[Tommy David]

Thanks for the response, that does help me as I am having a hard time figuring out how it saves projects, Cache, etc. I was able to export a project from the Database last night, but I don’t know if I did it right. I did it in multiple different ways by just clicking a bunch of different things.

I do wish it saved projects like most programs though. I just want the projects on the external drives when I’m done for archiving and backup purposes.

And yes, I think Final Cut Pro X is a superior editor to Premiere. I only switched to Premiere because Premiere is far superior when it comes to color correcting and the features it has. But, once resolve is introduced into the work flow, I don’t need any of those features, and then Final Cut becomes much better to use. Especially because I do so much multi cam and FCPX is the best with that.

I did try to use the multi cam in Resolve and it worked well it’s just FCPX makes everything so easy to do. I like to be able to flip a switch and go from proxy back to original media.

Final Cut Pro X could easily be as good as resolve if they would put a color grading system like that in there. The NLE in resolve is very similar to FCPX, it’s just like a dumbed down version of FCPX. But it seems Apple is doing nothing as far as putting color features in FCPX, not so much as even curves are in there.

[Tommy David]

No, not in anyway did I mean one color correction would work for the entire video. What I meant is, for example sharpening. If I’m shooting with the same camera, generally, I will use the same sharpening settings on all of the shots, it’d be nice to not have to copy and paste it to each one.

Also, sometimes it’s multi cam stuff, where I have choped it up in multi cam in Premiere or Final Cut and the scene from that specific angle will be graded the same and It’d be nice if I could somehow tell it to grade all the shots from that camera on that take the same way. I know I could grade the clips before I cut them up in an NLE, but then I have to grade, edit, and then grade again.

As much as I love Premiere, using FCPX as JUST an NLE to edit the clips together or do multi cam, it’s amazing with Resolve and I wish i would have started it sooner. Take away resolve, and FCPX just doesn’t hack it.

I tried multi cam in resolve NLE as well, FCPX was still by far the best. You literally just flip a switch and it changes to the proxys and and then you switch it and it changes back to the originals. With premiere you have to manually go in and replace the files with the proxy which you have to make yourself, it doesn’t do it for you like FCPX, when you’re done you then have to replace all of those clips, which might be 20 different camera angles on a music video with the original footage. Even though it’s one camera, it might have 7 angles of the band playing and a story going on that has a ton of angles in it as well. FCPX is king of the multi cam, IMO it’s worth the money just for that alone.

I figured out the Log wheels pretty well today, I see what’s going on there.

My main question I’m left with now is how do I save my projects to external hard drives? It seems to give me no option to start a new project on an external hard drive. I run a 512 SSD with 300GB free, it will go out quick if I can’t it to an external drive!

I’m still battling in my mind which program to use. SpeedGrade has the adjustment layers, some features that Resolve doesn’t have, and the SpeedGrade settings are saved in the Premiere Project, it has quite a few advantages.

However, I’ve always loved the new Final Cut Pro X… Not when it first came out, but the 10.2 version and how it does multi cam better than Premiere and I like editing and splicing clips up with it. I just hated it because there are no great color options, there are just amateur looking effects with very basic color correction, no curves, etc.

This work flow will allow me to use FCPX again and grade it in Resolve. Resolve loaded the XML file well.

However, there are some complex things that shouldn’t be complex… Such as starting a project on an external drive. That should be a very basic thing and I can’t find anywhere online how to do it.

[Tommy David]

Let me ask you about panning. This wasn’t a big problem in 1080p but since 4k is so sharp when I pan in 24FPS, even slowly it can be difficult. It hurts the eyes. Should I slower the shutter speed when panning? Or should I shoot the pans in 30FPS and just put them in a 24FPS timeline? My camera doesn’t do 4k at 60p or else I’d just do most of the pans in slow motion. I’m used to doing the pans in 1080p 60p. I have done some pans that look good indoors at 4k 24FPS but when it’s outdoors and there is more detail that judder plus how sharp it is makes my eyes focus and refocus so many times a second that it can give a headache.

[Tommy David]

Okay, so outdoors I can safely keep shooting at 1/48? I notice with my light kit, which is CFL I can even shoot 1/48 indoors most of the time, although I don’t to be safe. Because it only happens when I’m focused on certain objects. It’s not aliasing or moire either. But it seems like when the light shines on certain objects it causes the camera to see the flickr in the light. Like guitar strings.

