[Fabrizio D’agnano]

[Bret Williams] “I’m starting to think my project file should be on the USB 3 mirrored raid, and just keep the event media on the raid 5. “
A problem with the FCPX projects is that you don’t have a real backup if you just mirror them, meaning if you want to go back to an earlier version you can’t, unless you build duplicates along your work. I am using Digital Rebellion Pro Versioner, so I keep the FCP Projects folder on the fast drive together with the Events, but have Pro Versioner build backups in a folder on the system drive, that is time machined, so I two times safe.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I’m in about the same position. In a more or less next future, I’ll have to upgrade both my MBP and MP, with all that comes with them (storage, RT HD output card, etc), without breaking the bank too much. Since I already have a lot of esata arrays or just backup or spare drives, I don’t think I’ll go TB for backup. I think I’ll buy a € 150,00 Lacie TB to e-sata adapter and keep going with my current backup sets, until it’s natural time to replace them, and maybe the prices will have dropped a bit then. I backup, sync or archive during the night time, so a few less MB/s won’t change things much on that side. Or you could consider USB3 sets, that are much cheaper than TB, and should be good for backups.
As for the iMac, USB3 is backwards compatible, so the port accepts USB2 devices, and you can hook one of your current displays via the TB adapter to achieve a two displays setup.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

[Travis Roesler] “I hear a lot of mixed reviews.

Please let me know what you guys think.
“

Video editing can be a mixed bag of different flavors. An editor working in a company sharing seats and duties with other professionals and an event videographer or a freelance documentarist can have slightly or less slightly different needs. My experience as a freelance documentarist with FCPX is great. A couple of weeks ago I was working with a friend on an old project involving tape, so I had to switch back to 7 Even though I loved at the time, it felt really old now. I’d never go back. I find the X to be much faster in my real world experience. What helps me most is the magnetic timeline, once I got used to it, the skimming option for timeline or single clip, which is just great, and the media organization that lets me find all the jellyfish images I collected in years among a ton of clips, or the “new age” or “upbeat” audio tracks in my background music archive in a few seconds. I am working with the current version with minor flaws on an upgraded early 2008 Mac Pro. It still does the job and lets me deliver to the TV channel I work for, so yours should be even better. Upgrading to the new MP or just a rMBP will also mean adding to the machine price 1000,00 USD or more for an external TB offering the speed of the internal RAID you can build striping three drives on the old MP, a TB to esata adapter if you still own a lot of archive on esata raids and need to backup and archive stuff, a TB RT HD output card, unless the next version of FCPX offers this via the onboard HDMI port, and possibly other third party adapters like a PCIe to TB one if you use other cards. If you are on a low budget and paid a nice price for the MP and you don’t plan to work on large formats material for a couple of years, I don’t see it as a so bad purchase as others do.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

[Jim Giberti] “Very impressed with how the Retina chugs through these renders and handles the playback of everything with just the 8 GB RAM.
“

Jim, does your rMBP have the 2.7Ghz i7 installed? How many displays can you hook? I am wondering if one cab bypass the 15″ screen and set up a two x 25″ external LCD plus one HD RT output using the two TB ports.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Mathieu,
maybe I’ll get a new MP after it’s out and tested, but what will always be present in my tool set is a MBP to gather media and card copies while I’m two weeks shooting in some remote field, so I’d rather go for one of those, upgrading my current early 2011 one. I might need to use it as a main machine for a while, since my 2008 MP is showing some problem. What display/RT HD output set are you using?. Have you experienced overheating/stability issues?

thank you

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Paul,
what do you mean exactly by “inconsistent”? Buggy, slow or both?

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I use Time Machine to backup my SSD system drive alone. I then use GetBackup2 to synch the internal 2x2Tb raid0 onto an external 4Tb drive daily, I archive and copy all media on an external safe NAS, so the mirror comes handy in case I need to save a delivery on a dead end if the RAID fails, or if I need to go on with my work on my laptop at home, but is not an archive set. An internal SW RAID10 array could be a good solution, but I prefer to have the sync’ed drive resting quiet most of the time instead of spinning inside the MAC.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

The naming of the clips for archiving purpose was a problem for me at the beginning, but later I found a way to do everything I need within FCPX, using events duplication or managing. By the way, creating an event for the use of archiving some of the footage is really like creating a folder, and if you use it within FCPX it won’t really matter if the renaming does not affect the real media but the reference. The event will also retain all the description notes and additional informations I add to each clip. I find it very useful.
In my line of work I end up with only ten good clips out of one hundred. First thing I do is creating an archive of the card structure on a separate raid1 drive set, containing the good and the bad, just in case I need to look for a shot I miss. The cost of a drive containing all the card archives is about € 80,00 per year, and it’s well worth it for me. Then I unmount the archive, and skim the clips on the card from the Import Media panel, marking ins and outs and importing, without transcoding, only the portions of the good clips I need, in a dedicated event on the editing drive. I then subdivide the footage using keywords, like “underwater shots”, “Interviews”, “landscapes”, etc. When I am done with the shooting for that project and it’s time to start real editing, I build a synch’d copy of the event on a separate drive so that I have a quick recovery in case my set fails when I’m on a dead end delivery, then transcode the media to “optimized” on the editing drive set, even if my old MacPro handles native AVCHD pretty well. After a couple of weeks since I have delivered the work and it’s been accepted, I delete the transcoded media from the media editing drive and duplicate the project with used media only to a sparse disk image on a separate drive that I’ll keep. I then drag the shots that are not project related (or however all the ones I think I can use in another project) into another event, named f.e.”2013-07AtlanticOcean/underwater”, that resides in a set of drives dedicate to archiving, and then hide it. Then I delete the synch’d copy of the event. This seems to work well for me, but I sure there are a lot of ways to achieve small size archives and safe managing of the media, depending on one’s actual needs.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Dave,
what is the advantage of the Clip Wrap/QuickTime routine over importing portions of the clips from the FCPX Import Media and working in native quality without transcoding?

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I second that. Most things I was complaining about were really already there, only in a different position. By the way, if I were to trade the ability to export used portions of the clips only but in ProRes, or original AVCHD, I’d go for the latter, since I work with AVCHD source media and I need to archive huge amounts of media. I gather it’s not the same for people shooting in heavier source formats. Ripple training helped me a lot making FCPX a total winner.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3