[Richard Jacana]

Simply select the compound you edited in the browser and drag it on top of the compound in the timeline. Then choose: Replace from Start from the menu. You may get a warning that it’s about to shorten an edit, just click ok.

Andy, that was the answer I was looking for, I just chose replace (when I removed footage anyway) , works for my little 13 mini projects. Messing around with Andy’s method too but the clips now are attached to the slug so when I shorten a clip no more magnetic timeline 🙁 have to then push it up against the others.

[Richard Jacana]

Bill thanks for your response.

Regarding keywords and pre sorting the footage into each of the 13 sections – my piece involved footage that was gotten from 6 different events and there is no global keyword or smart collections feature so I just used favorites eg if I would need have the keyword “funny” it would have to be in each event, this seemed redundant – I suppose I could of merged all the clips into one master event but no, these events need to stand alone in my opinion as the video I am working on now is a “best of ” and videos have been made from these events so they need to be separate. Eg, I have say an event Vacation to Mali or Steamboat Summer 2012, I keep these events because each one of them will products it’s one little movie.

I think I get your idea regarding the slug and then attaching the clips to them but this seems less elegant and a workaround.

Event apple says – “Effectively, each compound clip can be considered a mini project,”

and

Compound clips have many uses. You can:

-Simplify a complicated project by creating a separate compound clip for each major section.

I know with FCPx there are may ways to achieve the same thing but I’m just looking for a workflow that I can use in future bigger projects – probably should try them all at first.

[Richard Jacana]

Andy, my events contain about 900 clips across 5 events. Each one of my compound clips is made up of about 10-20 clips out of the 900 and is 1-2 mins long in total x 13. Total runtime of the finished home movie will be 30mins.

Bill, I’m no power FCP 6 editor even though I’m from Final Cut Studio back in 2006, but apart from compound clips not working the way I want them too, I don’t see why this is a bad idea.

I have 13 months I am covering with perhaps 10 clips from each month I want to use. Drag all 130 clips into a single project and then if I want to make changes, move months around or shorten then I’m having to zoom around in the timeline and figure out where a month starts and ends, doesn’t sound fun.

Or creating 13 different project, err no thanks. What am I missing, how does one make mini projects / add all the clips together on some type of timeline without using a project?

[Richard Jacana]

I have event manager X. All events are on on TB drive and most are hidden. Have just this one event open and a few others did not really make a difference. I’m sure if I had all 20 or so open it would be a lot worse.

As far as memory goes I have 16gig and am only using 5gb I believe, looking at activity monitor.

Yes the Graphics card is a wimp, I can see how effects it may be slow but just general thumbnail loading? Guess it is graphic intensive.

It seems to be working ok and probably the best I can expect for a Mac Mini. Breaking up the large event into smaller events may help perhaps?

[Richard Jacana]

I realized that some of the footage was corrupt – (GH2 hacks can mess up footage but who can resist 150Mbps vs AVCHDs measly 24Mbps) – and FCPx just hung during the transcode of the corrupt clips. I’ve now removed corrupted clips and switched over to proxy and all seems well but still thumbnailing is slow. See my new post.

[Richard Jacana]

Thanks for your post, long and very informative. I too noticed a big speed increase in 10.0.6+.

I am curious how the hell you handled all that footage especially the keywords, favorites etc!! I am basically looking for a best practices workflow for sorting / tagging a large number of clips specifically for doc work. I shot a measly 930 AVCHD clips over 3 weeks. Most clips are short less than a couple of minutes. I’ve read that some folks like to do a first quick and dirty pass and apply keywords to entire clips. Then they go in to each clip and select favorites, ranges I presume within the clips. Would it be better to select keyword ranges in the beginning but I suppose this would be very time consuming for 900+ clips?

I can see starting off with broad keywords like outside, inside, day, dusk, night.

And then there is the naming convention, I’m sure for documentary no one has a strict convention and we can sort by date but how long and how descriptive should the names really be. I actually started this little project a year or so ago and have 500 clips transcoded to prores 422 and renames all of the clips with descriptive names like “On route to Omaha” or “Rain and hail”. I may just skip ingesting all 930 Avchd clips as this will probably causing my little mac mini to melt down when it converts then to ProRes 422 and proxy.

I still don’t get favorites, especially when someone renames then.

I’ve also read that it’s good to tag questions and answers on a thread here – my clips unfortunately don’t have a lot of dialog so won’t need this much but this sounds useful.

I get smart collections, can see how after choosing keywords they would be useful.

Ok, I’m rambling here but I’d love to hear your thoughts, and wonder if you or anyone has put up a video explaining this specifically regards to doc work. I see a nice little ebook here or video series that I’d we willing to pony up some lolly for! It is nice to hear that certain folk have contacted you and this makes me think a Final Cut X Server has to be in the work and multi user editing too. I wrote a little program to parse our the XML, there is real power in using XML, throw it into a file maker pro database and you’ve got something.

[Richard Jacana]

Did any of you guys put together a little video of what’s being talked about? Love to see an actual video of someone logging footage and adding keywords ranges and favorites etc. Still a little confused.

[Richard Jacana]

Update – For 10.0.8 – this works

Copy your sfx folder under Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Final Cut Pro Sound Effects/

Dragging folder in FCPx, nope.

[Richard Jacana]

I’m using an i7 Macbook air for some light video editing in FCPx and don’t appear to have any issues. I believe the i7 processor has some extra mojo for video that the i5 does not so perhaps this is your problem but the HD4000 card does seem to be the weak link.

My MBA has the 4000 card and it is surprisingly good. For big project I transcode. SSDs help a lot, I have one in my i7 mini. I’m a cheapskate so would love a 12 core Mac Pro but I use a i7 mini as my primary machine with maxed out Ram 16Gb and a SSD and the AMD option.

[Richard Jacana]

Download the trial, give it a whirl. If you switch you may as well run windoze 7 and get an HP workstation because yes, that’ll give you the most bang for the buck. I still think it’s easier for a one person show to run a mac, Windows 7 just takes more work to setup (my mac mini vs my two windows 7 laptos with Windows Enterprise), drivers etc but you may be lucking and if you have an IT dept then go for it.

I have both PP5.5 and FCPx and for what I do FCPx is a lot easier to use – interface is way cleanser and the organization of footage is years ahead of Adobe but sure there is a lot missing for pros. If I were a major edit house I would be still using what I had FPC 7 or PP5.5 – no big company jumps on the latest of greatest. Use what works best for you.

I love it when folks get into a pissing match about the whole Premiere Pro vs FCPx thing, makes for a great read. Apple is about making money and the pro market is insignificant compared to iPhones and iPads, just remember that. Apple is not your friend, neither is Adobe remember that – what ever they say and how much candy they offer you, they are out to make $$$ – pick what works best for you.