I don’t know if I can tell a difference in 1/48 and 1/60. I just choose 1/48 when I’m outside because I assume the closer to the 180 the better. I like the film look and edit to make it look vintage.

Here is a video I did with my full frame camera vs the 1 inch sensor. The full frame was on 1/50 the 1 inch is on 1/48. I can notice some flashing in this but it’s very subtle and you got to really be looking for it. The video tells you which camera I’m operating. One is 4k down sampled to 1080p and the other is just 1080p so there is a difference there. One is sharper than the other. I tried to color grade them to get them to match but not perfectly. Excuse the typos in the video, forgot to check it before export.

If you look on my channel there and go to the music studio video you’ll notice the flickr really bad.

Notice the cornfield in this video. See the flashing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fHeLtuXjnM

[Tommy David]

Thanks let me ask you another question. I notice some flickr and I shoot at 1/48 in 24FPS. I understand in the USA indoors under lights I have to shoot at 1/60 and I do. But outside I go 1/48 because there is no artificial lighting. Do I still need to shoot at 1/60 even outside due to the camcorder being USA and my monitor being USA? Because I have noticed flickr, even outside. Not much of it though and I’m not sure if it’s the shutter speed or that occasional flickr that seems to happen in 4k.

I was always under the impression that you only had to use 1/60 in the USA when under artificial lighting. However this has made me question if I’m wrong about that and if my computer or something else causes me to have to shoot at 1/60 even outdoors?

[Tommy David]

I have two monitors, a 100 dollar lilliput and a 900 dollar Manhattan monitor. The lilliput is my preference. The expensive monitor has higher resolution but it’s heavier and you can’t see it from all angles. You have to be starring right in front of it. The cheaper monitors like the lilliput use Canon or Sony batteries so you can get a bunch of off brand ones for cheap and the monitor weighs hardly nothing. The resolution isn’t as high but you don’t really need it to be over 1080p on a small screen like that. My lilliput isn’t even 1080p, I forget what it is, but I can pull focus and see everything very clearly.

[Tommy David]

Lightroom takes too long with video. The new Premiere Pro 2015, (update if you are still on 2014,) has the lumetri color panel built in. They made it to look like lightroom. It has the lightroom sliders but for video in the first panel. Then under that you have more sliders in the creative panel, then you have curves, just like in lightroom in the panel, and then you have color wheels. You also have two places to choose a LUT and there are a lot of good stock ones.

You can do this quick. I can’t imagine any faster way to do it. You could save a presets of color grades you would generally use. For example, I have a style that I use most all of the time but each video has to be tweaked differently. But if I want that blue look I have a blue ready to go if I want that warm california look I have that ready to go. I do not save it in presets though because every video is different. However, because the panel looks just like Lightroom, I can do it extremely fast.

[Tommy David]

Nice, I am checking out the free ones. I will probably buy a suite of them when I decide which company has the best ones. I like vintage looking footage. I pull the shadows up in my curves and kinda go for that flat look. I like LUTS that go together well with this. Some of them that are stock in PP2015 are really good with it. Like when I color grade something orange and I had the Kodak 2395, it goes together well with the orange color grade when I’m outside and gives it a vintage look.

[Tommy David]

I don’t use project manager, I drag and drop and it always works. It always knows where the files are and it doesn’t have to locate them. Even if it doesn’t look the same as it was before I put it on the hard drive. I always make sure before I delete the main one.

This is an Adobe with Apple issue, not just an Apple issue. Because of the way the ram works in OSX, Adobe has not coded their programs well with it. For example, the new speed grade is about impossible to use on extremely powerful Macs because it will tell the person they ran out of application memory. This is not an issue with a PC.

Photoshop is another example, you can open up a picture that isn’t that big and it will want to use your whole hard drive as a scratch disk and tell you that you don’t have enough disk space left, when you have plenty. Which is why I put the scratch disk on an external SSD now.

Adobe Premiere has not done this to me yet but I know how it works so I know it could happen. I won’t explain it in technical terms but think about it like this… In the newer OSX almost ALL RAM is used. In other words it isn’t idle like back in the old days.

