[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hi Oliver,

my list, that I send to Apple sometimes, sometimes updated after a new FCPX update:

– Remove Attributes button

– A kind of batch export

– If you export for instance, 3 timelines in the background, you only see the first file by name.
The one below, awaiting, just say: ‘Master File’. Why can’t you say the name of the project or timeline? So you can get a quick idea of what you are already exporting and if you forgot anything.
If it’s the same timeline you are exporting multiple times, with changes, let’s have it say the name of the sequence with the date and exact time of the export?

– If you click Expand All in the menu for expanding video and audio, that it expands every clip in the timeline, INCLUDING the ones you put in the timeline AFTER you pushed the Expand All option. It reduces the amound of clicking. If you want to edit with an expanded view of audio seperately, you click expand all, and edit the way you want. If you put new clips in the timeline, you don’t have to press again and again in the menu. The same goes for Components. Could be nice to just have it as a viewing mode.

– More RAW controls from REDCINE in the R3D Hud, including (big one) the eyedropper tool to very quickly and automatically set white balance.

– Have a simple white balance tool in your standard color tools, like the one from RED. Let it be a tool you can switch on or off.

– A timecode HUD with much more timecode options. Seeing in one view the timecodes of everything in the timeline (like the old timecode overlay in FCP7), optional of course. Being able to COPY and PASTE a timecode from a clip instead of manually having to feed it always, like you could in FCP 7. You could just copy the timecode from the viewer of canvas.

– A well made timecode reader/generator effect, not only a generator. (have both). Like the old one: read timecode, generate one, custom, … Now, we have to work trough compound clips with timecode generators above, which seems unnecessary. To be able to read source timecode.

– More options from Color. Tracker. Sharpening, denoising,… Maybe have a seperate Color Room? (same with Audio?)

– If you click to have Proxy Media Playback, put a warning side if media hasn’t been converted to Proxy yet, but don’t have it be offline completely. It sometimes doesn’t make sense to transcode EVERYTHING in your timeline to Proxy Media. Only being able to transcode a portion of it, and just see a small subtle warning sign in the rest without hindering your ability to work with it, would be much better!

– ‘Break Apart Compound Clip’ back in the contextual right-mouse click menu.

– At Audio Enchancements, at the background Noise Removal option, have a small button to set the noise print, as you could with Soundtrack Pro. I don’t know if the technology now in FCP X is the same as in Soundtrack Pro, but I’m getting much worse results (frankly, I never get good ones, and thus never use it) when using the remove background noise option in FCP X. Maybe having the option to manually set the noise print, will get better results back?

– Roles based mixer, with color coding etc.

– Being able to give Color Corrections names, instead of just the automated numbers.

– Have a quick way of putting audio back to a clip after detaching it. (and if they are out of sync, maybe have a dialogue box or something to choose if you want to keep it out of sync, or put it back to it’s default?) And/or better/easier solutions for working with a recording where for instance, all audio is 4 frames out of sync.

– Have the Background Render option be REALLY background. So for instance, when you are working, it keeps rendering, but like with one core or something. So it’s low taxing on the system, but you can really keep working.

– Please make it possible to have your transform, and crop tools in the inspector change in stacking order together with effects. Being able for instance, to put a crop ABOVE or BELOW a 3rd party effect for instance. Now there are many work-around necessary (compounding) to do this. (and some things are just impossible)

– The background Dashboard hud dissapears when going into another application. Not that handy.

– This feature could maybe be a work-around for the dashboard dissapearing, although it would be nice to have both: In the Share Monitor program, have a look at what you are exporting in every program (FCPX, Motion 5, Compressor 4). They all share the same engine. Having the Share Monitor open and being able to see what you are exporting in FCP X next to your regular Compressor Batch would be great. Having a seperate tab or something like that.

– When making a new compound clip, being able to immediately say which keyword it needs to have. Now, if you need to make a lot of them, and you are making compound clips from clips in a keyword-collection (which we do, to have a timecode generator on them, because we miss having a timecode hud), you always get thrown back into your Event, instead of staying within that keyword collection, and then you have to manually search the compound clip and assign a keyword to the compound clip again.

– In an Event, in your viewing options, you can choose to display: “no rating or keyword selections”. I like that option, but it would be extra nice if you have an extra viewing option with separate: “no rating” “no keyword”, next to the excisting option of both.

– Being able to have a Proxy with Alpha channel (have the software detect that automatically? Make Prores 4444 in those cases?)

– In the transform Tools, have full Rotation controls. So for instance, only with the Y axis for instance.

