[Michael Gissing]

Sound post is a classic example of a collective group working towards an end goal. Foley is a whole department. Dialog editors don’t do sfx typically. Specialists do music compose, record and edit while the rest of the sound team are doing their bits. Great sound tracks are collaborations and rather than diffuse the product the many eyes and ears and creative experiences are often greater than the sum of the parts.

The same can happen with software and hardware development. This idea that committees can’t create is fostered by lone wolf operators or ego driven people. Strong vision is great from people like an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. But make no mistake, the history of human technology development is the story of collaboration.

This explains it really well

https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex

[Michael Gissing]

I don’t buy the ‘bug’ line. Apple never admit to bugs like the behaviour of FCPX grade tool that just got quietly fixed. Calling it a bug makes me suspect it wasn’t. Actual bugs never get publicly outed by Apple.

[Michael Gissing]

An interesting and as usual polarising debate. Having been around hardware software developments for many years and also specing and building my own computers, here’s what I think happened.

The push is to make a laptop look ultra slim and exciting. It must also be quiet. No noisy fans to break the creative flow. Nothing wrong with that but when it meets the engineering bods who say a chip with this grunt needs the following thermal consideration and the design is making it really tough, the software guys, say “OK we can put code in that makes sure it won’t get too hot and potential cause issues”. Engineers are cautious. After all when dams and bridges fail, people die. The software does exactly what was required based on cautious engineering advice. Like all design it’s the compromise between aesthetics and function. There are no mistakes here, all is intentional and the units ship.

Someone instantly discovers the software, designed to do exactly what was recommended, means the new big grunt chip computer has the same speed as last years cheaper less grunty chip unless you add active cooling (your freezer). Sales and marketing rush in and say “Make it go faster without using a freezer”. Engineering says the calculated failure and damage will go up X%. Sales say “We can handle that. After all they won’t burst into flames like the Sony laptop batteries will they???Plus, we’ve been handling keyboard problems and other design issues for years with these laptops”. Software says, “We can fix the performance problem but we can’t fix the thermal design issues which engineering have warned you about”. The engineers hate compromise so they walk out of the meeting.

Over time we shall see if the engineers were right or overly cautious. Lots of people will happily shell out for the best and never get the machines close to breaking point. Unfortunately the heavy users like DITs on set in jungle and desert conditions or on the go graphics people who are pushing deadlines are the ones most likely to encounter issues. With all hardware and software we spin the chamber and click the trigger every day. Caveat emptor.

[Michael Gissing]

Shooting real time and manipulating later gives more options for the speed and feel of the timelapse but uses lots more data. A big advantage of the real time approach is I often split landscapes with a mask and have sky timelapse while the foreground remains normal speed. Very effective on shots where the wind is blowing trees which move at normal speed and the clouds race across the sky.

The big difference is you are not using long shutter times like on a stills camera with intervalometer can. So water blurs will look different.

For flicker I like the Digital Anarchy Flicker free OFX plugin best. I’ve got the Boris CC flicker fixer plus the one in Resolve Studio but Digital Anarchy seems to give the best results for timelapse.

[Michael Gissing]

Try the FCPX forum – https://forums.creativecow.net/fcpx.

This one is for Legacy FCP7. I have no idea how to reconnect in X

[Michael Gissing]

Thanks Marc. In this case its blur on blur off so really simple. Your method has more flexibility for more complex nodes.

[Michael Gissing]

A quick alternative is to just keyframe the blur value. I’m doing lots of license plate and face blurs at the moment with things coming into and out of shot. I just add a fixed or dynamic keyframe and ramp the blur value from 50 (nothing blurred) to whatever value I like the look of.

This is also handy when something moves in front of the object to blur. The shape remains but the blur ramps off and back on.

[Michael Gissing]

Without being able to directly compare the source computer files and folder structure and what you have on your drive, my guess about mismatched proxies made sense but if you are saying you have no issue with that and that you are just dealing with a project that has already been linked to the camera originals, then I am just guessing.

I see the name Consolidate on the main folder. That rings alarm bells because consolidated media usually means new files, truncated with handles. Again if the folder is not actually consolidated media then it’s just more guessing. But without the ability to cross compare the source drive and the one you are working with, I can’t really help. My gut tells me that you don’t have a duplication of the original RAID files that this project was using and that the .drp is pointing to different media that is missing from your drive or structured differently so Resolve can’t see it.

[Michael Gissing]

Its relinking incorrectly because it can’t find the right file. That can be for many reasons but a major problem with proxy workflows is making sure file names AND timecode are an exact match.

[Michael Gissing]

Lots of potential problems. Is the other editor using proxies or a proxy workflow? Can you get them to send screen shots of how the media is arranged in folders and sub folders. If you can match that (and the drive letter on a Win PC) then you have a better shot at a proper reconnect.

I’m hoping that the other editor was working with matching media file names and timecode. If that relationship has been broken then it that’s a problem.