FCXP TOOLS

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Consolidate FCP X Media – Worx4X Coming Soon!

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 3, 2017
Posted in: FCP X, Workflow. Tagged: . 2 Comments

Do you miss the old FCP 7 Media Manager? Wish you could consolidate your project media in FCP X? Well…good news for those wanting for a “real” media manager for FCP X. Marquis, the folks behind X2Pro, have created Worx4X which will do just that.

They plan to release it “well before NAB” No word on pricing, but I imagine it will be similar to X2Pro and other apps of that caliber.

worx4xwithbg

Export Project XML to Worx4X, set your handle and audio preferences, and it will consolidate and trim your media, then create a new Project XML that references the consolidated media.

This is a very simple, cool app and it works great. I’ll be posting a more in depth review as the app gets closer to the final version. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up… It’s coming. 🙂

FCP X & 3rd Party Plugins – 2K VFX

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 26, 2016
Posted in: Workflow. Tagged: , . 3 Comments

Just wanted to share a little story illustrating one of the great things about FCP X…  the capabilities you can add to the NLE with 3’rd party apps/plugins. Of course, some people believe that since FCP X doesn’t come with every option under the sun built in, it’s crippled. I am not one of those people. Case in point, Coremelt Slice-X and Track X.

slicetrack

A little back story… when we cut a trailer, we’ll often do a couple versions and let the client pick one, or combine bits from both. Recently, a version that I cut was not chosen (sad face) but a couple pieces from it were put into our other version. One of these bits contained a phone screen replacement I had done using Slice-X and Track X, so I had exported a comp for the other editor to use for the offline. Now, it’s time to finish it. Clean elements were supplied as 2K dpx files, which I exported from Resolve as 2K ProRes 4444 XQ movies to work with.

In addition to this shot, there were 3 other screen replacements that needed to be done, and the original thought was to do those, and redo this one, in After Effects. But, for whatever reason, AE wasn’t happy tracking this shot and Mocha was being… crashy. So rather than waste more time I just rebuilt it in FCP X with the clean 2K elements.

thumb.mov

This was a tricky track. The phone was being typed on, so it was jumping around, not a smooth motion. Also, the actors thumb was of course flying all over the place above the screen. I can’t really show the clean shots until the trailer comes out, so I’ve included a blurred version (above) of what I was dealing with. Obviously there’s more to the shot… When the finished piece is out, I’ll update the post with a link, though what’s here will remain blurred and crappy looking. 🙂

EDIT: See the final effect HERE, about 2:20 into the Trailer...

Let me add a disclaimer in advance of any snide comments… I’m sure this could have been done in AE, (or Nuke, Flame etc etc.) but what I was doing in FCP X, right in the NLE, looked great so it was easier just to keep it there.

In the offline version, the Track X replacement went a little nuts when the thumb moved all the way across the screen, so I redid that and after a little futzing around, got a nice, solid, clean replacement. So I could more easily reposition the screen, I exported just that element as a comped movie. Next, I used Slice-X on the original clip to remove the entire screen, including the actors thumb. Those became the base layers.

Screen Shot 2016-03-26 at 12.36.05 PM

I then used a fixed draw mask to cut out just the thumb, and used the built in keyer to get rid of the screen. Luckily, it was all shades of blue, and tweaking the key got rid of it all, while leaving the thumb with a clean edge.

Screen Shot 2016-03-26 at 12.44.40 PM

Next bit was a tiny slice of the hand between thumb and forefinger that had a blue glow on it, used Slice X to track it, and got rid of the blue using the color board, the skin tone stayed the same so it blended right in, I just used a portion of it at the end and faded it in.

Screen Shot 2016-03-26 at 12.47.59 PM

Finished up by adding an adjustment layer with Color Correction applied to get rid of the blue glow left over from the original screen. Since that made a mess of the color in the rest of the shot, I used Slice X to mask out just the phone section of the original shot in another copy of the clip, and placed that over the whole pile. A little tweaking, and it was done. Exported as a 2K 4444 XQ movie, and delivered as .tiff sequences via compressor. EZ. Here’s an annoying gif illustrating the pile of blurred parts with the complete shot blacked out.

layers example

As an added bonus, the client called and wanted the phone’s brand logo above the screen “painted out”. Slice X object remover got rid of it easily. Our AE artist said he didn’t think he could have done it any better, and definitely not as quickly. I also ended up doing 2 of the other 3 screen replacements in FCP X, as he was backed up recreating another temp comp I had made, involving turning a bright daytime city shot into a stormy night scene with lightning striking a building. lol That one was pretty complicated, and the AE version looks awesome. As I said, when the trailer is out I’ll link to it here.

