[Joe Marler]

[Tangier Clarke] “What I would like to do is, while having the synced clips smart playlist selected, be able to type the scene number of the clip which is also the beginning of the clip name, into the search field and only those clips show up.”

Tangier I agree I wish the FCPX search terms were more flexible. E.g, Finder has many adjustable search terms, including “raw query”: https://macmost.com/powerful-searches-with-raw-query.html

However in my simple testing you can have a smart collection on synced clips, have a scene number, and query on that scene number. But it hits on both clip name and scene number, so you can’t selectively query just one in the search box.

FCPX doesn’t have query syntax in the search box like Finder. With Finder you can search on “name begins with” or “name contains”, or “scene number equals”, also and/or boolean terms together: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/SpotlightQuery/Concepts/QueryFormat.html

With FCPX you can’t even select multiple keyword collections or smart collections for an intersection (logical AND) search. You can only CMD+click multiple items for a union (logical OR): https://www.statistics4u.com/fundstat_eng/dd_prob_union_sect.html

It would be nice if you could OPT+click for logical AND, and if the query syntax was more sophisticated.

FCPX uses SQLite whereas Finder is using Spotlight or some other query parser. Typically relational databases have a query optimizer which builds an access plan, which is then passed the storage engine layer for execution. It can work well but may require debugging of the access plan (by a sophisticated end user). Apple is probably trying to avoid this, hence that limits the complexity of the relational engine they’re using.

You could argue that Finder and Spotlight have complex query capability yet maintain good performance. Well, I often encounter situations where the Spotlight indexes are stale or malfunctioning and I have to manually rebuild them. The SQLite database (despite the limitations) is very reliable.

[Joe Marler]

[Brett Sherman] “are there Macs that can handle smooth realtime playback of 10-bit 4K 60P HEVC video? If so, which ones? Can the newest MacBook Pro do this?”

I have a top-spec MBP 16. I don’t use much HEVC material but I’ve tested a few things. In general it can edit 8-bit 100 mbps UHD 4k/23.98p HEVC from a DJI Inspire 2, but it’s a bit sluggish. I haven’t tested 60 fps HEVC material.

As a test I encoded the above material to 10-bit HEVC using FCPX, then re-imported the file and from a performance standpoint (on the MPB 16) it seemed about the same as the original 8-bit file. I don’t know if this has any validity or not.

Currently there is no hardware acceleration for 10-bit HEVC export, so that is super slow. This is using FCPX 10.4.8 on Catalina 10.15.3. There are rumors this may be enabled in future versions.

The general situation with hardware acceleration for various HEVC codecs is not well documented. There are three separate hardware acceleration methods: Quick Sync, T2 and AMD’s UVD/VCE. Each of those have various versions, depending on vintage. I think the application layer must access those using the VideoToolBox framework, or maybe there’s another framework.

Depending on the exact hardware/software/codec mixture, you might have hardware acceleration for decode but not encode, 8-bit but not 10-bit, UHD 4k but not above, 60 fps but not higher, etc.

There are also some FCPX stability issues reported on some HEVC codecs. For the above Inspire 2 material, I can edit that but if I try to transcode it to proxies FCPX will hang.

See below Max Tech video, which discusses some HEVC items on the MBP 16 and new Mac Pro.

https://youtu.be/LlHBjmF64_s

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[Joe Marler]

[Herb Sevush] “It turns out that you can’t start up the 2019 Catalina MP with any external disk that is also not Catalina (and that’s not easy to do either.) There is no way to wipe the drive of the 2019 Mac Pro and install an earlier OSX. None. It has something to do with Catalina and something to do with the security chip in the 2019’s boot drive. “

Some of the problems you encountered might happen with any T2-based machine with Secure Boot enabled. If so you might have encountered this on an iMac Pro or a MacBook Pro 16. If you have certain backup/restore/migration workflows from the pre-T2 era, this can be a painful experience — but it’s not necessarily the Mac Pro.

There have been issues with T2 security since day one. When the iMac Pro was released, Apple support would often recommend you erase the entire machine then re-install macOS to resolve a problem. Yet on a T2 machine with default security, that could result in a non-bootable machine. After erasing the machine it then disallowed network-based macOS install from Apple’s own servers. You also couldn’t boot from a clone — whether CCC, Super Duper, or anything else. The only solution was return the machine to Apple. I happened to have a Time Machine backup (which the T2 security system trusted), otherwise my iMac Pro would have been returned to Apple to “un-brick” it. This is not supposition but the result of many hours on the phone with Apple escalation support.

