[John Davidson]

Mixer just opened it up. This is his direct quote:

“Worked great. Opened fine, has handles. That will make life easier.”

Sold.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I generated an aaf and am sending it to mixer now just to confirm it works. It automatically strips compressor effects out which is good. Curious how it handles other filters though. Also, due to Apple’s app store sandboxing rules, you have to grant the app permissions to each and every volume or folder you want to allow access too for media. This means if you use DMG files like we do you’re going to have to allow access for each event dmg every time you export.

I think it’s going to work fine though. The app tells you when it doesn’t have access and pulls up the authorize screen, so that’s good. I’ll post results later.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Initially we thought it would be best to place voiceover as our primary track as VO is typically the ‘backbone’ of a spot. This was good until we needed to start shifting SOTS around and changed VO copy per client notes. Then end pages (title treatment and tune in time) started slipping around, final duration changed (because we don’t have visual timeline markers), and all sorts of havoc ensued. The position tool was also creating lots of little micro-gaps in primary that were distracting.

I feel that from a fundamental level the concept of a primary/secondary as a-roll and b-roll is excellent for just about everything except promos, because there’s really no a-roll track to define the primary storyline. Some spots don’t have voice over, some spots don’t have music, some spots don’t have much video – each promo project is different. Basically, everything in promos is B-Roll. Making a consistent system of avoiding the primary for 3 editors to collaborate with was much more difficult when the ‘backbone’ changed every other project.

While we CAN build a promo and wield the power of the primary storyline to great effect, it’s revisions that get us. To make many of these revisions we have to move clips out of the primary into secondaries, which creates issues with connected elements following the move into secondary, etc. As soon as we got the idea that all footage in a spot is b-roll, the use of our frankenstein style of editing in FCPX made sense – and alleviated worries of the ‘how in the heck are we going to make these revisions without destroying everything’ variety.

So we use the primary as a gap clip the length of our project and place markers on it at exactly :20 or :30 in the timeline, depending on the length of our spot. It is in effect a massively oversized marker container.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

And there went the biggest hurdle to working with FCPX.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I liked this interview better when I first read it on PVC 6 months ago. Maybe PVC had exclusivity to it for six months before Phillip could post it on his blog.

Although it does remind us how long it’s been since we got a real FCPX update.

[John Davidson]

Hey Sarah. The header says “Final Cut Pro Quit unexpectedly while using the DeckLinkFcpxCMIO plugin.”
I have the full crash log if you have an email I can send it to.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Good news! Although it’s weird they’re holding it up. Maybe it’ll come out in conjunction with an FCPX 10.1 update. #dreaming

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

This guy is using it.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4333332?start=0&tstart=0

It works just fine in our 2008 mac pro.

Just buy mountain lion in the app store. I believe you can skip Lion and you’ll be ok.

Also, while you’re in the upgrade mood, head over to macsales and get 16 gigs of RAM for that bad boy. And if you’re feeling insane, drop in a crucial 256 SSD (you’ll need a $20 sled for it, macsales will refer you to sled for the appropriate model mac pro you have. If you’re OS drive has more than 256 gigs on it now, a 512 gig SSD might be a little too expensive ($400) to be worth your time.

This is the one we put in our 08 mac pro. Very happy.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT256M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL2A

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Not a date discourager – a group discourager (Ie, 6 kids piling in his/her car all talking and joking and distracting the driver).

The Davidson’s don’t hit puberty till college and my wife is a 5 ft tall Japanese woman. Any child of mine will likely have no problem avoiding the dating scene, especially if he or she is anything like Dad!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Better yet, a beat up tiny pickup truck is best. They’ll never be asked to drive a group of friends anywhere and you’ll always have somebody around to take out your ‘too big for the can’ trash!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.