[Michael Garber]

Don,
Last night I had the same issue with undos getting greyed out. My guess is that it’s a bug. It seemed to start when I went into the Transform Effect mode. Or the old wireframe mode. I was also dealing with second layer generators and titles. What were you doing when this happened?

Not sure why your audio isn’t being recognized. Haven’t had that problem… yet. 😉

[Michael Garber]

Hi Nicholas,

I think Ron makes a good point and you should take that into consideration. That said, if you are willing to deal with the inherent bugginess of the software, and can accept that there is the possibility that something unpredictably bad might happen to your project then I say go for it. I’d like to see some brave souls start projects in X so that we can all learn people’s new workflows.

As for advice on keywording, you can always add both the three letter abbreviation and the full name. In fact, you could even add one or the other and then down the road, if you want the full name, you could just search for the abbreviation and add the full name keyword to all those clips.

I’ve been experimenting with favorites, markers, and keywords. From what I can tell, use keywords for general organization. Person, place, etc… Or, things that occur in a multitude of clips that you want to find easily.

Favorites and markers are curious and curiouser to me. I find that favorites tend to act like markers in FCP7. Markers are more like quick notes – and they can also act as a to-do.

Keywords, markers, and favorites can all have a notes field attached to it. It’s all searchable, however, there are issues with the search honing in on a specific marker or keyword, which is troubling if you are searching through hundreds or thousands of log notes. If anyone has a workaround for this, I’d be greatly interested.

I personally have had issues dealing with image files and performing moves on them. It’s just kind of wonky and crashes for me. That said, your mileage may vary.

My disclaimer to all this is that I’m learning, as you are, so these may not be the true methods for doing this. Research as much as you can before diving in on a large project. Keep FCP 7 around because you may need it to perform certain tasks that X won’t do. Hope all this helps!

Regards,
Michael Garber
5th Wall
a post production company
https://www.5thwall.tv

[Michael Garber]

I have a workaround. Not perfect, but it works similar to the way that markers worked. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, this may not be the only answer or even the correct one. I found two ways, actually; both with very similar outcomes.

1. In the viewer, select an in and out on a clip. Hit F for favorite (consider this like a marker). Click on the word “favorite” that pops up in the clip. Change it to whatever the title of your marker would be. Now, tab to or click on Notes in the next few columns over. Paste in your transcription there.

– The good thing about this method is that you don’t get a keyword popping up in the viewer, which tends to clutter things up from what I can tell. Keywords seem to be good for very general sorting methods (or very complex, depending on the way you look at it).

2. Same idea as above. Except you hit CMD-K and punch in a keyword on your in and out points. Same next step, add the transcription to the notes column.

– Annoying thing with keywords is that they always pop up in the root area of your event. They can make things look real junky real quick.

Good and bad to both these methods:
Good – all words seem to be searchable either through the smart filter or in the search box on the top right hand corner of the viewer.
Bad – searching for an item will only bring up the clip that the word is in. It won’t highlight the specific favorite or keyword that the text is in. This sucks if you have tons of markers/favorites/keyframes/whatevers to search through. But, it’s a start! So, good luck and let me know if this works for you or if you’ve found a better way. 🙂

[Michael Garber]

[Andriy Toloshnyy] “Are there any way to change timecode / aux timecode in FCPX?
Nope. Not yet at least. Looks like it’s a change to the metadata. But all those functions seem to be locked/unresponsive.

Have somebody experimented with broadcast wave files?
What is the new way to sync multitrack audio from set without subclips? Using slate or timecode? Are there a way to add a subframe offset to audio for a perfect sync?”

Don’t have all the answers here. But I can say that I was trying to bring in an AIFF with timecode starting around 1:14:00:00. FCPx simply wouldn’t see the timecode of the clip. I ended up having to export it from FCP 7 with slug for video. Only then would it see the timecode. Strange behavior, indeed.

[Michael Garber]

Long clips definitely seem to be an issue on my end. Had a 20 minute clip. Just doing a cutdown of it in the timeline took forever. Each time I made a cut, there was a spinning beach ball. It would have to re-write the waveform. Very cumbersome.

[Michael Garber]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for posting this! Saved me from writing up another post 😉

I’m in the same boat. I work on a lot of corporate documentaries that don’t have the budget for transcriptions. So, my old technique for logging interviews was to go through and mark the beginnings of questions. In the marker tab I’d write the question. In the description, I’d give a brief summary of the answer. Looks like it’s pretty much what you did, but without the transcripts.

This would come in very handy 1 year later, when the client would call and ask for all footage pertaining to a specific question.

It seems to me that Apple hasn’t turned on all the metadata functionality, yet. So, my speculation is that once we get to Lion which, from what I’m reading, will have more AVFoundation support, FCPx functionality will begin to open up (hopefully) and run better (ie not crash as much!). Also, Apple is planning an update this summer. Hopefully that will help.

Oh, as a workaround for the freaky-deaky keyword thing. Try putting quotes around your paragraph of transcription–maybe that will help? Let me know!

In the end, ScriptSync for FCPX would be a killer app! I have a feeling someone must see this need and is developing something.

[Michael Garber]

This shows you how.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4287

[Michael Garber]

One exception I’ve found for forcing a 64-bit boot. If you are running 10.6.8 and a Kona card, you need to run in 64-bit or you’ll get a kernel panic. One of AJA’s engineers sent me this page on the subject:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3773

[Michael Garber]

Quite literally mine, too :(. Just spent hours trying to figure out the best approach to logging my VO and couldn’t. Compound clip? Direct to timeline? In it’s own timeline? In a new timeline? Which storyline layer? What about auditioning (it wasn’t working correctly for me, at least). Oh well, in due time, I suppose.

It’s really a beta. It’s really a beta…

[Michael Garber]

Thanks for that and the CMD-OPT-G, OPT-G method. I’ll try it.