[Jeff Kirkland]

I was thinking about buying an RX100 to take on holiday but after some research the video modes just seemed a little weird so I passed.

My reading was that the 50i mode is actually 25p in a 50i wrapper so essentially 25psf. I couldn’t get any definitive confirmation of that though – but if that’s the case, then the 24mb mode would be the best choice. The compression math isn’t really quite this simple but 25p at 24mb per frame is less compressed than 50p (potentially twice the data) at 28mb.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’m always happy to do some research and try a couple of things out. But you’re right. You have to limit the play. If I need it fixed and nothing else works then it’s time to clean install and start again.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Something I noticed made the delay go away for me yesterday was resetting the FCPX window layout.

If your apps are in the cloud, a complete reinstall is relatively painless and certainly makes the problem go away, but that’s like using an elephant gun on a mouse. There must be a more elegant solution.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’ve had this happen from time to time too. In fact it’s just started up again in the last week or so.

The only thing I’ve found that seems to fix it, at least for a while is a clean install of my machine – which makes me think it’s an FCPX/OSX issue rather than anything to do with the media or libraries.

Are you using anything Blackmagic Design for monitoring? I’ve also wondered if it has something to do with the driver for my Blackmagic Ultrastudio Mini Monitor. Haven’t had a spare minute to investigate thougH.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Ultimately,the playback issue seemed to be a problem with the FCPX library. Moving the project to a new library fixed things, and all subsequent projects seem to be playing fine.

Just for the record, frame rate was 25p but I also tried with 24p. Both MOV and MP4 files refused to play.

I’ve just chalked it up to one of those weird things that happen from time to time.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks for the help. Fortunately, I’m testing the workflow before doing any actual production with the camera so I have the luxury af being able to play until I get it right.

I copied everything over to a new library and while, FCPX is struggling, the MOV files do play back as long as I set the viewer to better performance. I shot some test footage as MP4 and these play back just fine even with the viewer output set to best quality.

I can’t find any info on the difference between the GH4’s MP4 and MOV containers so for now, MP4 looks to be the best option.

I also just updated the GH4 firmware to version 2.1 which says it improves playback of recorded files, so I’ll try recording some more MOV files later today.

Ultimately though, I think it might be time to do some archiving, reformatting, and clean installing of my editing workstation. There’s nothing quite like a clean sweep to make weird problems go away….

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Thanks for the replies,

The footage was recorded to Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, imported to a FCPX camera archive, then brought into FCPX and the Thunderbolt RAID for editing.

What I don’t quite get is that OS X has no problem playing the files whether it’s using Quicklook, VLC, or whatever – only FCPX is stalling. If the files were corrupted, I’d have expected playback problems to be universal?

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Round tripping as done in FCP7 doesn’t really exist in FCPX but you can use XML to get to and from various audio apps.

Logic supports FCPXML so you can get your audio there without too much trouble, although I think the X2Pro application probably does a better job of organising things before import. X2Pro will also let you round trip to Pro Tools (which is its real purpose). Xto7 translates FCPXML to the FCP7 flavour and so can be handy for getting your audio into Audition or Soundtrack Pro.

Or in the case of basic stuff like a hum, you could try FCPX’s built in tools.

A quick visit to Google should find you any number of good tutorials on round tripping on to your audio app of choice and a recent episode of the FCPX Grill podcast talked specifically about getting to logic and back.

You might consider plugins like Izotope RX which is brilliant or even something simple like SoundSoap which I use a lot for basic noise cleanup.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’ve used my old ADVC100 and it worked ok, connected with a FireWire 800 to thunderbolt adapter. I can’t remember if I’ve used it since 10.1 though so I can’t confirm it still works with the very latest version of FCPX.

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

[Jeff Kirkland]

Not sure I 100% get how you’re approaching it now but I cant ell you how I do similar.

In my case, the demos are shot with three or four cameras. One camera is usually a wide-ish shot of the talent presenting, the others are detail shots from different angles. The demos run 10-15 minutes each before editing.

I build the narration and overall demo from the wide shot on the primary storyline. I then go back and add secondary storylines or connected clips where appropriate, grabbing b-roll footage from the browser to show the detail. The b-roll action has to match audio from the primary storyline but it’s not critical it be frame accurate so I just eyeball the sync if I have to.

Occasionally we have two angles of the presenter talking so I’ll make a multicam of them to build the primary storyline but I’ll still end up just grabbing the b-roll from the clip browser rather than messing with multi-cam.

Anyway, that’s what works for me. Everything is shot with my editing approach in mind and It takes me maybe an hour to get a rough cut down.

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