[Jeff Kirkland]

Can’t really help with the question other than to say I’d have though syncing post edit would be a not very efficient way to go. I’d do what you were doing in FCP7 but do it the FCPX way.

Start with FCPX syncing the audio for you, tag and keyword the synced clip, the edit it. Or just edit the synced clip into a project if the project is short enough. Metadata is great but often if it’s just a simple interview I can finish the edit in the time it would take me to go through and mark ranges.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

If you delete the optimised media, FCPX will revert to using the original media and you can optimise again at any point. My archiving process is to consolidate any events, delete all the optimised media or proxy media, and delete all the project render files.

Of course, I’ll always advise to test any workflow a couple of times with small sample projects to confirm it works that way for you.

How successfully you can work in AVCHD without transcoding will depend on your computer. My 2006 Mac Pro struggles to play AVCHD as does my 2011 13″ MacBook Pro while playback is fairly useable on my 2010 iMac. From the sounds of it though, you just need to see the rough cut so pristine playback isn’t really necessary.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

One last thought… if you highlight a range, you can create a compound clip from that range and that child clip can have it’s own name, and metadata. you can also change the audio configuration any way you want in a child clip independently of the parent.

I’m not sure how well a project performs with large numbers of compound clips since 10.0.6 made changes for the better.. anyone tried pushing the updated FCPX to it’s compound clip limit?

~jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

I just got Resolve to export a new set of clips. It just seemed like too much effort in FCPX to do it just with metadata. I always figure that sometimes, no matter what NLE it is, you just hit a weak area and have to do some extra prep before the edit.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Or for a completely different approach, last time I was in a similar situation I used Davinci Resolve Lite to quickly cut the footage up and then imported the new individual clips into FCPX for the edit.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

There’s no import setting but you could capture the footage with a different app such as Quicktime player, or at worst you could take all the individual clips and turn them into a single compound clip inside FCPX. I think it’s fair to say that tape ingest is a bit of an afterthought in FCPX – more of a ‘be glad you have it at all’ thing.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

I should add that I’m having to revisit the my workflow slightly because things didn’t work the way I expected when archiving a project yesterday. I ended up with some media not being organised and some unwanted media copied to my event from other events.

I haven’t looked into it properly yet but I think it’s a result of how compound clips work since 10.0.6. I have to figure out if I had problems because of how I organised things during the edit or there’s a problem organising or consolidating media when you have a compound clip residing in another event. Anyway, I think I see some testing and maybe another thread here in my future.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

FCPX is a database driven application. The secret to happy media management is to do as much of it as humanly possible inside of the application itself. The app doesn’t cope well if you end up with multiple events or projects with the same internal database ids, which is what will happen if you use the finder to make the duplicate.

For what it’s worth my current workflow tends to be…

I create a Camera Archive of the original media on an external drive. I used to do this by hand with various apps but since 10.0.6, I can mostly do it within FCPX.

I import media to an event on my working drive, copying the original media to the event. I figure I can’t have too many copies of the original media at this stage. If I need to, I get FCPX to either optimise the media or create proxy media depending on whether I’m going to be working on my Mac Pro or making do on my 13″ Macbook Pro.

I don’t really need to copy or move anything after that. If the project needs to be portable, I’ve already created everything on the external drive I’ll be using for the life of the edit. Maybe I’ll duplicate or move the projects and events over to my Mac Pro if I get to the point I don’t need portability any more.

At the end of the edit I consolidate all the media, then to save space I delete all the render files, and in the Finder manually delete any optimised or proxy media (I have the originals in the event so I can always recreate the optimised media another day) and move the project to external offline storage.

That last step is usually done to a sparse image for easier management as I have to push it across the network to a Drobo for final storage. For convenience, I usually copy all the client documents and images and anything else related to the project into the sparse bundle as well.

Cheers,
Jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Most stabilisers are meant to smooth the motion rather than make it rock solid so in that light the FCPX filter isn’t doing too badly. The adobe warp stabiliser is probably one of the best for stabilisation but as mentioned it’s not the choice if time is an issue.

My usual approach is to try Final Cut first. If I’m unhappy with that then it’s off to After Effects for one of the options there (Mocha or warp stabiliser).

I’ve not tried Lock and Load recently but I’ve always liked ProDAD’s Mercalli for stabilisation. They don’t have a FCPX version yet although they say it’s coming. Meanwhile it could be worth trying the demo of the standalone version of Mercalli at https://www.prodad.com.

I have an edit coming up next week that was mostly shot with a hand-held Canon 7D so I’ll be interested to hear how your research goes.

Cheers,
Jeff K

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Don’t forget to try stabilising in Motion. It has a lot more options available such as restricting the analysis area and point tracking..

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland