[Ronny Courtens]

Make sure you have the XAVC plugin from Sony: https://community.sony.com/sony/attachments/sony/large-sensor-camera-F5-F55/1478/2/XAVC.zip

1. Yes you will have plenty of headroom to zoom into

2. Depends on how many 4K streams you will play simultaneously from the drive. If it’s one 4K stream for the green screen and one 1080 or 720 for the background you will have no issues at all.

FYI: there have been reports of green transparent bars appearing on 4K XAVC video imported in FCPX 10.0.8: https://community.sony.com/t5/F5-F55/Green-Transparent-Bars-Problem-in-FCPX/td-p/112069/page/3

Does not happen always (I haven’t seen this problem so far) and it only relates to 4K XAVC. As you can read in the thread Apple seems to have fixed the issue in the meantime, but there has not been a fix update yet. Maybe a sign of an upcoming bug fix update?

[Ronny Courtens]

I’m afraid when you duplicate an edited NTSC Project you won’t be able to change the Project Settings of the duplicate to PAL as you cannot modify the time base of a Project once it has media inside.

But you can create a new Project using PAL settings, then copy/paste the content of the NTSC Project onto the PAL Project.

I must say I have pleasantly been surprised with the way FCPX conforms NTSC video to PAL on the timeline. The Rate Conform tool works extremely well, even using the basic Floor settings.

[Ronny Courtens]

Michael,

I’m sorry you are experiencing these importing issues. If it is possible for you I think it would be best to clean up your system like you say, then start again from scratch. Let’s first get these importing issues out of the way, then we tackle the next steps.

What worries me in your reply is that FCPX usually crashes at the “validating files” phase. As I see your footage is coming from a 5D this reminds me of numerous reports about importing issues with FCPX and 5D footage. We don’t work with DSLR footage very much, so I know Tim and other people on this forum will be able to give you much better advice on this matter.

Based on the information you have given so far I think you might be more successful if you imported just the individual H.264 clips instead of the entire folder structure. As you have a separate folder for each shooting day you could create a keyword collection for each day and import all video clips of that day in the collection. Once all your clips have been imported you can then create Optimized and Proxies from within the Event Library. I think this should work without any issues. But that’s just my opinion, I would wait a little while until someone else chimes in.

[Ronny Courtens]

Hi Justin,

You mention “24p shot to slow playback, which needs to be sped up to 132% for sync”.

Select one of these clips in the Event Browser and check the Info tab in the Inspector. What is the frame rate of the clip? As the 7D only has frame rate settings for 24, 30 or 60fps my guess is this footage has been shot at 29,97 fps. Is that correct?

[Ronny Courtens]

Michael,

You say FCPX keeps crashing while importing.

When you have a lot of media to import and you want to create Optimized and Proxy media it is better NOT to do this during the import process.

First import all your media.
Then group-select all your imported clips in the Event Library, R-click the selection and choose Transcode Media. You will see that this will make your workflow much faster and without crashes.

Bit in a hurry now, I will get back to you about the search issue.

[Ronny Courtens]

It gives me pleasure to see someone carefully preparing a project like you do instead of jumping into it unprepared and then blaming the NLE whenever something goes wrong ((-:

Q1
Depends on your system. FCPX handles large Events reasonably well but the larger your Event the more strain it will put on your system resources. RAM is a crucial element when working with large Events.

Also depends on your doc. We do quite some long-form docs. Most of these can easily be divided into specific topics. In such cases it’s easy to create multiple Events with only the media required for these topics, and to create a separate Project for each topic as well. Use Event Manager X to hide any Event you don’t need for the Project you are working on.

Q2
Yes and no.

Yes you can do a search on multiple Events. Just CMD-select the Events you want to search. You will get a Filter window equivalent to the one you get for creating a Smart Collection. Enter the appropriate data to filter your search and FCPX will only reveal the clips that match your criteria. At the bottom of the Filter window you will see a “New Smart Collection” button. Do not press this button because it won’t work with multiple Events selected. Which brings us to the “no” part of this question:

No you cannot create a Smart Collection that applies to multiple Events.

Q3
I have never done this, so I cannot speak out of experience here. But in the thread you have mentioned I think Jeremy has given some great tips. Test it out before jumping into the deep.

Q4
Why ProRes LT? In my town you can get arrested for transcoding highly compressed DSLR footage to another lossy format such as LT for editing (-:

Seriously: LT is not bad but especially if you are going to do some external finishing work on the footage 422 will hold up better. Even more if you are going to mix this footage with RED footage converted to ProRes HQ. I would optimize to ProRes 422 straight within FCPX and create your Proxies at the same time. Best and fastest workflow I know. BTW what format are you shooting with the D5? All i, IPB or H.264?

Q5
Breaking up long projects into different parts is always good practice, in any NLE. FCPX can be a hungry beast, but on a fast and clean system you should not worry about stability unless you are working with complex compositions involving non-optimized third party filters on a long timeline. For narrative or doc projects stability should not be an issue, providing your system is up to the task.

I’m sure others will chime in with more detailed tips and workflows. This is just some general stuff I can think of right now.

[Ronny Courtens]

Wow, I didn’t know that! Thank you for the tip. Very useful.

[Ronny Courtens]

Glad you found the solution and thank you for posting it.

[Ronny Courtens]

Your Dutch is very good! Yes I’m Belgian. I live in Flanders near the French border, but my post house is in Brussels.

[Ronny Courtens]

This is a long shot but it has helped before on similar issues: delete your Project and Event render files.