This may have been mitigated in more recent MacOS versions but the lesson I learned was immediately disable Secure Boot on all T2 machines.

There are still issues with this, and to install SoftRAID you must disable Secure Boot:

https://downloads.owc.com/softraid/mac/SoftRAID%20Installation%20with%20Catalina.pdf

In a recent Mac Geek Gab Podcast, Mike Bombich (developer of Carbon Copy Cloner) discussed various issues caused by APFS and Catalina. This included how APFS, encryption, and Catalina affect space consumption, migration, and backup/restore.

https://www.macobserver.com/podcasts/macgeekgab-796/

[Joe Marler]

This was recently discussed in detail on the Mac Geek Gab podcast by the creator of Carbon Copy Cloner, Mike Bombich.

At 45 min into the podcast he discusses:

– APFS has some nice features like snapshots and file cloning. If you want that use APFS.
– If you want multiple volumes on a disk which can be flexibly re-sized, use APFS.
– There are still some periodic reports of APFS reliability and corruption issues.
– Only Disk Utility can repair APFS, no 3rd party utilities will work.
– For rotational disks, maybe stay with HFS+ a while longer.
– For rotational disks with significant performance requirements, esp. file enumeration, definitely stay with HFS+. IOW lots of files, browsing through and searching those with Finder. APFS does not perform nearly as well on rotational media as HFS+ does.

https://www.macobserver.com/podcasts/macgeekgab-796/

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “Apple’s philosophy has been about empowering the individual. Given that, this feature may simply not fit their goals.”

I fully agree. I’d like to see some type of collaboration in FCPX, and Resolve and Premiere adding this creates some competitive pressure. However it’s just not in Apple’s DNA, historically speaking.

I would more readily expect some kind of greatly improved AI-type media analysis. That might include more advanced subject analysis, or maybe built in transcription. Various things like that would preserve the single-user focus. However those are also difficult to execute at a truly useful level. There’s a tendency for them to be like Siri on Mac – something used in marketing demos but which many users disable.

[Joe Marler]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Are you saying Apple can’t handle difficulty?”

I’m just saying (depending on the implementation) this would be a different type of difficulty than Apple is accustomed to. E.g, you don’t see any Apple machines on this list, therefore all the experience obtained in this rigorous environment by shaking out bugs in threading, file system, transaction management, etc. is missed: https://www.tpc.org/tpce/results/tpce_last_ten_results5.asp

For a very simple coarse locking implementation, it’s less difficult. But locking a library doesn’t buy you that much. Locking a project doesn’t do anything for the large % of work that takes place in the Event Browser. Locking an Event is better than a library but that provides less functionality than MergeX does now.

Adding more fine-grain concurrency and conflict resolution makes it more beneficial but it becomes exponentially more difficult to implement. It would vastly expand the required test matrix and entail an ongoing test and support burden.

Maybe there’s some middle ground which gives some truly useful collaboration but is extremely reliable and not so expensive to test and support. Google Sheets seems to work fairly well in multi-user collaboration, but Google has lots of experience doing that. I’m sure Apple is considering the cost/benefit ratio of various FCPX collaboration schemes.

[Joe Marler]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’d vote for multiuser collab too. It’s seems like it would be doable.”

If well implemented, this is one of the most useful features possible. The value is not restricted to large high end post-production teams who are co-located using a NAS. A two-person independent documentary team which is geographically distributed and intermittently connected to the internet could also benefit. There are more of the latter than the former.

However Adobe’s announced collaboration approach evidently is based around (1) Timeline locking and (2) Shared local storage – IOW a co-located team using a NAS.

With FCPX, lots of work happens in the Event Browser before touching a timeline, so some integrated collaboration of that work phase is needed. Also a collaboration approach is needed for distributed teams which are not co-located.

The problem is achieving this in a reliable, simple, truly effective implementation is really hard. It would essentially be a distributed database capable of reconciling various editor inputs. In the FCPX workflow it should allow multiple people to rate and keyword material, then resolve the conflicts. Picture something like MergeX but more elaborate, fully integrated, with conflict resolution backed by FCPX UI support.

Moving from the browser to the timeline, Resolve already has timeline merge capability. This essentially does a “diff” of two different timelines and graphically displays the similarities & differences. FCPX collaboration would ideally include something like that.

While it may see simple, there are various technical issues like distributed deadlock and livelock. Testing and supporting collaboration functionality is very difficult.

