[Joe Marler]

You don’t necessarily need Compressor for this. E.g, you could import all 400 clips to FCPX, answer “no” to the question of “Media…requires conversion to be compatible with future versions of macOS after macOS Mojave”.

Select all clips in the event browser, in Inspector Info tab in the Settings view, select deinterlace checkbox.

Then batch export all 400 clips from FCPX event browser in a single operation. You could pick either H.264 or ProRes output codecs, depending on whether a close study of a few test clips showed any quality difference.

Batch export from FCPX has been available since 10.4.4: https://larryjordan.com/articles/final-cut-pro-x-10-4-4-batch-export/

[Joe Marler]

[Ray Sherman] “400 .AVI 720 x 480 29.97 (screenshot below) video clips that I need to convert to Apple ProRes 422. I have FCPX and heard that Compressor would do the conversion. I don’t have Compressor yet and would like to know if it would do the job for sure. If so, I would like to know which steps/settings to take for maintaining the best quality as well as converting it to a 16.9 aspect ratio without stretching it.”

AVI is a container format which doesn’t by itself indicate the codec inside. However common codecs for 720×480 29.97 material include DVCPro and DVCPro50.

There is a discrepancy between post-Mojave compatibility of this material as indicated by FCPX 10.4.7 vs the Apple article “About incompatible media in Final Cut Pro X”:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209000

The article states that DVCAM, DVCPro and DVCPro50 will be compatible with future versions of FCPX in Catalina and later.

However I have a lot of AVI files from a Panasonic AG-DVX100 using DVCPRO, and both FCPX 10.4.7 and Compressor 4.4.5 on Mojave raise warnings this will not be compatible with future versions of macOS after Mojave.

In general I’d use Compressor to bulk transcode those to ProRes or some other format that will be compatible in future versions.

Another complication is most of that material is interlaced 4:3 aspect ratio. You can’t just blindly transcode it without extensive testing that the interlacing and aspect ratio is properly handled. Otherwise you could end up “baking in” interlaced material to a progressive project.

In FCPX I’d consider creating a custom project set to 720×480 29.97 *progressive*, import that material and use the FCPX deinterlace filter in Inspector>Info>Settings. Compressor gives more options on bit rate.

Closely inspect diagonal lines for aliasing and horizontal movement for comb-like interlace artifacts. If properly done it should be “hard deinterlaced” in FCPX and output should look good. Compare side-by-side to the original material played by Quicktime and by VLC. VLC allows manual control over deinterlacing and various deinterlace modes.

Make sure aspect ratio is as expected. Check for gamma shift or any other change vs the original material.

The quality of material from that era often wasn’t great by current standards, so you’d have to decide whether ProRes output was warranted or just use H.264.

You can import the whole batch of AVI clips to FCPX and it will prompt you it will be incompatible in the future, and ask to convert it. If you say yes, it will transcode all of them to 720×480 29.97 *interlaced*, I think using ProRes, although the codec ID says MPEG-4. DVC and DVCPRO were all-intraframe formats so compression wasn’t very good relative to H.264. The format specifier of the converted file is ProRes, vs “DV” for the original captured clip, and the converted clip bit rate is quite high, about 41 mbps vs 24 mbps from the original clip. For all these reasons I’d suggest picking a few test clips and doing various conversions to check the quality before you do 400.

[Joe Marler]

Your colorist exported a single file. If he used Resolve, you needed an XML export and media using a certain procedure (see below). That would hopefully give you clip boundaries in FCPX.

If it wasn’t resolve or if it’s not possible for him to re-export that, you will have to either manually do frame-accurate cuts on the timeline or else use scene detection software to automate this.

Resolve has scene detection and will try to cut each scene. It doesn’t always work but it’s adjustable. I think the free version has this. The stabilizer in Resolve is also significantly better than FCPX, so if you take it to Resolve you may as well stabilize it there.

