Teaser for the first broadcast; sunday July 31st / 19.15cet

If you want to watch our programme, 95% FCPX ....follow the link:
At the bottom is the teaser

Output part 1

The output-process

The first 20 minute documentary was edited, graded and basically the soundmix was done for a normal digital distribution (file, internet).

But I had to get this program to a broadcaster; luckily file not tape, but the rules are still different than with pure internet-output; basically you follow the tape-workflow, only you don´t use a tape anymore. One step less and a 17GB upload more.

Let´s start with the image. Well the lack of proper broadcast monitoring solutions forced me to make several renders to watch the clips via FCP7 and my Matrox MXO2. I tend to grade a little dark when using the computermonitor only. So that is really a problem and I hope Apple provides Matrox/AJA/BlackMAGIC and others with hooks so they can give us access to monitors again. Liquid Edition, which also relied heavily on GPU performance,  did this via a USB breakoutbox, so I expect something thunderboltish soon. If not....might be a dealbreaker, really!

Audio….different beast in broadcast environments. 

the problem was I had to get the audio-mix to the broadcaster with up to 8 dedicated audiochannels. that was something I couldn´t do in FCPX anymore. I had to output the timeline in various versions to merge them back in FCP7.

This is the same process I do in FCP7 also, I always make one file per audio-bus there and rebuild a timeline. Only this time I had to detach audio (because much ambience sound was in the clips) and jump between FCP7 and FCPX. Not really a lot of time lost there, but still weird to have to leave an NLE to do what an NLE should do.

First I exported the film with the audiomix i had done in FCPX as ProRes Masterfile.

Then I duplicated the Project/Timeline.

I then opened the timeline-list (the list where all items of your timeline are listed in the left bottom) and selected the keyword "SONG", since all my songs and SoundFX have that keyword. I made a compound clip of this selection. That process takes 10 seconds. 

Now I soloed this compound and tried to export an AIF, but that doesn´t work. I need to look into this, but I was not able to output AIFs or WAVs  through "Share->Export Audio…"

So I  exported a ProRes file with a GAP as video. That went fast…but when opening in FCP7 it is 1 frame only….apparently outputting GAPs alone is not an option. Puuhh….that gets annoying. So drop a black generator in the timeline, extend to 20.00 and output a Prores again….ok, that worked.
This should have taken 2 minutes and it took 30. I hope in FCP10.1 it will be 2 as expected.

Then I had to break up my tidy timeline and Detach all Audio for ambience and interviews.

I used the SONG - Compound as spreader between ambience (above) and interviews (below). Whoa, now the timeline looks messy, turn off connections and turn off thumbnails and waveforms and it is better to organize what I do. 

So I made two new compounds copied all 3 compounds to a "Audio only" timelineproject and exported each of them  (toggling the others).

Now drop the resulting 4 files (Pro Res master, ambience, SONG, interviews) into FCP7, adjust the audio-track-outputbus, adjust the pan when needed and export the whole lot as Prores ready for sending via ftp. I additionally export a AIF track-collection to make sure it will work. Since I do it similar in FCP7 the only drawback (well, besides the non-functioning audio export in version dotzero) is the closing and starting of the different FCP versions.

What would help was the option to tell FCPX in the inspector which (compound-)clip should output to which audio-channel. Simple. And they should make the "Export Audio function" function!
But I guess it won´t take long to fix these audio-issues in FCPX; now all we need is OMF/XML output so we could give the audiomix on for further work, which is needed for many production houses.

My guess is, Apple has a problem with these output-hooks, because stuff like auditions are not easy to write into a list, because they overlap each other.

more F3 settings

although principal shooting is finished for now for this project (there will actually be another shoot for the long documentary with some race-participants from Scandinavia in August) we want to share more infos about the F3. Stefan is tweaking his settings based on our experiences on this project. Here´s his newest report:

well,
something was missing... something that the vdslr have and the f3 hasn't.... a baked in look i mean. well, today i hooked up my d7000 and looked at my F3-profiles. something seemed wrong - not wrong, but different.... so i started all over again, and here's the vdslr match i came up with....

PP:
Matrix
Standard
Level: -4
Phase: +2
R-G: 31
R-B: -9
G-R: -5
G-B: 8
B-R: +57
B-G: +9

!!!...this will make the reds go way too "orangeish"....!!!

so: go to multimatrix, do a region detection: select a red/orangeish region in your picture, and let the F3 detect this region
then dial in:
Axis: R
Hue: +35
Saturation: -37

i have to work with this setting to see if something goes wrong in skin tones etc, but so far i like this one...
try it out and tell me what you think!

How to take parts of a Project (aka Event) with you, edit mobile and come back.

I had to travel for a day but wanted to keep editing on this project. I didn´t want to bring the RAID, knew the project itself was too much for my MBP and decided I wanted to edit a certain segment only.

Here´s how it works:
1. Decide which part of your Event is needed for the mobile edit (e.g. one day, one set of interviews etc.)
2. Plug in a mobile drive and create a new event there (e.g. mobileEditDay3)
3. drag the keywordcollection that is needed mobile from the main-Event to the new mobile Event on the mobile disk. FCPX will copy the footage from the "original Media Folder" to the mobile drive into that Original Media folder. Double check in Finder that your media is there.....but it works ;-)
4. on your MacBook you create a new project which is linked to the Event on the mobile drive and you can do your magic in FCPX now. This project will access the event with the copied media.

Now comes the interesting part when you are back home/in your studio:
5. back on your main machine don´t open FCPX but in the Finder copy the PROJECT on the mobile drive into the Projects folder of your main drive where the main Event lies!
6. unmount the mobile drive(!)
7. Open FCPX and in the Project library you have this mobile Project now. But all media shows as offline??!!! SHREEEKKK

8. Select the offline Project and in the Inspector Modify the Event References to your original Event

9. Voila...it is all reconnected again, even the renderfiles are in place already! Now you can leave this project alone until you need it elsewhere, then copy and paste the clips out of it into your other projects when needed.

!!!!!! This workflow will also work when sharing the workload. Let´s say you are 3 editors in a project. You collect everything on one machine, then drag the needed footage (via keywordcollections) to each others mobile drive. Let´s say one guy does Scenes 1-11, one guy does the action sequence and the opening sequence and one guy works on the third act with scenes 12-25.

You simply drag the keyword collections for each scene to the according drives, they take these drives with them, create new projects (for each scene?) and in the end come back and you modify the references. Brilliant, easy, fast.

I can see FCPX as a great networking tool, when you have a fileserver (heck a macmini will do with a big tunderbolt RAID attached) and the editors only take the footage they need or use it out of the network event.

F3 settings

Stefan is so kind and shares his settings with you...

F3 Picture Profile Settings:

as promised i'd like to share my PP Settings that i use the most - essentially these are the same settings i use on my EX-1. 

check them out and tell me what you think...

Matrix: 

Hi-Sat

Level: -8

Phase: -4

R-G: +59

R-B: -6

G-R: -21

G-B: -32

B-R: -29

B-G: +13

Gamma:

Cine1

Black: -10

Cheers

Stefan

Further features, bugs and cleaned up misunderstandings about FCPX

New update 0800cet July26th, bad news section

Well, you need to read aaaalllllll of this blog to hear everything...but this post will be updated every now and then with news about the actual editing process and when I find new features.

Here are more features and bugs (or missing features) that I find while working on this project.

Good news:
- In 2-screen mode while trimming or sliding there are in fact two viewers. I have the viewer and the scopes/hostogram on the right screen. When trimming the Scopes make room for the IN-Point view. So it is a dual viewer when you need it.

- Did you know you can add keyframes to the audio by holding ALT and clicking anywhere on the audio-volume-line?

- I have Compressor rendering in the background (using 400% of my 16 cores = 1600%). FCPX doesn´t mind at all. In FCP7 a render process in another program always slowed FCP7.

- I love the icon view now - but still want a "one-line-per-clip-view". I have the duration set to 10 seconds and it is a breeze to skim through a bin/collection with dozens of clips.

- OMG. I just found a simple way to speed things up: Menu "View-> Hide Waveforms", do that for the Event and you can race through the icons even faster.....WOW! In the timeline it also helps to turn them off or just change the clipappearance in the bottom right.

- in the Project Browser you can select a project and share it (render out a version), FCPX does this in the background and you can work on another project/event. Nice...no more waiting at all

- The new colour correction tool is a great color correction tool. I don´t say grading (yet), but colour correction.- Correction often means to fix a "too cool" or "too warm"....well....minus reddish or minus blueish is what you want. It works. Easy. Grading I am not so sure yet, but fixing problems it is fast and the quality of it seems to match that of the old "Color"

Bad news:
- database stopped workin on me for two hours. did colour corrections and audiocleanups for several hours. when i realized the undo function stopped working i restarted FCPx. 2 hours lost. apparently when the CMD-Z doesn´t work and in the menu EDIT-UNDO is greyed out the database doesn´t work anymore and your work is NOT SAVED. 2 hours between 11pm and 1am lost. GRRREEAATTT...NOT
- with 5600 items and dozens of keywords it takes a while now to open and close the project. 2 minutes each way i guess.
- today I had a few crashes, don´t know yet if it is the compressor in the background (rendering for 12 hours now....)
- major flaw found !!!! you know you can´t drag an effect from clip to the next. you have to copy the clip and paste ALL its effects. Doing this you will also copy all audio-efects for example. If you have a soundcompressor on one clip you will copy it over to the next. if there was one before...messed up.....so you have to clean up stuff after this copyprocedure. if haven´t found a shortcut "copy video effects only" or "copy audio-effects". they need to find a way so you can drag an effect from the inspector onto another clip. making presets is no help either....i will end up with hundreds of presets soon. and it´s slow to scroll down to them anyway.
        !!!!!EDIT: I found some help: you can go to COMMANDS and find "Copy Color Correction from previous clip, two clips before and three clips before and copy/paste these corrections alone. I have now shortcuts for these 3 paste-commands.

- interesting tidbit: i have some synced clips (shot with 7D and H4N; synced fine in the event) and when I went through them to add keywords the program went very very very sluggish. I thought at first I had reached the point of breakdown, restarted the machine, but no help. then tried on "normal clips" and there was no problem. So apprently when the database reches this size then adding keywords to a synced clips (i guess it adds keywords to several items in the background, since there are several audiotracks involved) is a little bit of a timeeater. so it might be better to keyword synced clips first, before you reach 80+ keyword collections like me ;-)
- missing: the ability to rename corrections in the colourtab. if you have 4 or five it would be nice to call them (expose, vignette, skin etc)

My way:
- title-fades.....there are two ways to fade titles/graphics. One is to make it it a secondary storyline (CMD-G), only then can you add a transition like a dissolve. This turns the title into a clip (also in size/height in the timeline, only purple). I don´t like that because I will put the titles on the "highest track" in the end so i can create a clean version of the film easily. And when they are thinner they are easier to be identified as titles to me. So I use the videoanimator in the clip (CTRL-V), adjust the opacity fade there and then CTRL-A to collapse this video-animationtool again.

- now you ask how I will put things into higher tracks....well...I use gap-clips to adjust the magnetic timeline. It is fairly easy. At the end of the project when I go through it all anway to check audio I will add gapclips and position them where I need to lift clips higher up (or lower on audio). This is one of the setbacks of the magentic timeline....but IMO it is by far not as long as what the magnetism saves me in time during the actual edit). 

- when you want to fix several audio-tracks that are attached to a video, don´t detach audio, but instead open the clip in a timeline of its own. I made myself a keyboard shortcut for that. there you can toggle and edit the audio without losing sync and then collapse it back to the videoclip.

5429 items and growing, database still untested.

I have now ingested pretty much all filmclips and some songs. there will be several more audioclips and animation out of Motion or AfterEffects, but I guess 5500 will be where this project will end up sizewise.

FCPX seems to handle this load of clips easily (keep in mind it uses all of my 16GB RAM right now!).

When in List mode the Event Browser is snappy. When in Icon Mode I need to wait a little while changing keywordcollection or Folder, but nothing unusual. While I stay within a folder/collection there is no delay or lag at all.

FCP7 constantly crashed on me while scrolling, when I had bins with many clips and thumbnails activated . FCPX does not mind to show dozens of clips with waveforms in the Event Browser. That is a surprise to me for a .0 release.

Then again it crashed twice today when I imported animations (ProRes422 movs). So it is not perfect yet, but it is definitely workable.

One little feature would be useful in the Eventbrowser: Now I have listview with the selceted clip showing one line, or I have icon-view where clips simply fill the lines and then drop into the next line. that´s hard to scroll through. I would like a iconview where every clip has its own line regardless of its duration. That would be a cool addition to the slider that allows to select seconds, minutes or ALL in the icon-view settings.