Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Andy Neil] “Personally, I’ve asked (in a feature request) to have gaps behave exactly as regular clips, and even have a gap clip generator in the generators tab (FCPX treats gaps as a generator in function). Then you could use the position tool to lift a gap into a connected clip if you want. Why? Because then you could use it like an adjustment layer for effects.”
Great idea!!!!!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Hashim Otaifa] “I wonder where shall i put the downloaded extra plugins to the FCPX?”
Here are some installation instructions (courtesy of Brendan Gibbons):
Drop the folder inside this zip into the following directory:
User/Movies / Motion Templates / Effects
Important:
For those of you that don’t have Motion 5 installed you need to create the correct folder structure inside of your User/Movies folder.
Firstly create a folder called Motion Templates
Inside that make the following folders:
Compositions
Effects
Generators
Titles
TransitionsAfter you have done that, each folder needs a extension added to it for it to work correctly.
Do a Command + I (Get Info) on each folder and add “.localized” (without quotes) to the end of the folder name in the info window
Motion Templates.localized
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Lawrence] “Agreed. but in MC, they’re basically invisible unless you decide you need to use them for something.”
Maybe it’s because my cutting days actually go back to film, but I can’t help feeling that gaps (“slug” as they used to be known!) are a useful tool, rather than something to be fought against 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And completely unnecessary in X. You don’t have to select the entire right side of the timeline, you simply insert space, then define it’s length. Everything else moves along with it. Easy.”
I’d have to agree about this – compared to the track tool (which was the one huge thing missing from Media Composer until very recently), inserting a gap to shift events down the timeline is a far more elegant and controllable solution than anything yet devised for this purpose.
This is where you really see the beauty (as against the hideousness) of connected clips – everything moves exactly as you woul want it to with complete precision. Every other method of approaching this task involves a lot more complicated and time-consuming finessing of the edit.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Lawrence] “Gaps are objects.”
Again, this is clearly true in Media Composer as well, as is made much clearer in MC 5.5 where you can select them and manipulate them in ways that are fundamentally the same as what is happening in FCPX.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Lawrence] “In FCPX, space in no longer space. Space is now an object.
This means you must now manage all the negative space between your clips in addition to the clips themselves. For anyone like myself who depends on a spatial workflow, this is simply unacceptable.
Consider is how unintuitive things quickly become. Here’s a simple example:
On an open timeline, if I want to delete a clip or a range, I simply select and delete. In FCPX, a simple delete aways ripples by default. If I don’t want to ripple, I must insert a gap.
Think about that for a second in terms of intention and required action.
In order to delete, you must insert space.”
As always this you make some fascinating points – I just wanted to observe that maybe we are dealing with semantics here.
Consider this from the Media Composer manual:
When you use the Lift/Overwrite tool, the application adds filler to the sequence to maintain sync.
Isn’t it possibly the case that what we are sseeing in FCPX is just a more explicit representation of something that has always been happening in other NLE’s without our being actively aware of it?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Chris Harlan] “it is just too inflexible to replace FCS”
[Oliver Peters] “FCP Classic evolved into a great freeform Swiss Army Knife”
For me, one of the main issues is that FCP Classic and Media Composer alike are tools that give you a very wide range of options for any particular process so that it is possible to devise a workflow that “works” for you, your business and your way of editing. (Quite often with NLE’s it’s about finding the least worst way of doing something, rather than the Platonically perfect way of doing it, but that’s a whole other story.)
The limitation with FCPX as it currently stands is that the range of worflow options have been reduced dramatically – in many areas, as much in terms of the editing interface as elsewhere, there are now almost no options at all. You have to do it the FCPX way, or not do it at all.
I’m sure this will change as time goes by (or maybe not?!) but it’s not a great position to be in at the moment – especially if you happen not to particularly like the FCPX way of doing things.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Herb Sevush] “it still makes me feel like I’m buying a car without a carburetor and they tell me to go buy one at AutoZone.”
Good analogy …
I feel very much the same about the issue of OMF export without which I can’t really do much with FCPX professionally yet. There is a deep and bitter irony to the fact that Automatic Duck were flagged by Apple as the solution to this problem in the FAQ – only for them to jump ship to Adobe where I would imagine that the last of their concerns will be supporting FCPX (though I could be wrong, anything is possible).
I feel that core functions really should be provided by Apple not by third parties – it feels just too flaky to be relying on companies like AD who may or may not disappear from the FCPX scene without warning, however brilliant their products may or may not be.
The other aspect to this is that I want to know that OMF export (or whatever other function we are talking about) is going to function without issues and I want Apple to have taken the responsibility for this reliable functioning. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t layer tracks as they are fixed. You can only move the contents of the track to another track. You can simply flip flop a1 with a10, or v1 with v5.”
FWIW this is actually something that you can do in Media Composer – option drag the track to move it up or down. Moderately handy – though I can’t rememeber the last time I actually wanted to do this!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “A keyer that actually works?”
You’re kidding, right? A keyer that you have absolutely no serious control over???? The old 3-way was waaaaaaay more sophisticated than that – OK, so it didn’t have user masks …
But my point was actually about how coarse the controls are – not up to the job of refined colour correction, OK for a quick fix type job. In short, it’s not good enough …
… yet.
Actually I’d also like to some some quantified comparison of the picture quality as I think there is a general idea that it’s better without any actual data to back it up … How much of this is subjective at this point?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com