Rob Tinworth
Forum Replies Created
-
If you just used the FCP text generator (not sure whether this works with Boris 3D), this is a really handy tool for subtitles:
https://www.spherico.de/filmtools/TitleExchange/
It’s a little fiddly, but essentially you export an xml of a timeline with a single sample title in the font+style that you want to change everything to. With that xml you create a template in Title Exchange Pro.
Then export all your subtitles on one track as an xml, and use TEP to convert the xml, to an xml, but using the template you created. That will change the font – and any of the parameters in the text generator – of all the subtitles. Then reimport the new xml into FCP.
It’s a real timesaver.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
Your clips shouldn’t be rescaling if the only difference between your timelines is the frame rates. But if you are finding they’re being stretched or rescaled in some way, Modify/Conform to sequence (map this to your keyboard) is a great way to quickly fix the scaling. Note that if you’ve made any adjustments to the motion tab in the clip, you’ll lose those settings.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
I don’t trust FCP to manage render files correctly. I would bounce the renders back into your timeline:
Rob’s favourite FCP tip – Render Bounce
1. At the finder level, locate the render folder for the project you’re working on (it’s on your scratch disk in ‘Render files’) and drag the folder to the sidebar. This creates a quick shortcut to your render folder.
2. Render a file in the timeline.
3. Click on your render folder shortcut and arrange by ‘Date Modified’
4. The file FCP has created for your render is at the top of the list, named something like ‘YourProjectName-FIN-000000c3’
5. Drag the clip from the finder window directly into your timeline and drop it on the track above the clip you rendered.
6. Optional – Label the clip red (or whatever colour, I’d create a keyboard shortcut for this). This allows you to keep track of what clips in your timeline are renders. If you’re working on an offline project, you’ll want to delete these ahead of the online. Make sure that any further effects you add to the render clip are copied onto the clip below.What you’ve done is forced FCP to consider the render file as a media file no different from your rushes. This means that FCP won’t delete it, and what’s more, if you do a dissolve to a clip on V3, you don’t now have to re-render the clip to see the dissolve – it’ll happen in realtime.
If it’s a quick render, it’s not worth doing. But if you’ve got a particularly heavy composite, or a filter that takes a while, this can be a time-saver.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
If you’re talking about effects favourites, you can create a new project, drag all your effects in there from your ‘favourites folder’ and save the project.
Then you just have to drag them back after a trash-prefs.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
I’d agree that there’s plenty of life in FCS yet, and now isn’t a great time to be switching systems – mac pros may or may not get updated. Will they get Thunderbolt, will we start to see Thunderbolt I/O devices? Avid about to go 64 bit with MC 6 and what I/O will that support?
This last one is particularly important if you’re also looking at Resolve. Resolve will only work with a BlackMagic video card. Avid will only work with AJA or Matrox. That looks likely to change with MC6 but who knows for sure.
But those cross-grade offers from Avid and Adobe are extremely tempting, if only to get on the upgrade ladder.
I can’t speak to Premier, but MC is always going to be a good option. No client is ever going to tell you “No, we don’t want you to edit on Avid”. I’ve heard that plenty of times over the course of the last decade working with FCP, and have had to fight pretty hard in some cases to cut with it.
I’ve fought FCP’s corner (until X) because for the way I think, the timeline is better than Avid. Avid is not just a case of the projects being organised differently and the buttons being in different places. The way you cut in the timeline relies far more heavily on trim editing rather than drag and drop. It’s a different way of thinking and it takes some getting used to. The smart tool is their attempt to make it a little more flexible, and it’s a great idea, though they’ve not really nailed it yet.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
“I dobut adding wings to a car is the best way to invent an airplane.”
Are you kidding?! If you add wings to your car you know what you get? A flying car!
How freakin awesome would that be?
Just like if you’d added a bunch of great features to FCP7 instead of trying to reinvent the car.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
You can create bins to organise your media, you can create subclips to organise your media, you can name and copy your clips (what are they talking about, “duplicating the media”) you can organise your media in sequences, you can organise all those bins with folders. Oh, so many ways to organise media in Avid, Premiere and FCP7. What a weakness!
You can overwrite edit in from the source window, you can drag in from the browser, you can drag in from the desktop, you can trim by entering a trim mode or by trimming in the timeline, or by using extend edit or by selecting down the timeline or by… Goodness me what a lot of ways to edit. It’s all too complicated.
But it’s the very fact that you can organise your media one of several different ways, it’s the very fact that you can perform the same edit in so many different ways that makes these NLES SO powerful. That flexibility allows me to use a different method or tool depending on what I’m doing, and sometimes, just how I’m feeling.
More importantly, it allows different editors to work in different ways. Everyone has their own habits and preferences and every editor flies their NLE in a slightly different way.
That’s a good thing.
It’s hard to tell from these videos, and I’ve no hands on experience with FCP-X, so anyone care to comment on whether FCP-X has that same flexibility?
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
or match frame into the source monitor, apply the speed effect and overwrite back into the sequence.
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
It’s funny – a relationship is exactly how it feels. Like 8 years ago I left Avid for a younger NLE. And now that NLE has left me for a new market with bigger tits (and a fatter wallet). And I’m crawling back to Avid begging for forgiveness.
What’s been great is the number of people from Avid or who work with Avid who have extended offers to help me get my head around MC or talk through setup.
I really get the sense this is not the Avid I remember, the one that offered the discount upgrade from ABVB to Merdien, and then, the very next week, launched Adrenaline.
I’m still not giving up on FCP7. It still works, and in the words of my favourite comment on the subject: “I’m going to stay with 7 until they pry my cold, dead fingers from the keyboard.”
But it was exciting to read about Avid’s MC6. BMD support would solve the issue with having Avid+Resolve sitting on the same system. Now if they can just get that timeline sorted out…
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv -
Compound clips sound promising.
Like Rafael, I also work by using sequences as selects reels. This is how I orangise all my media, and all my thoughts for that matter.
So if I was to create compound clips to work like a selects reel, am I able within that compound clip to edit clips, (ie top and tail them, cut out the middle when the cameraman forgets to switch off the camera) and then reorder the clips (say establishers first, interview at the end), and highlight clips I think are more promising (in 7 I do this visually by lifting them to V2). Can I see the duration of clips within the compound clip?
With a sequence, I can visually see all this information at a glance, just by looking at the timeline.
How is a compound clip graphically displayed in FCP-X?
Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv