[Geert Van den berg]

[Herb Sevush] “Yes to all your negatives Jeremy, but the fact remains that in the right hands a 5D can produce pictures you simply can’t get with any other camera. Is there anything you can output with FCPX you can’t do with any other NLE?”

I am not Jeremy but there are 2 things you can do with with FCPX, which you can’t do with PPro… these points do not really apply in comparison to Avid though (and are not new in comparison to FCP7)… but these are very important points, so I am surprised there are so little comments about it.

1.) rewrap video which has only straight cuts, preserving 1:1 quality.
2.) better render quality (try to to re-render a couple of generations in FCPX and then PPro and compare and you’ll be surprised, I was…)

Not saying it isn’t missing anything, I still can’t really use FCPX either, but if they fix the things they say they’re going to fix in the FAQ, then I like the direction of this application.

[Geert Van den berg]

I am not Jeremy but there are 2 things you can do with with FCPX, which you can’t do with PPro… these points do not really apply in comparison to Avid though (and are not new in comparison to FCP7)… but these are very important points, so I am surprised there are so little comments about it.

1.) rewrap video which has only straight cuts, preserving 1:1 quality.
2.) better render quality (try to to re-render a couple of generations in FCPX and then PPro and compare and you’ll be surprised, I was…)

Not saying it is not missing anything, I still can’t really use FCPX either, but if they fix the things they say they’re going to fix in the FAQ, then I like the direction they’re going with this application.

[Geert Van den berg]

Do the test Tom, and then report back. Just looking at one render doesn’t tell anything. Offcourse I do hope someone can prove me wrong or point out I used a wrong setting, because I really like Premiere.

Layer the files on top in FCP and then look at the difference, switch between them and look at the details in the picture and maybe also try the difference composite mode.

When rendering to Quicktime using the same codec (IMX), I’d expect both applications to perform the same, but it appears that is not the case.

Actually I thought my render settings were changed, as Premiere appears to remember the last render setting, but sometimes it does not. But I did the test twice. Once on my MacBook Pro, which has also FCPX installed, so I thought it might be some updated Quicktime codec causing problems. But I also tried it on the Mac at the company, which still has an older version of the IMX codec installed, the same result.

And offcourse you can never beat re-wrapping, as it’s 1:1. But I did render in FCP. See my other post here https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/14635

[Geert Van den berg]

I’ve thought of combining in Quicktime Pro, I could even script that, but it would still be quite a workaround and then I could just as easy combine the parts in FCP.

Actually I’ve also thought about exporting with an alpha-layer and compositing in Final Cut Pro, but that is also a workaround.

So I think I’ll stick with FCP and just use Photoshop for the static titles. We have been using Motion when it has to get flashy, but it’s a bit unstable. So I hope to replace that with After Effects.

But please also do the render test. I hope someone can prove me wrong!

[Geert Van den berg]

So you’re parsing the SQlite files of the project and events? (Yeah, I am fishing for more info! ;-))

2000 lines of applescript code?! Impressive!

I don’t have any need for your app yet, because I don’t use AE, but I might in the near future.

It’s good to see that there are possibilities with FCPX!

[Geert Van den berg]

Weird thing is you can copy an FX to a storyline in the timeline index, but it seems to me that when you do that, there’s no way to remove or turn of the FX on that storyline, or am I missing something?

[Geert Van den berg]

I tried throwing the app on the script library window in the applescript script editor application, FCPX is not refused, so I already thought it might be scriptable, however there is no library yet.

Mikael if I may ask and without disclosing any of your code, how do you go about interfacing with FCPX, are you doing everything via AppleScript? Did you use common AppleScript terms to find out the synthax that works?

[Geert Van den berg]

Off course I still have an issue though, and that is that I can’t do a partial export from within a FCPX project without going to Compressor… Off course there workarounds but I’d like to keep the correct timecode.

But image quality first, the rest will come (hopefully).

[Geert Van den berg]

Geoff, thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

I was totally neglecting the fact you can also select the codec under share/export. I was always using the last option, which uses a Compressor setting and which always transcodes. The regular export appears to be working just as in the FCP7. Thank god, this made my day!

However what do find strange that ‘use project settings’ always transcodes to ProRes, while the first clip I put in the timeline is IMX or XDCAM, but selecting the right codec from the dropdown menu does the trick. The image doesn’t loose any color information anymore.

This is a big + for FCPX on my list.

[Geert Van den berg]

Good topic! Not just for web delivery but in general.

I am also busy trying out 2 other NLE’s and have found some very interesting things regarding image quality. Since our company does titling of programs that we dub in Dutch, I find it very important to do not degrade/transcode the rest of the program which we don’t touch.

FCP 6 & 7 have the nice ability to save a quicktime in the same format as the sequence, when a file in that sequence is just a straight cut and matches the sequence settings, saving to a new file (or in my case wrap to MXF with MXF4mac) is just a copy and doesn’t degrade the image quality.

I think this is not the case with FCPX because (while you can use ProRes as its native codec) it will handle most codecs in the timeline directly, so the output of a Quicktime file has to be rendered to one specific format. Another NLE which I won’t name (yet, because I am not completely done testing), also uses that same philosophy.

At the moment I think the image quality that FCPX outputs is better than the other NLE (probably not better than FCP7 because that leaves the material completely intact, still need to compare). The test I am doing is rendering out the same scene a couple of time, each time putting the new render in a new sequence. It’s not something you’d do in reallife but I think it’s a good test to exagerate what happens when the image is rendered. In my case the formats of choice are IMX and XDCAM because those are the final delivery requirements that I need to create (we ingest in those formats, or recieve mxf’s in that format, do the titling and then wrap the deliverable). In FCPX you see the color information gets worse but the picture stays sharp. In the other NLE after 3 passes the picture is looking terribly pixelated! (the 3rd NLE I mentioned earlier still has to be tested for this)

With ProRes, this is happening much less, there is a difference, but I can easily do 10 passes (in FCPX, haven’t gone that far in the other NLE yet). It gets a bit less sharp but the colors stay intact quite well. Also in the other NLE with ProRes the outcome seems less worse. I still need to compare. It could also be a bug with the particular Sony codecs. However like I said this bug doesn’t happen in FCPX. Only the colors gets worse each pass.

Now to say that I am comparing codecs. I am not. I am just trying out the same test with another codec as well to see if it’s a bug with that particular codec. And I am doing the same process in 2 NLE’s and there is a difference when using the same codec. Odd?

The main issue that I am having is that when choosing another NLE than FCP7 we will also need to reconsider our captures. Uncompressed is not an option because with the amount of material that we handle we’d need lots of more storage and we already have quite a lot. ProRes is an option (actually we already use it for most HD material because for editting it’s just a better format then XDCAM) but that still means we already have to make a complete render for every deliverable, while we can now output one in 5-10 minutes this will probably double in time. I don’t like that at all… we have quite a good workflow, so no need to change yet, but in the future?