[Joe Marler]

[Ty Ford] “I’ve tried different attsached drives and get a – 50 error.

I tried rendering back to the source drive and got this message, “Video rendering error: 10008 “

That typically means there’s something wrong with the source clip: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210757

Using the clip name and timecode info from the error message, select the clip in the timeline, do a SHIFT+F, locate it in the Event Browser, then right-click and reveal that clip in Finder and verify it is OK and playable.

If OK, disable background rendering in FCPX preferences, then delete all render files via File>Delete Generated Library Files>Delete Render Files>All.

Then reboot the machine, start FCPX, select all clips in the timeline via CMD+A then render them to cache via CTRL+R. If that hangs or crashes, state the error. If it completes then export using this preset: File>Share>Master File>Settings, Format: Computer, Video Codec: H.264 Faster Encode, Resolution: 1920 x 1080.

[Joe Marler]

[Thanos Papadopoulos] “Yes I did the update and has the option that I was looking for! Although I didn’t see this option for the optimised clips. Is there something similar? Why only proxy relink?”

Good question. Proxies were the biggest problem for these reasons:

Proxies were commonly used as a smaller-size “proxy only” library to facilitate remote work. Hence they were often put on different drives with different volume names which broke the links, since volume name of the drive where they were generated was burned into the library and could not be changed.

By contrast optimized media was about 6x the size of H264 originals and not commonly distributed or moved.

Starting with 10.4.9 there these improvements were made:

(1) Proxies can be relinked
(2) If creating proxies, they apparently are tracked by inode lookup within a volume. IOW the proxies can be relocated anywhere on the volume without relinking.
(3) If optimized media (only) is created, those cannot be relinked but they are apparently tracked by inode like the proxy case. Moving or even renaming the file does not break the link.

If proxies + optimized media is created, evidently the proxies get the inode lookup. This may be a limitation in the SQL table schema within the library where they aren’t storing inode separately for proxies and optimized media.

As with earlier versions, the media files themselves use inode lookup and can be relocated or renamed within the volume and FCPX will find them without a relink. The symlinks pointing to those moved or renamed media files will automatically be rebuilt. This of course assumes the disk volumes are HFS+ or APFS.

While there is no formal relink for optimized media, it can be manually relinked if the filenames and file extensions are the same. This might require bulk renaming the extension from .mov to .mp4.

[Joe Marler]

[Ty Ford] “Any help on importing and displaying source timecode.”

Starting with 10.3 there is a timecode effect in FCPX. Just query on “timecode” in the effects browser and drop that on the clip. You can reposition it, adjust size, background transparency, etc.

You will need to decide whether to use project timecode or source timecode. I usually disable the “show name” checkbox since the clip name is not needed, then slightly lighten the background transparency and reposition the burn-in timecode field to not conflict with the subject.

Typically you’d want project timecode not source timecode, otherwise it will restart with each clip in the timeline. However you can add two different timecode effects and display both project and source timecode.

After you get it the way you want on the first clip, you can do CTRL+C on the clip to copy that effect then select all the remaining clips in the timeline and do Edit>Paste Effects and add the TC effect and current settings to all the clips in one batch.

The timecode effect has a positive offset option but there is no odometer-like “reset to zero” option. If you export an eval video with burn-in timecode, then get feedback on various points, then later trim the head (say to exclude the slate or pre-roll) you can at least add a positive offset to make that TC sync with the original eval video.

[Joe Marler]

[pip hare] “need to edit ‘4K’ MP4 footage from a Sony Alpha 6600 (3840 x 2160, H.264, Linear PCM, Color Profile 1-2-1). And also ‘4K’ footage from a Sony PXW 190. And I have to use FCP X.
What specs would anyone recommend for a MacBook Pro – or is there any MacBook Pro that is likely to cope without requiring proxies/transcoding?”

I’ve edited hundreds of camera hours of 4k XAVC-S material from Alpha cameras. It is somewhat sluggish on any NLE on any Mac platform, including Premiere 14.3.2, Resolve Studio 16.2.5 and FCPX 10.4.8. I just re-tested that on a 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro and a top-spec 2019 MacBook Pro 16. Premiere is by far the worst — major lag time for JKL commands and program monitor frame rate (even at 1/4 res) is sluggish.

In general it’s not too bad editing single-cam 4k XAVC-S using FCPX on a well-equipped 2019 MacBook Pro 16. For multi-cam you’d likely need proxies.

It is not an I/O issue and having media on the world’s fastest SSD won’t help. It is CPU-bound on the decode path, and for some reason the available accelerators such as Quick Sync, T2, etc. are not working as you might hope. At least FCPX is a little faster than Resolve and way faster than Premiere for this codec on the same Mac hardware.

For the PXW-Z190, I don’t know. Every codec is different. That camera can do 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC-L. In general 10-bit 4:2:2 Long GOP material is harder to decode.

[Joe Marler]

[Noam Osband] “I made a string out with lots of highlights. I want to be able to have that open and have the browser show me only what’s in the project. Is there any way to do that? “

This sounds like the common issue in FCPX of using a project for stringouts, then wanting to skim it while another project is open or wanting to have multiple projects open concurrently.

For better or worse, FCPX is not designed to work that way. You keyword and rate media in the browser, then filter on that to add to your main project.

What about cases where you want stringouts in a certain clip order, or maybe multiple stringouts? Make those compound clips. They then become skimmable objects in the browser. You can easily select ranges from that and add to your timeline.

You can also create a smart collection to show only used media. BTW this is used media for the currently open project, not all used media from all projects. Open the stringout project, click on the used media smart collection you created, and only clips used in the project appear in the browser. CMD+A to select those browser clips, then keyword them, e.g, “stringout1”. Then open your main project and you can click on the stringout1 keyword collection to see only the clips used in stringout1. They will not be in the stringout timeline order but will be visible as discrete clips you can rapidly skim through.

[Joe Marler]

[Jay Soriano] “Was offered a 2010 Mac Pro for $500…is it still a viable option in 2020 editing on FCPX with a Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB GPU?…Mostly HD footage with some 4K here and there.”

The crucial item is codec. If you will now or ever in the future be editing or transcoding from a H264 or HEVC codec or exporting to those codecs, the 2010 MP (like the 2013 trash can) does not have hardware acceleration for this. I’ve heard of some people using the 3rd party OpenCore bootloader, but I don’t know how reliable that is.

When I tested my top-spec 12-core D700 Mac Pro vs a 2015 iMac 27, the iMac was 2x faster at transcoding 4k H264 to ProRes.

If your cameras use ProRes acquisition and your deliverable is ProRes, it’s not so bad. But in general I’d suggest getting a used iMac 27. Maybe the best bang for the buck would be a 2017 iMac 27 with SSD and the RP580 GPU. You might find one on eBay for under $1k. Depending on what condition you’re willing to accept you might find some scratched or dented base-model iMac Pro for under $3k. The iMac Pro is really good because it’s quiet and has lots of ports.

[Joe Marler]

[Flavio Juliano] “Do you think the crash report might reveal a specific file(s) that is causing this? If not, I figure I can try either:

1) Backup current state now and then restore from Time Machine March, then drag in files from current state backup to try and get things up to speed.

2) Install High Sierra (as Apple still supports it, as you said) and see what happens. And officially purchase Final Cut Pro (as I have a cracked version, that’s why I can’t update it)”

It is very costly from a time standpoint to debug stuff like this, plus outcome is uncertain. Often a huge amount of time is spent only to find the only alternative is upgrade.

I suggest you update to High Sierra, make a file-level back up of your FCPX libraries, then get the free evaluation version of FCPX. Due to COVID-19, Apple extended the eval period from 30 to 90 days. I think it’s still 90. That would give plenty of time to upgrade your library and test it on the latest version of FCPX, or whatever version is supported by your hardware and High Sierra. FCPX will update your old libraries to the newer version but it’s one-way only; you can’t go back. Thus the reason for the file-level backup.

Make sure you also make a file-level backup of the Final Cut Pro.app file in /Applications.

If it works or is improved, go ahead and purchase FCPX. If it doesn’t work you have a file-level backup of your libraries so can go back to the older version of FCPX. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21196321/apple-final-cut-pro-logic-pro-x-90-day-free-trial-coronavirus

[Joe Marler]

[Terry Flaxton] “am I right in I presuming the Quicktime that sits in Catalina will show at 8k if it’s got an 8k screen on the end of the chain – so the attendant question from me to if you know is if you’ve got a 5k screen does the latest quicktime automatically resize to a nearby resolution like 4k or whatever the size of screen it’s dealing with?”

Viewing 8k vs 4k Vimeo and Youtube content on a 5k iMac screen shows there’s more detail visible at 8k. This implies the viewable resolution is not capped at 4k by the iMac 5k screen.

However that is with my face 20″ away from my 27″ screen and using prescription computer reading glasses optimized for that distance.

