[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, I think of myself as pretty picky…

Honestly, the last nle I used that didn’t have at least a slight but perceptible lag on playback was a 10 year old avbv Avid playing standard def on a G4 tower running Mac os 9 with is9 local storage. Every system I’ve used since then has had a slight hesitation before playing the first frame of video. On pc based systems, there was usually a far more annoying lag in the interface responsiveness. As in click a button with the mouse and wait a half second for it to register. Now that will drive a person crazy!

I’m pretty sure any nle will have some hesitation playing long gop formats. I think it’s more of an issue on a network. I’ve never had more than about a half second delay with HD or 2k footage on local storage (fiber or thunderbolt raids, usb3 or esata through a thunderbolt adapter). Even then it’s not been consistent or intrusive.

[Jeff Markgraf]

No problems with AJA Kona 3 in a Sonnet thunderbolt to PCI adapter. No problem with an AJA T-Tap TBolt to sdi.

MacBook pro 15″ Retina. TBolt 2 raid. HD and 2k footage.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Andrew –

I agree that it would be nice to have the trim media function available. Even though I don’t need it much any more, I know it’s important for others. Even if it’s only available for certain formats, such as ProRes, one can make a decision about what format to shoot, or whether to optimize, in light of the need to consolidate.

Regarding your suggestion that since an NLE can decode such a file with frame accuracy, it should be able to truncate and output the same way: I don’t think it’s nearly that simple. From my admittedly basic understanding, reading a long gop file requires reading an I frame, then creating groups of b and p frames both in front of and after the I frame. Editing on anything other than an I frame requires decoding the whole group in order to make a new I frame at the frame used for the edit. I’m sure Oliver or Jeremy or another big brain will jump in here to correct me if I’ve gotten this wrong.

I think there’s also an assumption here that Avid DnX files are long gop files. I don’t think they are. I don’t think MXF is synonymous with long gop. If they are in fact all I frame, then consolidating is as easy as it would be with ProRes.

[Jeff Markgraf]

As long as you weren’t part of a “morning zoo.” That would require some kind of after-the-fact punishment (said a guy who used to do a morning show, years ago).

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, yes.

Didn’t mean to suggest that Apple can’t or won’t do “difficult.” I think, as I discussed above, that the consolidation-style media management isn’t seen by Apple as particularly important, what with the preponderance of small-ish files coming from modern cameras. If they saw this as an important feature, they’d get on it. I would assume it doesn’t meet their cost-benefit threshold for now.

So it would seem ripe for a third party to do this. Like Primaries Exporter. Or a video-enabled version of X2Pro. I’m not a techie, so I don’t know if there’s an issue truncating R3D files or the various long-GOP files without first transcoding to ProRes or some such all I-frame format. After all, Avid’s consolidation works on its own MXF files and doesn’t deal with other formats. Maybe there’s a reason (besides Avid’s usual…Avid-ness!).

[Jeff Markgraf]

Avid has many improvements in version 8. But it’s fundamentally the same program. I’ve used it successfully for many years. It is what it is.

If it were me, I’d give X another try. Take advantage of Linda or Ripple or whatever training course you prefer. Lots of help available here. Give it at least a month to really get comfortable, and try to work on some real projects, not just tutorials.

And the low cost is a real plus, even when factoring in the various plug-ins and helper programs. But don’t try it with older hardware – that way lies madness.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Right. As I’ve mentioned, almost all the online tutorials and blog posts on this topic are for Resolve 9 and for earlier versions of Avid. Avid 8 has many improvements, especially in dealing with files instead of tapes.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Daniel –

re: projects –
I’m using “project” in the FCPX sense of the word…what others would call a sequence or timeline. So the Teaser would be one timeline or “project.” Act 1 is its own timeline. and so forth. Then a master “project” is made that just pastes each act in order, with blacks in between. No compound clips or any of that.

re: audio –
so the audio comes along with each act. Again, no compounding. My main point about the audio is that when you make the multi-cam clips, all 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever channels are included, in synch. I’m not at the computer now, so I can’t t remember if the multi-cam shows all the audio tracks split in the timeline or if they’re combined. If they’re combined, just expand the audio and do your work. In addition, individual tracks can be enabled or disabled in the inspector.

re: Plural Eyes –
You shouldn’t have to go outside X to synch the audio. If slates are missing, you can set markers at approximate synch points on the video and the audio, then make the multi-cam. The markers help X focus on a smaller area to find the synch better. (See the manual.)

I feel your pain on the indie movie thing. I’ve been working on and off on a movie shot on R3D 5k. It’s a mess. Slates are not consistent. Audio was not logged properly, so it’s often guess work to match the audio with the correct take. The scenes as shot do not match the scenes as numbered in the script. The scenes were changed on the set, without being reflected in a revised script. Coverage is wildly inconsistent. Did I mention no time code on anything? All avoidable problems, but here we are…

Good luck. Happy to answer any other questions you may have.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Jumping into this thread a little late, but…

I get the frustration. Avid has had consolidate media with handles forever. One of the knocks on FCP Legacy was that they were late to the consolidate party and their implementation was, shall we say…less than reliable. For sure, the ability to transfer only the used media was important, especially when pulling only a short bit from an hour’s worth of loaded footage.

And this is where I think I see the disconnect in this discussion.

Much of the media ingesting I did in past years was of the “put in the tape and capture the whole thing” variety. When I had 10 tapes full of synched dailies, they were rarely logged, and I rarely had the time to sit and log the tape in a bin and then batch capture each take. So I often ended up using lots of short bits from one tape. To have to copy over that whole one hour file just for the 3 minutes I may have used would have been ridiculous.

But virtually all media I deal with these days is shot to cards or drives. It comes in short bursts, with a new clip created with each take (or other camera start/stop). Yes, some directors like to let the camera “roll” for ten minutes at a time. But mostly the files are no more than a few minutes long.

So the idea of copying a 2 minute take, of which I’ve used 40 seconds, doesn’t seem like such a big deal. It’s not as if I’m forced to copy the unused takes.

Now, I know that transferring 10 minutes of R3D 4k footage is a pain compared to 1 minute of that footage. But, really, if I’m transferring that kind of footage, then I’m copying to a drive and shipping or messengering the drive to the next guy. It’s not as if I’m uploading 50 gigs of footage (unless I’m a big boy with my own T1 line or some other studio-grade file transfer system in place).

Now, in promo land, I often work with pulling clips from one or more 48 minute episodes of a show. That’s 20 or 30 gigs per episode. In that case, I’d sure like to be able to trim that deliverable footage to the few gigs I actually used. So hello Clip Exporter or Primaries Exporter. Should this functionality be included in X? Ideally. But there’s a way around it for now.

I’m inclined to go with Jeremy here in guessing that if it were simple, X would already have this built in. Otherwise, one is forced to go to the “Apple has forsaken the pro user” argument, which is just stupid.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Perhaps I should clarify that point.

X is fully capable of importing, editing and exporting broadcast-quallity video and audio in standard broadcast formats. The recent update to pro codecs filled in MXF capabilities, which for many was the last missing piece.

In spite of the much-discussed (and often mis-represented or merely misunderstood) differences in workflow and/or specific techniques, X is far more like Avid or Premiere or FCP Legacy than it is different. (Kinda like the difference in DNA between chimps and humans is less than 3 percent or some such small amount!)

That being said, not having tracks in the conventional sense takes some getting used to. Some people freak out having one primary edit window. And yes, Apple changed some of the customary nomenclature (some with good reason, others seemingly just because they could!).

The biggest hurdle for most is jumping in and thinking, “how do I do (_____) , which I always do in Premiere, in X?” Sometimes it’s a simple change of keystrokes. But often it’s the wrong question. A more experienced X user would reply, “you don’t, because you don’t need to in X” or “X does this instead, which accomplishes the same thing.”

That’s what I mean by using X on its terms, rather than trying to make it a direct Premiere or Avid replacement. Personally, after decades on Avid and FCP (and several other NLEs), I find X to be a breath of fresh air. I’m enjoying the editing process more now on X than I have in years.

But you must dive in and try a real project on it and give it more than a week to wrap your head around the differences.