[Keith Koby]

Thanks for posting. I don’t agree with everything the author wrote there, but I do think the app is ready for use.

We are currently switching workflows over to fcpx – promo and other longer form workflows. Staff who have been exposed to the app and are using it are happy with it and adapted without losing much of a beat. They were reading the manual and listening to me talk about it over the last few months and looking at it at work and at home – so getting familiar helps – but the transition hasn’t been nearly as bad as you’d think.

We are sharing media and finding 10.0.6 stable. There are a few little issues that we are sorting through, but they do not effect the final output files. The editing process has been much faster than 7 and the export to audio is slick with the xtopro app.

If you are a freelance editor in our goto talent pool and you want to continue to work with us in the future, take some time and learn the app. The rate is the same.

[Keith Koby]

I like the flanders, but for price and consistency, we try to outfit all of the stations identically here. We’ve been pleased with the Panasonic BT-LH1850s. You’ll find it for under $2200 and the feature set is really good – big caveat is that it is not full raster 1920×1080 as the flanders is… it’s like slightly bigger than 720p.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

Hi Christian,

We haven’t tried (intentionally) to add a san location that is already open and in use in 10.0.6, but I’ll test that when I get to the office today. And we haven’t passed a whole lot of projects back and forth with 10.0.6.

We are running a good old fashioned xsan volume (with xsan controllers). It’s good that the app recognizes metasan as a san and lets you add san locations. It’s really bad that you have the ability to add a san location at the same time. It sounds as if sometimes, you aren’t really getting read write access to the db files and not writing the record that says a particular user on a particular station has control. Are you logging in as different users on the different stations?

The only issue that we’ve seen post update is that the import window doesn’t show the contents of one of our volumes unless we unbind our OD and leave just AD binding. (golden triangle)

The one workflow in production at this time is relatively simple… Setup project on one station (import media, make 3D compound clips, format timeline etc), then, remove san location. Open san location on a second computer, play it down on the 3D monitor and surround sound setup, add elements, cut and fix. Then we export. We’ve forgone rendering and just play down during edit without rendering wherever possible. Export rendering (rendering on exporting a master file) has been really great so far in 10.0.6 – super fast.

I hope that helps. We are working on converting other workflows now that involve lots of graphics compositing and green screen. We are actually rebuilding some 3D animations that were created in AE over in motion to see if it’s possible to make them “drop zoned” and then saved as fcp x templates. The objective is to create templates for this particular workflow where everything could be done inside of fcp x.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

Thanks for taking the time to make that. Interesting results.

[Keith Koby]

Media is indeed on the same san volume as the “san locations”. Here’s an example of the relative path to the media and to the “project” or “san location”.

Xsan Vol -> Media -> [Workgroup] -> [year date org folder] -> Project Media Folder
Xsan Vol -> Projects -> [Workgroup] -> fcpx projects -> [year date org folder] -> san location folder

The fcp7 projects folder is organized somewhat similarly inside of Xsan Vol/Projects:

Xsan Vol -> Projects -> [Workgroup] -> fcp7 projects -> [year data org folder] -> project files

Making sure that the media is organized centrally is imperative if you want to have it available to more applications than just fcp x (in our case 7, AE etc). You don’t want users digging through other user’s event db directory structures and moving files or not moving files.

I’ve been struggling a bit with how to describe this to editors as we introduce them to fcpx professionally. I found myself using a crutch like; “san location” in x = “project file” in 7. So when we create a san location, we name it with the same naming convention we would have used for an fcp7 project file.

I think it’s a bit weird because if you weren’t sharing the media and putting the projects on a san, you’d probably describe events and projects in X a bit differently. But it seems to work and it gets users past the idea that the brower/bins are separate from the timelines which is foreign at first encounter to x.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

We are putting events and projects on the san using san locations. The media itself is elsewhere, centrally located, on the san and the option to copy the media into the event on import is turned off. We’ve had multiple x instances using the same media at the same time, but the san location containing the event and project folders with the dbs is only accessible to one editor at a time. It gives you a little message saying that the san location is in use by “userA” on “computerB” for example when you try to add the san location to a second x instance while it is open on the first.

So this is pretty much the same as 7. You’d have one user in a project at a time and no more, or you’d potentially save over top of each other. In X you have one user in an event or project at a time because of limitations on the db files. If you need to share an event or a project at the same time, export an xml and import it on the second station.

You could also duplicate the san location in the finder I think and then add the san location on the second computer.

It’s no better or worse than 7 as far as project sharing goes on a san, at least for now. I hope that this will change in the future, but there are obvious hurdles to get over for this app to achieve it’s full sharing potential (using a db that can be read by more than one user at a time for example).

This thing could really be great for collaboration some day though. I believe that it will get there. That is one reason that I’m really excited about it and pushing for us to use it. In some ways, I’ll admit, I’m betting on it. The ceiling of this app is way higher than anything else out there.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

The app store won’t let you download and install without 10.7.5. It says something like “this update requires 10.7.5 first…”

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

Yes, I agree Oliver. It doesn’t seem that this addition prevents you in any way from working with favorites as before. It’s a simple key stroke to get back to the whole clip being selected.

From my standpoint, as I’m training staff to use the program, it was very difficult to get people understand that they needed to mark the favorite marking before moving away to something else. The editors I’m working with won’t have the luxury of spending lots of time in the program before making the switch. The feature of the range becoming unmarked was a deal breaker for them. A lot of guys go back and forth from the timeline to the event (or the viewer in legacy), I’m not sure of why they have the compulsion, but they do. Checking TC, whatever… I’m not willing to fight for them to overcome the problem they have with the unmarking and I found it cumbersome myself.

This is a big step forward in getting wider adoption and like Oliver, I can’t find that it’s some huge hindrance to the old way. It seems that it has even given you a way to keyword ranges on multiple clips simultaneously. I haven’t tried that, but it seems it would work.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

Bkg export is great. Tilda drag will help resistant editors.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Keith Koby]

nice! sorry to derail anyways. it was a good TC feature discussion before. trying to download 10.7.5 so I can upgrade and dig on some PIOPs…