[John Rofrano]

[Rob Cioffi] “Is it possible to apply a VFX to a parent track so children will inherit it as well? Say I wanted to add a rain or TV simulator type effect.”

Yes. If you add an empty track above another and use the Make Compositing Child button to make the top track a Parent, you can add FX to the parent track and the child track will inherit them.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

What you need is a high quality IPS monitor that is calibrated using a hardware colorimeter like the Spyder 5 Pro. You could use a consumer TV but you would also need to calibrate with a hardware colorimeter if you were going to trust the colors and I’m guessing that not all consumer TVs will calibrate properly which is why a high quality monitor is preferred. I use an ASUS ProArt PA246Q which cost $500 when new and it does a great job on a budget. Some of the Sony monitors cost thousands of dollars. You just want something that is calibrated properly.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

There doesn’t appear to be any way to accomplish this. You can select multiple keyframes but changing the feather seems to have no affect. 🙁

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Glenn Cowan] “For the life of me, I can’t find how to Unhide it. “

When you have the Mixer window open, use Shift+R to open the Controls View and you’ll see buttons to hide and show the buses, fx, etc.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Hi Glenn, Render Assistant only renders the current project to multiple formats. It does not batch render projects. Sony Production Assistant and VASST Ultimate S Pro both have the capability to batch render projects but Render Assistant does not.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Ron Koms] “Looked for a way to remove it, not sure how?”

Right-click the audio track and select FX Automation Envelopes | FX Automation… and you will see a window with all of the plug-ins and check boxes next to each parameter that can be automated. Select each of the plug-ins and clear all of the checkboxes and that will turn off whatever automation you added.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Matthew Jeschke] “What kind of equipment do you shoot with (I’m sure you use just about everything)? “

Actually, I don’t shoot much anymore. I’m still using my Sony HVR-Z1U with HVR-DR60 Hard Disk Recording Unit on rails with a Chrosziel Matte Box and Sachtler sticks, and a Sony HVR-A1U HDV and a small Sony AVCHD camera. I also have a GoPro. I never got into DSLR’s and there is nothing driving me to 4K so until my cameras break, there is no compelling reason to update them. If I was still actively shooting I would have probably upgraded to a Sony NXCAM.

[Matthew Jeschke] “I’m curious about trying one of these Black Magic Pocket cameras”

The Black Magic Pocket camera shoots Apple ProRes which is great for Mac editors… not so great for PC editors. I’ve noticed that many great camera hardware and devices are designed to work optimally with a Mac. That’s one of the reason’s I sold my PC’s are moved 100% to Macs. (I edit on a 2010 Mac Pro 12-Core) I was looking at the Black Magic Pocket camera myself. I really like what I see. That’s probably a good way to go but if you stick with a PC and Vegas Pro you’ll be doing a lot of transcoding before editing.

[Matthew Jeschke] “…and or supplementing my 5d with one of those Atomos recorders.”

You should seriously consider getting a Mac then because the Atomos recorders shoot QuickTime format with Apple ProRes codec which you could edit easily on a Mac in FCP X with no transcoding. Vegas Pro, unfortunately, has problems with too many QuickTime files in a project so I would not recommend the Atomos for Vegas Pro editors.

[Matthew Jeschke] “The 5d’s built in compression is appallingly bad.”

Why don’t you use a “real” video camera? Wouldn’t it make shooting and editing a lot easier? If you like Vegas Pro, why not get a Sony camera that shoots a format that Vegas Pro handles nicely like XDCAM, XAVC, AVCHD, etc.? You seem to like all of this hardware that is geared toward Mac editors. Not a good mix. My advice… either stick with hardware that shoots formats that Vegas Pro can handle or get a Mac and edit with FCP X which works great with these other devices.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Sorry I didn’t realize they were in an MXF wrapper. When you said AVCHD I wrongly assumed MTS files which FCP X can read fine from any folder. MXF files are a whole other story. FCP X cannot read MXF files unless they are in their original card structure like you have. Since you don’t want FCP X to make copies, because you already did, and these are your copies… you’re going to have to manually convert your files to ProRes some other way.

For future reference, your workflow should be to not make your own backup copy, but rather, have FCP X copy the files from the camera card structure into the folder that you really want them in and then edit from that folder. Then you won’t have these workflow problems. In other words, instead of having two copies both in camera card format, take the original drive with all of the camera card structures on it and ingest that with FCP X to a target folder that you will work from. The original camera card drive will then be your backup. You can still do and it might be quicker than manually trying to figure something else out.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Sorry if I confused the matter with the library stuff. I gave you the answer in my first paragraph (I guess I should have stopped explaining at that point) 😉

All you need to do is move the AVCHD files outside of the camera card structure and place them in another folder and you will be able to import and leave them in place and generate optimized media.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

FCP X is trying to prevent you from doing something dangerous like delete your original media files. 😉 It’s not a bad failsafe mechanism. I assume you copied the entire card card structure to the external drive. If you really want to edit your original media, try moving the files into another folder that is not under that card structure. FCP X will then let you leave them in place.

What I do is work with two external drives. One contains all of my camera card archives. The second contains all of my projects. If either one gets corrupt I have the other one as backup. This is how FCP X works too. So I can select files from my camera card archive drive and have FCP X copy them to my project drive just like it wants to. Then I eject my camera card archive drive and continue editing on my project drive which is also external. I like to keep my media contained in my library but if you want it to be external, just set up your library media location to external and FCP X will use that.

In the Library Properties under Storage Locations press the Modify Settings button and change the Media location to your external folder. All future media will be place there. I believe this is what you are trying to get FCP X to do.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com