[Herb Sevush]

Thanks. That solved it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Bee Eph –

Yes, I’ve been working on FCP for about 3 years. For the most part it works, if not always with the elegance an ex-edit*or would like. As for the death of edit* — well, as they say, the good die young – and to this day I still mutter curses under my breath whenever I hear the name “discreet.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Joe –

Detective Renault: (to Rick Blaine) Rick, I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Waiter: (to Detective Renault) Your winnings , sir.
(Casablanca)

And I would be shocked, shocked if Apple hasn’t gotten at least five hundred such complaints over the years. I’ve complained to whomever I could find at NAB, but then again that’s part of the problem — who could I find?

My first NLE was the EMC, which I bought almost ten years ago. It could handle time code breaks perfectly. It was a small company a the time and if I picked up the phone I could talk to the founder and chief designer, and if my complaints caused a change in the software my name would be noted in the software updates. Created a certain pride of ownership.

EMC lost the marketing war to Avid and eventually went under. Myself, having an advanced case of the esoteric imperative, I went on to buy another non-Avid NLE, D-Vision ON-Line, later to become Discreet edit*. This was about 7 years ago. It too could handle time code breaks perfectly. It was a larger company, but at user groups in NY and at Discreet’s booth at NAB I met most of the software designers and could talk to them directly about things I didn’t like and design flaws I perceived. As the software matured I saw the effect these conversations had in the way the software grew. Then of course edit* was EOL’d by Discreet and I was cured of the esoteric imperative.

Now I use FCP and for the most part I am very happy with it. But part of the deal is that I know that nothing I say to anybody at Apple will have the slightest effect. Instead I have chosen to become a public nuisance about the shortcomings I see, and hope to stir up enough fuss that it might cause someone in Cuppertino to notice. But I’m not holding my breath.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

JeremyG

It would be nice to think that complaining directly to Apple about FCP shortcomings would do the trick, but for this “type” of problem I don’t think it does.

Apple will respond to “bug” reports caused by new software versions — witness the latest 5.1.3 to 5.1.4 re-write – but I don’t think e-mailing directly works when addressing long term faults in the software. Apple is well aware of these issues, it’s just that they don’t consider these problems “bugs” – instead they have taken on the status of “features” – witness the idiocy of the video mute “bug” which Apple now lists in their documentation as a feature – the fact that using video mute destroys all your renders causes merely a “what me worry” response from the providers of FCP. When dealing with inherent limitations of their software design I think only a public “gnashing of teeth” – at every opportunity and in every forum – might cause them to actually spend the effort necessary to correct these problems. Public complaints might hurt sales – sending in “bug” reports only fills up their servers.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Johnno

While this thread has been full of very good advice about the importance of careful logging practices in editing, your original question has not been properly answered.

“My question is why does FCP take so long to find the break and then start to encode again?”

The round about answer is that much of FCP is elegant, powerful and a pleasure to use, but then there are the ugly cousins hidden in the corner and the capture process might be the ugliest cousin of them all. We can call him Mortimer. FCP’s inability to handle capturing across time code breaks efficiently is an embarrassment. While in general it’s not good procedure to capture across, or even too near, time code breaks there are times when most editors have to do it – but FCP can’t really handle it. It can make the whole “batch re-capture” scenario a nightmare. There is no excuse for it, other NLE’s can handle this problem and have been doing so for many years. As to why FCP has this problem – well asking “why?” is always tricky but in my opinion it’s partially because many FCP editors seem to feel that criticizing this product is some kind of original sin – so therefore Apple doesn’t feel enough pressure to correct it’s often bizarre limitations.

So the short answer to your question is that FCP sucks at capturing over time code breaks and the reason is that not enough people complain about it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Graffiti has a good credit roll feature, if you can get a version of Graffiti that will work with your current version of FCP, which is not always the easiest thing to do. Also, for much less than Graffiti, CHV makes a CG plug-in for FCP that includes a good Credit Roll program. You can create your roll in a word processor, spell check it, and then paste it into the plug-in – multiple formats, ability to integrate graphic files into the roll, etc.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

The renders are going to the main fibre channel Xraid. Any other thoughts?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Walter –

“You mean like the Boris Title 3D that’s been included in FCP for years?”

No, not like Title 3D. I actually want a Video Titler that enables me to compose using the video as a background — if I wanted to compose my CG in a void I could use Photoshop. The requirements for a Pro Video CG titler have been around since before NLE’s were invented – basic stuff like:

1 – being able to compose over the video so you can know what the composited CG will actually look like.

2 – The ability to handle multiple font styles with differing colors. outlines and shadow types, including the use of gradients as fill or outline colors.

3 – being able to create variable and interesting shapes to serve as backgrounds to the text, with the same color and shadow options as the text.

Title 3D can handle #2 quite well, but it doesn’t address #1 and #3 at all. As I’m sure you well know, you could do this with a Chyron 20 years ago. You can do this with any number of PC based NLE titler’s now. You can do this, although not elegantly, with Boris Graffitti, on those few days when the Boris engineers can actually get Graffitti to work with whatever the current build of FCP happens to be (as a fully paid up Graffitti owner I believe I have the right to complain about this). But in FCP you can’t do this with Title 3D, nor with any of the CHV text plug-ins, nor with anything less than a motion graphics program like Motion, LiveType or the aforementioned Graffitti.

And this is definitely a pain in the A**. For the life of me I can’t imagine that an editor as knowledgeable and experienced as you hasn’t worked with a decent, let alone stellar, CG program, and won’t admit that this situation is a weakness for FCP. Sure you can create lower third backgrounds on another track and work around the fact that Title 3D doesn’t have this feature, and sure you can move the 3D graphics around in the motion tab to better position them in the final comp – I can also drive in a nail with a piece of lead pipe, but that doesn’t make the pipe a hammer.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

David –

Both LiveType and Motion are for animated titling and require rendering. For the creation of basic “lower thirds” they are like using a canon to kill a mosquito. On the other hand the FCP titler is woefully inadequate for anything other than building slates. What’s required is an integrated CG application that can handle multiple fonts, colored and gradient background shapes, and the creation of credit rolls and crawls – and create graphic files with alpha layers that can quickly and easily be moved around the timeline without the need for extensive rendering.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

My stocking stuffers, both redundent and novel

1 – A capture system that handles time code breaks as seemlessly as my Discreet Edit could do 6 years ago. No endless delays waiting for the system to find the break and re-cue the tape. Just capture and break into seperate clips on a TC break on the fly. Hell, my EMC2 could handle this ten years ago, it is a programming disgrace that FCP can’t handle this better.

2 – A decent titling program. Something as good as Inscriber or Deko on the PC side would be lovely, but merely something as good as Premiere Pro’s tittler is essential.

3 – Media consolidation that doesn’t require degrees in physics, mathematics, and divinity to accomplish. Again, I had better media consolidation ten years ago with the EMC than FCP can provide today.

4 – Video muting that destroys renders is the same as not having video muting. Either make this feature work correctly or get rid of it altogether.

5 – As long as rendering is needed, it should be smart rendering. If something is changed in a rendered sequence, FCP should be able to only re-render those parts which actually need re-rendering. Discreet Edit could do this 4 years ago, no excuse for FCP rendering to be so “stupid.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions