[John Rofrano]

I see that you have gaps on your Primary Storyline. Might I suggest a different approach: Since the Primary Story is the Music, I would drop the Music on the Primary Storyline and make everything else a Connected Clip. In a music video, the story is all about the music and the video is secondary. If you approach it from this perspective, you might have a more fluid workflow. This way the video will stay attached and in sync with the music.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Hugue Loiselle] “Does FCP X as a good workflow with 16 G RAM or does it absolutely need 32G? (Wich the MBP can’t have)”

No need for 32GB. I edit with FCP X on my mid 2015 MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory with ease.

[Hugue Loiselle] “Should I go with AVID and and monthly membership? or an ADOBE PREMIERE ?”

Why would you rent software when you can own it? I bought FCP X several years ago and every year Apple updates it with new capabilities and I haven’t paid another penny. You would have to be daft to pay every year for features you might not even need. Makes absolutely no sense at all to me. I don’t lease my car and I don’t lease my software. I like to be in control of my expenses and not on someone else’s “payroll”.

[Hugue Loiselle] “Is Davinci Resolve a good option? “

I’ve never tried it but Davinci Resolve but others like it. It is a color grading application thats trying to be an NLE so it might be light on some features. It’s is free, so no harm in trying it out for yourself. It might meet your needs. I use FCP X because it meets my needs.

[Hugue Loiselle] “oh yeah, and working mostly in HD”

Me too.

[Hugue Loiselle] “Looking for all of your suggestions”

If you get FCP X you should get Apple Motion and Apple Compressor as well. The combination of these three are very powerful. Being able to create Motion templates for use in FCP X is a big plus.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Neighbors] “It’s hard for me to imagine editing without tracks – Layering multiple composite layers and mixing multiple audio sources, etc. But I guess I’ll understand a bit better after checking out the trial. “

You will need to have it explained to you because as an existing “track based” NLE user, you have a lot to Unlearn! It’s not going to be familiar so you really need some training. It’s a whole new approach. I highly recommend Ripple Training I’ve bought a LOT of their training material and it is top notch! They have a lot of free stuff as well. There are some hour long tutorials on YouTube from others like David A. Cox that are good. Just search for “fcpx training”. It’s worth it to sit and watch and get the concepts and then you’ll have a much easier time of it. Good luck!

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

EditReady is definitely the way to go. I use it all the time. Worth every penny.

You want to re-wrap your m2t files into a QuickTime mov container so that there is no quality loss. EditReady is great at this. It can also transcode them to Apple ProRes 422 if you want but re-wrapping them should be fine.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Neighbors] “If you don’t mind, I’m curious to hear from a long-time Vegas expert who has switched to FCP, how was that transition?”

The transition was extremely easy coming from Vegas Pro because FCP X lets you work in pretty much the same way. I mostly drag stuff to the timeline and manipulate it there and FCP X lets you do that with the same ease as Vegas Pro. It’s not picky about 3-point editing, or conforming to a certain frame rate or resolution or format or any of that. You just drop stuff on the timeline and it works. FCP 7 was NOT like that. FCP X is a LOT like Vegas Pro in that regard.

[Tim Neighbors] “Do you recommend others make the switch?”

Only if you want to buy a Mac! ???? You see I switched to the Mac first and then continued to use Vegas Pro in VMware Fusion and then got tired of the limitation of no GPU hardware support and started looking for a native Mac solution which is when I started using Final Cut Pro X. So I did not switch to FCP X as much as I switched to the Mac and then started using FCP X and left Vegas Pro behind. It was more organic than deliberate.

To answer your question: Yes, I would recommend that anyone who owns a Mac check out FCP X instead of trying to get Vegas Pro to work in a VM. FCP X is a far more creative experience with it’s “magnetic timeline” and has more capabilities than Vegas Pro has (in addition to some gorgeous broadcast quality generated media that makes Vegas Pro look amateurish by comparison) Many things that require plug-ins in Vegas Pro are built into FCP X like syncing external audio with video, 3D Titles, particles, and audio noise reduction to name a few. Effects like chroma key are light-years ahead of what Vegas Pro has. Let’s face it, Vegas Pro effects are based on 10 year old technology and it shows. The tight integration that FCP X has with Apple Motion is a powerful combination for using customized Motion Graphics in FCP X. There are also many more plug-ins to choose from for FCP X than for Vegas Pro. It just has a richer ecosystem supporting it.

[Tim Neighbors] “I’ve only dabbled in FCP, but wanted to pull my hair out with how slow it seemed to be, though in all fairness, that was FCP7 and I probably just needed to get used to it.”

FCP 7 was a completely different program. No comparison. FCP 7 required you to conform all of your video to the same resolution and frame rate, it did not allow you to edit many native formats so you had to convert everything to Apple ProRes 422, etc. There is simply no comparison between FCP 7 and FCP X. They don’t look the same, they don’t behave the same, they are not remotely the same.

FCP X is video editing re-imagined… actually, it’s “story telling with video” re-imagined. There are no tracks. There is a Primary Storyline that is “magnetic” (i.e., clips stick together without gaps) with Secondary Storylines that are magnetically anchored to the primary clips. As you move clips on the primary storyline, any secondary clips or entire secondary storylines move with them and there are never any gaps or clips overlaying each other or hiding behind other clips like in Vegas Pro because there are no tracks to get in the way. It’s a very creative and productive way to work. I could never go back to editing video with tracks again. Not in any program.

[Tim Neighbors] “Not being able to tweak things on the timeline without stopping playback would slow me down a lot.”

FCP X allows you to do this. Just set up a playback loop and continue to manipulate and trim clips on the timeline while playback is still going. Like I said, FCP X is nothing like FCP 7 and a lot like Vegas Pro in some regards. I found the transition very easy.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Tim Neighbors] “With Vegas 14 will this still be an issue if I get a Win10 laptop with a 4K display? Will all of the icons and text be tiny or have they since improved the scaling ability of the software?”

Sorry Tim but I don’t use Vegas Pro or a PC anymore so I really can’t answer your questions.

I moved to a Mac Pro 12-Core and now use Final Cut Pro X and it looks absolutely gorgeous on a 5K display. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

The answer really depends on who you plan to give it to and what they can ingest. CineForm is an extremely high quality intermediary codec which you can obtain for free (you use to have to buy it) by downloading GoPro Studio. This will require that whoever you give it to can read CineForm files. Sony YUV is another high quality AVI codec that Vegas Pro supports. The question is, can your client read them?

Since the industry standard for high quality delivery is Apple ProRes MOV file, I find it odd that you want to deliver an AVI file so I assume whoever you are delivering this to has specifically requested an AVI file. You might want to ask them what codec they would like you to use since there is no standard and whatever you use (other than uncompressed) they need to be able to read.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Technically speaking, if it is coming out of your speakers you can record it with any audio recorder/editor. I would recommend you look at the free Audacity editor which also records. You can probably set it up to record right from your sound card. Here is one such tutorial:

Tutorial – Recording Computer Playback on Windows

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Today, macOS Memory management is no longer a binary used/unused thing. The OS is optimizing memory based on the likelihood of you using it again. It also has algorithms for compressing memory, etc. It does this for better performance. It knows what memory is available to reclaim but it doesn’t always reclaim it immediately, but if an application requested it, it would reclaim it as needed. You should not be worrying about this unless you are seeing performance or stability problems.

If you really want to free up memory, there is a free utility called Memory Clean in the App Store that will do just that. What the program actually does is demand all of the memory in your Mac and then releases it. This forces the OS to reclaim any memory that it knows is free but hasn’t reclaimed yet and then gives it to Memory Clean which then releases it so that you now see a big chunk of free memory. All that it really does is give you a “warm fuzzy feeling” about free memory and actually defeats the performance gains that the OS is trying to give you by not reclaiming it immediately.

Microsoft had a huge PR problem with Vista because it would use free memory as a cache in an effort to pre-load what it thinks you will need next and customers complained that all of their free memory was being used up. They were actually asking Microsoft to make their computers run slower because they wanted to see more free memory. It’s completely ridiculous to worry about free memory unless you are having issues. Otherwise just enjoy the fact that the programmers who wrote the OS know slightly more about memory theory than you do and let them do their job and use your free memory to improve performance. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Aleksandrs Dubanevics] “So I need to render out .mov file (DV, codec dvcp) so that the scan order is Top Field First, but somehow I cannot do that. It’s either Bottom Field First or Progressive. What am I doing wrong?”

We cannot tell you what you are doing wrong if you don’t tell us the exact steps that you are taking.

[Aleksandrs Dubanevics] “I tried changing setting etc., but still nothing seems to work to get the Top Field First. “

Are you rendering as NTSC DV/DVCPRO or PAL DV/DVCPRO? NTSC is Lower Field First and PAL is Upper Field First.

I just rendered a PAL DV/DVCPRO QuickTime MOV file as Upper Field First and when I dropped it back on the Vegas Pro timeline is correctly showed as being Upper Field First so it is working as one would expect. As I said, I can’t say what you are doing wrong because I don’t know what steps you have taken or how you have come to the conclusion that the file is not as intended.

Vegas Pro does not come with a PAL or NTSC DV QuickTime template so you must be creating one yourself. Can you show us a screen shot of your settings? Perhaps then we can see where you’ve gone wrong.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com