[Mike Bonner]

Hey Robin,

Yeah, I don’t know whose responsible for implementing the support, I just didn’t see any native options for communicating with a control surface in the latest FCPX update.

However, Tangent posted on their website their partnership with a 3rd party app to allow their surfaces to work in X:

“We’ll also be showing some new technology demonstrators in action:
CommandPost – a partner application which allows our panels to operate many controls in Apple Final Cut Pro X, including the new Color Wheels, via the Tangent Mapper.”

This post is what made me have a look at CommandPost. In addition to panel support, they also add a lot of other great added functionality to X.

I’m just very pleased that I can use these tools now in X. It will speed up my workflow, and I don’t need to look at idle balls on my desk while color correcting.

[Mike Bonner]

Well, looks like they quietly fixed it. Can we end the debate and call it a bug now?

Still no panel support, but CommandPost is working great.

[Mike Bonner]

This may be obsolete in a few hours when the next version of FCPX is released, but…

I was just playing around with the lasted release of CommandPost. (an app that hacks additional features into fcpx)

The latest version allows you to map Tangent panels to both the color board and color wheels in FCPX.

Relevant to this discussion, you can map the LGG rings to the color board exposure pucks, and the balls to the color wheels RGB controls. In this way, you can achieve the “expected” adjustments with a panel when working in REC709.

Hopefully, they will address the previously discussed issue in the next release, maybe even offer native panel support, but if not, this is a very useable work around.

[Mike Bonner]

[Oliver Peters] “First of all, be very, very careful in making any color judgements based on the viewer”

Thanks, Oliver, I definitely defer to you for experience in color; I am aware of this issue.

What struck me though was how different applications handled the footage. I know that Resolve’s viewer is supposed to bypass the OS profiles, and I tested the deliverables in VLC, which I believe does the same. I was not aware that PP and MC were capable of doing the same.

What I did not mention was that I tried to do a few tests as simply as possible, recreating if you will, what most FCPX users would experience (i.e., no broadcast video monitor). And, it just seems FC is doing something very different than the other NLE’s (operating under the same OS color profile)

Anyway, I’m taking this discussion off topic. Thanks for the responses.

[Mike Bonner]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Try clicking the scope button with the waveform on it and change the scale from 100% to 133%.”

Yes, Jeremy, you are right about this. Having a look back at Apple’s support pages, it’s stated when using 75% contrast color bars to set the vector scope to 133%. Although, this seems like an odd default setting while working in a Rec709 project, but oh well, I guess that is a discussion that should have been had 5 years ago. But, I’m put a little more at ease using that setting.

[Mike Bonner]

Hey everyone, I was just as excited to see color wheels in fcpx as anyone else, but now I’m thoroughly confused.

Has anyone looked at bars and the vector scope with this issue?

After reading through this very exciting thread, I wanted to see what the adjustments did to more real life footage. But before I even got to making adjustments, the color of the footage seemed off. The images were desaturated, and the signals on the scopes appeared to be “clamped”.

I imported some old footage that I exported out of an older version of fcpx, as well as a jpg test chart.

Not matching up with the visual saturation and scope trace I was seeing in Resolve, I checked them in PP and MC as well. Resolve, PP, and MC gave the expected results, fcpx, not so much. Here are some screen shots.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can see the potential for problems, obviously. Thinking you need to boost the colors, and rendering out an image way too saturated. Or, maybe it will all even out in the end as it goes through the render process, but even so, you would be doing more work than you need to do.

I don’t know, maybe there is a new preference switch that I haven’t clicked on or something, but I really don’t have any confidence right now on how fcpx is handling my media.

It could be my system or setup, so it be nice to know if anyone else is seeing similar results. Thanks.

[Mike Bonner]

+1
Especially when overlaying video with alpha used for titles created somewhere else.

[Mike Bonner]

I’m pretty sure Alex4D’s “Sound Only” transition still behaves the same way it did before. Yeah, I was hoping for a better stock solution this time around. Would love to know if I’ve missed something.
I was toying with the idea of using the new Toggle Audio Fade In/Out kb commands as a work around. Basically, expand audio, toggle fades on each clip, drag one audio portion over, then collapse. It is definitely more clicks, but I never liked the idea of gunking up my storylines with audio transitions.

[Mike Bonner]

The library is on the external drive along with all of the associated media (not stored in library). I did not move the library to a different finder location, I physically moved the drive across the room to a different machine (with and updated version of fcpx, of course).

And, to update: I reconnected the drive back on the original machine and opened up the project. Now, I was assuming the 2nd machine had trouble linking the effects, and therefore they were “offline”, and everything would be fine back on the original computer. Guess what? All the effects and keyframes were gone! Thank you incremental saving. I am very lucky I had saved a backup project to a different disk, and after deleting the problem project and opening the backup, all the effects and keyframes were back.

This, in my mind, is a MASSIVE FAIL. All that you would have to do is accidentally open up the wrong project from an external drive or server, and all of your effect and mixing work is erased? If the backup project that I had saved had not worked, I would have lost at least a day’s work. My guess is that this has something to do with switching between role and subrole “mode” when working with audio lanes. I believe the project may have opened in role mode, and therefore lost all of the subrole effects. I know there is a warning when doing this when working in your project, but I did not receive any warning messages. I’m not positive about that theory, I only thought about that after deleting the project.

But, one thing I know for sure. Be careful with this new role functionality! It’s not what I would call non-destructive! You can’t go from subrole to role mode without losing work. You can’t go back to a previous version after doing a mix on a compound clip (since any changes to the compound clip will change the clip in the browser, not just the timeline). And now it looks life you can’t open up your project on a different computer after applying subrole effects to a compound clip without loosing them.

Stay safe, my friends.

[Mike Bonner]

Yeah, both Mac Extended Journaled, both ignoring ownership.
I am reformatting the portable drive and repopulating. See if that helps.