[Winston A. cely]

• First and foremost is cost. I won’t lie, a $300 app is a steal, and if FCPX turned out to be a disaster for me, I’d have a year or two to save up the cash to buy Premiere or AVID.

• I use Motion almost exclusively for titling and graphics, so the workflow would be a better match for me.

• This sorta goes with the cost, but I was simply curious with how FCP had evolved and the only way to form an opinion I could trust was to use it.

• I’ve always been attracted to the idea of workstations that are built in a cohesive manner. Meaning, the hardware and software are built by the same company. Although I never used the AVID machines that sorta embodied this idea, I still find it appealing. Maybe because it gives me the simi-false security that things play nice together.

• And certainly there’s a loyalty facet to it as well as far as Apple is concerned.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

I just finished the Ripple Training series on FCPX, and I gotta say I can’t wait to start using FCPX for actual broadcast projects. If I had not done the training, I would have bought a ticket to Cupertino and gone on a killing spree. Nothing in FCPX acts like it’s legacy versions, and therefor all my experience in how to operate an NLE was more or less useless. I would have fumbled around for days trying to figure out how to do something, and once I found it, would have screamed because it’s not the way I thought it should be done. That’s pretty dang frustrating, but after going through the training series, everything that’s been changed makes way more sense to me as an editor and story teller (granted I don’t really consider making infomercials “story telling” lol).

Sure there are some asinine things, like not being able to export OMFs for a sound mix, or bringing in legacy FCP projects. FCP7 works fine now and will for at least another year, and on the rare occurrence I need to go back to one of those old shows, I’ll use FCP7. Big damn deal.

Of course, the OMFs, XMLs, EDLs, are part of what make FCPX not yet ready for prime time, but I have confidence (for the time being, anyway) that they’ll show up eventually. As it’s been said many times before, time will tell.

Personal opinion for me is that if more people went through a couple training sessions with FCPX they might be more open to it’s possibilities. However, I know it’s never a fun idea to think you have to relearn a skill set (in this case how to operate an application) just to continue doing what you’ve been doing for so long already. Then again, that’s precisely what it sounds like most everyone is going to do anyway as they move to Smoke, AVID, or other NLE from FCP.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

Right. I just didn’t want to get into using anything else with the group of people I’m training. They’re not likely to need more that simple cuts, dissolves, simple text and simple background. Things that are built into FCPX but used to have a little more inside the app control in legacy versions of FCP. At least as far as the gradient generator is concerned. 😉

However, I’ve got FxFactory plugins installed and that has a gradient generator that’s controlled completely in FCPX (or legacy versions), but that doesn’t really help with this class, as I don’t want them to feel they have to buy more stuff just to do simple tasks.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

Well, shoot. I was hoping to not have to go into anything like that. I’m developing a very quick and simple 1 day lesson on how to edit with FCPX. I mean super simple, so I was hoping to avoid needing to go to Motion. Looks like I’ll have to add a quick Motion tutorial or just tell them to make a still in Photoshop (which they’re used to using) and bring it in that way.

Thanks!

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

So, I’m guessing there’s been no new news on any Thunderbolt drive enclosures? Specifically something that will allow you to buy a “tray” to put in a new hard drive so your projects can be drive specific?

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

We love the Timecode burn in Compressor for client views of edits. It makes feedback a breeze.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

I just wanted to do a quick followup, just incase someone else runs into this problem….

I finally called AJA on friday, and talked to one of their excellent support reps. He gave me LOTS of information on what I should try. Some of it I had tried, some it I hadn’t. After spending all friday night trying to get it to work, I gave up. Nothing worked and I figured my aging (though still fresh to me anyway) Mac Pro and peripherals couldn’t handle XDCAM EX footage. Not the end of the world since I don’t do final mastering (typically).

After feeling totally defeated, I turned off my system (absolutely everything including the dang monitor) friday night and didn’t turn anything on till this morning. Guess what, it’s working like a dream again. The ONLY thing I did was turn the system on, and then open the project. I’m getting perfect playback and have no idea what happened. It’s funny because I had tried turning everything off for a couple minutes here and there and it didn’t work. But this time, it was magic.

So, I guess if you have any symptoms like mine, having a few days to turn the system off may help.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

So I moved on to another project that was shot with XDCAM 1080i60, had my new Sonnet Tempo E4P eSATA card, and reset all my settings, and I was getting flawless playback! Well, I finish a rough cut, have to go back to an older SD project, use AJA Control Panel to switch to 525i29.97, finish that project up, and now I’m back to the HD project. I switched my settings back to the HD settings and it’s giving me the same issues I had with the other HD project. Stuttery, slowly getting slower, choppy audio etc. I’ve tried uninstalling, restarting, re-installing, restarting, shutting off, unplugging everything, using a voodoo doll etc, and still no joy. I give up, I’m just too stupid to work this machine properly and will now go become a hermit.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

Hi Shane. OK, that’s it then. I had spoken with someone who had used D7 before and not had issues with the H.264 files. And yeah, if I turn off the external monitor, I get flawless playback in my canvas, but I have to have the external monitor in order to feel safe with my edit. Thanks. From now on, conversion is going to be my first step before editing.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Winston A. cely]

OK. So I’ve bought a new Sonnet E4P card to make sure I’m getting as much bandwidth as possible (note attached photo). I’ve now quadruple checked that my setting match between the AJA control panel and my sequence settings, and my footage settings. I’m still getting stuttered/progressively slower monitor playback.

Would this have anything to do with the footage being shot on a Canon D7?

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick