John Steventon
Forum Replies Created
-
Hiya,
Quick question on this – how does Mixdown differ from Exporting an AIFF?
Ta.
John
John Steventon – Author of DJing for Dummies
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…
G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.04, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
I was tearing my hair out using EDL’s from my MC v11 – until I was shown the light by the nice people on here about Automatic Duck. You’re looking for Pro Import FCP.
Strangely, part of this varies for me sometimes, but the safest workflow is:
1) Edit with Avid (duh)
2) Duplicate your sequence into a new bin
3) Decompose the sequence (whatever handles you choose, and click on Imported clips if you want to seperate them too)
4) (I mark an in and out on the sequence with all tracks selected as a point of anality here, but I don’t think there’s a need)
5) Export an OMF version 2 – check the settings to be sure that ‘Link to current media’ is selected for both Audio and Video (and that the checkbox to export Audio and video is checked too of course) There isn’t any media to link to – but that’s ok.
6) Transfer the OMF file (it should only be a few Mb) to your FCP system, then using Automatic Duck Pro Import – (it’s in the Import menu once you install it), locate the OMF, and import it.You’ll get a sequence and a bin – just re-conform the bin clips, and you’re set.
The option on this is to make anothe OMF from Avid from your original sequence that JUST has the Audio – and embed that so you dont need to recapture all the audio again – but it’s probably easier, safer, – and time allowing, better to just take it all in through FCP.
Hope this helped – like I said, it REALLY opened my eyes to how it should be done. All the dissolves, motion effects, basic titles, basic resize effects etc were all included – and made onlining SOOOO much easier (though don’t tell the boss that “-)
Oh, one last thing – be sure to order the FCP version, not the AE version like I did at first… DOH!
J
John Steventon – Author of DJing for Dummies
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…
G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.04, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
I don’t think it’s ‘that’ basic a question to be honest. It’s been asked on here before, and people have said ‘There isn’t a way, you’ll have to right click….’ and it wasn’t until recently (after a couple of years of using the system) that I discovered this myself.
It sure isn’t clear in the manual, there’s no ‘add transition to all from in to out’ little check box like you get in Avid – it’s a ‘You know it, or you don’t know it’ kind of thing.
I know that opening line was meant as a gentle push to do some learnin’ before some askin’ but, you’ve got to assume the OP asked on here as a) The FCP manual is SOOO big that it’s easy to look for other avenues, and b) That this an incredible friendly, speedy, knowledgable and approachable forum to ask for advice.
I know if I’m ever at a loss (which, if you search my previous posts, you’ll know I am often), I’ll automatically come here first, post the question – then I’ll look into the manual while i wait to see if someone has been kind enough to help out.
Sorry, apparantly I’m grumpy this morning…
J
John Steventon – Author of DJing for Dummies
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…
G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.04, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
Hey,
Cheers for the reply.
The one thing I’d ask though on the audio thing, is how else do I mix-down other than export an AIFF? If I just do a nested track, that obviously still throws up the render error – so the only thing I can see to do is just export a stereo mix AIFF. Let me know if I’m missing something glaring.
(By the way, before I do that, I delete all the Audio Render files, so it renders everything one last time – that still doesn’t make a difference – just had a ‘new piece of audio’ inserted at the end of the programme. Which was nice… And then, to top it off, when I changed it, and tried to insert the new, 30 second part of the programme, I got the frustrating ‘…the selection only lasts one frame’ error when doing the edit-to-tape.
Like I said, it knows that I have my mis-givings with it, and frankly, likes to take the pee-pee out of mee-mee.
🙂
J
John Steventon – Author of DJing for Dummies
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…
G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.04, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
Hey folks,
Sorry – had to actually finish the project last night rather than reply to posts – how unfair! 🙂
Ok. Here’s what I think came up that i should mention…
1) My laziness caused the problem
2) Audio in FCP
3) Broadcast safe effect – nothing really to add here, but why have an effect called Broadcast Safe that doesn’t actually give you broadcast safe? (enough re-renders and tweaks will at least flatten the video levels, but no matter what I do -
Hi guys,
Thanks for the replies. I don’t know if I read your reply too fast Walter, but I think my explanation must have come off the wrong way round.
I have a 10-bit pal project, which will be output 10-bit PAL onto DigiBeta. Though the seuqnece was made up of a couple of hundred DigiBeta clips, there were also five or six HDV clips to be incorporated. I knew that I’d have to render, and distort etc the HDV clips to allow them to play on the PAL 10-bit timeline, but what I wasn’t prepared for was changing the settings in order to capture the HDV clips making all the render infortmation for the 10-Bit video stuff go offline.
I did a work-around by going into the autosave vault, and re-building the timeline using that – but it just really frustrated me how easily FCP drops its renders. I know it’s all about keeping the quality at full, rather than re-rendering renders – but this does make for some time-consuming re-renders, and (especially in my case) some very frustrating times sitting in front of the system.
I think I say this every time I ‘compain’ about something in FCP – I LOVE using it, I love what it allows me to do to the picture – it’s incredibly versatile and creative – but it’s just – well – annoying when it comes to the finer details.
Thanks for the post though Walter, I really appreciate your thoughtful – and importantly – calm responses to what really amounts to my rants being like a baby spitting out his dummy…
Although I still 100% hate working with Audio in FCP… but that’s another rant altogether…
John
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
Just a guess, but under the ‘edit to tape’ option under the RT menu, what have you selected? ‘Use playback settings’ or ‘Full Quality’?
That doesn’t really explain why it’s ok when you just hit play, but not ok when you edit to tape – but that’s the first place I’d check if I was having a similar problem.
Hope this wasn’t flotsom.
J
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
I’ve had something similar a couple of times (by the way, I don’t know how to fix it).
Happily editing away, go into another project, come back, and half the media has gone. The difference between your and my situation though is that I can’t re-connect. When I select the offline clips, and choose re-connect, the window doesn’t even display the clips for me to reconnect.
I can’t batch-capture just the clips on the timeline I need either (have you tried that as a fix?) – On my system, even if I choose ‘make clips independant – or if I go to media manager to make a sequence to let me only digitise the clips used – it still wants to take in the entire rushes relating to that clip.
If you’re in rush – and it won’t re-connect properly, the only real thing you can do is a) Re-import the QT’s off your hard drive, and manually drop in each of the clips into where they’ve gone offline. B) If your system will let you, do a batch capture of the offline clips – get ’em bac k in that way – or, if you’re like me and FCP won’t let you – c) Export an EDL – import EDL, recature the clips your need – then as you lay each clip back onto the timeline, copy the old one so you can paste the attributes of any effects back into it.
It’s interesting that others have this fault – I’d always been fobbed off with ‘it must be your system’. Good luck with it, I share your pain.
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
In no way wanting to sound sour here – I thought I’d come back to this to tell you what just happened to me – and why I still don’t feel 100% comfortable with FCP.
I had until 17:00 today to online a programme for Broadcast on Friday. Sounds normal so far, huh?
Everything captured fine, which is normal – I went through and graded each shot individually, and when happy, applied a Broadcast safe effect, as the facility I’m doing the online at doesn’t have legalizers – and FCP’s is supposed to be good enough anyway.
I had to sit here for an hour while everything rendered, as when I tried to play in real time, even though it’s swithched to SAFE and all the video playback is set to FULL – it still dropped the resolution to play certain clips.
Anyway, everything’s hunky dory until 16:00 when the render’s done and I start to edit the piece to tape.
Unfortunately, some of my rush-grades weren’t as good as i hoped, but with an hour to go, I knew I had enough time to run off the 23 min prog, and then insert any iffy shots if they needed it. In the end, only 6 needed tweaked because of exposure changes mid-shot. So, I needed to perform insert edits for shots that didn’t turn out as well as hoped.
3 of them worked. Then I got the dreaded ‘….the edit only lasts one frame’ error – even though I’m inserting in 30 seconds of material.
Delete prefs, re-start, go back into it – great. Next edit – same thing – and again. So I’ve already lost 10 minutes through re-starts. Yeehah.
