Howard Duy vu
Forum Replies Created
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It’s actually pretty straightforward. I would output a ProRes master first (after you do what Bret suggests, which are all the slates and broadcast-safe things which are standard). The audio part is really easy because it’s a song, so you know where it will peak, so just make sure it’s under -10 db.
After you get your ProRes master, run it through Compressor, with XDCAM HD422i60 as your codec, 59.94 framerate, and top first field order. I’m guessing you cut this video at 23.976fps, so this step is to add the pulldown to get to 59.94 fps. You should be able to just have the “copy audio tracks from source” checked if you made sure your ProRes master was set to 48kHz stereo. The list looks complicated, but it’s all very standard.
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[Richard Herd] “Slight disagreement, here. For me, I use quite a bit of AE in a sizzle reel. I’m not sure the best workflow (currently) for X into AE; it’d be nice if there was a dynamic link between X and AE. “
IMO dynamic linking is overrated. It may be good for simple things, but often you will want to keep track of multiple revisions, and it’s just much easier to keep rendering into a folder. Also, you’ll have to render ALL THE TIME when you bump out new versions. What about when you go to another house for color grading? You’ll have to render them out anyway.
Another thing people don’t realize is it can be bad when you archive a project. What if years down the line you need to open up the project, but the newest version of AE does something weird to those old comps (not to mention updated plugins)? If it’s already rendered, you’ll have them.
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[TImothy Auld] “Ok, what are you talking about? What delivery systems require tracks? All of them from my perspective. Some require one thing and another on this track or that but they all require that specific audio be placed on specific tracks. Is this outside of your experience?”
Whatever, man. You’re trolling or you don’t even understand the basics of X. You give roles or subroles to audio and video in FCPX. Stuff like Music, and a subrole can be Music.Background or Music.Theme, whatever you want. It even makes more sense than A1, A2, etc.; it gets you to think about the CONTENT rather than what track it’s on. From there, you export an AAF for something like Pro Tools (using XtoPro). It will translate these roles to tracks for Pro Tools, all nice and organized. You can even export a master with audio splits instantly cause it can put each role in a separate track in the quicktime. In the old way, an AE would have to take time to organize your crap.
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None of the things you listed should be deal breakers, since things just work differently sometimes in FCPX. Don’t worry, I’ve finished many many projects on X now, and there’s nothing you can’t do in it that you can do in the other NLEs. As you say, they all have their quirks.
[Lillian Young] “1. In FCP 7, I would lock my audio track and edit videos on other tracks. In this Storyline environment of X, I read that using a gap clip on the main track is the workaround. “
If you mean just use an empty gap at the front of the project and attach a piece of audio to it so that you can use the primary for cutting, well that’s just how it’s supposed to work. I will do this for a music video for example, where you just attach the music track at the top, and then just cut using the primary/secondaries/attached/whatever you want. The music is attached at the top, so it will never move whatever you do down the line. Some people just like using one large gap clip and then just attaching clips or storylines on top of it which is also fine.
[Lillian Young] “2. If the clips are on top of a Gap clip, then to do simple things like add transitions, I have to create Storylines.”
If you add a transition to a connected clip, it will turn it into a storyline. But it will do it automatically, so it doesn’t slow you down or anything. What’s the problem here? You can have a storyline with just one clip in it that just dissolves at the head, for example. A storyline is just a container for clips really. Why do you think this is a dealbreaker?
[Lillian Young] “3. The audio drops or peeks randomly on playback but renders fine. Playing it again sometimes resolves the issue — sometimes not. “
Are you talking about the audio meter? Hm, i haven’t seen this behavior. One thing you should make sure of is to have audio with standard samples rates like 44.1 or 48 kHz. Perhaps this is more to do with your I/O card and its drivers, not sure what you’re using.
[Lillian Young] “4. You cannot simply select in and out points from the storyline. You have to create a Compound Clip and then select a Range? Seriously?! “
No, you can use the range tool to select an in to out in a storyline. You don’t have to make it a compound clip at all. In the primary storyline, you can always select in and out or use the range tool. It’s true that FCPX has more focus on the primary, but secondaries are pretty easy to use.
[Lillian Young] “5. I can’t just grab a clip like a video clip and move or delete it without the audio (detached but attached via stem) being effected. So I have to use the tilda key to move a clip independently while making sure the previously stem-attached clip is connected to something (like a Gap Clip) to avoid magnetic slipping…headache just describing this”
You can press “delete” (the other delete which is fn-delete on laptops) to delete the clip without deleting its attached audio. Holding tilde is not that hard, and audio is ALWAYS attached to something. It doesn’t magnetically slip anywhere, it stays in the exact place it’s connected to in the primary.
[Lillian Young] “6. To get the latest version with major updates, I’d have to upgrade my OS. As a pro with multiple third party plugins and apps, there’s no way I’d upgrade my OS on an early release. Neither do most businesses.”
Well I can’t say anything about this other than that the latest version uses a lot of optimizations from Mavericks to get performance improvements, so it wasn’t really avoidable. That said, Mavericks is pretty stable right now and is not really an early release anymore. I remember working on Avid systems on Jaguar (!) while Tiger had been out for a while, so it goes both ways.
[Lillian Young] “7. I experienced a MAJOR scare when FCPX didn’t recognize my external drive containing my project. On FCP 7, you just open the FCP file. FCPX is trying to be so ‘cool; with its no-saving, auto-open features that it scares me that when something goes wrong, what should be a simple recovery becomes very complicated. In my case, disconnecting then re-connecting my drive solved the issue, but not before a heart attack. “
You can be sure that you’re looking at things through rose-colored nostalgia. What about the crashes when FCP7 project files got too large? Sweating when you think the project file has been corrupted… or large still images causing crashes? FCP7 weird audio glitches galore. I loved that program, but it had its share of problems. Avid can only add on things, making it more and more complex over the years, since it will make a lot of people angry if they change anything substantially.
Anyway, I say stick with it for a few more projects with decent deadlines, and you’ll see it’s pretty good.
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[Oliver Peters] “LOL. Not me. In fact, I’m still using Color quite a bit.
Actually, I’ll probably do the next job of any complexity with Media Composer.”
Do what you want, but FCPX is more than capable of handling complex projects. This audio bug I agree should be fixed, but it’s actually the only major audio bug I’ve come across and it’s fairly easy to work around. Actually, FCP7 was very glitchy when dealing with audio with different sample rates. Also, there’s really no reason to use Color since Davinci Resolve is out there and is way faster and more stable.
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I have had this happen: it would play fine in the timeline, and then the export resulted in a crazy bit of distorted noise at the trouble spot.
I tracked it down to audio that had a weird sample rate, something like 48.0576. This usually happens if the audio is attached to some video with a different or odd framerate, and you use something like Cinema Tools to reconform the framerate.
What you should do is find where the distortion sound is happening and take a good look at all the audio in that section and make sure it’s all 48kHz. Re-export it from Compressor for example. Basically something standard. FCPX currently doesn’t play very nice with odd sample rates for whatever reason.
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It looks like it’s a white cup, so you could use the luma keyer in FCPX (or use a green cup, etc). Also, according to that video, it’s doesn’t look like the space layer has any motion tracking at all. You could probably get away with keyframing it if you wanted to move it. If you want motion tracking, use Motion or After Effects.