Now, it’s not actually being used but it’s there set apart to be used by programs, it thinks it knows about how much will need to be set aside for your project. Now, technically what I just said is not exactly right but without pulling out a long and boring article to show you, I’ll just tell you the way I understood it when someone who knew what they were talking about told me.

This is why you can have 32GB of ram and have no program open and check the activity monitor and it will say you are using most of it.

I use Desktop hard drives at home but on the go I edit on a portable hard drive. There are 2GB 7200RPM portable hard drives for cheap nowadays. A 1Tb will go for like 70 bucks at 7200RPM. It won’t treat that drive the same. In a way it will, but in a way it won’t.

I do sometimes edit on my macbook hard drive but that is only when it’s a very small project that I usually don’t care about and will delete anyway. Such as color grade test, seeing how a new lens looks, etc.

[Tommy David]

The reason I go for the top of the line Macbook Pro over the iMac and sacrifice a bit of power, (Such as 16GB of ram instead of 32, 2.6Ghz instead of 3.3, etc,) Is the fact that it’s so powerful, honestly the only reason to ever get a desktop is if the power can’t be had in a notebook these days.

At home I have a 27 inch thunderbolt Apple Display, beside it is a 19 inch Acer display, beside it is an 8.9 inch 1080p display. It runs all three of these monitors flawlessly. I then have my keyboard and trackpad in a magic wand so that they stay together. I also have a music studio in my home so I have a Saffire Pro 40 interface with a lot of digital pre amps plugged into it as well as professional studio monitors. I have USB hubs plugged into the macbook as well as external hard drives.

The beauty in this, is when I go somewhere, I simply unplug 5 chords and put it in my book bag. It’s very thin, as it is the top of the line Retina edition. I also have a 2012 non retina which is a bit thicker.

You important files are always with you. If someone breaks in to your home while you’re away, they may get your monitors but they won’t get your computer.

I have owned iMac’s as well, however after selling them I knew I’d never go that route again. It’s better to sacrifice a small amount of performance for the portability. The huge desktop machine with big monitors is the same machine you put in your book bag.

If there was a bigger performance gap, I would go for the desktop but there isn’t. I edit 4k footage from my Macbook Pro with no problems. I use SpeedGrade, Premiere Pro, Logic Pro X, Abelton live.

Sure it’s a mobile graphics unit. But the GPU has 2Gb of dedicated ram and will handle Cuda or Open CL quickly with premiere. I never miss a frame, even with 4k. It exports quickly with open CL. I do not use Cuda anymore as it caused my mac a lot of glitches.

Unless you just absolutely need 32 gb of ram and a processor faster than the top of the line macbook processor, then go for the iMac. But most people don’t need that. Keep in mind, I am usually watching YouTube on one screen while editing video on another and on another desktop I have logic pro x pulled up editing the audio for the video. I’ve even had Lightroom open at the same time in order to find photos I want to put in videos.

It doesn’t matter how many programs I throw at it at once, it doesn’t slow down.

Now, I do play the bigger files, which are ProRes files. I now Adobe says we should edit with native formats but the truth is they don’t play back as smooth on the Mac. ProRes plays back smooth with no dropped frames, even with heavy color grading. However, the files are much larger.

Disk space isn’t too relevant these days. I have a 512SSD but I don’t even have half of it full because I have portable hard drives as well as desktop hard drives for my music recording, Lightroom/Photography, and Premiere Pro CC. Sometimes on the go if I don’t use a portable drive, I have enough space for the project until I get home. But 2TB portable drives are cheap these days!

Most iMac users are stuck with an iPad in the field. it makes it difficult to edit raw files or really look at video clips.

One of the biggest advantages is, on a video shoot I dump my SD cards onto portable 1Tb hard drives (I have 3 of them plus a portable SSD,) by which scene it is through the Macbook, again couldn’t do that if it was an iMac.

I once knew a guy who got into the same kinda workflow I got into and he had a case for his 27 inch iMac which he would bring to shoots. He wanted more power instead of slightly less with portability.

I don’t plan on ever going desktop again. But if I do, it will be because I still have a Macbook. The new MacBooks weigh almost nothing, there is no optical drive in them, they are very thin compared to the 2012 models, which back then was considered thin.

On the macbook display you might have to go into what size it’s scaled at and make it where there is more screen real estate for programs like speed grade. But I just wait until I get home to do anything like that.