[Joe Marler]

[Tangier Clarke] “I would be so happy for Apple to build in batch syncing; more so than batch exporting, but I’d like that too.”

Tangier, by “batch syncing” if you mean do a multicam sync on groups of files, FCPX can do that now. It has some limitations and is not as powerful as PluralEyes, but I have gotten 50 files to sync without error in FCPX. The main trick is ensure each camera is named using the procedure I mentioned in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/41629

[Joe Marler]

If you are syncing based on audio waveform, this can vary considerably. One step to faster and more reliable multicam sync by audio is ensure each camera is named in the metadata:

(1) In Event Browser at top left select List View (it’s the button above the red X at left)
(2) In Event Browser, click on clip name to sort by name. All the clips from each camera should be grouped together.
(3) Select a group of clips from one camera (Click on 1st, go to last and Shift-click).
(4) In Inspector at upper right, click on Info button. If Inspector pane is not on, turn it on with Window>Show Inspector
(5) At bottom of Inspector Pane, click the drop-down box and select “General”. This shows more details.
(6) In the Inspector Pane, enter a unique camera name. When you press Enter it will add that camera name to all the clips you have selected in a single step.
(7) Repeat step 4 and 7 for each camera.
(8) In Event Browser, select all clips from all the cameras you added camera name info to.
(9) Right-click on the selected group and select “New Multicam Clip”, then set checkbox “use audio for synchronization”

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “I don’t know the answer. Part of the high shooting ratio might simply boil down to Fincher’s aim for perfection. “

OK, understood. I thought I read somewhere Fincher did not use the high shooting ratio like Kubrick — IOW do 100 takes to get a perfect one — but rather to provide multiple versions of each scene so the final “script” would essentially be written in post. I cannot remember or find where that was.

[Oliver Peters] “Seems like you only get 25% useful footage out of that second camera angle and take up a lot more time, storage and effort in post. Not to mention, additional time in production staging and blocking for the other angles.”

Yes I agree, esp. on high multicam shots. It is nice to have but we end up impeding production because of getting in each other’s shot, limiting shooting angles, waiting for all cameras to get ready, restricting floor space, etc. It can cause more problems than it solves.

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “Most films need a certain amount of experimentation. Often a written story requires a lot of details spelled out so that the story is clear. In a film one often finds that some of what was written and filmed is no longer needed.”

Yes. It is misleading to think that a scripted drama requires little editing, hence software features that facilitate quick rearranging, skimming, etc. are not important. Maybe the “limited editing” thing was more true in the past, esp. on filmed TV dramas which had a 10:1 shooting ratio.

Even during the film days an editor would sometimes totally re-create the film. A notable example was “The Night They Raided Minsky’s”, when editor Ralph Rosenblum worked for a year in post to fundamentally re-make the film. All the work he did was not in the script. This was documented in the book “When The Shooting Stops …The Cutting Begins”. What he would have given back then for our modern tools.

Oliver you have written about post-production on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. That film had a 200:1 shooting ratio and 443 hours of material. There was a script but I understand a huge amount of experimentation took place during the edit to shape the film. This was not purely technical work about what take looked better but creative brainstorming about what kind of movie they wanted — after it was shot. All those examined permutations were not scripted — it was creatively discovered during the edit. The gigantic shooting ratio essentially allowed re-shaping the tone and feel of the movie. Is that correct?

The point is this same technology is now available for everyone, so it’s no longer accurate to think a script somehow eliminates the need for major experimentation in post. And that is for scripted narratives — with docs it’s even more so — the story is often discovered during the editorial process.

[Joe Marler]

[Andrew Kimery] “FCP X still has things like the razor blade tool, sprocket holes, film leader, an 18th century looking key icon, etc.,. ;)…What matters is if the interface still effectively communicates the desired information. For example, it’s easy for people to associate ‘razor blade’ with cutting something so giving the tool that allows you to make a virtual cut in your virtual footage a razor blade icon still effectively communicates the function of that tool…”

This item you casually mentioned is actually a deep, divisive debate within the UI design community, about skeuomorphism. Jobs and Scott Forstall liked it, Jony Ive and his team do not. The previous iOS Podcasts app with the reel-to-reel tape metaphor was held up as an example of skeuomorphism gone wild — most users had never touched reel-to-reel tape, so why use it. An example of the complaints: https://gizmodo.com/5991798/apples-podcasts-app-no-longer-has-horrible-reel-to-reel-skeuomorphism

Besides end users, the UI design community piled on this as uncool and out of sync with the new wave “flat UI” approach. They use UI buzzwords like “authentically digital”, referring to how great the flat non-skeuomorphic design is.

Instead of rationally and carefully excising selected skeuomorphic elements, a mind set has taken hold that every trace of real-world UI realism must be eradicated — no matter what the cost. This includes things like color gradients, drop shadows, real-world textures, etc. In UI designer lingo, they disparagingly refer to these elements as “chrome”.

They had some valid points but this is producing a UI which many users find sterile, unfamiliar, puzzling, ugly and (worst of all) inefficient.

A good example is the much-maligned iOS Podcasts app. However archaic, the previous reel-to-reel metaphor instantly conveyed what the app was, what state it was in and what UI options existed. Now we have a trendy, flattened Podcasts app which is difficult to figure out, and is incapable of playing a video podcast full screen on an iPad. Here is how a video podcast looks on the new iPad Pro. It is severely letterboxed and there’s nothing you can do about it:

https://joema.smugmug.com/Computers/IOS-91-Podcast-Player-on-iPad/n-F4k9VW/i-jQBpD7b/O

The chief UI designers at Apple pay lip service to Bauhaus design, which says “form follows function”. However their actual implementation of flat UI design often repudiates this. It prioritizes form (the flat non-skeuomorphic look) *over* function (readability, intuitive elements). In essence, it is a new version of the much-maligned “chrome”, no different than other fads of the past like automotive tail fins. It reality it is “chromeless chrome”, non-functional flat design elements which adhere to an austere UI doctrine, yet interfere with and obscure the underlying function. The gigantic borders on the iOS 9 Podcast Player are such an example.

FCPX is actually an interesting case. It is a new database-driven approach which eschews tracks and other artifacts which were brought forward from the flatbed editing world. It has a few residual skeuomorphic items like the razor blade and key but these efficiently convey the purpose. I just hope Jony Ive doesn’t get his hands on FCPX and damage it as happened to the Podcasts app and OS X Disk Utility.

[Joe Marler]

[Lillian Young] “I switched to Premiere Pro last year….The deal-breaker is that projects MAY open if you hold Shift and Option for 8+ minutes…multiple people like me online having the same issue…I can work on my FCP X projects on any (same version of) FCP X. Only once since I’ve started using it (around 2012) have I had a project not open…Premiere won’t even open on my workstation. It crashes on my laptop. I literally have to go back to my office on the weekend to make revisions on a project…I do not want to go back to FCP X. It feels amateur after using Premiere. But I want reliability…”

I have used Premiere for years and currently use both CC and FCPX. If I had a dollar for each time either had crashed, it would pay for a nice meal at a five star restaurant.

After the difficult adjustment, I really like FCPX — it is super fast, especially on H264 4K material. Adobe has a real problem there and it will be interesting to see what they do in the near future.

From a reliability standpoint I think the current FCPX is overall a bit better but I have had many FCPX crashes and apparent memory leaks leading to unexplained slowdowns.

I definitely don’t view FCPX as iMovie+Motion. I think it was Mike Matzdorff (assistant editor on “Focus”) who described the interface as deceptively simple, hiding deeply powerful functionality.

If at this point you are invested in Premiere, your problems can probably be resolved one way or another. My advice is pursue that vigorously before you ditch Premiere. It is easy to get frustrated at whatever your current software is, but this can happen with any editing software.

[Joe Marler]

[Bret Williams] “the odd thing being that if he reimports that ProRes output back into X the banding disappears within the X viewer.”

Yes that is the mystery. There are two ways to proceed:

(1) Try the playback on more platforms, e.g, retina MacBook, Roxio Player, Quicktime Pro 7, Windows/VLC, Windows Media Player, etc. Note any differences. If he could upload a brief clip probably lots of people could try it.

(2) Examine the technical characteristics of the video file with MediaInfo, Invisor, or Exiftool, and compare those to a similarly-encoded file with similar subject material (dark monocolor gradients) which does not exhibit those characteristics.

One possibility is the X viewer has some kind of smoothing logic built in which lessens the banding.

His concern is understandable because he can’t expect people to use FCPX for playback. Even though casual viewers won’t notice the difference, as content producers we have a more sensitive threshold for things like this. Also if it is re-encoded (say for Youtube/Vimeo upload) the effect might be magnified. Understanding the root cause might come in handy later.

[Joe Marler]

[Craig Alan] “What I need is: cover brown outs and provide power when needed with the feature to power down the computer.”

I use an APC XS 1500 for my 2015 iMac 27 and two drive arrays. It is not a pure sine wave UPS but my iMac has no problems running on it: https://amzn.com/B002UUTCNE

Powered on and sitting there, the total power draw for the iMac, 8TB Pegasus R4 and 8TB G-Tech G-RAID is about 95 watts. This theoretically produces a run time of about 74 minutes on the UPS. If the iMac is doing heavy work, power consumption (as measured on the UPS display) increases to about 150-170 watts, with proportionally shorter run time.

I don’t even have the auto-shutdown feature installed, as outages are rare in my area and 98% of those which occur are brief.

[Joe Marler]

[Chris Thomas] “Thanks Joe much appreciated and thanks for the vid too! So you think the best bet is to get my hands on a newer version whic will make relinking a lot easier..?”

If you really are on 10.0, updating is a good idea. However there have been many changes. While beneficial, you need to be aware of them. See this page for starters: https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcpx-101-media-management/

You generally don’t want to update while in the middle of a major project, but in your case if you really are on 10.0, it might be worth the risk. 10.0 did not even have multicam support. I would have good backups in case of encountering problems.

[Joe Marler]

As of around 10.1.2, FCPX can relink all media in a project no matter what location on the drive volume.

If moving media between two machines, in theory you could move every media file and folder to a different relative location on the destination volume than it was on the source volume. You could even use different folder names on the destination volume. FCPX will search every folder the drive volume and relink all the media files.

This MacBreak Studio episode covers it starting around 04:10.
The specific relink procedure starts at about 08:00.

By “10.0”, I assume you are not actually running the initial version of FCPX. If you are running a really old version this functionality was not there. If you are running a recent version, watch this video and compare it the steps you took:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKVVZixgk0

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