[Michael Carter]

I generally manage the images first – open some representative files in Photoshop, from different bits of the sequence. Play with cropping and resizing to your output size. If you want to use 4:3 aspect images on a 16:9 timeline for cropping and motion possibilities in post, suss out the max size you’ll want the images. Then let Photoshop do a batch – get them down as small as possible, and consider using an Action and saving it until the project is done.

I’d say use the action and have the batch save copies, or do this to a copy of the files. You may find there’s a section you’d like to adjust exposure on, for instance, and if it’s an extreme move, doing it to the original full size images may give you more leeway (like brightening a sky or something, or cloning something out of a few frames), and just being able to repeat the exact steps you did will save you headaches.

And as others have said, determine if you have too many files – if you find the final sequence is too long and too slow, then you’ll have the extra step of time-warping it, so I’d do tests of 1/5 of the files or something. Get the lay of the land before committing resources that could take MORE resources to, essentially, take back out.

I haven’t had to do anything like “Select only every third image from this folder” in Mac OS for years, but there may be scripts and tips for that out there. One thing that sometimes you can luck out with is view by icon, and play with finder window size, and “view – clean up by file name” or date – sometimes a window will arrange itself where you can drag-select visually (vs click, click, click) and choose a range of files. If your files start with “file # 0” vs 1, you may have to remove it from the picture to make this work.

Say you want only 1 out of 5 files… make your window 5 file icons across, and the files should stay in numerical order, where you just drag down a column to select. Are there better ways to do this and OSX geeks are laughing their heads off at me now? Quite possibly!

There are free batch-renaming scripts out there that work like champs, too.

[Michael Carter]

Is each letter two files? That could be your problem. The plugin is randomly scattering everything.

I’d find a way to bind them together if so – precomp each letter, for instance. Or do a set of PNGs where the white stroke and the inner color are one file.

[Michael Carter]

[Robin S. Kurz] “I guess you REALLY need to check out 7toX. Only been around since December of 2011. Maybe January 2012. Either way, I guess not long enough to get noticed.”

Aaw, sarcasm is just so precious!!! Especially when you just scan the first post on a thread and ignore all the comments?

FCP7 won’t run on my current setup. Tried the install twice. So I need to keep a machine running for at least the next several years with something like 10.7. (We already discussed all this above, while you were sleeping in).

I just opened a Photoshop file that I archived in nineteen ninety five. I didn’t need to open it on a IIfx running OS7. I didn’t need a third party app. I can open legacy AE projects in CC with no issues. All of your “I’m smarter than this guy posturing” doesn’t change my opinion that Apple releasing X with no path to work or modify or import legacy projects was, at the least, arrogance. That they’re not addressing the millions of projects that exist out there and may need to be accessed – unless we keep legacy machines going – seems the same. yes, I know you guys all bitched about this years ago and have gotten used to it. Pardon me while I’m still in my “WHAT THE LIVING F*CK?!?!?” stage. My first Mac was a little beige box with a 9″ B&W screen. Other than manufacturers just disappearing, this is the first time I recall that “professional” software abandoned legacy users.

So my opinion remains: Apple should address the fact that 7 will be a dead system before long and a simple app to generate XMLs from 7 files – without needing 7 – seems like a good product to make when you consider how much work has been done in 7, for years.

[Robin S. Kurz] Or get “Clip Exporter” which is even FREE, if you insist on doing it the hard way. But I’ll bet that the vast majority (if not in fact 100%) of what you do in AE in the context of an edit (titles? simple to average mograph stuff?) could not only be done 1:1, but with actual speed to speak of. Meaning realtime, not slide-show.

I have to admit, FCPX’s 3D camera tracker and integration with C4D is really impressive, and in no way slideshow like at all. (Cough). I have about 30 aerial clips shot at 60p, I need to replace the flat blue skies with some animated stills with curved geometry (cough, choke), reduce the flicker, get the frame rates to 24p, retime and speed ramp and get some motion blur on them, and a few will need lens flares that track with the footage (cough). I’ll get right on that, just let me find that in the manual (cough).

And I can see my edits in real-time in AE, even tracked and flared and effected, so not sure about slideshows.

I could go on but I just got sarcastic. But thanks for all the constructive help (and please point me to this unicorn-like free copy of clip exporter – I’ve only seen a $110 version). Sorry my feature request post set you off so badly. Someday my brainz be bigsmarty like you!

[Michael Carter]

[David Mathis] “One last item would be to add a video transition without adding an audio transition in the mix. Yes, expand audio and video does the trick just extra clicks. My two cents.”

