[T. Payton]

Saw these new plugins, some of them might be useful for highlight recovery:

https://www.irudis.com/Products/TonalizerVFX/DemoReel.aspx

https://www.crumplepop.com/?page_id=1539?source=idustrialrevolution

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

FWIW. MacPro 1,1 (2006) 2.66 Ghz, Radeon 5770, 13GB RAM. Did a quick test:

1080p timeline:
– 1 minute h264 footage on primary (4K clip no less).
– 2 layers of PGNs with alpha, one PSD with transparency each with a custom “grow” filter applied.
– 3 “custom” titles stacked,
– 1 “ferris wheel”,
– 1 “field of view’,
– 1 “dramatic”

Background rendering is turned off. Plays back with “Better Performance” and no dropped frames. Applied transitions to each, staggered them in time, and it does drop frames, but not very noticeable.

However, I copied and pasted that 10 times on the timeline, so now a 10 minute timeline with 868 items– dropped frames throughout even without transitions. The dropped frames are noticeable but it is not unworkable.

I then replaced the h264 clip with a bunch of 4K (4096 x 2048) ProRes LT clips, it improved somewhat but still had dropped frames.

I don’t now why my older MacPro is performing better. Its really nothing special. What kind of video card do you have?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Those files sizes shouldn’t pose a problem (my project and events are often over 90MB and that is what causes the slow down.)

This sounds like some kind of memory issue or leak, or perhaps rendering or other background process. I”m afraid I haven’t seen this issue and can think of doing anything but checking the basics:

Try these first:

– Turn off background rendering in Prefs
– Ensure there are no background processing running in FCP X. Stop them if they are.
– Set playback to “optimized” in Prefs
– Quit all your other open apps.

If that doesn’t do it:

– Trash Your Prefs (use https://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/index.html if you don’t have it already)
– Delete render files for the project (view the project library, select a project and choose File > Delete Project Render Files.)

Let us know if any of this resolves it.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

I hear what you guys are saying (at least I think). However, I think we are in the middle of a rather significant transition in video: where being ignorant of certain technology and terminology is not going to make a person ineffective or create a lesser quality product.

Think about the entire concept of interlaced SD video: in a few years there will be no such thing. And frame rates? What will it matter in a world where all video playback or broadcast is in effect a QuickTime movie playing back on a computer screen? You wanna make a 48 fps 3D movie? Knock yourself out. 😉

I’m not saying that knowledge is unnecessary, I think that anyone who really wants to know their craft should study it so well that they are familiar with the history, the technology and how the craft has evolved. But knowing those skills doesn’t make someone a great editor, and they can’t be a requirement either. With the converging digital technology what was once only the realm of the technician is quickly becoming the world of the not-so-technical artist also.

Here is a not so brief story to illustration my point:

I have worked in advertising for 20 years in many different mediums, and frankly video is the last to make this digital delivery transition, (and let me tell you it has been a slow process. ) At our shop we basically have two “ranks” of people. Designers ( actually Art Directors & Creative Directors) and Production Artists. (This is an over simplification, as there are many more positions, but this is just a simple way to explain it.) To make an ad 25 years ago an Art Director would scribble something on a paper, hand it to the Production Artists to execute that scribble. A production artists knew not only how to execute that scribble in a given medium, but the right way to do paste up and the mechanical requirements for delivering that scribble to a newspaper, or magazine or whatever.

Then the Mac came along (early 1990’s), and there were great tools made for the Production Artists (Quark XPress, Photoshop, Illustrator). They were geeky and precise. Two things production artists love. We production artists knew how to get just the right ratio of CMYK ink to produce a proper flesh tone, a specular highlight on a white dress, and how to trap a spot color job so that it would make any pressman look good. We knew that a 85% dot in newsprint was effectively a 100% dot. But likes like before, the Art Directors still scribbled down ideas and we the production artists would execute it and make it deliverable. (We were still doing paste up more or less.)

Then the Art Directors realized they could “scribble” on the Mac (mid 1990’s), and could get play with photo placement, cropping, fonts, mix colors, etc. So then the Art Directors would give these files to a Production Artist and say “can you get this finalized and out for proofs.” Only problem was the Art Directors didn’t know the nuance of what the publications needed. So we Production Artists stepped in and had to often times rebuild what the Art Directors built in ignorance. Making sure the photos were the correct resolution, color correcting (in CMYK of course) and building a technically correct and printable file that would product good film (yes we output film negatives, a huge advance over mechanical paste-up). Production became “pre-press”, everything was dandy, and production and pre-press work was abundant. There was even an entire industry of service bureaus that could do the work if someone didn’t have in house production folks.

Then Apple and Adobe stepped into the picture and changed everything (early 2000’s). Apple popularized ICC color profiles and Adobe implemented them. No more having to work in CMYK. And beyond just type and fonts being WYSIWYG, color was now WYSIWYG too. Adobe then released InDesign which had built in pre-press checking, which could tell Art Directors they needed a higher res photo, or to the ink color they picked can’t be reproduced. And no longer did you supply film and a hard copy proof to a publication, Adobe PDF files (specifically PDF-X) became the standard worldwide. So at our shop, the “pre-press” stage went from hours per project to minutes, and sometimes it wasn’t needed at all. Art Directors were now sending out projects, not because they became geeky, but the software became smarter and the industry changed to make things more efficient and less prone to error. CMYK photos? I haven’t touched one in years, the conversion happens automatically when creating a PDF. Trapping? I never think about it, it happens automatically when the PDF is made into a plate.

Now from my perspective, what happened in our print advertising world is happening to video.

The video evolution parallels print very closely, but at a much slower pace. We went from tape-to-tape editing to digital editing in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, but still ended up with a tape for delivery. (akin to paste-up and film for print). However, the empowering of the Art Directors/Designers has not happened in until now. Both in the realm of high quality accessible capture (DSLR) and most recently editing.

Take for example my fellow Art Director at my shop. She is not only an excellent designer, but her eye for video cuts, and motion, and emotion is much better than mine. So I would be working on a project and would finish a draft edit and call her into my office. She would have excellent feedback and perhaps a few changes or two and the final result would be much better that my draft edit. So this went on for several years and then last summer we got slammed with a ton of material to edit on a tight deadline. All our freelance editors were unavailable and I was in a bind. So I realized she had to edit herself, and not just over my shoulder. So after a good hour or so trying to training her in FCP 7 she concluded that all of this was way too complicated. Setting in and out points in the viewer. Performing insert or overwrite edits, and paying attention to the canvas. Finding the ripple tool. And how many times to I hit “R”? Making sure the audio was connected to the clips, etc. I went home that day realizing that there was no way she was going to be up to speed enough to really help with editing.

And then I remembered iMovie and that it could export XML for FCP. So I watched the Lynda.com training that night and in the morning taught her iMovie in less than 30 minutes. I transcoded the footage to quarter res h264, and gave her the interviews and transcripts. Early that afternoon she came in my office and announced happily she was done. She had cut down 5 long interviews into a cohesive story in just a couple of hours. (!) This would have taken me all day. We reviewed the shots together in iMovie, reordered shots around effortlessly, created markers, etc, and frankly faster and telling a better story that I could have dreamed of doing in FCP. Then we published the rough cut to youtube in moments. Yeah right out of iMovie. It was almost too easy. The client loved it, I then finished the online edit in FCP and delivered the finished product.

So I am technical guy, who knows all the ins and outs of video formats, frame rates, codecs, etc, but you know who I want to give the power to edit, my fellow creator director. She is a fantastic editor, better than me, but she doesn’t have the technical skills, but with FCP X she doesn’t have to have the technical skills to get a project 90% of the way done. There will always be the last 10% that a “finishing technician” needs to do, but our goal is to tell a great story, and that is what “easier to use apps” like Final Cut Pro X, InDesign, ICC Profiles, and frankly iMovie have done. The “previous generation of” NLEs are fantastic production tools—but frankly they were and are often out of reach of a person unless they were willing to tackle the technical learning curve to use them.

I’m not saying the current FCP X is perfect, far be it. But I see video editing following the same progression that our shop has seen with radio, web and print before that. The tools moved from being strictly in the hands of production artists, to be in the hands of the directors, and the directors didn’t need to become geeky production artists. I attribute this to the fact that the tools are doing more for us, as the knowledge of the technicians is now a function of the software. And as we have seen in the other mediums, these better tools have made mediums that much more accessible and therefore the artistry of the person using them becomes all the more apparent — and those who would never have had the opportunity before now get a chance to share their gift with the world.

And they still need us geeky technicians to finish off that last 10%. 😉

(P.S. the biggest hurdle I see FCP X needing to make, besides fixing all the problems I have mentioned here on the Cow, is that it needs to become more “tinkerable”. We finishing technicians need to be able to get our hands dirty and refine everything with great control. The current lack of an anamorphic setting for video clips is just one illustration of that missing capability in FCP X. It swung too far toward and artists tool, without keeping enough of the production capabilities.)

(P.P.S. My little story is primarily about editing and not shooting. Shooting is frankly hard and takes huge amounts of geeky technical knowledge and skill. )

(P.P.P.S No offense was intended in calling those of us who love “legacy” NLEs as geeky. I mean it in the best sense of the word.)

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

I’ve got some ideas on how to resolve this but first can you look at the size of your “currentevent” files in both your event and project?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Andy – looks like the “Transition to/from Black” isn’t even in the FCP X help. That is a great find.

It looks it is only able to be modified on a primary storyline. Is that what you have found also?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Ted – just tried to reproduce this – video on primary storyline, two layers of compound clips with pngs. Added wipes and it is playing back as expected.

Therefore maybe it is something on your system. Trash the prefs and see if you get the same results. Also to creating a new project. Maybe try using psd instead of png.

Let us know how that goes.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Looks like your video is private.

Is this HDV footage by any chance?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

If you REALLY want to stop it, you can force quit FCP X. Option click on the App in the dock, or try command-option-escape. It shouldn’t have any bad affects if you are simply duping media.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Very odd. Try setting the codec settings to anything other than current. See what that does.

Also, what are you viewing the movie in? Drag it back in FCP X and see if it looks any different than Quicktime Player.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque