[Joe Marler]

[Craig Seeman] “BMD releases Video Assist which can record BRAW from cameras that can send raw much as Atmos does with ProRes RAW

FCPX doesn’t support BRAW
Resolve doesn’t support ProRes RAW”

The Panasonic S1H will support ProRes RAW to the Atomos Ninja V sometime early 2020.

Earlier this year several post-production systems announced support for ProRes RAW: https://www.provideocoalition.com/prores-raw-coming-to-a-number-of-post-production-systems-at-nab-2019/

Financially it’s probably more important for Resolve to support ProRes RAW than FCPX to support BRAW. Blackmagic makes most of their money from hardware, and wider BRAW adoption likely increases hardware sales. IOW if FCPX supports BRAW that will help Blackmagic more than Apple is helped by Resolve supporting ProRes RAW. Apple likely knows this and might be negotiating hardball with Blackmagic for licensing fees.

That said, if Apple doesn’t further increase the momentum behind ProRes RAW, they could end up in a position like Intel when they temporarily refused to advance the x86 CPU to 64 bits.

Intel took a hardball position their Itanium CPU with its new instruction set would become the new standard. They restricted any work on advancing x86 to 64 bits. Seemingly overnight, AMD’s 64-bit instruction set became widely adopted, then it was too late for Intel to act. Today Itanium is dead and Intel must license AMD’s 64-bit instruction set, which is humiliating. It’s not impossible that could happen with Apple and ProRes RAW.

OTOH the opposite could happen: BRAW and ProRes RAW are acquisition formats, so the real question is how will this play out long term across the camera ecosystem. If Apple can convince more camera manufacturers to support ProRes RAW and only Blackmagic’s cameras acquire in BRAW, then no matter how many NLEs support BRAW, over time more content will be produced in ProRes RAW.

[Joe Marler]

Forgot to add, besides Keyboard Maestro there is TextExpander, and you can combine both: https://macautomationtips.com/textexpander-keyboard-maestro-use/

[Joe Marler]

[Xavier Paredes] “Perhaps do the editing work by creating/editing the “CurrentVersion.fcpevent” files (accessed by right-clicking the library file on the HD and choosing “Show package contents”) “

You cannot do edits by editing the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file. This contains several SQL tables with an undocumented schema. The only way to even view those is using a utility like SQLPro: https://www.sqlitepro.com

In theory if you knew the schema and data dictionary (including definition and decoding of binary Blob columns) and internal table workflow used by FCPX you could write a SQLite application to do this. Without that information, attempted edits will corrupt the library and crash FCPX.

[Joe Marler]

[Ryan Holmes] “What software do y’all use/recommend for digital asset management (DAM)? Primarily concerned with still photography…”

This is a FCPX forum, which is Mac-only and has a built-in DAM. For multi-user access FCPX does not have built-in features for this but Lumaforge and others have figured out some solutions. For NAS hardware and consulting see https://lumaforge.com.

For expanded multi-library asset management some FCPX installations use KeyFlow Pro 2: https://www.keyflowpro.com

On Mac a very simple “poor man’s DAM” is use Finder tags then search those via Spotlight indexing or use NeoFinder which can search the previously-indexed content of offline hard drives. This can work for music, stills or video. For a NAS or LAN you’d need to verify the behavior and reliability of Finder tags and Spotlight indexing. Obviously this is Mac-only; Windows clients would not work. https://cdfinder.de

The general issue is photo cataloging apps like Lightroom are designed around a single-user database. They cannot easily be re-hosted on a LAN for multi-user access. For concurrent multi-user access to a centralized photo database, a specialized product is needed.

For more a more elaborate Windows/Mac MAM, see CatDV. I used this several years ago and it worked very well: https://www.squarebox.com

Here is another one called Daminion. I have no experience with it: https://daminion.net

Likewise here is one called Fotoware: https://www.fotoware.com

You might get better response from a photographic forum like DPReview. They have very high traffic over there.

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “And Apple will now supporting DNxHD and HR with a Pro Formats update. Also Avid will extend ProRes support to Windows Media Composer.”

Oliver, thanks. This seems to be a change from Apple’s HT209000 article where they state starting with Catalina, DNxHD / DNxHR would not be supported. This meant not supported except within Media Composer, IOW FCPX would not open DNxHD / DNxHR files: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209000

The updated statement implies that in Catalina, FCPX and other apps can read DNxHD / DNxHR via a 64-bit plugin.

Even before this it was apparent that future 3rd-party codec support would be possible because RED RAW and Canon Cinema RAW Light were listed in Apple’s HT209000 article as being supported within FCPX going forward – provided RED or Canon software is installed.

In Catalina the difference isn’t really 32-bit vs 64-bit but rather the technical method and approval mechanism for doing this via 64-bit 3rd-party AVFoundation plugins is not revealed. IOW there is still a method for plugin-based 3rd-party codec support but it’s not documented and Apple apparently must approve each one or maybe agree to incorporate that within Pro Video Formats. That is my understanding, I’m sure someone will correct me if needed.

[Joe Marler]

[Chad Greene] “Our media and cashe is saved externally on our Jellyfish shared storage with all editors/libraries using the same folder. We have been doing this for years on our NFS share without trouble, but just stared using an SMB. Does SMB work differently with cashe?”

I’ve seen this infrequently when using local storage. It is typically a cache issue. When I delete cache (which is easy to do from Finder if using a designated storage location), then restart FCPX it usually goes away.

If your cache is on the Jellyfish and all editors using the same folder, I’m not sure what prevents conflict. FCPX assumes a single-user mode and there is no built-in logic for deconfliction. This is OK for read-only content like media but for cache and library, writes are happening constantly. Maybe you mean cache and library are within the same folder but each editor has their own unique copy.

Because of high-bandwidth frequent random writes to the cache, I’d normally think you’d get better performance if that’s on a local small SSD. This would especially be the case if you are on 1 gig ethernet not 10 gig.

However it’s possible the issue was caused by switching to SMB.

It says on Lumaforge’s web site: “SMB Protocols…are not designed to work with the FCPX Library Architecture. Currently, the best way to run FCPX in a shared environment is through NFS Protocol.”

https://lumaforge.com/workflow

The Lumaforge support page says “Libraries and Cache should only be kept on a Jellyfish NFS Share.”

https://jellyfish.support/knowledgeBase/7106702

https://lumaforge.com/workflow

[Joe Marler]

[Richard Krall] “I need a way to show all the clips that have been used in multiple projects/timelines using clips from the same pool. “

Yes it would be useful if the FCPX Event Browser had a built-in library-wide filter for used and unused media across all projects. It does this for ratings and keywords – they are not restricted to the currently-selected project.

They might not do this for performance reasons. Each project and snapshot is a separate CurrentVersion.fcpevent file, each containing several SQL tables having possibly many thousand rows based on number of timeline edits. By contrast the Browser-level ratings and keywords are kept in a separate event-level CurrentVersion.fcpevent file. Those are smaller and fewer. The SQLite database need only open each event database and do a union query for library-wide ratings/keywords.

For library or event-wide used/unused media, it would have to open all project databases concurrently and do a much more complex query.

As a workaround you can create a smart collection for used media, then open each project in succession and keyword those “Project1UsedMedia”, “Project2UsedMedia”, etc. Then in the left sidebar simply CMD+click all of them to show the combined total of all used clip ranges. Or you could create a smart collection for this: add search item “keywords”, then pick “Include All” and select the “ProjectXUsedMedia” keyword collections you just tagged.

You could also do the opposite and keyword all unused ranges in the library or event, then display them.

From a database performance standpoint this works because it’s using the more efficient event-level databases vs the much more detailed and typically more numerous project-level databases.

However the downside is it’s static. As you continuously add clips to new projects it will not get updated. You’d have to remember for each new or changed project to re-do it’s “used media” keyword collection. For a final or infrequent check at the end of a large endeavor it’s not that bad. It would be nice if it were built in and dynamically updated but I’m not sure that’s possible given the Event Browser UI philosophy of nearly-instant response.

[Joe Marler]

Make sure you have plenty of free space on all drives and they are all formatted HFS+ or APFS not exFAT. Then run Disk Utility First Aid on all drives.

In FCPX select each library and in the Inspector verify the storage properties are what you expect. If you aren’t sure where each library is located, in the left sidebar right-click on the library and pick “Reveal in Finder”.

After that temporarily disable background rendering in FCPX Preferences (if enabled), then delete render files via Files>Delete Generated Library Files, restart FCPX and try the event move operation. If that doesn’t work, reset FCPX preferences (step 11): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203477

If that doesn’t work, try to drag/drop the event as a *copy* not a move. Look for the green + sign to be sure. After that, select the copied event in the new library and pick File>Consolidate Event Media. This ensures the referenced media is copied to the new storage location. Once you verify the event and media are present in the new library you can delete the event from the old library. These are straightforward procedures but make sure everything is backed up first.

[Joe Marler]

[Nicky Velasquez] “I am asking about a potential current fix.
Right now I am manually RE-synching EVERY CLIP in my TIME LINE. (Much like the MC approach.)
Can I move the synch clips “synch” and affect all instances in all projects?”

Since sync clips in the timeline do not inherit changed properties of the parent clip in the Event Browser, it will be necessary to adjust each timeline clip. I am sorry about that, but that’s one advantage of using a multicam clip vs a sync clip. Maybe someone else has a better suggestion.

I don’t understand how the problem happened. We have 4 or 5 Ninja Vs plus Blackmagic recorders and we use them frequently. I have never seen this problem. We record audio both directly into the Ninja also via HDMI – both ways. The audio delay on our Ninja Vs are set to 0 frames. All are on the latest firmware, but I never noticed a delay problem on the original firmware. Some of them use LUTs and some don’t. This is mostly UHD 4k/23.98 ProRes via HDMI from Sony A7R3s, Panasonic S1 and BMPCC4k.

You are probably aware of this, but anytime you deal with digital video and separate audio there is a possible sync issue due to digital processing delays. You normally see it on venue systems where video goes there via HDMI but analog audio is processed for a PA system. There is an HDMI lip sync delay protocol whereby the monitor informs the HDMI source of its video processing delay and the source is supposed to delay audio to match. This doesn’t always work, esp. in multi-display systems. For an HDMI recorder I don’t know how that works, but so far I haven’t seen a problem on either our Atomos or Blackmagic recorders.

From your description it appears the recorded Atomos video and scratch audio are out of sync several frames and this out of sync condition persists if downloaded to the NLE. Then when you synced external audio to the scratch audio that was likewise delayed since it synced to delayed audio.

When you are playing back the Atomos material, is it delayed if played back locally on the Atomos if listening with headphones, or is it only delayed if that same material is played in the NLE or via Quicktime? I guess it doesn’t make any difference – it must be fixed in the NLE, I was just curious.

[Joe Marler]

[Bill Davis] “until we get camera that record AND monitors ProRes RAW internally (hopefully with full Rec2020 HDR monitoring so you can see what you’re actually shooting) the rigs are pretty unwieldy. “

I’ve shot the Ursa Mini a lot and I love the menus and overall design. The color and image quality is beautiful. However can be difficult to use in the field. You can bolt on an EVF and a bunch of other stuff, but that’s not it’s strongest point. There’s a reason why true run-and-gun pro ENG work still uses fixed-lens camcorders with a 2/3″ sensor.

For interchangeable lens cameras there are various options. The Sony FS5/FS7 are good but they are old and may be replaced by the upcoming FX6/FX9.

Up until now there hasn’t been a truly professional large sensor “DSLR-form factor” mirrorless video camera. It appears the Panasonic S1H will be the first, unless you consider the BMPCC6K.

The S1H will record ProRes RAW to an Atomos Ninja V. Admittedly that’s an external recorder but it’s (superficially) smaller and more portable than an Ursa. It has 14.5 stops dynamic range, displays shutter angle and video gain, and has several built-in video features missing from the Ursa such as 5.7 megapixel OLED EVF, vector scope, waveform, dual-native ISO, dual zebra levels, and master pedestal. It supports the Academy ACES color workflow and can use the exact same LUTS and IDT as the Varicam 35. It was obviously not designed by the consumer electronics division of a large conglomerate; in fact the head of Varicam 35 had a significant role.

The S1H does not have built-in ND and I doubt cameras of that form factor will ever have that because mechanically there’s no place to put it. It does have 6-stop sensor stabilization.

OTOH if you put a cage, shotgun mic, shoulder mount, XLR adapter, external monitor or EVF on an S1H, what is the difference between that a similarly-configured Ursa? You still have a “Tinkertoy assembly project” each time you set it up and break it down.

The BMPCC6K has a Super35 sensor, a built-in 5″ LCD and can record BRAW internally to SDXC cards. You can only currently edit that with Resolve but ProRes RAW can only be edited with FCPX. In theory you can grab it from the case and shoot BRAW using only internal power, internal storage and the built-in LCD. However in many cases it will probably be rigged up which puts it back in the same category as an S1H.