– The last view of your viewing modes of your clips in the timeline is very small, which makes it very handy if you are working with many layers and don’t need to see thumbnails. It would be great to have fade handles for audio in that viewing mode. And maybe also have an expanded audio components view in that mode, but I would consider that less important.

– Having Snapping also work with for instance, doing retiming (with Hold Frames) on multiple secondary storylines above each other.

– If you have for instance 4 layers of video, with each of them having 4 clips next to each other… Once you make a couple of clips in a layer of video into a secondary storyline there is a minimal height difference. This becomes annoying when working with multiple layers of video, and you want to check and go from one of them to the other. (for instance, by putting transitions between them).

– At this point it seems impossible if you use Match EQ, to apply the match with the same clip, but just an other audio component. If I have one clip with 2 tracks of audio components, and I want to match channel 1 with channel 2, I cannot do so. I need to copy the clip, and make sure it’s physically another clip on the timeline. This seems a lot of unnecessary steps and gets in the way of what the whole Audio Component feature is about.

– Being able to drop a complete folder in Compressor. And make Smart Folders or Quees. Compressor has Job Actions now, but it would be great if you could tell it to use every movie that arrives in a folder (including things you are currently rendering out in FCPX, but you are leaving the computer overnight), to compress that to a couple of things. I know you SORT OF can get that now by sharing in FCPX to multiple things, but it would be a nice feature for Compressor to have too.

– A way to ‘lock’ edits/Projects, with a simple lock-icon like in system preferences. Snapshot seems to be a way, I’m just wondering if a lock icon is not more universal and easily understandable.

– it would be great if you could select all your markers in the timeline index, and make them into another kind of marker, with one command, or one click. Like making all your markers chapter markers, or making all your markers to do items, etc. …

– Having a way of seperately consolidating only your Proxy Media to another folder like you want.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

The thing was: with FCP7 it play or it didn’t play. Or it crashed.

With FCPX, it can try to play, it can give you beach balls, and sometimes it can crash. It’s in that way a lot less predictable, performance wise.
Of course the program is doing so much (thumbnails, an updating inspector, waveforms, …)
That being said, I cannot stress how little I see of this on modern computers with 10.2. I don’t do work with 50 audio tracks though, but I do work with some fairly long timelines sometimes, with 6 to 10 clips playing, and all of them having pretty heavy effects.

The difference between FCP7 and FCPX seems to be that in my experience, the USER INTERFACE of 7 never really slowed down (if it didn’t crash).
In X, the user interface itself can sometimes slow down, which can make the app feel slower.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I used to have pretty bad performance with XDCAM also. I must say it seems better now. Maybe because of the underlying technology that they bought with MXF?
Even rewrapped XDCAM MOV seems to work pretty well. That being said, I mostly work with Prores LT in FCPX. Then, performance can be great.
A clip with color correction on it (even 4 layers of it) seems to export in the same speed as one without adjustments. Really impressive.

For the few times I worked with H.264 performance seemed very good too. Even the exporting to Prores went very fast.

Closing the Inspector is sometimes a wise choise.
And when working with a lot of effects, I like to just put on the smallest view in the timeline, without thumbnails. I don’t know if that does a lot, but I would guess so.

Performance and waveforms have been pretty reliable and fast for me since 10.2. Even on shared storage. If you have a decent switch, because we used to have a couple of computers on an old switch, and we got really bad performance if 2 computers got on the same network. That was something that wasn’t FCPX fault though, because it was the same in the Finder, doing copy operations.
To be honest, I can’t remember having beach balls since 10.2, which in complex edits with a lot of graphical effects, I used to have much more.

And I still have the feeling FCPX likes relatively new computers. An SSD on your working system, and fast storage seems to do the most in my opinion.

I’ve had good experience with RED RAW 4K, even on a Macbook air with a small USB3 drive. no complex edit in that case though.
I’ve had good experience working in 4K, even on a 2012 Retina Macbook Pro. Fast storage, though.
No experience in 5K.

That’s pretty much

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Yes that sounds Like a good Idea. And if you do a snapshot duplicate of a timeline it shouldn’t update.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

There are 2 options:

Sync’N Link where you can have it all automated. If it’s logged correctly, it’s a program for 200 dollars, that can make all synchronised clips for you, just trough XML and with all the tracks named (and I THINK also in Roles, but don’t quote me on that) like it was logged by the sound recorder.

