FCP X Workflow

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FCP X Versioning Using Roles – The Video

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 25, 2017
Posted in: FCP X 10.3, Workflow. Tagged: . 5 Comments

I had a question about using Roles to make multiple versions from a single project recently. As I wrote a post about it a while ago, I referred the questioner to that. And, while copying the link, I decide to re-read it. It is very vague and was done before the big 10.3 update. So…

I’ve made a little video that – in my usual rambling semi-coherent fashion – goes into a little more detail about this process. As usual, if you know how to do this it’s nothing new. But if you don’t really get how Roles and Share Presets work, hopefully this will be of some use.

EDIT: Couple things I was vague about (as usual) I wanted to clear up. First, as pointed out in a comment below, you need to set a default Share Destination so you can use the CMD E shortcut properly. You do this in the Destinations Preference tab. EZ.

setdefault

The other thing, which I can’t stress enough, is how much simpler and less prone to user error it is to spit versions out of FCP X – Even if the spot was cut in another NLE, or onlined somewhere else. Why? Once your Share Presets are created, all the work is done.

You do need to prepare each Project Timeline with the proper Roles and A/V elements, just as you would with your timelines in any other system. But in X, no matter how many cuts you are exporting, once the sequences are prepped you don’t need to touch them. A few other advantages…

No enabling/disabling video or audio tracks for each export.

No need for duplicate sequences. You can export Stereo Comps and/or Multichannel mixed Stereo and mono Splits from a single timeline.

With multiple cuts, no need to repeat/match/copy/paste all your A/V track assignments and audio configurations for every timeline.

I’m not being facetious here. No matter what NLE you use, if you need to export multiple versions of multiple spots with any regularity, you should be using FCP X to do it.

Cat Video Made With FCP X!

Posted by fcpxpert1 on June 28, 2016
Posted in: FCPX At Work, Workflow. Tagged: . Leave a comment

magic_cat

About a month ago, I posted a little teaser about a “transformation” effect I made in FCP X for the Nine Lives movie campaign. As the spots are now rolling out, I thought I’d post a bit more detail. First, have a look at the effect, it’s about 10 seconds in:

For the campaign, we have 3 or 4 editors working on different spots in Premiere and FCP 7 (yes, FCP 7…)  so, for logistical reasons, I cut this spot in Premiere. Trust me, it would have been easier in X for a number of reasons, but that’s another story…

The tricky part of doing 30’s and 15’s was getting the main character quickly transformed into a cat, it’s not a quick bit at all in the film. And, as I was skimming through some dailies in X… I had an idea. “CoreMelt Drive X has a cool Track Sparks Color effect” I thought, “why not incorporate that and make some ‘magic’ in FCP X?”

So… I made a rough version which was cut into some spots that went to focus groups. Audiences liked it. The marketing folks liked it. The director liked it. It was going into everything, so it was time to make a 2k version for finish.  All this was done right in the timeline, I never left FCP X. I used Coremelt Slice-X & Drive-X, the built in Keyer, Draw Mask, Droplet and Glow effects.

STEP 1
Replace Purrkins Head
(can’t show the raw footage… sorry!)

CLIPS PURRKINS HEAD COMP

I found a shot where Purrkins (Christopher  Walken) gestures in a way where he could maybe be throwing something. Great! Well, except for the fact that he was talking while he did it. So… I had to replace Walkens head. I used slice X to cut it out, then placed another part from the same scene -where he wasn’t talking and looked ominous- under the cutout clip.

I resized the shot and keyframed the movement, then put it in a compound clip so I could fine tune the sizing without screwing up the keyframes from the first pass. Got that done, and exported a comped QuickTime master.

STEP 2
Make Brand Disappear

CLIPS BRAND DISAPPEAR COMP

Again, skimming the dailies, found a long take where Brand (Kevin Spacey) is in the shot, then walks out so there’s a “clean plate”. But of course, the camera moved a little bit in the interim. So, I used the free Andy’s better 3D effect to line up the the empty room with the earlier section with Brand in the shot (seen above in the Secondary). Added a soft edge wipe from top to bottom, done. Put the whole thing into a Compound Clip so I could resize it.

STEP 3
Make Fuzzypants Appear

CLIPS- CAT PARTS OVER BRAND

More dailies skimming… I found a shot of the cat sitting on a green cyc. Keyed him over the empty room part of the previous Compound Clip, resized and flipped him, did some tweaks to try to get him to match the scene, and then cut out a section of the empty room to partially obscure him for some depth. Used opacity to fade him in as Brand fades out… done. Made that chunk into another QT master.

STEP 5
Magic! 🙂

MAGIC CLIPS

Now to make it all work, hopefully… First I took,  the 2 QT comps, and used Coremelt Drive-X to track some magical sparks on them. They were thrown by Purrkins, and then come into the next shot and envelope Brand as he disappears.

I then put these clips into Compound Clips, added an adjustment layer in each one, pasted the Drive-X Effect onto these, and disabled the clips from the film. That left me with just the magic sparks effect that I could tweak as needed. I then copied a bit of one clip to make a little sparkle when the cat appears.TRACKED MAGIC.mov

STEP 6
Assemble The Parts

CLIPS_FULL EFFECT

Last step was to duplicate the 2 Comp QT’s and stack them. On the top clip, I keyframed a Draw Mask on each clip to open up the area where the effect should travel. I then stuck the “magic” clips in the middle. On the bottom clip I added a keyframed Droplet effect that followed the magic sparks. Lastly I stuck the little spark for the cat on top.

A little tweaking and… OK, a bunch of tweaking. This is for a worldwide campaign so I wanted it to not suck. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I had to stop somewhere… Once I got it looking decent, I exported it as a 2k ProRes 4444 file, and off it went. If you watch tv, use the internet, or go to the movies you’ll be seeing it.

There’s actually a lot of stuff created in X in all the Nine Lives spots that will start appearing everywhere. Some I cut, some were cut by others. I recreated the Europa logo to freeze the goddess and remove her reflection (too distracting). FCP X 3D text, keyer and draw mask made that easy.

CmAosUTWkAA3lTl.jpg-large

Many of the screen replacements for the trailer and in the spots, lot’s of retimed VO etc.

computer insta

Could I have used other apps for all this? Sure, but why?  It was quicker and easier to do all this in FCP X and export as clips that can be used by everyone, regardless of NLE. Everything I need is right in the FCP X timeline.

I would have preferred to cut the spots in FCP X as well, but whatever, I got to do all the fun stuff in it! FCP X is hands down my favorite NLE, but you can do a whole lot more with it than just edit.

Oh, go see the movie, it’s cute and you can safely bring your kids!

FCP Exchange – Video and Omissions

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 14, 2016
Posted in: FCP X, Workflow. Tagged: . 2 Comments

The video from the FCP Exchange event has been posted, I’ve added it below. I realized that when listing the tools I use, there were a couple great plugins I neglected to mention so I wanted to do that now…

First is Automatic Duck Import AE – If you use After Effects as part of your workflow, this is indispensable.  It’s an AE plugin so just load your fcpxml right into AE. And if you use shared media, no need to render clips, it’ll link to the proper media. Common effects, compound clips, retiming, transforms and a lot more get translated. Really nicely done.

Also CoreMelt Slice-X, Track-X, and Drive-X. I might have glossed over these as well but I use them a lot. The stuff you can do with these without ever leaving the NLE is amazing.

Last but not least, anything from MotionVFX. Pretty much the gold standard for templates and in-NLE 3d Environment. Great stuff.

Anyway, here’s the video. As a perfectionist, I need to note that the fake “trailer” I used in the presentation had uncleared music in it. So, before they could put this online, I sent a replacement audio track with some free music I shoe-horned into the cut.

But… for some reason it’s horrifically out of sync. It wasn’t like that at all in the live version so, uh… please ignore that! 😉 Hope you find it interesting, and do check out the other videos in the playlist. There were some great presentations!

