Random Junk

Best Way to “Rate” Stuff in FCP X…

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 20, 2015
Posted in: Random Junk, Tips. Tagged: , . 2 Comments

This popped up on twitter recently… You can use Emoji characters or Symbols to “rate” things in FCP X. Thing is, you can use them in, like, any text fields. Not sure if it’s a good thing if you share Libraries with other people, but it sure is fun!. Name Keyword Collections, Folders, Events etc. Add notes, even name your clips… Use CTRL-CMD-Spacebar or OPT-CMD-T to select your symbol. 🙂

emoji-X

Here’s a link to the original tweeter.

Exciting Webinar, Taming the Timeline

Posted by fcpxpert1 on January 12, 2015
Posted in: Random Junk. Tagged: , , . 2 Comments

I’ve done a webinar for Moviola and the LACPUG, based on some stuff I’ve written here and at the Creative Cow. Sadly, I think I’ll be working at the time it goes live, but please check it out if you’d like. Hopefully it’s useful, or at least entertaining. Here’s the link, I think it’s also downloadable any time after it airs.

http://moviola.com/webinars/fcp-x-taming-the-magnetic-timeline/

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Let me know how it is. As it turns out… making webinars is hard. 🙂

Random Babbling…

Posted by fcpxpert1 on April 4, 2014
Posted in: Opinion, Random Junk. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

In lieu of actual interesting content, I wanted to share this just, uh… because. The job I was on today is one that I could basically come up with a slightly ridiculous idea and run with it. So I cut a spot with a grid overlay, some other generated grid lines moving around (thanks Simon!) multiple resized/retimed clips filling up the grid, piles of sfx, all comped over a BG clip.

Not gonna win any awards, not terribly complicated in the grand scheme of things, and it may never see the light of day… but it was fun. What made it even more fun was the fact that I could assemble the giant pile of stuff below, and play and edit it in real time, full resolution, unrendered.

Could I have have done this in another NLE? Sure. The source was SD, so not really surprising, but it just made me smile doing this in X, so I thought I’d write this. Better than nothing right? 🙂

timelineboxes

 

Non-Scientific Random Pointless Comparison

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 11, 2014
Posted in: Random Junk. Tagged: , , . 3 Comments

So, While I procrastinate the writing of my next, exciting, Magnetic Timeline post, I thought I’d throw up (pun intended) this little nugget. I recently watched a demo of Premiere CC running on a new Mac Pro. There was a little section on real-time interaction with the app, followed by a demo of mixed format 4k real-time performance. Like many of the Mac Pro demos, it was pretty impressive. What got my curiosity up though, was the first section about real time interaction with the app, i.e., editing while playing back. The media used in this section was not specified, but I doubt it was 4k, if anyone knows please chime in. Have a look below. The relevant portion begins about 2 minutes in and is about 2 minutes long. The rest of the video is cool, but irrelevant to my pointless demo…

So… after watching this, I was curious how FCP X (And PrCC) would perform with a similar timeline on the computer I happened to be on at the time. It was not a Mac Pro… So, I grabbed some 1080p H264 clips and did a little test, which runs about 4 minutes:

Then, to be fair, I did the same thing with PrCC. This takes a little longer, about 8 minutes:

So, that’s 15 minutes of your life you’ll never get back. What’s my point? Didn’t really have one, just thought it was an interesting comparison. I own rent Premiere. I use it, and FCP 7 for that matter, when I need to. I much prefer FCP X.

Anyway, I think the takeaway here is that I want a Mac Pro, no matter what I’m gonna run on it. Also, Halloween Parties are fun. 🙂

Addendum: It was pointed out to me that the Pr “Dust and Grain” effect (analog to the “Aged Film” effect I used in X) is not GPU accelerated, so that may be why Pr choked near the end of the “demo”.