FCPX is based on the SQLite database — but that is a single-user code library, not a multi-user database engine. How to get from that to a reliable multi-user implementation is unclear. Resolve can optionally use a PostgreSQL database server, but their code must be designed for that. You can’t just take a single-user app and move it to a multi-user database.

[Joe Marler]

Attach a file so we can see. Please state what version of FCPX and MacOS and what hardware. Also state what output codec.

If you see transient glitches in “the final output”, IOW the exported disk file, are you playing that with Quicktime Player? In that case FCPX may not even be involved.

In some rare cases, transient, intermittent brightness or color fluctuations have been reported within FCPX due to mis-identification of color space. If encoded to an output file these then become permanent in the file. However this is not pixelation. In this case the solution is select all clips, then in the Inspector under “Settings”, re-flag them Rec709.

There was an issue in Catalina if the Reduce Transparency accessibility preference turned on. That was fixed in FCPX 10.4.8.

If the output file shows random pixelation when played with Quicktime Player, try playing it with the latest version of VLC, which has its own built-in codecs.

If it only happens within FCPX, duplicate the timeline via a snapshot, then select all clips and remove all effects via Edit>Remove Effects. Then see if it happens in that timeline with no effects applied. That can help narrow it down to a plugin or effect. If it goes away, duplicate the timeline again but remove the effects from 1/2 of the timeline at a time, then 1/4, then 1/8, etc to narrow down where it’s happening.

You can also try running Apple Diagnostics on your hardware. If it finds nothing that’s not a clean bill of health because it’s a superficial check, but if it finds something it’s usually serious: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/diagnose-problems-mh35727/mac

Make sure you are not running the Chrome browser which is poorly behaved and can saturate the MacOS VideoToolBox framework, causing unpredictable FCPX behavior.

[Joe Marler]

Select the clip, then in Inspector “info” tab, select “General” view mode at bottom. Then check if it applied an automatic camera LUT. If so turn that off and examine.

If that doesn’t make a difference, select the “Settings” view at bottom of the Inspector and manually flag the clip as Rec709.

If you are importing from .mts files copied out of the AVCHD package, try importing from the AVCHD package itself. Sometimes there is color metadata that’s needed.

[Joe Marler]

[Chris Dutton] “he was going through every clip he had taken and ones he liked he moved above to show which to keep. He was using Premiere Pro, which I now know is different to how you arrange the clips…”

With FCPX do not do this. You organize “to keep” material in the Event Browser – before touching a timeline. Get in the habit of doing that and things will work much faster. See the tutorial FCPX Warp Speed Organizing:

https://youtu.be/FJVO7VzcwDM

[Chris Dutton] “….I have done this on all of my clips….I am wanting to basically delete these grey boxes so the clips above could then take its place, but of course, when I do this, it deletes the clips connected to it….Is there an easy way to do this instead of going over all the clips and manually moving each back into the grey area?

OPT+CMD+down arrow will overwrite the selected clip(s) to the primary storyline. You can lasso to select all the connected clips, then drop them to the primary storyline in a single step. You can also go the opposite direction – OPT+CMD+up arrow will lift a clip from the primary storyline, leaving a gap clip in its place.

[Chris Dutton] “.The clips I am not using which are currently on the main timeline I would like to put maybe right at the end of the project, so, if I decide I may want to use a clip I can go and look back at the ones I had originally dismissed, would that be easier to just copy those into another project?”

The easiest thing (and how FCPX is designed) is use the range-based rating and keywording while in the Event Browser to mark those – before adding them to a timeline. However they are already in the timeline so the question is what to do now.

FCPX is not designed to have multiple open timelines, copying clips between them, so don’t do that.

You you several options:

– Just move the clips to the end of the timeline or stack them up as connected clips, as frequently done in track-oriented NLEs.

– Lasso/select all the clips in the primary storyline you want to save, then create a compound clip of those with OPT+G. That will become a single skimmable clip in the Event Browser. At least that allows using FCPX as intended, marking ranges and bringing those down to the timeline.

– Create a snapshot duplicate of your timeline. Then create a Used Media Range smart collection. This shows used media in the currently-opened timeline. You can see those as orange stripes if you have View>Browser>Used Media Ranges enabled. Select that smart collection, then keyword the clip ranges. This will include all your timeline clips for later easy retrieval, not just those you want to save for later. But at least it marks them in the Event Browser for later use. After that switch back to your normal timeline and those keyworded clips will remain keyworded, even after you overwrite them in the primary storyline.

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