And how about an audio only transition (crossfade)? Missing that big time…

[Michael Carter]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “So, I’m now using FCP 7 where it is still useful, FCP X for most of the editing I do, and in the past few months, Resolve as a round-trip target for my FCP X projects for Colour Correction and some compositing. But if you’re so ‘attached’ to FCP 7, I think you may find Resolve 12.5.1 to be a worthy successor.”

Wouldn’t say I’m attached to it – for years it felt like the most primitive software I used and I’m glad to be done with it. But I’m like many who agree that there are missing features in X that are head-scratchers.

[Michael Carter]

I still have a 2009 going, but mainly to revive legacy FCP7 projects for 7toX. I think it’s probably run for 60,000 hours with no issues.

The best things I did were SSD boot drive and scratch drive, and 2 disc spinning internal raid for footage. Worked fine until I started dropping 4k footage on a 1080 timeline. I shoot with an NX1 often, and EditReady brought the thing to its damn knees. I swear I could hear it wheezing like a pack-a-day 70 year old. Multicam edits in 1080 were also no-go.

I added a beefy video card for After Effects, which did make a nice difference, render times did improve noticeably.

I like my Mac Pro cylinder OK, but I think it’s a big fail compared to the tower. All those drives (I had 6 going, and 2 or 3 external firewire drives) with fast connections to the motherboard. Everything’s now in enclosures. It looks like an octopus that’s into bondage. FCPX screams on it, AE though? Not the speed bump I’d hoped for. But that’s likely more Adobe’s fault.

[Michael Carter]

I don’t, to a great extent, disagree. There’s something about the overall editing experience that’s very cool with FCPX.

Pretty much everything I mentioned has workarounds, with a few caveats. There’s nothing that will replace the precision of editing audio in 7, other than “just spend more time on the edit”. I really really feel that not having something like the “canvas” view, where I can see the timecode range of the clip I’m using – that’s pretty glaring and iMovie-ish. it’s like someone at Apple is saying “now why would you want to know that?”

And the worst one for me is the jumping tracks. In complex edits, It’s a big visual organizing tool to me to have a sense of “this stuff is up here at this level” (and man, I’m a visual thinker… even my tools are sorted more by shape than use).

Overall, I was pretty amazed how quickly X became 2nd nature – a matter of days. I still don’t have a solid idea of why I can’t move chunks of things around (cut out a 5 second clip, select everything past it, deselect the big gap placeholder on the main track, but you can’t slide all that stuff to the left in one move. Have to do bits and pieces and realign everything). Getting used to that but it does make for creative profanity.

Would love to hear jumping tracks workarounds that keep everything on screen editable without ‘clicking in’ to subclip types of things.

[Michael Carter]

I shoot and edit for most of my clients, but lately I’ve been getting footage for one of my big medical-center clients from some company that specializes in social+medical stuff, PR type things for big medical centers, etc.

And it’s almost all crap. “Set the microphone on the table” (while the kids play with coloring books… on the same table. With auto gain on). Shoot everything on Canon DSLRs at 1.8 with AF on. Shoot it all handheld. Wow, nice interview – her eyes are out of focus but I can really read that neck tattoo, nice & sharp. Argh.

Another thing I’m seeing is “drone guys” ending up getting all of a client’s event business. Same thing, and at events, the 1.8 with AF? Just amateur-hour. Everything oversaturated, nothing in focus for long. And… drum roll… they deliver their edits in 60p. Since that’s what the drone shoots. When I have to pull footage for projects where the client wants a really good edit, I’ve got to transcode, re-time, add motion blur, replace skies… freaking mess.

(I actually shoot a lot of projects with an NX1 and Nikkor glass – many of my budgets are small enough to avoid rentals. Shoot that NX properly and it’s damn nice footage. And I’m getting to love it with 1960’s Canon FL lenses, though I’d save that for more beauty or esoteric projects. For dirt-cheap lenses, they’re pretty special with the right subject. Need an 85 next…)

[Michael Carter]

Hey, bring ’em – I’ve read solutions for keeping things on one track, but I can’t find a way to keep thing synched by using compound clips and so on. Or being able to edit a track in the timeline and seeing its relationship to other timeline elements vs. opening a compound clip. The magnetic timeline and the “main storyline” (or whatever) things are fine for many projects… but there are times I want to have, say, cameras A B and C stay on their own tracks vs. jumping up and down. I guess, since I have the full Adobe suite, I should just download Premiere and use it for some things. But my brain feels pretty full most days…

[Michael Carter]

And the damn in and out timecode!