[Joe Marler]

[Paul Schreck] “I’ve selected all my favorites in the Events Browser, but when I bring those down to the storyline I have to sync each one to the master clip, which is a pain”

OK, I thought the only problem was finding the favorited ranges within the timeline — but you have unfinished syncing work to do.

Normally you want to do most of that in the Event Browser. The best way was probably using a multicam clip — even if only a single audio and video track. You have two cameras, and maybe external audio? Then *after* creating the full-length MC clip you favorite or keyword *that* — not the parent clips. It’s also useful to reject the parent clips and leave the “hide rejected” filter on to make sure they don’t accidentally get used.

Then you skim the MC clip in the Event Browser with the Angle Viewer enabled, and add ranges from the MC clip to the timeline. For a music program if you want unbroken full-duration material, add the entire MC clip and use the Angle Editor in the timeline to cut between cameras. I know at this point that doesn’t help — I’m just stating the preferred procedure.

The dilemma is once you have material on the timeline, there’s no audio sync mechanism — except for a multicam clip which can be opened and clips selectively added or re-synced. Yet you have already favorited parent clips of a potential multicam, and those are on the timeline, but ratings/keywords are not carried forward into an MC clip. IMO you have stumbled into a common situation and the available FCPX docs and tutorials do not adequately warn against this.

Here is one possible way to fix it (I’m not saying it’s perfect):

(1) Create a proper MC clip using the full length of both camera angles and external audio. Note: before creating or syncing a multicam, you must label all the shots from each camera or recorder in the inspector. Procedure: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/49568#49574

(2) Open the MC clip, open the Angle Viewer and verify everything is in sync.

(3) In the left of the timeline, click the down arrow (any track) and pick “Add Angle”.

(4) In the Event Browser find all your favorites from one particular camera. If during import you used the FCPX preference “assign keywords from folder” and if your folders were named by camera, this is easy. If you didn’t do that, you may be able to sort by filename. If your cameras have similar filenames, you’ll have to visually identify the favorites from a given camera.

(5) Add all the favorites (or at least a batch of them) from a given camera to the new angle you created in the MC clip. You can drag and drop them from the Event Browser to the new angle in the MC clip.

(6) Set the monitoring angle in the MC clip by clicking on the monitor icon at the left of the timeline. For sync purposes this is normally the track with good audio, or a continuous audio-only track.

(7) In the angle you just added favorites to, select all those if not already selected. At the left of that angle in the timeline pick “sync selection to monitoring angle”. Each favorite clip should be individually synced to the audio of the monitoring angle. Use the Angle Viewer to verify the sync

(8) Repeat the above steps for the favorites from the other camera. Add those to another angle you created, then select and sync them to the monitoring angle.

(9) At this point the favorites in your MC will be redundant to the full-duration synced A/V tracks. If your newly-synced favorites in the MC give complete coverage you can disable the full-length tracks with the V key. If the favorites do not give complete coverage you can add that MC clip to a timeline and use the Angle Editor in that new timeline to pick what angle to show for how long.

If this doesn’t work, there is another procedure for manually matching each favorite range via timecode using a three-point edit to an MC clip but I won’t list it here as this post is already long enough.

[Joe Marler]

[Paul Schreck] “I’ve selected several ranges as favorites in this B-roll and have synced the B-roll under the master footage in the storyline. I’m trying to find my favorites within the clips that I’ve pulled down. “

The concept with FCPX is you do all the keywording and rating in the Event Browser, and only put on the timeline a highly filtered subset. From that standpoint the timeline isn’t the place to stack lots of “trial” material (Auditions is a limited exception). Probably for this reason, favorited and keyworded ranges by design aren’t carried forward to the timeline.

However I think it’s possible to determine a favorited or keyworded range on the timeline. You can create a smart collection which filters on used media ranges (hence on the timeline) and rating=favorite or keyword=whatever. Then you can search for that clip using the timeline index. It’s not ideal but it should work.

[Joe Marler]

Auditions don’t work with multi-cam, and I think your material is two-camera plus separate audio. There are several possible workarounds. These are just ideas, maybe someone has a better approach.

In the Event Browser you could simply draw ranges over each “take” in the multi-cam and keyword that. Then click on each keyword in the left sidebar to rapidly switch between takes. If you want to see all the sub-clips in the Browser at the same time, create a keyword smart collection. You could quickly skim from take to take, without even being on the timeline. Then when you decide which one is best, put that on the timeline.

If you want to combine parts of different takes, you could also do that. E.g, favorite or keyword the preferred “take fragments” as you skim each take in the Event Browser, then add those to the timeline and fine tune them.

A keyword smart collection can be either library-wide (aka “Library Smart Collection”) or within a single event. This article discusses how to make them: https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-library-smart-collections/

[Joe Marler]

The behavior and a workaround are discussed in MacBreak Studio #340:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxTj2Ls9Zg0

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[Joe Marler]

[Xavier Paredes] “looking to see if someone else has experienced the echo “side effect” when ticking the Hum Removal box.”

I haven’t experienced this except when both noise removal and hum removal were accidentally both selected. Hum removal by itself didn’t cause an echo effect in my experience. For the simple cases where I used FCPX hum removal, it worked very well.

However the FCPX hum removal algorithm is doing something more complex than simply notching out a 50/60 Hz hum and harmonics. I tested it on a more complex case with many audio harmonics from stadium lighting and it also worked OK there, and without obvious artifacts. Maybe there’s some kind of source material that triggers an echo side effect. This was on 10.4.4.

[Joe Marler]

I’ve sometimes heard an echo-like artifact when using FCPX audio noise reduction. If you turn down the effect intensity it will go away but the noise reduction decreases also. The only time I use FCPX audio noise reduction is by accident.

My documentary team uses iZotope RX7 Advanced, which in skilled hands can do wonders. We don’t use it as a plugin but as a stand alone app.

CrumplePop makes the FCPX plugin AudioDenoise, which is simpler to use. It works OK but it’s nothing like iZotope and basic version of iZotope isn’t much more money and it’s the gold standard. It can usually remove easy cases like hum, truck back up alarms, etc. with no discernable artifacts. Removing broad-band crashing sounds ( someone drops a box or slams a door during dialog) is much more difficult. Note iZotope is like Photoshop for noise removal — it requires an experienced technician for best results.

https://www.crumplepop.com/product/fcpx-premiere-plugin-audio-denoise/

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/repair-and-edit/rx.html

[Joe Marler]

The first and simplest approach is delete all generated library files – proxies, optimized, renders, etc. That shrinks the library itself to a small size.

For media archiving, you have a choice of the entire library or just the project (ie timeline). If it’s a single (or a few) projects built from a large library, maybe only a small % of the media was actually used. If the non-used media isn’t needed for archival purposes, you can create an “archive library”, configure it for “in library storage”, then drag/drop the projects to that and consolidate. Thereafter that archive library will contain only the media actually used and the edits for the timelines. However if various 3rd-party plugins or effects were used, you’d need a plan to also save those.

FCPX doesn’t trim used clip ranges when copying to another library. If you need that, there is Worx 4 X, but it has some limitations: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/worx4-x/id1195903030?ls=1&mt=12

If you need to save all the media whether it was used or not, just backup the entire media tree and library. If you aren’t sure where all the media is, Final Cut Library Manager can produce a spreadsheet of each file and pathname: https://www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

There is also Reference X, a stand-alone utility which displays all media files and the paths used by a library, and can optionally copy them to a user-specified location: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reference-x/id1291743117?mt=12

There is the new concern over archiving FCPX media which might use encoding formats not be supported in future versions. IOW you theoretically could save media and library (maybe even a managed library with all media internal), then pull it off the shelf in three years and find that FCPX 11 won’t read it. This is a separate issue that requires its own discussion thread. If you are concerned about this you could transcode to optimized media and save that, although it would be a lot bigger.

[Joe Marler]

[Michael Hadley] “my full top spec 2017 iMac which crashes frequently due to “GPU Issues” (at least according to Digital Rebellions crash log thingie).”

I’ve also had many GPU-related crashes on a 2017 i7 iMac when adding several color corrections in FCPX when the scopes are up. That was 10.4.1 and 10.4.2 on High Sierra 10.13.4, material was 8-bit 4:2:0 4k H264 100 mbps from Sony Alpha, Panasonic GH5 and DVX200 cameras. However I was always in proxy mode so it was really editing ProRes.

It should never do that. I’ve since switched my heavy work to my iMac Pro which doesn’t crash under the same conditions so I haven’t had time to re-evaluate the iMac after upgrading to Mojave, FCXP 10.4.4 and Pro Video Formats 2.0.7.

Maybe the eGPU would help but FCPX shouldn’t be crashing in the first place. Below is a representative call stack from one of my FCPX crashes.

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007fff6f494b6e __pthread_kill + 10
1 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff6f65f080 pthread_kill + 333
2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff6f3f01ae abort + 127
3 libGPUSupportMercury.dylib 0x00007fff5ffec0f1 gpusGenerateCrashLog + 168
4 com.apple.AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver 0x000000010e4fdf2b gpusKillClientExt + 9
5 libGPUSupportMercury.dylib 0x00007fff5ffed4d6 gpusSubmitDataBuffers + 184
6 com.apple.AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver 0x000000010e4d5332 glrATI_Hwl_SubmitPacketsWithToken + 154
7 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff523bda2c CAOpenGLLayerDraw(CAOpenGLLayer*, double, CVTimeStamp const*, unsigned int) + 1985
8 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff523bd073 -[CAOpenGLLayer _display] + 565
9 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff5235d973 CA::Layer::display_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 633
10 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff5235d431 CA::Layer::layout_and_display_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 35
11 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff5235c434 CA::Context::commit_transaction(CA::Transaction*) + 326
12 com.apple.QuartzCore 0x00007fff5235bfe1 CA::Transaction::commit() + 487
13 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff44ec0a72 __65+[CATransaction(NSCATransaction) NS_setFlushesWithDisplayRefresh]_block_invoke + 283
14 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff4704c467 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_AN_OBSERVER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 23
15 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff4704c38f __CFRunLoopDoObservers + 527
16 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff4702e908 __CFRunLoopRun + 1240
17 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff4702e1a3 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 483
18 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff46316d96 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 286
19 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff46316b06 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 613
20 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff46316884 _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 64
21 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff445c9a73 _DPSNextEvent + 2085
22 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff44d5fe34 -[NSApplication(NSEvent) _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 3044
23 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff445be885 -[NSApplication run] + 764
24 com.apple.LunaKit 0x000000010a43d2ad LKApplicationMain + 365
25 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff6f344015 start + 1

[Joe Marler]

I see it doing that, but I’ve never before tried to expand the Ken Burns boxes so far off the video frame when viewing it at 6.25 or 12.5%. It feels like a programming limit similar to how they don’t allow you viewing at 2%, but maybe it’s an oversight.

I think your only option is using a keyframed transform but it doesn’t have ease in/out on scale. It does have easing on position, as described in this Larry Jordan article: https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-throw-your-animation-a-curve/

There is a free plugin from Alex4D which does easing on scale and position: https://blog.alex4d.com/2011/08/04/smooth-move-fpx-effect

[Joe Marler]

OK I looked at the material. As your MediaInfo indicates, it is DV 720×480, 29.97i, interlaced bottom field first. I see on the horizontal blinds some aliasing depending on whether I play the clip in VLC, Quicktime, FCPX, and what deinterlacing is used.

Create a manual 720p 29.97 project (File>New>Project>Use Custom Settings, pick 720p HD 29.97p), add a clip to that, then set the deinterlace checkbox for that clip. Then render it out and inspect it vs the original clip. I tried several things and that seemed to give the best quality.

Traditionally you edit interlaced material in an interlaced project and export it as interlaced since the original intent was the playback chain (DVD, TV, etc) would deinterlace. However nowadays most content is progressive so you are normally editing small pieces of interlaced archival material in a progressive timeline. In such cases the project itself is progressive so the interlaced clips should be deinterlaced.

Premiere Pro allows deinterlacing the clip then exporting it as interlaced which doesn’t seem correct — the “interlaced” metadata flag should indicate interlaced material.

In testing other vintage interlaced material on FCPX 10.4.4, I noticed it sometimes does not identify the field dominance correctly. It’s probably a good idea to check this in MediaInfo then check in Inspector Settings and make sure field dominance is set correctly.

I think there was a behavioral change between FCPX 10.3.4 and 10.4 about how the deinterlace checkbox is implemented but I no longer have that version and can’t test it.