Anyway… my point in all this is just to say that 3rd party plugins that add functions to FCP X are not a bad thing at all, quite the opposite actually. No jumping between apps, everything can be done – in this case in 2K with real time playback – without ever leaving the NLE. Yes, you need to bolt on the capabilities you need, but in the end it’s actually cheaper than buying or renting a bunch of specialized apps to do stuff like this. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other programs that can do this, there certainly are. But, compared to Premiere and Media composer. FCP X is the only NLE that gives you the capability to do this without ever leaving the timeline. Also, it was easy, and fun. 🙂

P.S. I was taking the screenshots for this on my 3 year old MacBook air. The project actually played in real time with 4+ layers of 2k clips, 3 of which had Coremelt effects, masks, color correction applied. It was a little choppy, but the fact it played at all kind of surprised me.

 

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! 🙂

MetaRecorder-Tag Field Audio For FCP X

Posted by fcpxpert1 on May 4, 2015
Posted in: FCPX At Work. Tagged: . 1 Comment

This is a very cool little $5 iOs app from Apogee. Designed for Sennheiser clip-on mics, (will work with anything, including a built in mic), you can record, and add markers, Roles, Favorites and Keywords in the app. Then export audio and fcpxml to Dropbox, and import into FCP X. All the metadata comes with it. Also, you can control recording, add markers, mic levels, and Favorite takes… from the Apple Watch. I don’t have an Apple Watch, but if I did more location recording, this would be a great reason to get one. 🙂

It’s a free download and records 60 seconds until it’s unlocked. You can unlock via $5 in-app purchase, or for free (limited time offer it seems) by just plugging in an Apogee or Sennheiser device. I recorded and marked up a couple takes today, and here’s what came into FCP X. Great use of technology. I bought it, and I don’t even need it. lol

screenshot2015-05-04at11.58.08am

 

New Plugin- Hawaiki Keyer

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 25, 2015
Posted in: FCPX At Work. Tagged: . Leave a comment

UPDATE: Version 2 of the plugin was released in June, 2015. This comparison was done using V.1.

UPDATE: Added AE Keylight comparison…

If you do a lot of keying, in FCP X or *cough cough* Premiere, you really need Hawaiki Keyer.

Screen Shot 2015-03-25 at 5.50.49 PM

Easy to use but super powerful, beats the built in keyers and at $49 US won’t break the bank. Been playing with it today and it’s really nice. I can get great results, and I really don’t know what I’m doing. 🙂

It’s an FxFactory plugin, and works in FCP X, Motion, Pr and AE. Check it out, and check out the comparison below, view it at full size for the best look…

KEYCOMPARE 1

GeekCo® Share-O-Matic…

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 13, 2015
Posted in: Workflow. Tagged: , , . 3 Comments


I was bored the other day so I wrote a little AppleScript to automate the process of sharing a bunch of projects to a single destination. Basically it hits CMD-E, return, return, down arrow for the number of times you specify. You have to put your Projects in a collection or something and select the first one. Then tell Share-O-Matic how many times to repeat the action and get out of it’s way. Literally. It won’t stop until it repeats those keystrokes the number of times you specify. Seriously, it’s literally unstoppable, and kind of terrifying. Also you can’t do anything else while it chugs away.

This is not a real batch exporter, it just queues all your Shares up for you. Start small and see how it works. It’s kind of useless if you only have a few projects, but if you have a lot, you can go have a cocktail while it presses buttons for you. 😉 However, If it destroys your computer and you lose all your work, I disclaim any responsibility. Use at your own risk. And feel free to share it if you find it useful.

Here it is: Click Me!Screen Shot 2015-02-14 at 12.20.26 PM

UPDATE: Seems like great minds think alike, as there’s apparently another similar script available here. It’s 20 bucks as opposed to free, and seems a little fancier than mine, but both appear to do exactly the same thing. He has a tutorial in which he makes a good point… If you’re sharing a lot of Projects, turn off the FCP X alerts in System Prefs when you run the script. Unless you want 100 alerts piling up for you to dismiss. 🙂

More CoreMelt Tracking Fun in FCP X

Posted by fcpxpert1 on December 9, 2013
Posted in: FCPX At Work, Workflow. Tagged: . 4 Comments

Another quickie… You’re probably familiar with Slice-X with Mocha from CoreMelt. If you’re not, you really should be. Mocha powered Planar Tracking for FCPX. Rotoscoping, rig and object removal, and more, without ever leaving the app.

Well, they’ve just announced a new, related Plugin called Track X. It’s currently in beta, but soon you’ll also be able to track graphics and text in FCPX.  No need for round tripping anymore, you can do it all in the FCPX viewer. Uses the same Mocha engine as Slice X. It look really nice, and really easy. A demo video is posted here.

No pricing yet but, like Slice X, I’m sure it’ll be worth every penny. OK… Back to waiting for the FCPX update… tick-tock….

trackx_step2