[T. Payton]

[Michael Phillips] “I can see some form of vibrate and sound feedback happening, but still not the same as actual hardware with resistance, hard start and stop locations, etc. “

Oh absolutely. Nothing is going to replace the muscle memory and feedback of real switches and nobs, but some Apps I have used on the iPads have me convinced that I am interacting with physical buttons. For example the game “LED Football 2”, a version of the old LED Mattel football game from the 70’s (or was it early 80’s) does an excellent job of simulated physical buttons. It really feels like you are mashing plastic buttons on that old hand held.

I think that the these control surface developers need to think beyond simulating a physical control surface. Rather take advantage of what a table can do. Display customized information and change controls in an instant. For example what if there was a dedicated screen for different tasks. Like this:

– Clip Review – controls for settings ins and outs, favorites, reject. Renaming clips. Add markers. Moving to next clip,previous clip, etc.
– Timeline Navigation & Marking- something that you could hand to a director so they could call the shots (Edimote is pretty close to this). It could do a much better job with markers where on the iPad a marker note could created and then pushed to FCPX.
– Color tool – Big buttons to display each type of scope. Scope options, etc. Enable grade on, off. Move to next/previous clip, Enable the event browser., etc.
– Multi-cam Tool – buttons to display the angle editor, switch number of angels shown, change angles, etc. This would need transport controls too.

Well just some babbling on my end. Much of this would still require Apple to create the hooks for FCP to be controlled and send pertinent information to an external controller.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

[Nicholas Kleczewski] “And can anyone tell me what purpose a jog wheel really serves at this point, real or virtual?”

Well my ShuttlePro looks really cool sitting on my desk… I don’t use it, but it sure looks impressive. 😉

Every once in a while I grab it and look through some footage. But then I go back to JKL or the skimmer.

I think that a control surface that would extend the FCP X interface and save desktop real estate would be a useful tool. A color board control that wouldn’t require the color board inspector to be up would something that I would use.

Video scopes that would be shown just on the iPad would be useful. Faders and meters on audio bus mixer would be ideally suited for the iPad also.

Regarding the lack of tactile response, I believe that a cleverly implemented audio feedback system could get pretty close to a physical feedback. Hearing switches “click” and nobs turn would help quite a bit.

I think the big hangup on why these types of apps haven’t appeared is that there is not an API for controlling FCP X. With FCP Legacy and Color we had hooks to allow developers to implement control surfaces, with FCP X we don’t.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

James,

Sorry you are having trouble. Troubleshooting an export is a drag.

Before I answer your questions, you mentioned that you got to 78% rendered. How did you do that? What happened after it got to 78%, did all the render files become erased? Have you tried rendering in sections instead of the whole thing? Have you thought about the possibility that your drive may be bad?

[James Bayliss-Smith] “I heard it is even quicker to export without render. Why is this?”

That was true before 10.0.6. Before 10.0.6 only the CPU was used for timeline rendering but the CPU & GPU was used for export. After 10.0.6 both CPU & GPU are used for rendering and export. However, in some circumstances it is faster to export a lowres version of a project than render a full res.

[James Bayliss-Smith] “How would one disable a plugging short of deleting all my subtitles?”

Just move the Digital Heaven folder out of the Movies/Motion Templates/Generators folder. It won’t effect your timeline. To be extra safe dupe your project or event db (the ones called currentversion) and then disable that title. BUT. don’t do that quite yet because…

I have a feeling it is the DH Subtitle that is the problem, so why not try exporting the whole thing or sections without the “Titles” role, or whatever role you have the subtitles assigned. (Therefore if you don’t have them all assigned to a role do that first). Then in the share dialog box choose “Roles as Multitrack Quicktime Movie” and then in the video section uncheck “Titles” or your role.

James, is this making sense?

(BTW. I’m only thinking it is DH Subtitles not because there is a flaw with it but I’ve seen lots of complicated motion filters/titles/generators cause some problems.)

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Bummer.

This may be a silly question, but what happens if you go back to your mountain lion computer?

