T. Payton
Forum Replies Created
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Oh forgot to mention when you create your project, or timeline, just choose your delivery size and format there in your case PAL SD.
As far as letting you reframe without resampling the footage, just do a little math and you can figure out the max percentage of zoom before it starts resampling. I’m guessing it is going to be just under 200%.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Actually FCP X has all this worked out for you already. Just import your h264 footage, and then choose “create proxy” while you are importing or select all your footage and right click and choose “transcode” then choose “create proxy”. This will take a little while to make proxy version of your clips.
Then while you edit, in preferences under playback choose to play “proxy media”. When you are ready for your final hires version, just choose “original media”.
No scaling, not nothing. Just change the preference.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
I hear what you are saying, however, help me understand, how would that be any different from each student having their own external drive and then using it normally without using sparse images?
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Oh one more thing…
FCP X is a very different animal in the eyes of us who have used other NLEs. But it was designed to a better way to edit stories. Simpler yes. But unbelievably efficient and very well thought out. (it still has bugs however.) Therefore think of FCP X as not only a new editor but a wholly different kind of App (drive based, not file based, always in ripple mode, will manage media for you, etc.) and it will take some time to get used to it and see the advantages.
I would highly recommend the PeachPit Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X. This is Apple sanctioned, comes with a bunch of different types of media to edit with and is frankly fantastic. More in-depth and exhaustive than any of the video training I have watch. Work through this and you’ll be an FCP X expert and you can support your students much better.
https://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0132777398
If you don’t like to read, Ripple Training’s FCP X is also excellent:
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Thanks for the detail, I think we can help.
[craig ennis] “the initial problem that we are having is that when a student creates a new event the event folder and all the scratch is designated read only to al other users. sometimes during group work other group members my try to log in and access the project and are not able to.”
Ahh I see the trouble. FCP X storage for projects and events is based on a drive, not a location within that drive. However when saving to a startup drive, FCP X stores events and projects in a users home directory “movie” folder. You can tell you are storing in a users home folder because there will be a little “house” icon in the events library. The issue you are probably having is saving to that home directory because it has permissions just for that single user.
BTW: And there is no longer any specific “scratch drive” in FCP X. FCP X has now streamlined media/rendrer files, etc. with Events and Projects. Events are now containers for media, and projects are containers for timelines (however you can store timelines called compound clips in an event).
There are several ways multiple users (each with their own account) on a single machine to see the same FCP X events and projects. The recommended way to run FCP X is with an internal or external media drive of some kind. However, it appears that you don’t have that as an option. Therefore as a workaround you can create a disk image on your startup drive to serve as your media drive. Create a Disk Image in Disk Utility and make sure it is set to “sparce image” like below. Create it at the root of your startup drive.
Then you just need to double click the Disk Image and it will mount and be accessible to FCP X. (You can do this after FCP X launches) Now in FCP X, instruct everyone to create events and projects in that media drive.
For an even better solution make a media drive for each student. You’ll have to tell them to be on the honor system regarding not opening other media drives, but it would ensure everyone is only loading their projects.
There could be some more complexity to your network, but this should at least get you going in the right direction.
p.s. You could conceivably store that Disk Image “media drive” on your network. But unless it is blazing it will be a frustrating experience.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
[craig ennis] “the organisational night mare that is the fcpx file system”
Can you elaborate on the nightmare? Is it because you have many users needing to access only their projects? If that is the case the sparse disk image idea (one for each user) would be a great solution.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
I might add that from my testing if you use the Create Archive feature, FCP X will also just plow through timecode breaks without any complaining.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
I hate to state the obvious, but did you call Apple about this issue?
BTW. While I don’t have 10’s of Macs. I have not encountered any unusual permissions issues with FCP X. It doesn’t handle permissions any differently than any other Mac app. In fact with DV and HDV captures from Tape is far superior and more reliable than FCP 7.
Can you be more specific about your issues?
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Are you on 10.0.1? Also what is your playback set to in preferences, high quality or better performance?
1 – I just made a 4.5 hr compound clip with about 40 edits (1080 HDV however) and it reacts normally. You might try setting your timeline to “pills”, or collapsing your audio roles. However, are you storing your compound clip in the event, or is it a compound clip in a project?
2 – Your milage may vary with h264. I wouldn’t think your MBP would have much trouble. I haven’t had trouble on my 2006 Mac Pro. Try toggling between playback of high quality and better performance and see if those perform any better. The other issue might be your FW800 RAID. The transfer rate might not be the problem, but the random access time might be. FCP X saves every time you touch the keyboard and release the mouse, plus it is reading audio and video off different parts of your HD. I have seen a slowdown on my FW800 drive, but not on my ESATA Raid.
3. – You can make a compound clip longer. Like Andy said, just add footage to the compound clip then when you go back to the timeline just roll your outpoint and you’ll have the extra length. Actually it works just like you described. Maybe there is something else we are missing.
4 – Haven’t seen this but it might be happening.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
It sounds Iike your project/event files are open or “locked”. I would find the current version files of both of those and duplicate them, then move the originals someplace like your desktop and rename the dupes to be the same as the originals.
See if fcp x launches then.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque