Joe Marler
22
Apple Final Cut Pro X Coins
39
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Is it the menu glitch seen on 10.4.7 (and other apps) if macOS System Preferences>Accessibility>Display>Reduce Transparency is set?
-
I did some simple FCPX 10.4.7 performance tests on my 10-core Vega64 iMac Pro, running Mojave 10.14.6.
The BruceX benchmark is about 2x faster than on 10.4.6. In fact it’s so fast I have to append about 5 BruceX timelines and divide the elapsed time by 5 to get an approximate number, which is 5.2 seconds.
Exporting a rendered 4k ProRes 422 timeline to 1080p H264 is about 40% faster.
No difference seen in Neat Video 5.1.2. That’s expected since it’s on the same macOS and the code path is largely within the plugin not within FCPX.
However in general it appears GPU code paths on built-in effects are a lot faster, also some encode/decode paths.
-
Don’t understand the question exactly but Quicktime Player 7 Pro had the ability to rapidly make a small video reference file from an image sequence. This in turn could be imported to FCPX which would access the underlying image sequence as a video. It allowed construction of time lapses from stills without transcoding.
I understand starting with Catalina this capability has been restored to Quicktime Player 10.
-
[Dave Smith] ” is a way to replace a clip with a new version and have all the different ranges and edits used in the project update automatically….Now that I’ve done a bunch of editing on a long clip of a guy doing a seminar I decided to try improving the absolutely dismal audio in Adobe Audition. “
The proper way to do this is using a multicam clip. Multicam clip ranges in the timeline dynamically inherit changes from the parent clip. You can change color, audio, add new audio channels, etc, and this will appear in the edited timeline. When adding new audio to an existing multicam clip, that can be synced to the monitoring angle: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph12661?locale=en_US
Because of these features it’s often best to use a multicam clip anytime you have external audio, even if only using a single camera. Sam Mestman described this several years ago: https://www.fcpworks.com/sync-or-multicam-clips/
It is conceivable you might be able to relink to the new audio file, but there are various relink constraints (audio and video included below). Before trying this, duplicate your project within FCPX, plus shut down FCPX and in Finder duplicate the library. This provides two additional rollback options if something goes wrong.
Relink constraints:
– Files must have the same audio config (same number of channels), but sample rate can differ.
– Pixel aspect ratio should be the same, but it may relink even if different. This could result in a squeezed or stretched frame.
– Clip duration must be the same or longer. If longer, then later relinking to the original clip won’t work because the new target will then be shorter.
– File suffix must be the same.
– Codec need not be the same, e.g. you can create 720p H264 proxies and relink to those as original media.
– After relinking to a different resolution file, the viewer may show a window-boxed screen. This is typically a cache issue and can be resolved by deleting the FCPX cache for that event, which is either stored in the library or outside as defined by the library inspector. The cache is a file bundle named LibraryName.fcpcache.
If relinking the new audio file doesn’t work, you will have to import the revised audio clip and match timecode for each range in the timeline then do a replace edit on each one. I can’t tell from your description if the original timeline clip ranges are multicam clips, sync clips, compound clips, A/V clip with in-camera audio or just video with manually-connected audio.
The general procedure is skim the timeline clip range, note the start/end points, skim the same range in the newly-imported clip, mark the range, then do a replace edit with OPT+R. This must be done for each clip range in the timeline. The exact procedure differs based on clip type.
-
[Jeff Kirkland] “I usually use EditReady to transcode or rewrap the files to a new folder, then import the new files rather than getting fcpx to do it.”
I strongly agree with this. Re-wrapping (not transcoding) with EditReady is very fast. Importing the resultant files with “leave files in place” is super fast. It avoids issues with bloating the library and possible problems with aborted ingest which leaves camera icons on some clips. That problem is so frequent I see it reported on various forums about every other day.
With some codecs such as Sony XAVC-S you can get away with copying the .mp4 files out of the tree and importing with “leave files in place”. We know from experience this works OK with FCPX (at least current versions).
However this is generally poor practice because the files are not re-wrapped and for some codecs the behavior can be adverse. E.g, doing that with AVCHD can cause major performance problems. Other codecs might need metadata info about clip spanning, color profile, etc. EditReady folds all this into the re-wrapped file.
-
[Jeff Feaz] “if anyone knows a Finder/Terminal trick, or even a third-party app, that can skip unchanged files inside a consolidated library”
I personally would be uncomfortable committing to that workflow and becoming dependent on it. You are talking about making differential backups within the library bundle. The library internals are not documented and are subject to change without notice in future versions. The library contains many different SQLite databases which may have thousands of pointers to media files inside a library.
Since most UNIX-heritage operating systems don’t support mandatory file locking, it would be easy to differentially back up part of the library bundle while it was being changed by SQLite. Unless you carefully tested each and every backup you would never know this.
If FCPX was positively shut down before the backup it might be OK. But if that did not happen, say due to a hung shutdown of FCPX, the backup could be subtly “poisoned” and you might not know it.
The automatic backups in /Movies/Final Cut Backups are transactionally secure. You could back up *those* to external media, along with any new media files. If the media files are stored external to the library that is easier. This also keeps the library small and easy to back up at the file level.
-
[Jan-Kees Looij] “It’s the combo HDMI out from FCPX and analog audio out from Mac Pro that causes a-sync on TV…
So if you play the exact same file from Quicktime Player to the same HDMI and analog audio out there is no mis-sync? If there is mis-sync, it’s not an FCPX issue.
-
Quicktime Player 10 can do no-encode trimming of several codecs, including H264: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201066
I thought the TRV350 was a tape-based consumer camcorder that pre-dated DV. In those you would typically capture the tape in real time using Firewire to a computer.
After capture from tape if the on-disk codec doesn’t allow trimming by Quicktime Player 10, you’ll have to use FCPX. Import, edit then export to ProRes 422.
However given the limited resolution of that camcorder you probably could not see any difference if you exported to H264 via File>Export>Master File>Setting>Computer. FCPX uses a fairly high bitrate for that encoding.
If the on-disk material is interlaced (which was common in that era), *that* is a bigger quality issue than theoretical generation loss from re-encoding. It is easy to accidentally pick a project/export option which doesn’t handle this well.
If it’s interlaced, you might want to “hard deinterlace” that in FCPX since most playback devices today expect progressive scan material. One way to do this is create a new project with “use custom settings”, use something like 720 x 480 and 29.97 (if appropriate), add the material to the timeline, select those clips, then in the Inspector “info” tab pick Settings at bottom to expose the deinterlace filter, check that, then export. The output will be hard deinterlaced.
VLC allows turning deinterlace processing on/off. You can compare the image quality of the original camera clip with and without VLC playback deinterlacing to the hard deinterlaced clip you export from FCPX and determine if it’s OK.
-
[Jan-Kees Looij] “when using audio out from Mac Pro, video and audio are not in sync when playing back from FCPX.”
Is is only when playing back from FCPX? What if you play the same material from Quicktime Player or VLC?
Anytime you route audio separate from digital video there is a possibility of A/V sync issues. Starting with HDMI 1.3 there is a lip sync compensation protocol whereby the “sink” device (TV in this case) is supposed to tell the source device (Mac Pro) its video delay and the source device is supposed to delay audio to match that.
However the original 1.3 lip sync protocol was very primitive and only included a fixed delay. It might have been an optional feature which each manufacturer decided whether to support.
The later HDMI 2.0 spec included a dynamic delay and the new version 2.1 includes eARC which can send audio backwards over the same HDMI cable to the source device. The idea is the display knows from moment to moment its own video delay, matches that for the HDMI audio it receives, then sends backward the properly delayed audio. The source device (typically an A/V receiver or computer) must also accept the eARC return data then can distribute that to speakers: https://www.whathifi.com/us/advice/hdmi-arc-and-hdmi-earc-everything-you-need-to-know
Your TV and the 2013 Mac Pro are relatively old, I’m not sure if the TV even supports HDMI 1.3. Even if it does both it and the Mac Pro would have to support the HDMI lip sync protocol, and the 1.3 version is only a fixed delay. IOW based on TV settings or varying delay based on scaling, resolution, etc it could not compensate for that.
The simplest solution is take audio from the TV. That is more likely in sync.
Turn off all extraneous processing in the TV (which you’ve already done). Double check to make sure everything is off, including sharpening, color profiles, motion smoothing, noise reduction, etc.
Then try sending a lower-resolution video stream such as 720p. Usually the lower the resolution the less delay but in some cases it can increase delays due to scaling. You’ll have to experiment, but there’s no guarantee. Also try different power-on sequences. On version 1.3/1.4 it’s during the HDMI/EDID “handshake” that the lip sync delay data is exchanged.
On Windows there’s a free utility called Equalizer APO that also has adjustable system-wide audio delay. I don’t know if any similar thing exists for Mac: https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/
There are hardware delay units ranging from simple ones that have analog RCE in/out:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/889746-REG/
To more expensive ones that have optical in/out:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1056871-REG/
There are also much more expensive rack-mounted delay devices.
-
Your export should have worked, don’t know why it got stuck. The H264 encoding is slightly different for that option – it uses a smaller GOP length but this should not cause a “stuck” export.