You don’t need to render before exporting. What if you try to export in say 20 minute sections. Does that work?

You mentioned you are using subtitle x. Have you tried to disable it and see if rendering/exporting works?

Are you on the same version of fcpx on both machines?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

All that information can be derived from the FCPXML export of an event.

I’m not aware of simple app that will parse an FCPXML, but it would be fairly straightforward to write one. You might look into CATDV (https://www.squarebox.co.uk/) should be able to give you a report that you need for your client. However it costs more than a FCPX license. Get the trial and see if it suits your needs.

Could you share how you are getting a list of clips out of FCPX?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Oliver,

I haven’t specifically had problems with large projects but I typically see the following causing crashing:

Corrupted Media
FCP X is rather sensitive to bad clips. Video, stills (PDFs especially), a few random PSDs, MP3s and fonts. FCP X hits one of those and crashing happens. Isolating the problem is tricky, but is a good step to take.

Corrupted Prefs
I trash my prefs when crashing begins because crashing seems to lead to more crashing.

Third-Party Plugins & Tools
I’ve also had Third-Party plugins and A/V output (BlackMagic, AJA, Matrox) cause trouble. Sometimes in the Crash report the first few lines indicate what the app was doing when it crashed and I have seen third party tools specifically mentioned in the crash report.

Render Files (not just the timeline ones)
Another area that seems to cause trouble are the render files FCP X creates. Not just for a timeline, but an event will have caches for waveforms and thumbnails. You might try trashing “Peaks Data” and “Thumbnail Media” for the event in the “Render Files” folder. Or just trash the whole “Render Files” folder for the event, then restart and see if that helps.

Hope this helps.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Oh sure,

I would setup Option-T as “open in timeline”. Then locate your first compound clip in the event browser and select it (clear any old selections with option-X).

Then in the timeline open your timeline index and filter for the name of the clip that corresponds with that compound clip. That will just show the clips you need to replace with that compound clip.

So select your first clip in the index then press Option-T to open the timeline. Once there select the video clip and press Shift-R to replace it with the compound clip. Then delete the extra audio from the old clip. Back out of the clip with Command-[ and move to the next clip in the timeline index.

Obviously this will be contingent on the compound clip and the exported version that he did having the exact same length.

Alternatively, instead of replacing, in the clip timeline press x to select the in and out, and then Q to connect the compound clip. Then you can assure it is correct and delete the old video and audio and move the compound clip to overwrite the primary storyline.

Does this make sense?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

By the way, my thought was to do what you started doing in that you open each and every clip in the timeline and then replace it with the compound clip as the INs and OUTs will be marked when you open the clip.

Then as you go back to your timeline you can break apart the clip (Command-Shift-G) and then you will have a clean compound clip in the timeline that refers back to your single Parent Compound Clip.

You can go one step further to restore the original clip by breaking it apart again.

This will be a tedious thing to do, but setup some custom keyboard shortcuts for Replace Edit and I’ll bet you can get it done in an hour or so.

Does that make sense?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

From my partial understanding you want a compound clip to replace all the instances of a regular clip in the timeline. Unfortunately regular clips are not “reference clips” as compound clips now are.

I can think of some possible solutions for this but it is hard to explain here. Shoot me an email and I can try to help by screen sharing and we could talk on the phone. Email my first name without the period at my company name and then “.net”

Also, can you explain why you need to do this? I understand that the timeline is just a bit less than ideal, but is there something wrong with the edit that you have to fix?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

[Bill Rabkin] “1) How do I insert only its audio (without its video) into the primary storyline beneath the credits?”

Choose Audio Only from the Edit Pop Up menu. See this page in FCP X help:

https://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver1632d091

Here is a picture of the help page if that ever goes offline:

[Bill Rabkin] “2) If I had not created a compound clip of this song, but simply selected it in the timeline, how can I copy and paste only the audio of the selection?”

Sure. Option click the audio to Expand the Audio Components. Then select the range you want of the audio. Copy and then Paste to wherever you need it.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque