Walter Biscardi
Forum Replies Created
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All the FSIs are excellent. We run 5 of them here.
Yes, broadcast monitors are essential for viewing correct colors and levels for broadcast work. You already have the Kona board so you’re set to connect. Without the monitor, you simply cannot accurately gauge your picture quality.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
Very easy to do in Apple Color. Just mask off that one area and pull down the brights. Won’t completely disappear by any means, but you can knock it down a bit.
Colorista is a plug-in for FCP which can also do masking on that one area.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Kevin McRoberts] “on the RAID to recover the broken FCP Docs”
You have your Project files on the RAID? The .fcp files? If so, always keep those on your internal Mac HD. I have a “Projects” folder on my main Startup Drive where we keep all our projects.
Project files that are kept on the RAID are more likely to be corrupted.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Arnie Schlissel] ” As seems standard in this particular forum, there’s more misinformation than otherwise. Fortunately there’s an obscure website called APPLE.COM were you can find a lot of this stuff out.”
Well Arnie, this is definitely not a standard forum. Until June, EVERYTHING in here is misinformation. 🙂
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Chris Kenny] “”All the current features” is the wrong mindset, and not at all how Apple thinks in general. “Better overall for the things people are doing in the real world” is the right mindset, and almost certainly what Apple is aiming for.”
The real world? You mean like cutting four feature documentaries over, delivering hundreds of HD and SD broadcast masters to five networks, cutting multiple weekly episodic series? Is that not a definition of the “real world?”
The “real world” is anyone who is currently using Final Cut Pro to earn a living. What they are able to accomplish today is exactly what they should be able to accomplish with the new software with much greater efficiency.
[Chris Kenny] “A year ago the fact that Final Cut Pro was an aging, 32-bit Carbon app was evidence that Apple didn’t care about pro users. Today, somehow, that aging 32-bit Carbon app is a “solid, robust platform”, and its shiny new 64-bit, OpenCL and GCD-enabled, 4K-supporting, float-processing, Cocoa-based replacement is taken as evidence that Apple doesn’t care about pro users.
Go figure.”
Does the shiny replacement allow the user to assign tracks? See that’s a huge part of our workflow for the documentaries when we have 26 tracks of raw audio.
We use tracks 1 – 4 for primary narration.
Tracks 5 – 8 for soundbites.
Tracks 9 – 14 for primary natural sound.
Tracks 15 – 20 for secondary natural sounds
Tracks 21 – 26 for rough music and SFX
When we send the mix to the ProTools designer, we send along a document outlining what’s what so he knows exactly what he has when we send the mix.
I honestly have no idea if we can assign tracks. The “sneak peek” didn’t tell us, they just extolled the virtues of trackless editing. Just throw the video and audio in there, who cares, the app will just make a place for it. Apple’s certainly not talking.
So if that one item is not available when Final Cut Pro X ships in June, then that tells me Apple did not consult enough Pro Users. What I just described is a very standard workflow in broadcast and film editing.
I believe that’s a very simple question that won’t break any big “secrets” from Apple that will have Adobe and Avid scurrying to match that feature.
So it’s about time Apple updated the software, but did they retain the features that made it so great for pro editors or did they just create something they wanted to be slick and then figure out what they need to add back after the fact? That will be the determination on whether we just purchase the one copy or install copies on every workstation and throw it into production.
Who cares how many formats it can handle, how much realtime it can have, it has to retain very basic professional functions that took it from being a laughingstock in 1999 to the standard by which everything else is judged in 2011.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Craig Seeman] “I don’t believe Apple will keep things “secret” once the product has been released. It’s just not something a developer does while things are still being worked on an subject to change.”
But again, nothing we’re asking is secret. These features already exist in the current Final Cut Pro.
What Apple showed us at the FCPUG SuperMeet were some of the secret new features. So some of the “secrets” are already out.
Why you have to keep OMF support, assignable track support, Edit to Tape support secret is beyond me, but then I’m not Apple.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Erik Lindahl] ” and MOST people have moved away from tapes for a large portion of the their day-to-day work anyways.”
How do you quantify most people? You’ve done a survey or looked up some article on this? MOST people I work with day to day are still working with huge libraries of tape, either for archive purposes or still shooting tape over hard drives.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
Absolutely no law written that we have to upgrade, particularly since it’s essentially a 1.0 release. If Apple wants to re-boot the franchise, that’s fine.
So you say we should expect to run FCP X and FCP 7 simultaneously on the same machine? How inefficient is that? Two software packages to the do same job?
The problem with FCP 7, at least for us, is the lack of support for all the other codecs out there. Converting H.264 to ProRes takes a ton of time that would be better spent editing. For instance I have over 20 hours of GoPro camera footage we need for a documentary. Gonna take a 12 core Mac 3 days to convert all of that to ProRes when I could just simply start editing with it natively in Premiere or Avid today.
Oh wait, you say FCP X will edit that natively now? So I can go ahead and edit that in FCP X, but if I need something from FCP 7, I can just use that? Well, with Apple’s notorious lack of backwards compatibility, we won’t be able to edit in FCP X and then switch over to FCP 7. Wouldn’t matter anyway because if we’re editing in H.264 in FCP X…. well we all know how ugly that will be if you try to step back to FCP 7. Spinning beach ball and unexpected quit anyone?
So in my case, I’m looking for all the current features in FCP 7, but with the efficiency of being able to work with more codecs natively which is what I expected from a new FCP 8. Not something that takes away features that I need for the sake of re-booting the franchise and then expecting us all to celebrate like it’s 1999.
So no, we don’t have to upgrade, nor do we have to celebrate Apple taking a product for which many of us earn our living and instead of giving us a solid, robust platform, building on 10 years of development and telling us to “remember when FCP 1.0 came out, this is sort of like that again.” Actually it’s not like that at all. More on that shortly.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
1 – Repair Disc Permissions on your Mac.
2 – Re-boot your Mac zapping the PRAM. (when the machine restarts, hold down Option+Command+P+R and the machine will reboot itself multiple times, let the machine chime three times, and then release the keys)
3 – Duplicate one of the project files and re-name it.
4 – Launch FCP and see if you can open that duplicated file.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Sarah Taylor] “Ah-ha! I think I figured out my issue. I had these files stored on an external hard drive and I think that was causing the delay.
I saved the files to the Mac and things seem to be moving at a much faster pace.”No, the external was not the issue unless it was a 5400 RPM drive.
As others have noted, the H.264 is the issue. If you want to edit natively with that file type, you’re best using Avid or Premiere at this point, or even iMovie.
FCP does not edit H.264 natively. It may work for a while, but at some point, your system will get very unstable and start crashing.
You need to convert the H.264 to ProRes in order to have a stable, fast edit in FCP 7
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media