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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

FCPX The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

You can turn off the magnetic timeline by using the P command instead of the A command. This will initiate the old behavior of overwriting clips with other clips rather than them falling into a magnetic timeline. Essentially, this is the way to turn off the magnetic ness of the timeline to make it feel more FCP7 familiar.
 
I have recently switched to fcpx after I had an hour long documentary project start crashing in premiere and causing real mayhem.

I'm loving the stability of fcpx and have noticed a big improvement in speed. I generally can learn things with youtube videos etc. There are a few things I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around

1.) the audio tracks are all over the place. I can't figure it how to organize these tracks. Also if I want to export for sound design like vo, broll sound, fx music etc I don't know how to do that I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental.
2.) I still have no idea how to organize the media. I've been using events to import each folder for the shoot but I get the feeling this is the wrong way to handle media?
3.) I used to duplicate my sequences on a daily basis so that I could go back to previous edits when needed. Is there a way to do this effectively with fcpx?
 
Audio>
you can try to export and FCP X XML into LOGIC X for a mix but you should add the ADDON by http://www.marquisbroadcast.com/x2pro-audio-convert.html
Use role to your advantage. Hint you can create role names, this means you can use terms like Dialog, effects, etc or you can be more conventional and use TRACK 1, 2, 3 4 etc as role names. When you export the clips you assigned the role you can mimic tracks in mixing software.

Organising> Keywords are your best friend. Grab all of the interview clips and assign a keyword like "interview" and it creates a smart folder in the event with everything assigned that name.

IE> EVENT NAME IS Footage. KEYWORD is Interview and rests inside the Footage event. Or Creat an event called INTERVIEW and then keyword interview clips with a few words from clip content. Be your own assistant and do this as a first step to really familiarise yourself with the footage.

Duplicate> YES. Use the SAVE PROJECT AS SNAPSHOT command. This freezes the project and creates a separate timestamped sequence. If you do this at the end of each day you can always easily return to the end of the last session.
 
Adam Rook said:
The ugly side for me is the magnetic timeline. I can't stand that sucker. I never use it. I always drop my clips in using the "Q" command and it places it above the magnetic timeline. There are advantages to working that way and there are frustrations that come with it also. I wish we had the option to turn it off and work similarly to the way we did in FCP.
Click to expand...

With the Position Tool and connected clips you kind of have a way of doing that. But to be honest... I have noticed that of EVERYTHING Apple changed with FCPX, The magnetic timeline is one that is the most difficult to get used to, because it's the one that counts the most of muscle memory. And muscle memory is something that can only change by doing it 'the other way' until your brain clicks with it. There are reasons for using the position tool and connected clips, but I've noticed that I just made my life more difficult doing that. My brain just needed to adjust, and once I started thinking in terms of primary storyline, connected clips, secondary storyline, it started to slowly click. Now it's just the way I think when I'm working in a timeline. I used to have to kind of GUESS how the magnetic timeline would work (and would get frustrated if it didn't do what I think it would do) but now I know how it works, my brain and my muscle memory too, and most of the time, I'm faster and more efficient with it.
The same thing with the Skimmer, which is a huge part of how the magnetic timeline works. I first hated it. Put it off. Started using it, relunctantly first. Then after a while got used to it, got a lot faster with it, then without it. I teached a friend of mine, collegue too, how to edit in FCPX. I saw him make a lot of the same 'misstakes', the first weeks. Not using the skimmer, working in connected clips, etc. ... All the FCP 7 way of doing stuff. I kindly told him to really start using the program as designed, including the skimmer which is handy MOST of the time, etc. ... He started doing it, also relunctantly, and after a couple of weeks he told me he opened FCP 7 again and it all immediately felt 'old' and slow. Not only user-interface, he was not talking about export times either, but just the way of how everything works. Even if you were just used to working for 6 years on FCP 7.

Dan McCain said:
1.) the audio tracks are all over the place. I can't figure it how to organize these tracks. Also if I want to export for sound design like vo, broll sound, fx music etc I don't know how to do that I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental.
2.) I still have no idea how to organize the media. I've been using events to import each folder for the shoot but I get the feeling this is the wrong way to handle media?
3.) I used to duplicate my sequences on a daily basis so that I could go back to previous edits when needed. Is there a way to do this effectively with fcpx?
Click to expand...

1) You have to learn how to use Roles and the Timeline Index. Some videos to help you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9SKJoarCoI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-wlJp9TauQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soN3NtPWW-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRvZ9KH390I

This should get you along :-) the only thing that a lot of people still want, is that Apple puts in a functionality, where the clips vertical organisation in the timeline adjusts to putting all Roles together (maybe only after putting on an option in the Timeline Index). And having them color coded. Would be fantastic.
Anyhow, this way of working shows how fantastic a trackless timeline can be. You don't need to patch tracks WHILE YOU CUT anymore. You don't have clip collissions. You can just use metadata that is flexible to seperate music from effects from titles from dialogue, etc. ...
You just choose how you want it exported in the end, and the whole tracks/patching thing doesn't get in your way while you are doing the creative stuff. It's liberating, and in my opinion, once you get used to it, you find the old way of working very un-flexible.

2) There are no hard rules, you kind of have to figure out what works best for you. You can make multiple events, but think about how much footage you have, what's the advantage of spreading them out in multiple events. I mostly work with one event within one project, but if you have a lot of footage, maybe it's better to contain them in seperate events within that library.
Then, you can make Folders in FCPX, but they cannot hold footage on their own, they can only hold keyword collections. And then keyword collections are your main way of organizing footage, and probably one of FCPX's greatest inventions because a shot is no longer contained to a bin, but can contain multiple keyword. For documentary or coorporate work this is GREAT, and if you do fiction, you can pretty much work the same way as you did previously with bins or folders, but with more flexibility. It's awesome.

3) Duplicate. As David said: you can just select a project (project = timeline = FCP7-sequence) and right click Duplicate or Duplicate as Snapshot. If you have a Compound Clip in a sequence, and you duplicate as snapshot, that snapshot timeline will always stay the same. It's good that both options exist, because if you make changes to a Compound Clip, it ripples trough to every instance where this clip is used, so it can be a good thing to have it change to a duplicate of a sequence, or if you want to avoid that, use the Snapshot functionality.
 
For those interested, here's my post about "Focus". For an FCPX feature workflow, it's a good idea to pick up Mike Matzdorff's book, which is linked at the bottom of this article.

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/focus/

Also, I've written a few blog posts about organizing and script-based workflows in FCPX that might be helpful for some.

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/final-cut-pro-x-organizing-tips/

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/nle-tips-week-4/

- Oliver
 
I believe the FCPX team is an island of good intentions in a company whose real emphasis is phones, TV's, watches, cars, and consumer products. On both the hardware and the software side, Apple treats the pro market like a passing hobby, and I understand their financial motive for this. But I do not and will not count on them to put the necessary resources into being market leaders in the pro space. It's a travesty that FCPX launched as it did, that it has taken this long to become usable, that it is still plagued by a morass of questionable UX choices and workflow challenges. Signs of a small team with good intentions inside a company whose real attention is on other things. The Apple acolytes would have us believe FCPX is the future, or that companies like Avid and Adobe who DO prioritize this space will somehow be eclipsed in the long run by Apple's obviously half-hearted efforts. FCPX has two pieces of innovation going for it: magnetic timeline and database-driven clip management. If these prove to have merit, they will be adopted by others who truly make this space their lifeblood. The FCP7 debacle proved that Apple cannot be trusted as a primary tool provider ever again.

PS - How's that QT gamma treating you?
 
I get what you are saying Tim, and I think it's good not to put all your 'trust' in a company, but on the other hand:

- Adobe said "don't worry, subscription won't be the only option." 3 months later they revealed at NAB (or IBC, I forgot) that CS6 was the last version that you could buy an outright license for.

- Avid wanted to retreat from the Mac one time. It didn't happen after a backlash from the users.

- RED has it's own share of products that they announced and never brought to fruition.

- Auto desk also had discontinued products.

Not blaming any of these companies. I think they all had their reasons or situations where stuff didn't went like the users wanted it (and in some cases, the way users deserved it. To be honest: I also think Apple did a horrible way of treating it's pro customers in certain points in their history, but I think you could say that about a lot of companies if you hunt for certain examples and I don't think Apple is alone in this.
I also think that if you look at what Apple did with the Mac, with FCP in it's history, there are also a lot of examples where they empowered a lot of their users, and that also deserves a lot of credit and sometimes doesn't get told in the same sentences where we talk about what Apple did that hurt 'us' pro users. You could also put a track record of what they did. Would we all have a Da Vinci Resolve for such a affordable price if Apple didn't start with buying Color and putting it into FCS Studio? Maybe, but I think the move deserves credit too.

I don't know why you also say 'obviously half-hearted efforts'. FCP Studio had the biggest market share, it was a good product (agreed in a less competitive landscape than now), FCPX had a nice amount of updates (although it slowed down a bit, it seems). I also hear some people talk about stuff they are annoyed in for versions and versions and versions about Avid. Would you call it half-hearted because some stuff isn't fixed?

I understand that the idea that Apple dropped FCPX and it wouldn't blink on their quarter results gets people uneasy (me too sometimes ;-)). You could also view it another way: Apple could throw money at the thing like hell (which isn't true for all the other companies) and they wouldn't feel it in their quarter results. I think they still use FCPX as one of the programs to showcase the Mac Pro, and it's in their hardware where they get their profits. When they can release software that uses their competitive advantage of software/hardware/OS engineering, where you get faster performance in the program then in competing NLE's with their own (expensive) hardware, it's not tempting to give it up. For what it's worth, Apple said when they released FCPX, they already had a 10-year development plan for the program.

I also don't want to be a party-pooper in running away from that discussion just when it gets heated (stupid, considering what I all typed above) but it would be nice if we could keep this discussion about the WORKING Good/Bad/Ugly of FCPX, and not about if Apple is to be trusted as a provider of pro-products. Not that I'm against the discussion, as you can see, but I kind of hope this thread keeps away for that and if we want to discuss that kind of stuff, it could be in another thread. It could derail quickly, and I actually think the current thread like it is would be better served for both FCPX users/critics/undecided editors, if it stays about the program itself and not about Apple as a whole.
 
I think that to properly understand and use FCPX in a feature-level workflow, you have to understand that Apple took a different route with X than with FC Studio. Rather than try to be a comprehensive suite of tools that covered all the bases, they opted for a smaller, more streamlined application that could serve as a sort of hub.

It ties in much better to core OSX functions than did FCP "classic" and it uses certain common architectures that help grow a larger ecosystem. So now you have a standard SDK for camera media and you have FCPXML as the cornerstone for all interchange. By not designing in (or what was more often the case in the past, licensing technologies from third parties) all accessories into the app, it has allowed them to release a lower cost tool that also is purpose-built for one function - editing.

The third-party developers who have stepped up to the plate with add-ons, have really created possibilities that never existed in the old FCP and for the most part, don't currently exist for Premiere Pro or Media Composer. Sync-N-Link X, Shot Notes X and X2Pro are great examples. Then, if plug-ins are your thing, the Motion template architecture has created an ecosystem that eclipses anything before it. So, given the path Apple's ProApps team is on, FCPX has becomes a very solid tool. This actually enables workflow customized tailored to your needs - commercials, features, documentaries, etc.

- Oliver
 
You know what I like.

FCP X has made a very serious effort in attempting to create a new non linear editing mentality. They moved away from a "source record" model which ironically is borrowed from tape based linear editing. Avid (as an editor) I'm talking editing hasn't really changed since version 1,2,3.

So I like that FCPX took on this "play/record" idea and replaced it with a very intuitive and fluid way of editing in a timeline. Light works editors love the "magnetic ness" of the timeline.

Organizing things is is very very fast.

Yes. You have to take the linear part of the old style non linear editors (you know, the ones we all used) but once you do that FCPX is a fast and intuitive editor.
 
I'm on Avid's ACA Products & Solutions council and we've had a lot of discussions with the designers about feature request wish lists. The talk invariably focuses on things like higher resolution, better color correction tools, etc. Things that make for a better "online edit" system. But the input from the Hollywood "film" editors in the group is actually that they want a better "offline edit" system. Focus a bit on making the creative tasks easier and more fluid. I think that's what the ProApps team set out to do with FCPX. Ironically, the system seems like more of a mimic of film editing technology (Moviolas, Steenbecks, KEMs) and less like previous NLEs or linear systems.

- Oliver
 
Tim Morten said:
I believe the FCPX team is an island of good intentions in a company whose real emphasis is phones, TV's, watches, cars, and consumer products. On both the hardware and the software side, Apple treats the pro market like a passing hobby, and I understand their financial motive for this. But I do not and will not count on them to put the necessary resources into being market leaders in the pro space. It's a travesty that FCPX launched as it did, that it has taken this long to become usable, that it is still plagued by a morass of questionable UX choices and workflow challenges. Signs of a small team with good intentions inside a company whose real attention is on other things. The Apple acolytes would have us believe FCPX is the future, or that companies like Avid and Adobe who DO prioritize this space will somehow be eclipsed in the long run by Apple's obviously half-hearted efforts. FCPX has two pieces of innovation going for it: magnetic timeline and database-driven clip management. If these prove to have merit, they will be adopted by others who truly make this space their lifeblood. The FCP7 debacle proved that Apple cannot be trusted as a primary tool provider ever again.

PS - How's that QT gamma treating you?
Click to expand...
Tim, I understand the inclination to turn this into a debate about which NLE is better, however this wouldn't be the space for it. I think it's certainly a worthwhile discussion to have in another thread but here my goal as someone who has primarily worked with the standard NLEs for the past twenty years was to provide my take on FCPX, what I have been able to achieve on my current project using FCPX for the first time on a paid job, and hopefully let some of those insights help people or open up discussion specifically about how FCPX works, what can be improved, and what the future of the app may look like. So if possible, I'd love to keep it going in that direction. Please feel free to offer your take on FCPX, good or bad but just in a productive manner that helps achieve the goal of the thread. As indicated, I don't have all positive things to say about it. There will be some negatives, but hopefully they are just discussion points.
 
Tim Morten said:
...

PS - How's that QT gamma treating you?
Click to expand...

I would love to see some expert commentary on this. It has been my understanding that FCPX, now being based on AV Foundation, doesn't use Quicktime. I am not a programmer so I may not have a complete grasp of this but I was under the impression this gamma shift was no longer an issue (except perhaps in legacy QT players). Any search on the matter seems to yield a lot of information from 2012 and earlier but not a whole lot since.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
I would love to see some expert commentary on this.
Click to expand...

I'm certainly not an expert, but the gamma shift has nearly always been a function of the QT player, not the encoding tool. As many players as well as other NLEs use legacy QuickTime libraries to read some of these codecs, issues arise. That's because the QuickTime engine doesn't properly decode the metadata in the file. For example, I recently experimented with levels in moving exports from Avid into Premiere. If the export was DNxHD Rec709 MOV Premiere saw elevated levels. But if I used uncompressed or ProRes or used an OP1a MXF, levels were fine. The reason is because QT incorrectly decodes the DNxHD codec.

The bottom line is that QT is being deprecated as a media architecture, although it will continue as a wrapper format and a media player. FCPX doesn't use it. Avid and Adobe are actively rewriting many of the library components so that their apps still work when QT files are involved. That's in the belief that eventually some upcoming Mac OS will no longer include these.

- Oliver
 
Oliver Peters said:
I'm certainly not an expert, but the gamma shift has nearly always been a function of the QT player, not the encoding tool. As many players as well as other NLEs use legacy QuickTime libraries to read some of these codecs, issues arise. That's because the QuickTime engine doesn't properly decode the metadata in the file. For example, I recently experimented with levels in moving exports from Avid into Premiere. If the export was DNxHD Rec709 MOV Premiere saw elevated levels. But if I used uncompressed or ProRes or used an OP1a MXF, levels were fine. The reason is because QT incorrectly decodes the DNxHD codec.

The bottom line is that QT is being deprecated as a media architecture, although it will continue as a wrapper format and a media player. FCPX doesn't use it. Avid and Adobe are actively rewriting many of the library components so that their apps still work when QT files are involved. That's in the belief that eventually some upcoming Mac OS will no longer include these.

- Oliver
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. I have delivered more than one short film out of FCPX to blu-ray and on to a projector with good color consistency so I was skeptical about this being an issue. Bottom line, it would seem that blaming FCPX for any gamma shift is a bit of FUD.
 
Updated the good. This will be an evolving thread.
 
Another major motion picture feature shot red edited fcpx

Another major motion picture feature shot red edited fcpx

Wow!! Perfect timing ! Another Major Motion Picture Edited on fcpx AND color graded by Denver Riddle in fcpx using "Color Finale". "Just Let Go" .Shot on red Epic. Due in theaters 9/28

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=4p4V5I&m=3dxFmHHHWqM79_2&b=Sl8YUYh.5XcEOxsARXqS_Q

As an early adopter of fcpx since day1 , it's good to see people giving it a second chance and realizing its power useful and speed!
 
Stacey Spears said:
I am surprised that the magnetic timeline has not made it into other editors.
Click to expand...

You can perform the same exact edit in Premiere without the timeline being "magnetic". A magnetic timeline is nothing more than a timeline that is always in ripple edit mode.
 
The bad for me, other than not having the ability to export legacy project types like regular/limited xml that slow-on-the-uptake pundits sometimes need (without 3rd party plugins), is the inability to choose the playback resolution -- 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, and full... Especially now with 6k and 8k?! I'm sorry Apple, but even the top-o-the-line trashcan is gonna run into difficulty at 5:1... mix in slow-mo and/or hdrx and its game-over man
Also think traditional colour wheels would've been better... there's nothing advantageous about current thing; just seems like they were trying to be different for different's sake.

Definitely think the "background" tasks that aren't really background (as you can't edit while they're going) is useless, and I completely hate that the project file just continually gets larger and larger as you re-render the simplest of tweaks... It's just asinine... And it also makes it less than ideal for sharing projects back and forth (whereas before, you just share a 2meg project file, relink the media, and you get everything, easy-peasy.)

EDIT: As for Just Let Go; Desmond might be a constant, but NLEs certainly aren't.... Am I right, or what?!
 
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