 

Saving?! We Don’t Need No Stinking Saving!

Posted by fcpxpert1 on January 4, 2016
Posted in: Opinion, Uncategorized. Tagged: . 1 Comment

Oh, hey… Happy New Year and all that! 🙂 Just wanted to say a quick word about maybe the least talked about advantage of FCP X… that being the fact that there is no need to “save” your work. Ever. This was brought to mind by this tweet:

Screen Shot 2016-01-04 at 3.00.23 PM

To which I responded:

xcrashlol

In all seriousness though… The fact that you never need to  “save” in FCP X is an amazing feature. First of all, FCP X is very stable, but like any app it hangs or crashes once in a while. And because I’m not insane, I run backup apps to supplement the built in backups. But only once in the 3 years I’ve been cutting in X have I needed to restore a project. Once. In 3 years of pretty much daily use.

In other NLE’s, a crash is usually a nightmare, you all know the feeling. It sucks. But if X crashes, or hangs or the power goes out… It doesn’t matter. Restart X, pick up right where you left off. I’ve had the power go out right after making a cut, and that cut was there when I got everything back up.

You can debate the merits of FCP X all you want, but never worrying about saving may be, psychologically anyway, the biggest advantage of them all. 🙂

Connection Point Fun-SFX Spotting

Posted by fcpxpert1 on November 3, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 4 Comments

Here’s another of my infrequent, semi coherent tip videos. 🙂 For FCP X pros, probably nothing exciting here, it’s just a little demo about using connection points to quickly and accurately spot SFX when doing sound design. People complain about audio in FCP X all the time, but it’s actually my favorite NLE in which to do this sort of stuff.

Anyway, hope you find it useful.

EDIT: It’s been pointed out, correctly, that this is way too long… After about 2 minutes, I’ve made the point. I guess I need a producer. lol

FCP X – “Pro” Essential Companions

Posted by fcpxpert1 on October 20, 2015
Posted in: FCPX At Work. Tagged: , . 17 Comments

I’ve done this list before, but it’s time for an update. On it’s own, FCP X is a really powerful NLE. But, if you use it “professionally” (whatever that means) there are a number of things you’ll need to add.

Need to send out EDL’s/AAF’s for finishing? Need to do rotoscoping, tracking, or work with 3D objects without switching apps? Have really crappy audio that needs fixing? Had a hard drive die? Need to change the source TC of a master file? Need to see source TC in the timeline? Need to send a project to, or import from another NLE?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then here’s what you need. Some things are free, some are cheap, and some are… not. I use, or have used all of this stuff, and it’s awesome. I’ve grouped them as “Free”, “Inexpensive”, “Essential”, and “Extravagant”.

You won’t need all of this, especially the “Extravagant” stuff. However, if you dowloaded or purchased everything other than the extravagances it’ll cost about $1200. Add in the $300 for FCP X and, for $1500, you have an NLE that can do almost anything without leaving the timeline. You’d likely need 2 or 3 other apps – apps that are expensive and/or require a subscription – to do what some of these products enable.

But you don’t need to spend that much money. Mix and match. FCP X is a platform. Buy the inexpensive base app, and you can extend it to do what you want (or need), for not a lot of money. And with much of this stuff, you pay for it once and it’s yours forever, updates and and all.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and In general I’m not listing Effects Plugins here. Google will find you a myriad of more specialized add-ons. I’m just listing what I feel is essential stuff to enhance your workflow and add functionality. No pretty pictures, just information. Hope it’s useful.

FREE STUFF

Alex 4D Widescreen Matte. Matte your footage to every aspect ratio under the sun.

Coremelt Source Timecode. Part of the Coremelt free bundle with lots of other cool stuff.

Role-O-Matic. Batch assign Roles to multichannel audio files

Digital Rebellion Preference Manager. Backup and restore preferences. Works with most other NLE’s as well

Spherico myFiles. See where every file and all effects used in a project are located on your drive(s). Great when you need to share projects and want to make sure the recipient has everything they need.

Digital Rebellion FCS Remover. Great if you need to troubleshoot/reinstall.

Slice-X Free. NEW, mocha planar tracking in the NLE. Limited to oval and rectangle shapes. Full version below adds way more flexibility

Resolve 12. Besides being the standard for Color Correction and having a decent NLE as well, It’s kind of a Swiss Army Knife for FCP X. Translate FCP X projects to Media Composer. Not flawlessly, but it works. 🙂

FxFactory. In addition to the many paid plugins, there are tons of great workflow freebies. I recommend disabling all the demos as soon as you install it though, it’s a little intrusive. Also I highly recommend anything in here from Hawaiki. Not free, but awesome.

INEXPENSIVE ESSENTIALS ($50 or less)

Compressor ($49.99) & Motion ($49.99) If you don’t own these, get them now. WTF is wrong with you?! lol

X-Wiper. ($4.99) Easily slim down Libraries. Deletes render files and other crap with one click. Run it before you archive Libraries to save drive space.

Backups for Final Cut Pro. ($17.99) You need this. If you don’t run some sort of backup app, you are a fool. Easy to use incremental backups, works great.

Pro Versioner ($49) Another backup app. I run this as well, can’t be too careful! This one works with most other major NLE’s

7toX ($9.99), and XtoCC ($49.99)  Get your stuff to and from other NLE’s. You will need these sometime, just get ‘em. 🙂 IA  has a lot of other great tools for production workflows as well.

Marker. ($19.99) Easily keep track of Media Files used in FCP X in the Finder.

Final Cut Library Manager. ($22) While I prefer the simplicity of X-Wiper for Library cleaning, FCLM is a really great app for keeping track of stuff across drives, creating Library templates, and other useful tasks. A bargain.

ESSENTIAL PRO APPS ($150 or less.)

Sound Soap. ($149) Audio noise removal at a very nice price. Standalone and plugin versions. Great results.

mObject Pro Bundle. ($149). A true 3D environment, text and objects, right inside FCP X. Works with Motion too.

EDL-X. ($99.99) Sadly, you still need this. Happily, it’s a great tool! It generates really good EDL’s right from FCP X. Better and more detailed than the built in stuff other NLE’s spit out.

SliceX/Track X bundle. ($149) Planar tracking in FCP X. Amazing. There are lots of other Coremelt bundles available here, but you need this one.

X2Pro. ($150) Create AAF audio packages to import into DAW’s for mixing. Great app, don’t bother with the cheaper LE version. Preps your project for mixing better than anything else using Roles. 2 clicks, done. all split out with tracks named. If you get asked for OMF, which is a dead format unless you use Fairlight without the AAF add on, use this. Any modern system will open it just fine.

Color Finale. ($99) Powerful supplement to FCP X’ built in tools. Wheels, Curves, LUT’s and more. Great stuff.

ClipXporter. ($109+ in app purchase for xtra functions) Export clips and projects for Ae, Nuke, or just trimmed media. Great app. Great integration with Frame.io as well.

Producers Best Friend. ($99) Create detailed spreadsheets listing pretty much everything in a project. No more reporting hell, just a couple clicks and you’re done.

Digital Rebellion Pro Maintenance ($129) and Pro Media ($99) Tools. dozens of media and system repair and analysis tools. Well worth the money. If you can only get 1, get the Media Tools. Both packages work with all major NLE’s

EXTRAVAGENT PRO APPS (Pricey, but awesome.)

Izotope RX5. ($349+ depending on version) Gold standard of audio repair/analysis. Works in most NLE’s and DAW’s as well

Boris SoundBite. ($295) Find words in source files by analyzing waveforms. kind of indispensable, for me anyway.

Stereo3d Toolkit. ($1499) Edit Stereo 3d material in FCP X There’s a $99 LE version as well

There ya go. Start downloading! 🙂

Tracks vs. Roles Redux – Versioning

Posted by fcpxpert1 on October 14, 2015
Posted in: FCPX At Work. Tagged: , . 6 Comments

A little while ago, right here on my fancy blog, I stated my opinion in the “debate” over tracks vs. Roles. I like Roles. This isn’t to say they are perfect, there are things they could do that they don’t, and hopefully Apple is grinding away trying to make them even more powerful.

In any case, I had a job recently that provides an excellent example of how Roles simplify one of the most confusing and convoluted tasks we often need to do, outputting multiple versions, with different A/V configurations, of multiple spots.

This gig consisted of 5 different spots, cutdowns of a trailer done by another editor in FCP 7. Now, you may be thinking,…“WHY?!”, which his another topic entirely. 🙂 But, I’ve done the cutdowns in old faithful, and it’s time for finishing, here’s what I need to deliver:

delivery listFor each of the 5 spots: 2 tagged texted versions, 1 generic version, and 1 textless version. 3 versions require a 4ch split audio version (Comp/M&E), the textless version requires an 8ch combined mono/stereo split. All but the textless need a 2ch comp version as well. One texted version gets an audible rating, all other versions do not. All versions need unique slates. Also 3 duplicate 2ch versions with no slate are needed, and these 3 versions then must be delivered in 3 different codecs/resolutions.

splits

So a little math yields the following: 50 versions. Now, I could of course do this in in 7 or Pr or MC. I could make 2 or 3 different sequences for every spot (for the 3 audio configurations), put all the correct picture elements and slates on separate tracks in the proper sequences, and then very carefully enable/disable what’s needed for each version. I’ve done this. It works fine. It is also a huge pain in the ass, and you can very easily miss something. Screw that. Here’s what I did.

First, in FCP 7, I created a split audio master of the first texted version of each spot. I then exported 3 other master picture versions of each. Had I done the final output from a track based NLE I likely would have done this anyway as it’s easier to manage, but with all the different slates and audio versions, it still would have been a… what’s the word?… Oh, right… a clusterfuck.

fcp7

Then, in FCP X using a Motion Template I made, I created 35 slates (15 outputs have no slate). That took a while, and would have needed to be done no matter which NLE I was in. Then, exported as png’s and reimported.

template

Next, import all the A/V Masters and assign Audio and Video Roles to everything, including the slates, corresponding to the proper versions. Using Role-O-Matic for audio saved some time, but the Role assignment process only took about 15 minutes. Then, create 5 master projects, (hit “D” once and “Q” 7 times for each project…no patching!), add a bit of MOS slug, a little trimming and I’m all set to go. That took maybe 5 more minutes. Here’s the result…

xproj2

Next step is to create Share presets. Set the default Export preset. Share a spot, create a preset and save it, cancel the share, repeat ’til done. Each preset specifies the picture version, matching slate, and audio configuration. Another 5 minutes. EZ…

presetsinx

So, all in, 25 minutes of setup, probably less than prepping all the sequences in another NLE, (never mind the incessant disabling enabling, switching sequences and other fiddling during the export), and I’m essentially done.

All I gotta do now for each spot is CMD-E, 2 clicks for proper output config, ENTER, paste filename from a list, ENTER… 10 seconds per file. No enabling/disabling clips and switching sequences for every version. Oh, I do need to select a range excluding the slate for the 3 slate-less versions of each, so that’s another couple seconds.

Get coffee, wander back to my bay, drop all the slate-less versions in Compressor, apply a group setting to make the 2 low res versions of each… Done

Honestly, had these spots been originally cut in X, none of the prep at all would have been necessary. Zero. No splits, no master version exports. The Roles would have been assigned from the start.  Just make the slates and Export presets and go.

Roles kick ass, and they could do a whole lot more, so send your demands to Apple! 🙂

EDIT: Just finished exporting, and I was a little optimistic. Very little 😉 I needed to select different folders for the outputs as I went, so it took an average of 19 seconds for each export, all 50 versions were done in 17 minutes. Off to run the Compressor group to make the low res versions…

GeekCo. Role-O-Matic 3 – Batch Set Multichannel Audio Roles and Subroles and Name Components

Posted by fcpxpert1 on July 15, 2015
Posted in: Random Junk. Tagged: , . 18 Comments
Update: The release of FCP X 10.3 has made R.O.M unnecessary. It still works, but you don’t need it. If you’re using an older version of FCP X then it’s still useful, but you should update FCP X. 🙂
Update: Version 3.2 is out with a fix and revised instructions to avoid duplicating FCP X default audio Roles. In short, do not capitalize “dialogue”, “music”, or “effects” when setting your Roles. They’ll show as capitalized in FCP X when reimported. Only non-cosmetic change to the app is the default “dialog” Role in the prompts is now lowercase. (Thanks Sasu!)
Previous Update: Version 3 now renames Audio Components to match your Roles and Subroles. Components with existing custom names can be renamed, or left as they are.
If, for some reason, you do not want this renaming feature, click here to download Role-O-Matic 2. Same app minus the component renaming bit…

Ever need to set audio Roles on lots of multichannel clips? Open each one in a timeline, set the Roles, repeat ’til the end of time. Role-O-Matic ends the drudgery!

roleomaticiconThis little app allows you to batch apply common Roles and SubRoles on any number of A/V and Audio-Only clips, even if they have different channel configurations, all at once. If you have 6 reels of a DME split feature, tons of dailies or location audio, you can now set the roles on all channels in all the clips at once. It also names the audio components to match your roles and subroles, so you can see what they are in the Inspector and Timeline.

windowPut all the clips in an Event, Export fcpxml, run it through Role-O-Matic, and reimport. If you don’t understand why you would need this, don’t download it! If you do understand why it’s useful, I think you’ll like it.

ROMFLOW

The code that does the work was generously donated by someone smarter than I, so it’s probably not gonna change too much unless you are a coding guru and want to help me with it. It works great, and doesn’t modify any files or change your original fcpxml, so it’s pretty benign. It’s very easy to use, but please read the instructions carefully. They’re with the app or you can click here to read or download them now.

Click Here to Download Role-O-Matic 3.

Here’s a little demo/tutorial in my trademark rambling, semi-coherent style. As a bonus it was recorded with a crappy USB headset so I sound like Darth Vader, but without the cool vocal effects. I highly recommend turning on auto generated subtitles for some comedy. 🙂

Current known issues listed below. Will update here and in the app read me as needed.

In some cases certain channels in some clips may be muted/disabled in the Event created from R-O-M fcpxml. Simply unmute/re-enable them

Using spaces and other “illegal” characters may result in no Roles being set.

If you have files with interleaved stereo channels that are actually dual-mono, such as a lav on the left and a boom on the right, or interleaved surround files etc, Role-O-Matic cannot  add separate Roles to each component, only to the “master” component.

If clips have names in their metadata, and are then renamed in the inspector before you export xml, it puts the custom name in another element that ROM won’t change. For newly imported clips it should work as expected. Worse comes to worse you can always batch name ’em in the inspector though..

When reimported, stereo components/channels may be labeled “Reverse Stereo”. This isn’t caused by R-O-M, it happens even if you just re-import your original fcpxml. The stereo imaging is not changed, it’s just labeled incorrectly. I’ve sent feedback to Apple on this, you should too.

The imported Event will have the same name as the exported original with a “2” appended. The workaround is to rename the original Event before Importing the new fcpxml, or rename the new one when its imported. Or something. 🙂

It’s beta-ish, Please let me know if you have any problems not noted above.

Library Smart Collection for Missing Media

Posted by fcpxpert1 on May 26, 2015
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: . 2 Comments

This is very useful. Matt Goddard posted this on Facebook, and I though I’d pass it along. Create a Library level Smart Collection, and set it to search for text that includes “missing”. It will find and list all missing media. Also, T. Payton points out that you can perform this search in the Timeline Index as well. Thanks guys! 🙂

LibMissingColl