Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Sadly I think this is yet another thing they rushed out before it was ready because it would sound sexy and professional to a wider audience who don’t really need multicam but like to think that it’s there.
I can’t imagine any of the users who were desperately waiting for multicam in order to be able to start editing in FCPX are that thrilled by the way it’s actually turned out so far. It’s not really usable in this form for most purposes other than maybe music promos.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Nice job, Noam!
Most trailer editors I know would expect to take at least a week to cut a theatrical trailer, at any rate three days minimum, so that’s pretty damn good for an hour and a half!!!
Did you mix the sound inside FCPX?
Movie looks great – best of luck with it on the festival circuit.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Dave Gage] “He didn’t know at the time if having a ton of additional plug-ins would slow the start time of FCP X or even the program in general. This thread seems to imply that it could.”
An interesting question and worrying if it’s true. I can only report that I have a large number of templates sitting in my various Motion Templates folders, including not only everything I have made for myself and obviously the effects I have shared with others, but also the massive FXFactory set, and I have had no problems associated with the Effects library.
Maybe I have been lucky, but it’s possible there are particular sets of effects that are causing issues. I have heard a number of anecdotal accounts of issues with CoreMelt plug-ins which may or may not be actual issues.
I’m not at all sure that the sheer number of plug-ins is an issue in itself but obviously am keen to know if that is the case.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Oliver Peters] “[Jeremy Garchow] “The common language is time and layer order. ”
Which is absolutely non-existant in FCP X, especially with audio.”
I’d say this was definitely one of the biggest issues. Automatic Duck for FCPX had a big problem with detached audio (which never got resolved) and it’s clear that the biggest issues with Xto7 are audio related and reflect the utterly alien paradigm and what needs to be circumvented to translate it properly.
My acccount of my experience with Xto7 and audio is buried in another thread on the Techniques forum so I hope you don’t mind if I repost here as it’s germane to the discussion:
A fairly straightforward sequence over just over two minutes duration, these are some of the problems:
1) All the video came through more or less OK but one clip (no different in source from various other successfully transferred items) was one frame long and used only the very last frame of the source video – not correct in either case.
2) A lot of the source audio was from an 8-channel source of which I only used one mono channel in the edit. These mostly came through as 32-channel clips – yup, that’s right 32!!! The FCP7 sequence had 99 tracks and would doubltes have had more if it had been capable of seeing them.
3) Wherever the audio had been detached from the video (a necessary step in this instance), it did not get translated.
4) The biggest problem however was that the majority of the audio came from two separate non-sync sources, both of them stereo AIFFs/WAVs. Quite a few of these clips didn’t make it through the translation process at all. Of those that did, all of them use the first frame of the source for the first frame of the edited clip.
Just to clarify all of the non-sync audio (i.e. from any audio source that wasn’t tied to video) came in using the first frame as the source timecode in each case.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Hi Jim
I suspect you are probably looking for something more sophisticated but here’s a template I have made using my proprietary keyer, because the Motion keyer is not publishable to FCPX.
The default is a median skin tone but there are controls to adjust it to your particular image source. (Note that I used to be able to provide a colour picker with this but the option has disappeared as a result of either the latest Motion or FCPX release.) Adjust the RGB colour sliders as necessary (or use the Mac color interface) and use the supplied sliders to firm up the key.
You can also blur the key, which as you say is a very important requirement.
There is a 4-point mask (with adjustable edge roundness and feathering) with onscreen controls so you can isolate the are that you want to key.
The “smoothing” controls are for gaussian blur, contrast and brightness and saturation. Of course, it would be a very easy matter to add in any other filters that you think would help get the job done.
Hope it’s of some interest.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Really interesting post, Jeremy – which I have to say has made me change my mind to some degree. Andreas Kiel made a very similar point recently about how third parties pretty much invisibly helped FCP Legacy become what it was.
The only thing I would say is that it is very clear to say the least that FCPX is a very different more complex beast than Legacy ever was.
To use a car analogy (for a change – we used to get loads of car analogies but now it’s all baseball, baseball!), Legacy is like my old Triumph Spitfire that I pretty much took to pieces and rebuilt without being much of a mechanic because the underlying principles were so basic and accessible to a layperson. Conversely, with the modern car where everything is computer-controlled, you can’t hope for a non-professional to be able to do anything other than change the windshield washer fluid. Everything else requires you to go back to the dealership where they have the specialized tools and knowledge.
Legacy was fundamentally fairly simple and legacy XML made it relatively easy for third parties to build robust solutions. By contrast, FCPX is massively different to anything we have seen before and FCPXML seemingly still needs a lot of work. There is clear evidence that third parties are struggling, especially in the area of writing translators.
Phil Hodgetts I think said that writing the 7oX translator was like translating from English to Spanish via Mandarin, or something like that. That’s what’s of concern to me here. The levels of complexity are many orders higher than developers have been used to in the past and I think the ride is going to be rough for some time to come, at least in terms of translators.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Michael Gissing] “XtoPro makes an AAF I think. For sound post people AAFs require paying AVID a license fee.”
XtoPro is not available until the end of February – it will not support levels, pans or transitions at that date. Who knows how well or not it may perform? I’m not betting the house on it just yet …
[Michael Gissing] “An alternative which is possible right now is xto7 which lets you bring the project into FCP7 and then export an OMF from their. If an when any editor brings me a FCPX job, I will explore that route.”
This route is not a remotely plausible option at present, as I have discovered today:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/7938
Way too many very serious issues that mean it’s completely unusable, unless all you want to carry over is audio that was originally tied to video (and wasn’t even detached).
We need a solution from Apple, one that we can beat them over the head about when it doesn’t work. For some reason, I feel bad about beating tiny third party companies over the head when their products don’t work …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Michael Gissing] “I think it may take some time for any sort of robust standard with FCPX XML, as it is also alpha development in beta software.”
I think this is at the root of the problem right now. I think there are going to be many teething problems to be got through with FCPXML before it all settles down enough to get us reliable audio export of the kind we have come to expect.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Fair enough, Michael – I definitely overstated, apologies.
I agree that Jeremy and one or two others have expressed a small but not especially vocal reservation about this.
But I don’t think the list is as long as all that.
And quite a few seem to be happy with the notion of some potentially unreliable third party solution, which may be here today and gone tomorrow, and may not even work reliably today.
For me FCPX doesn’t even begin to become an option until this is emphatically and unequivocally resolved – and I don’t see any sign of that happening yet.
XtoPro may change that, but then again anything is possible and everything is uncertain …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Brad Davis] “if you want that level of functionality you can buy it from someone else”
And if you don’t want to have that level of functionality you’re just the kind of editor that Apple has been aiming for all along.
Frankly I am astonished at how few of the posters on this forum (virtually none, apart from Michael Gissing that I know of) seem to have the slightest interest in getting their audio out of their NLE and into ProTools (or other pro-DAW of your choice) to be able to mix their final audio with the right tools, in the right room with the right monitoring.
Everything I do needs this kind of mixing and I don’t have the option of not doing it this way. Think yourself lucky if for you this is just an unnecessary luxury that you can happily do without.
Unless and until Apple provide this functionality as a built-in feature that works with rock-solid reliability, FCPX will remain just an amusing toy for that apparently diminishing sector of the market that has to deliver high-end audio with their pictures.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com