Mark Morache
Forum Replies Created
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “do you feel like you’re going against the grain of the software here, or is it really just the mechanics of dealing with the assumed hierarchy”
I don’t feel like I’m going against the grain of the software at all. They make it very easy to pull and push a clip from/into the primary storyline. I figure it’s there for a reason, so I tried making use of it.
For example, if I want to cover up the last 10 seconds of a soundbite on the primary, I can easily set the in-point of the range, the out-point will be set to the end of the clip, and then I hit Q to connect the clip. Now because I like to keep things in the primary as much as I can, I select the connected clip, and push it down into the primary storyline. This will automatically create an L-cut with the interview, with the audio of the soundbite extending under the b-roll. Now I have the freedom to use my keys to set the in and out points to edit a small sequence of shots in the space that I put the b-roll. I can replace ranges and mix the shots up to my hearts content.
My other reasons for lifting/overwriting has to do with pecularities of the interface. Since you can’t “slip” a clip without affecting the connected clips, sometimes I lift a clip, slip it, then overwrite it back to the primary. Likewise, I can’t “roll” to extend a clip, to the end of the clip it’s next to. It will always leave one frame of a clip, (or a zero-length piece of gap). Here’s where someone suggested that I lift, then extend, then overwrite to extend the end of a clip thereby replacing clips around it.
I expect that the one-frame remnant and the slipping issues will be taken care of in a future build of FCX.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
Good catch. If I had taken the time to re-read my post before posting, I might have caught that.
I hope they figure out a way to use the I/O keys to make edits into secondary storylines, perhaps even a way to “lock” the primary, just like we lock tracks in FCP7.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
Franz, Good question.
For me, I find that my fastest work can happen in the primary timeline. For example, you cannot use the I and O keys to set edit points on anything except the primary storyline. Likewise, the blade tool defaults to the primary storyline.
My edits are generally driven by audio: narration, interviews and natural sound. I put all of these into the primary storyline for my first assembly.
However, I don’t like to keep the narration in the primary storyline, because I would rather put my b-roll there so I can edit more quickly using all the tools, including the keys to select my points.
My workflow includes lifting and dropping clips from and to the primary storyline as I need to. So after my sound is all laid out, I can select all of the narration clips and lift them from the storyline. This puts the audio clips below the primary storyline, and leaves a gap clip in its place in the timeline that I can fill with b-roll.
Considering how easy it is supposed to be with the magnetic timeline, I frequently find myself pulling clips out of the primary and sticking them back in.
The tools in FCX gives us many different ways to work, and it’s a little challenging to find the best workflow for you, but it’s happening more intuitively now that I’ve been working with it for awhile.
Is it faster than the legacy track-based timeline. Is some ways yes, in other ways no, but I believe it will get better.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
[Oliver Peters] “My gut feeling is that Apple has decided to dumb down the effects within FCP X”
I’m not convinced of this. There is too much in FCX that’s powerful and professional to believe they are only trying to create a product for youtubers. And honestly, how much can they dumb it down and still keep it powerful? Look at the newbies on the boards trying to figure out basic stuff.
I believe that like most Apple products, they want to give us what we need to do the job, but they want it to be elegant and simple, and they’ve only left things temporarily, like stem track exports and multicam.
I think their challenge is how to figure out how to give us something simple like the HUD in Motion, but still allow us to dig in there and modify the minutiae. I’m not sure they know how to do that yet, which may be why the release of what can easily still be considered a beta version of their software.
I believe Motion is an awesome product, and if that’s the model for what they want to do with FCX, (awesome power, real-time feedback, ease of use, unlimited control) then I’m hopeful for where Final Cut is going.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
Yes, it should be rendered and in the preferences, select the playback pulldown for best quality instead of better performance and it should look better. Either way, your export will look as good as the paused image you see. FCX lowers the resolution for increased performance.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Adding/deleting key frames sort of works if you do it within the right portion of that part of the path”
Firstly, I never noticed the dashed lines. Must be my aging eyes.
Try jumping to the keyframe then going two or three frames past it, and before it. I’ve had good luck adding/deleting the keyframes just a few frames on each side of a keyframe. When you add/delete the keyframe the object jumps, so I keep hitting add/delete until the object doesn’t move.
Seems pretty consistent to me.
I think adding the keyframe within a few frames forces the handles for the linear acceleration to change. These are handles that you can’t see or control directly, but must exist.
Yes the crop is like doing the Ken Burns effect, except that the Ken Burns effect doesn’t have keyframes. It works for the entire length of the clip. I’ve noticed that you can make the crop box larger than the frame, thereby shrinking the picture, but you’d be guessing at the exact position because you don’t get that realtime feedback of how the adjustments are moving the object around.
It’s klunky. It’ll get better, won’t it?
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
[Helmut Kobler] “I’ve noticed that the timeline gets laggy when my projects get to 3-5 minutes,”
Keep an eye on your file size for the CurrentVersion.fcpproject file. I found that there are some practices that can balloon your project size, and slow down the application.
I’m working on a 4 minute video now, the timeline index shows 185 items in it, including a bunch of compound clips. There are effects, transitions, lower thirds and other text effects, many connected clips and secondary story lines. The project file is about 25mb, and things are still snappy.
I can point you to the thread if your project seems much larger than that.
As far as using compressor, yes, it’s awfuly slow. I’ve been having better luck using “Export using compressor settings”. It sends your project to compressor fairly quickly without actually opening the application. As far as exporting just a portion of a project, I’d be tempted to delete the parts of my timeline I don’t want exported, exporting what’s left with compressor settings (rendering in the background) then hitting undo to get your timeline back. (Of course before deleting parts of my timeline, I’d make a copy of my project with no renders, just in case the program crashes before I performed my undos. ) This goes much more quickly, and duplicating the project with no renders goes pretty quickly as well.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
That’s a curious size. What’s it for?
As for FCX, you cannot set up a project that size.
You can in FCP7.
You should have no problem setting up a preset in compressor to convert or even crop to create that final size.
When you create a new project (sequence) you can specify a custom setting for PAL SD of 720×576. It’s 25fps. Is that what you’re trying to do?
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
Yep… you’re right about making the center keyframe linear. It made the corner nice and sharp.
It’s good to know about the ability to break the handles though.
And it still doesn’t explain why adding and deleting the keyframes causes the position to not ease in and out.
I’m just glad to finally have a workaround, and I hope they fix it in the next update.
I wonder if they could give us a keyframe editor like in motion? Perhaps those expanded video animation bars could actually be made useful.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
It’s interesting to note that there is the ability to break the curve handles apart in the viewer. I didn’t know this, nor can I find it documented anywhere.