There is a relationship between screen size, resolution and viewing distance. To see the difference between 8k and 4k on an 80″ screen, you’d need to be closer than about 1.3 meters (about 4 feet) — see below link.

Diagram of resolution vs screen size vs viewing distance, including 8k and above: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-HHkdtSn/0/4e47ce96/X2/i-HHkdtSn-X2.jpg

The playback system would also need reliable 200 mbps download speed, plus the video decoding hardware and software to support that without lag or dropped frames, and for all scene types. Some scene types (ripples on water, camera flash strobes, fireworks, etc) are more difficult decode cases and deficiencies often show up there. So you can’t just give out a URL and assume it will work.

There are several video encoding test cases commonly used in research. I don’t know where you could obtain these at 8k resolution but you could try to find (or shoot) similar 8k test clips, then validate your system end-to-end (inc’l final playback system) before having a client watch your actual material. One example scene is “Ducks Take Off”. This is a compressed Youtube clip, you’d need to obtain the original uncompressed video for each test case. If that sounds like a lot of work, welcome to the bleeding edge — that is the cost of 8k at this stage of development:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDcf0ri8XUE

Links to additional encoding test material:

https://media.xiph.org/video/derf/
http://ultravideo.cs.tut.fi/#testsequences
http://medialab.sjtu.edu.cn/web4k/index.html

[Joe Marler]

[Terry Flaxton] “all possible settings there using H265/HEVC seem limited to 4k. Any suggestions to getting an 8k onto the net in 265 ?”

8k HEVC doesn’t seem supported in current versions of Compressor. It is supported in Resolve but since there is no hardware acceleration for 8k HEVC encoding on any current platform I’m aware of, that’s a potential problem. So Resolve will encode it on a 10-core Vega64 iMac Pro (don’t know about other machines) but it takes about 15 min to encode 10 seconds of material.

You could try exporting 8k ProRes and transcoding to HEVC with Handbrake. They seem to have a fast HEVC software encoding algorithm (x265). I did a quick test using the latest Handbrake 1.3.3 and it seemed to work using the “veryfast” encode option.

However comparing that file size to the 8k H264 produced by FCPX, the H264 version is actually smaller. Neither one will play smoothly in Quicktime — even locally. Maybe more encoding experiments could produce a smoothly playable file.

Youtube has some 8k material that actually seems to work in Chrome (not Safari) but right-clicking and picking “stats for nerds” shows a sustained approx 250 megabit/sec streaming rate. That is using Google’s VP9 codec which is similar to H264.

Even if you uploaded HEVC that will be re-encoded on Youtube or Vimeo to whatever their streaming codecs are. During client/server handshake when the connection is established one of those streaming codecs is automatically chosen. So the upload codec is totally different from the streaming codec provided by Youtube or Vimeo.

[Joe Marler]

[Michael Reilly] “I’m new to final cut pro x and I had a question about selecting clips in the time line.

in premiere there is a shortcut that allows you to grab all of the clips in front of the playhead, i think the command is TT. is there a similar shortcut like this in final cut pro x? “

What is your goal for doing this? Is it to move that group and insert a gap clip? If so you can do that with OPT+W.

If you want to select all clips before or after the playhead, you can do that with the timeline index. Do SHIFT+CMD+2 to enable the index, the current playhead position is marked on the index, then select all clips before or after. Or in the timeline you could shrink to fit with SHIFT+Z, then just lasso all those before or after.

Other related timeline shortcut commands:

Blade all layers at current playhead or skimmer location: SHIFT+CMD+B: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph12724?locale=en_US

Extend all layers of selected clips: CTRL+ D and set a longer duration (type +10 for 10 frames, or +10. for 10 sec), make sure all layers are selected, then OPT + ] will trim all your clips to the playhead.

In general the best workflow in FCPX is not dumping a lot of stuff on the timeline early in the edit. Rather first carefully curate and tag the material in the Event Browser using favorites, rejects and keywords, then query that with the available tools. If you want stringouts or specific sequences, put those in a compound clip which becomes a skimmable item in the Event Browser.

With FCPX there is a separate concept of range vs clip selection. Often in FCPX you deal with ranges not clips. There are many shortcut commands to mark and adjust ranges:
https://support.apple.com/guide/final-cut-pro/set-multiple-ranges-in-the-browser-veradbf2dce/mac

Other timeline index features in MacBreak Studio #442:
https://youtu.be/0dqcuBUVXjc

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