For some reason (boredom) I was looking at my oldest App Store purchases. For what it’s worth, “Let’s Golf!2” is the first. 😉  And then, of course, there’s this:

As of right now, it’s cost me $42.86 a year. Pretty good deal huh? I’d say probably the best deal of any NLE.**

To be fair, let’s add in Logic Pro X, Compressor and Motion 5. That get’s me to $7 a month, and decreasing every day.

**Resolve isn’t really free. It’s 300 bucks, same as FCP. But… it has tracks, which considerably detracts from its value. 😉

I had to cut a Red band trailer into a Green Band this week. Not a big deal, but I had to keep all the mixed audio in sync while I cut. And there was a lot of audio to wrangle.

Audio sources were discrete stereo, and 5.1 DME’s, so 24 channels/files. 

Put the 6 L and R Stereo files into 3 Compound Clips, and the 18 5.1 files into another 3. Then put those 6 Compound Clips into a Compound Clip with the picture. Oh, audio was 24fps and pix was 23.98 so I had to slow each audio file down by about 2 frames. So…

My master was an A/V Compound Clip, containing 6 Audio Compound Clips, all of which contained 3-6 retimed audio clips. (Roles all properly set of course) Played fine as you’d expect…

A SIMPLE CUT LIKE THIS…

…WITH ALL THIS ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Edited out the R rated stuff, keeping all the disparate stems in sync, and today exported:

all the cut discrete stems (24),

an AAF,

an EDL,

and the master Video with comped audio in under 5 min. This app rocks. 😀

So, I recently cut and finished a trailer for “Grow House”, a comedy from the co-writer of “Friday”.  As you may have guessed from the title, the movie revolves around, um… growing marijuana.

I was looking for a little gimmick to use at the end, and I found that there’s a built in “Leaves” wipe in FCP X. It was almost perfect, but needed one, tiny adjustment. 🙂 After a few minutes of messing around, the Weed-Wipe was born.

Now, I don’t condone or encourage any activity that may be implied by this effect, or by the movie, but click the gif below if you’d like your very own copy! (30 MB)

And, if you’d like to see the wipe in action, it’s at the end very not-safe-for-work Red Band trailer. For those who dislike swearing, there’s a Green Band version too!

This was done start to finish in FCP X by the way. the titles were done in After Effects, but everything else; transitions, compositing, CALM Act compliant mix, mastering, was all FCP X.

For the gear-heads who may care, I used a Coremelt C2 transition and Slice-X with Color Finale, FCP Effects Whip Pans, KingLuma Radiance, Rampant 4k Smoke Overlays, Klangfruend LUFS Meter and of course, The Weed Wipe!

Skimming in FCP X is one of the things that I really miss when I’m in other NLE’s, particularly for previewing effects and looking at individual clips in composited piles of video. Here’s a little video that compares the difference between skimming in FCP X, and similar options (if any) in other NLE’s. If you use X this isn’t new info, and if you don’t… here’s the difference.

Just because. 🙂 Possibly useful in visualizing Audio Signal Flow FCP X 10.3.

When it comes to color grading, I pretty much have no clue what I’m doing. I bumble around though, and I stumbled on a neat trick. Forgive me if everyone knows about it… When visually comparing two shots, it’s easy if one shot can be loaded in the source monitor so you can check the two side by side. But when the 2 shots are in a timeline, I’ve always been annoyed by needing to click back and forth between them to see whether they match well. I’m probably doing it wrong, but here’s the little trick, courtesy of our friend the skimmer. 🙂

Select the clip you want to work on and place the playhead on it so it shows in the monitor and scopes. Then, turn on the skimmer and hover over the “source” clip. You now see your “source” in the monitor and scopes. Then, just hit the S key to turn it on and off, making adjustments to your selected clip. It’s a super fast way to ‘A/B’ shots from the same timeline. See the gigantic gif below for a “demo”. Excuse the blur… top secret stuff! lol

Helpful? Common knowledge? Let me know! 🙂

Man, that logo looks crappy on a black BG… too lazy to fix… Oh, Hi! Going to NAB? Want to go to NAB? If you’re there, I’ll be blabbing about FCP X at a little FCP Exchange presentation on Tuesday at 2:30. Stop by and heckle! Bring your FCP X hating friends! Fun!

Here’s the info/registration link. See ya there! 🙂