Another option is a free program called Role-O-Matic (if I’m not mistaken) made by our own Charlie from the board here, where you can put Roles on seperate tracks.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hi Mike,

I and at least 3 others on the forum here, still think that the concept that when you change a Role in the timeline, it doesn’t switch back to the Browser, is a GOOD thing.

The whole logic from X is:
changes from the browser, trickle down if you use the clip afterwards in a timeline. This is not only true about Roles, but also about volume changes etc.
Changes on the timeline, don’t reflect back to the ‘master’ clip in the browser.

You say it’s a big disadvantage, but I think it’s an advantage. I WOULDN’T WANT the Role to change in the Master clip. That way, it’s (in my humble opinion) logic that if you want a change that persists everywhere, you do it in the browser before you use the clip (the ‘master’ clip). If you want to change something, volume or a role or a channel configuration, that is particular about that timeline, you just do it in the timeline.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

James,

I just teached 5 ‘teachers’ coming from fcp7, FCPX. So they can learn their students.
The first hour of my lesson I get Some resistance.

Once they see FCPX’s organisational tools, the speed of editing with the Magnetic timeline, the ‘philosophy’ (and genius) of Roles, All that resistance faded away quickly. I literally heard gasps.

I talked with a cameraman that asked me: ow you stayed with final cut? I teach Avid.
I talked with him about what you can do with X (the concept of keywords vs bins and its many benefits) and you could see the look in his eyes change. Like ‘this sounds damn interesting, maybe I should check it out”

On another forum (R-E-D), someone said he wanted to try out FCPX while not informing his client about it and ideally not have the client notice that he was using (learning…) brand new software. I paraphrase:
“Imagine my surprise when the client came after the first week and asked why this was all going so much faster! Then it clicked for me that something must have been up.”

Was is Craig Seeman (not sure anymore?) who edited the culture show on FCPX with a director who started the sessions with claiming he was sceptical of Craig using that new Final Cut Pro. And when they finished for the first time in 4 days instead of 5, the director went home praising X…

What will make people change? Once more and more of these stories of people editing faster gets out, the more people will start to take notice. In my experience, a lot of people STILL don’t know ANYTHING about the advantages of X. I’m not starting a discussion on who’s to blame for that (I think Apple could do more focused marketing but some people should stop write it of because they heard someone else writing it of based on a version 4 years ago…)

I notice, again and again, when I’m doing a demo for a full room of people, teaching my colleague, talking to a cameraman or giving a workshop of X, that almost all of them take X more seriously (a lot of them even changing a 180 degrees in opinion) once they see what it can do and see the software being used by someone who already makes use of all specific X advantages (Roles, Timeline Index, Keyword Collections, Magnetic Timeline,…)

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

[Walter Soyka] “I mostly agree, except I’d say that roles and tracks are not mutually exclusive. We’ve discussed track groups, overlapping clips, zones, etc. as options to get the best of both worlds.”

I agree! Once you start with a Role-based Mixer, I think you would end up in a ‘track-like’ user interface (maybe Apple surprises us with something completely new?), but you don’t have any of the disadvantages of tracks (patching, clip collissions, …)

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

No, Apple hasn’t commented on it, and Roles haven’t developed further since the initial update.

I’m basing myself on the fact that someone I know that has SOME contact with Apple (I don’t know how much exactly, but I know for sure there is some contacts), that Apple is ‘very aware’ about Audio being the next big thing they need to work on in FCPX. It doesn’t mean it WILL be in the next feature update, but if Apple makes Audio a big part of a next feature update, I’m pretty sure Roles will be a big part of it (how could it not? Their whole structure of the timeline is based on it).

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Walter,

I think it will come, but I’m also sure it takes a lot of time to get right.
I want a faster development pace too, but I think they ARE working on getting Roles better, and I just think it’s one very difficult problem to get the good solution for.

In my opinion, the whole concept of Roles really beats tracks. It really does, in my opinion.
But more color coding and a mixer based on that, and maybe automatic vertical organisation is needed to make it ‘perfect’.
But I’m sure it’s a very difficult problem to handle, in the Trackless timeline, and with enough freedom to have some stuff go automatic and other stuff still free to change (thinking about vertical organisation here).
Also User Interface wise, I’m sure if you want to do it RIGHT, it takes a lot of time.

That being said, call me optimistic, but when that’s done and if Apple succeeds in getting that right, I don’t know how anyone would want to work with tracks anymore instead of Roles (with the extra features people want). I’m not sure how anyone could defend tracks instead of Roles (again, IF Apple gets those extra features right, because at this point Roles is very interesting but feels a bit incomplete).