Ripple Training FCPX/Resolve round trip: https://youtu.be/v5R6AnxFyhM

Sam Mestman FCPX/Resolve round trip: https://youtu.be/cjpTAUSqlWY

Resolve scene cut detection: https://youtu.be/HqjhF1wfIOk

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[Joe Marler]

You are correct, I got the new Video Assist mixed up with the Atomos recorders.

However it seems Atomos could make a ProRes RAW recorder for Blackmagic cameras. Blackmagic gives away a free open BRAW SDK for Mac OS, Windows and Linux. The purpose is facilitate decoding of BRAW format, including unique information about the camera’s image sensor. That was all stated in the press release: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20180914-01

Atomos can already encode ProRes RAW, and the BRAW SDK would seem to give the ability to decode BRAW, including access to low-level sensor data.

However Jeff’s current situation is what to do now. I guess you could use Resolve to batch convert BRAW to ProRes (maybe after “first light” correction). You’d obviously lose something but Arri cameras sometimes record ProRes.

[Joe Marler]

While BRAW was originally a raw format for Blackmagic cameras, Atomos makes some recorders that record/encode BRAW from a few non-BM cameras, e.g, C300 II.

I wonder if Atomos will make recorders that record ProRes RAW from a Blackmagic camera? That would solve the problem for FCPX users wanting to edit raw from those cameras.

[Joe Marler]

[Jeff Kirkland] “what workflows people are using when dealing with Blackmagic Raw? I’ve got a short film shot in braw and I really want to edit it in FCPX. “

It’s not just FCPX. You can’t play BRAW in QuickLook, QuickTime or VLC. There is a special Blackmagic player. By contrast ProRes RAW can be played in all those — it acts just like regular ProRes.

But your material already exists, so it’s not like you have a choice. I’d just use Resolve. It’s actually pretty good. Or you really want to use FCPX, use Resolve to batch convert them to ProRes.

[Joe Marler]

I don’t think that’s possible. How would constructs unique to FCPX like roles, events, favorites, rejects, range-based keywords, etc. translate?

[Joe Marler]

Delete all render files, then turn off background rendering if on (in FCPX preferences). Do a fresh one-time pre-render of the entire timeline by selecting all clips via CMD+A, then render all with CTRL+R. That helps isolate a render vs encoding problem.

Make sure all volumes have plenty of free space. Run Disk Utility First Aid on all volumes. For the boot volume this requires starting in recovery mode (boot while holding CMD+R).

If exporting to a network drive or through a hub, try exporting to a local directly-connected drive. Make sure that drive is HFS+ or APFS not ExFAT.

Make sure you are not running Chrome. That can cause various FCPX performance and stability problems.

[Joe Marler]

[Jason Brown] “I normally have WAV for each mic and just make through edits for each to bounce back and forth – that has worked well. I’m wondering if I should first break these out and not have POLY wav files, but make independent files for each track?”

Just do Clip>Expand Audio Components. For a polyphonic WAV file you should see each mic. You can then select range mode with the R key, click and drag across each range you want to adjust. Do SHIFT+CMD+S to silence, OPT+SHIFT+CMD+S to to reset level. No need to blade anything.

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “what makes you think Afterburner won’t encounter that same fate in a few years?”

It is implemented using an FPGA, not a fixed-function, full-custom ASIC. In theory this can be reprogrammed in the field to incorporate new algorithms, codecs, etc.

This is possibly how Blackmagic implemented BRAW in their cameras, after the cameras were already designed and deployed. Only an FPGA has the horsepower to do this.

E.g, you could hypothetically update a NLE to better handle a “difficult” codec, but that is just software, and is restricted to the CPU’s instruction set. By contrast an FPGA does this in hardware.

They are more expensive per piece than a full custom ASIC and they burn more power, but the time-to-market is much faster and they can be reprogrammed in the field, at least conceptually.

Traditionally you wouldn’t use an FPGA in high-volume product where power consumption was critical, but in a lower volume product that could not amortize the design cost of a full custom ASIC, and where power consumption was an acceptable tradeoff. However FPGA progress has been so marked that they are increasingly used outside this formally narrow area.