[Phil Lowe]

you can see a thumbnail at whatever interval you set

I work in text (list) mode. Always have. Always will.

And Jeff, check out this link at the 3:08 mark and watch him scroll down and drag, scroll down and drag, and scroll down and drag. This is the workflow I’m trying to avoid by having all the clips on one sequence:

https://youtu.be/H2Vv8D63fqs?t=184

One more thing: the guy in the video I linked uses separate events like bins. I think I’m going to organize all my media – by type (bites, b-roll, etc) into compound clips to do the same thing, much as I do now with Avid, putting different types of media in different sequences.

P.S. Watching him drop voice tracks from the browser was just painful. That’s how to do it in Windows Movie Maker! 😉 Way faster to record all the tracks straight to the timeline and clean them up there.

[Phil Lowe]

In FCP X you don’t generally “pull individual clips” into the browser — you import everything — it’s *all* visible in the browser.

Yes, and whether you have a couple dozen or a couple hundred clips, you have to go through each one individually and “skim” to find the shot you want. If they are all in the same (compound) clip, you have only a single clip you have to scrub through. Making a compound clip is the closest thing I’ve found to creating an intermediate sequence and cutting from that. I’m trying to eliminate the time it takes to view individual clips by placing them all on a single timeline. Compound clips seem to be the best answer for me in an otherwise (IMHO) ghastly interface.

By the way, Avid has had the ability to preview and scrub clips in the bin for years – much like the default FCP X browser view now – and I never liked that approach either, because you still have to view the clips one at a time instead of having them all viewable as a single clip, which is what putting them all on a sequence (or compound clip) gives you.

[Phil Lowe]

In FCP X the skimmer and event browser are designed for this (hence the names). It is extremely fast.

The idea behind placing every clip on an intermediate timeline is to be able to scrub/”skim” them all without having to go back to the bin to pull up another clip. It’s especially useful for B-Rolling a sequence quickly. Every time you have to pull an individual clip into the browser – I don’t care how fast you can “skim” it once there – it’s wasting time. People who have never edited for news don’t understand how critical every second can be. A few seconds can mean the difference between making or missing deadline.

Personally, I don’t care at all for Apple’s new editing paradigm but since I have to use it for editing news soon, I need it to work for what I do.

[Phil Lowe]

Did you zoom in while in the effect editor and then exit the editor? If you zoomed in while in the effect editor and then exited the editor, you will get a normal zoom when playing back but will be zoomed in when stopped. Go back into the effect editor and zoom to normal, then exit the editor and you should be good to go.

[Phil Lowe]

Thanks, Jeff. It sounds like throwing all the clips into a compound clip with the ability to log timecode and edit from that is the solution I’ll want for editing news. Whether I’ll ever come around to an FCPX way of thinking is highly doubtful. Too many years invested in Avid Newscutter and Media Composer, the latter of which I still use for paid and unpaid freelance work. Much faster for me. 😉

[Phil Lowe]

“I’m working from an external hard drive connected through USB 3.0.
All the file’s are AMA linked, not imported.”

Transcode on import is the way to speed up your edit, but 18 hours of transcoded HD is going to use a lot of disk space. Space or speed: what do you need more?

[Phil Lowe]

Doesn’t sound like a very “news friendly” solution to me. Who has time to keyword when you’re cutting under heavy deadline pressure?

SMH.

[Phil Lowe]

So let me offer a different scenario…

Let’s say I have 200 clips and I want to place them all on a single timeline, in order, to be able to “speed review” them by simply skimming the entire timeline.

Now let’s say I want to bring that timeline into the viewer, set an in & out to cut into a different timeline that I’m working on. Can FCPX cut from one timeline into another? The reason I ask is because this is a fairly typical news editor’s workflow, and the station for which I’m working just “upgraded” to FCPX. And if it can’t, what’s the workaround for achieving the same thing?

[Phil Lowe]

“Why not promote it more heavily?”

Because iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iMac – all of Apple’s consumer products – are what made it all its money. Why actively promote what is, in essence, a niche product when you’re rolling in dough from all your consumer gagdets?

The day Apple pushes us all to edit on iPads is the day I sell this MacBook Pro I just bought.

[Phil Lowe]

Thanks. From my perspective, however, Avid is my racing bike. 😉