Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “It’s very unfortunate that FCP X has no true effects API. In other words, developers cannot actually create a filter than interacts with the application in exactly the same way as some of the built-in effects,”
Absolutely agree. This definitely needs to be addressed.
[Oliver Peters] “AFAIK. Apple advice to developers discourages complex effects control exposed to the user in FCP X.”
I think this is just a recommendation about template design in general – as in, don’t give the editor too much to play with!
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Aaron Williams] “I like the ability to pinpoint the red marker and change it to a super vibrant red. The Hug and Luma curve are super helpful to get client logo colors a lot closer.”
You might like to try out the new free effect (Motion Template) that I have created that specifically addresses this:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/8736
Isolate your chosen color and then adjust hue, saturation and luma, just as you would with the Color secondary curves. The two big advantages if this effect over using the Color Board keyer (which sort of does the job at a pinch), is a) that you can view the key directly (as a black&white/Grayscale image) which really helps in isolating exactly the range you are wanting to affect, and b) you can blur the key, which is a feature currently not available in the Color Board and it an important consideration for this kind of grading challenge.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Also many of the slider-based and wheels-based filters, like the ones Simon has produced, will also enhance the grading power.”
Many thanks for mentioning my “grading” templates here – and also in your excellent piece on FCPX 10.0.3.
Unfortunately I need to mention that I have withdrawn from circulation the Color wheels template you refer to (which was only ever a “proof of concept”), as I wasn’t really happy with the way it was going. I may revisit this as some point but for now the limitations (and weaknesses of Motion 5) mean that I don’t think it’s working well enough.
I have also withdrawn most of the other “grading” templates for similar reasons.
The main one is that there is a level of complexity in the design of these things that is quite quickly reached at which performance becomes undesirably sluggish. What works smoothly in Motion, can become unduly cumbersome in FCPX (as I believe you have pointed out elsewhere).
The other issue is that while the Motion 5/FCPX template model works fine for at a fairly simple level, there is again a complexity threshold at which things start to break – and the only way to fix it is to build everything again from scratch. This applies particularly to very complex parameter linking within Motion 5 which after a certain point can behave unpredictably in the sense of simply turning itself off.
Apologies to anyone who has tried to use any of these templates and had issues.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
In the Inspector for this Behavior, open up the Format tab and change the X position to a positive value instead of the negative value which is the default.
A positive value makes the object move in from the right, a negative one makes it move in from the left.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Oliver Peters] “From what I’ve seen, most FCP editors never even opened Color – or they did so once, were completely confused and never touched it again.”
Totally agree. Which is why Apple thought they were perfectly safe in killing it stone dead. The “outcry” has been almost non-existent, certainly in the editing community.
Although there were a few people who were using Color as a source of revenue who are pretty miffed. But they have long since moved on.
Much as I deplore their decision, it is clear that the move to build everything into the one app is one that Apple have actually got right in terms of the vast mass of editors out there.
It’s interesting that there are so many people who either think the Color Board is the answer to all grading problems, or who are happy to drop the odd $100 for some third party “grading” plug-in that promises a “secret sauce” that is in fact anything but secret.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Lance Bachelder] “I’ve been playing with Tonalizer in FCPX quite a bit and it’s my favorite all-time 3rd party plug-in.”
I’d be very interested to hear why you think Tonalizer is so special. Could you describe what it does that you haven’t been able to do with anything else?
Thanks.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And deadlines getting ever tighter.
More footage (usually meaning more cameras) and less time.
It’s a great time to be alive!”
Hey, living on the edge! Who’d have it any other way!??
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “Funny, but this is how we worked back in 1996 on every NLE before drive space was so cheap people just started loading whole tapes (and now cards) in without even considering the concept of logging.”
I think this really depends on the kind of work you are doing. I don’t think anybody in features or drama generally would be very pleased if somehow material had been preselected out of existence. Here everyone rightly expects all the material (as in every single frame shot without exception) to be available all of the time.
Though your point is still a good one in many cases – overshooting being very much a modern curse.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Chris Harlan] “I’m still using 4, but when I have time I might gravitate to 5 and use FCPX/Compressor as its i/o.”
I’d highly recommend Compressor 4 (which you can use even without FCPX). Although it’s still a 32 bit app, the 64 bit job controller means that my 8 cores now show up as 16 cores with a virtual cluster, which is a very pretty sight indeed. And I’m getting some very impressive encode times as a result.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “it wasn’t really great at dynamic changes, they weren’t tightly integrated”
Oddly, it was actually really good at this.
Send to STP Audio File Project not did not create new media, it was also dynamically linked so that whatever filters you applied in STP would stay live and editable – particularly handy if you’d sent a clip from the timeline for EQ or compression or whatever, you could always go back and tweak it whenever you wanted.
Obviously there is never going to be a way of dynamically linking an entire audio mix (as in the Send to STP Multitrack Project route. you are alwasy going to need to send back a mixed down version of your project, but even that is well handled for speed of use, I always thought.
I would however agree that for the casual user who’s not interested in mixing DAW-style, the integration of the Logic plug-ins in FCPX is a handy advance and can give some good results pretty quickly. But really this most emphatically comes into the dreaded “dumbing down” category of improvements, just as the Color Board is a sadly dumbed down version of Color. (And yes, Resolve is clearly the way foeard in the latter case.)
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com