I’ve got 10 mins to finish the cut to tape, label it, and courier it out of here, or I’m (insert your expletive here).
I then sit on the credit roll at the end, and to my horror, see the yellow exclamation mark at the top of the screen – some of the shots are STILL ILLEGAL!! The same shot was used four times in all (once in the main prog, once in the credits, then twice in clean credit beds at the end of the tape). Each one of them needed to be exported as a quicktime, laid back into the sequence, a new broadcast safe effect applied (which needed rendered) and then cut to tape. And what happened on the fourth one? Yup. You guessed it – the edit only lasts 1 frame according to FCP – so I need to restart the machine. Again.
SO – it’s 5 past 5 – and I’m getting my shiny hiny kicked. Something that would have taken 10 minutes on Avid ended up taking 40 minutes on FCP due to the instability of the edit to tape tool (which I’m hoping an upgrade to 5.1.2 fixes) and the fact that the broadcast safe effect (even set to very conservative) doesn’t actually mean you’ll put everything out broadcast safe.
Sure, you could say that it’s my own fault for not checking each clip step by step after the render, but I didn’t have the time, and I’m working within the range of what the edit system says it’ll do – and put my trust in it in the exact same way I put my trust in an Avid to do similar things when doing a digital cut.
The time issue is one thing, it was embarrassing for sure, and I don’t like missing deadlines – but what I really don’t like it that randomness of how some functions decide to work – and then other times, decide not to work. For this to be something that’ll truly take over from Avid (which I’m sure it will anyway, regardless of my bleats on this forum) it has to be a lot more solid – do EXACTLY what it’s supposed to do, and not throw up the odd gremlin here and there.
They said exactly the same thing about Avid when it started to wedge its way into the old tape suite market, so this is all very familiar, but I’m just trying to say that though it feels like trying to stop a river with a stick on here sometimes when I try to suggest that FCP isn’t the editing Holy Grail as I am in the minority for finding faults and annoyances with it – I think that issues like this need to be addressed, and considered when someone posts about the shift from Media Composers to FCP. Creativity and control are incredible – but if you can’t hit deadlines, or if you unwittingly put out a tape that fails a QC (which I’m kacking myself about now – who knows what other clips the machine missed) then I stick by my earlier comments in this thread – that it’s ‘almost’ the best system to use – but it’s almost like putting on a condom – almost just ain’t enough I’m afraid.
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
-
They’re all 100% fantastic points, but remember, the OP was asking about the transition from Avid to FCP – and in my experience, the ’10 ways to do one thing’ that FCP offers, which as you point out, is nowhere near what Avid gives you, can be quite frustrating.
The best thing I’ve ever seen written about this transition is earlier in this thread about banging your hand off the door when changing gear on the ‘wrong side’. The most accurate description I’ve ever heard.
Like I said, there’s no doubt that FCP gives the editor a lot more control and picture manipulation and quality than a Media Composer – hands down, it’s just better – but there are still a lot of frustrations with the system, and when compounded with an Avid editing background that’s the basic for this post, the initial learning cruve, as short as it is, can feel a bit like banging your head off the wall.
If you ask me, the hardest part is going BACK to Avid. Key presses aside, I find it quite annoying that I don’t have the same control on Avid over the picture, but I still much prefer the render and audio control using Avid than FCP.
I only offer all this as a side to show that there are a lot of issues here, but none of them are insurmountable. I used to be a complete Avid dinosaur, I wouldn’t ever consider shifting systems, but now – because of the control over the picture I have, I will always push to work on the FCP online edit suite rather than any of the Media Composers in the building, but I need to give more time to make sure any of the media management or audio gremlins that I (maybe not everyone else does) experience as well as any re-render time I need to perform each time I alter a clip.
Which is good if I have a client who doesn’t know any better, and can maybe even squeeze a couple more pennies out of them – but if it’s someone who’s not used to some of the re-render times on FCP, and are used to the render ‘retainment’ that Avid has – I find I spend a lot of time apologising.
Thanks for the reply though Walter, your explanation of tailoring the interface to an editors needs opened my eyes to exactly WHY there’s 10 ways to do one thing.
Cheers.
John
John
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.