FCP X

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McDirty
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Re: FCP X

Post by McDirty » Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:33 pm

I pretty much agree with Kira_douji. Been playing around with FCPX for 4 days now myself. I have to say, I don't think it's as bad as everyone who's reviewing it says, the new interface just needs some time getting used to. Ironically, I'm personally liking the magnetic timeline actually. It's definitely something that can cause obstacles later on in editing, but nothing too big. The magnetic timeline certainly has it's benefits.
However, I went through 1 hour trying to figure out how to properly 'save' 'load' and 'delete' a simple project, both manually and within the interface. Because there is no save feature in this application. Projects are no longer created as files, instead they're created within something called events. :?

This is definitely a lot stabler than Premiere and FCP7 though. If there's one thing that I'm impressed about this program, it's FAST!

Trimming clips also took me a while to understand and while I like the skim feature while trimming, I definitely don't like the fact there is no longer a timeline for the trimming. It doesn't make precise frame by frame trimming easy, you kind of have to guess where to set your in and out points. I haven't been able to find a feature to turn the audio preview off either while skimming either, so the audio preview definitely gets annoying after a while, especially when listening to the sound of sped up footage.

I'm happy that the program treats h264 with ease, but not happy that it's very limited on containers that it accepts. But then again, it was the same thing with previous versions of FCP.

I would say that this application is definitely NOT up to par for professional video editing, especially in an team environment. However, I would actually say that editing an AMV on this is very doable and I can see someone editing an AMV very very fast on this if they get good with the workflow.

Here's also a sequence of what I've been experimenting with:
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Kira_Douji
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Re: FCP X

Post by Kira_Douji » Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:54 pm

McDirty wrote:I pretty much agree with Kira_douji. Been playing around with FCPX for 4 days now myself. I have to say, I don't think it's as bad as everyone who's reviewing it says, the new interface just needs some time getting used to. Ironically, I'm personally liking the magnetic timeline actually. It's definitely something that can cause obstacles later on in editing, but nothing too big. The magnetic timeline certainly has it's benefits.
Yeah, I think it took me a bit to get used too at first, but I definitely agree now. Liking the magnetic timeline - although still learning to deal with storylines!
McDirty wrote:However, I went through 1 hour trying to figure out how to properly 'save' 'load' and 'delete' a simple project, both manually and within the interface. Because there is no save feature in this application. Projects are no longer created as files, instead they're created within something called events. :?
Yeah it basically works like iPhoto - love it or hate it. I can't TELL YOU how many times I catch myself spastically hitting cmd+s - it's ingrained! lol.
McDirty wrote:This is definitely a lot stabler than Premiere and FCP7 though. If there's one thing that I'm impressed about this program, it's FAST!
ZOOM! :awesome:
McDirty wrote:Trimming clips also took me a while to understand and while I like the skim feature while trimming, I definitely don't like the fact there is no longer a timeline for the trimming. It doesn't make precise frame by frame trimming easy, you kind of have to guess where to set your in and out points.
I've found it easier to clip exactly where I want before I hit the timeline. Select the clip, then use the left and right arrow to move frame by frame (shift+arrow goes faster!), hit "i" for the beginning, "o" for the end and drag it on down. Frame perfect grabs ;)

Also, you can tell FCPX not to both with the audio in the clips too - in your screenshot the buttons are right above your marker! Just hit the "Give me more options" triangle on the right of that group of three buttons and you'll be about to select "video only". (This button is also just to the left of your blue arrow "tools" button).
McDirty wrote:I haven't been able to find a feature to turn the audio preview off either while skimming either, so the audio preview definitely gets annoying after a while, especially when listening to the sound of sped up footage.
Using your picture: The first two blue highlighted buttons to the left of the "transitions" box are audio and video skimming. I nixed audio right away! ;P
McDirty wrote:I would actually say that editing an AMV on this is very doable and I can see someone editing an AMV very very fast on this if they get good with the workflow.
Seconded! :up:
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McDirty
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Re: FCP X

Post by McDirty » Mon Jun 27, 2011 11:42 pm

Kira_Douji wrote:Using your picture: The first two blue highlighted buttons to the left of the "transitions" box are audio and video skimming. I nixed audio right away! ;P
LOL! Now I feel like a total retard, it's right there in broad daylight. :rofl:

McDirty
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Re: FCP X

Post by McDirty » Tue Jun 28, 2011 1:21 am

Hmmm...apparently something weird is going on, I don't know if it's a bug or intentional. But there's a certain clip that I add to the timeline, which causes the entire sequence to just blackout in playback. When I remove this clip from the timeline, the visuals in the entire sequence comes back to view. Maybe it's a corrupted vid file, or maybe FCPX doesn't like the compression of this one file, but I find it quite peculiar that the entire sequence would just blackout on visuals because of this one clip.

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Kira_Douji
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Re: FCP X

Post by Kira_Douji » Tue Jun 28, 2011 1:28 am

I'm curious what happens when you recode it and reimport... :?:
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gotenks794
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Re: FCP X

Post by gotenks794 » Tue Jun 28, 2011 1:59 am

Does anyone know how I could do an uninstall/reinstall of the App? Do I just delete it and then re-download it? That's my last resort at this point. Everything I throw at it (even the tried and true DV file) is giving me a blank screen on playback, chunk of noise on pause. Even the video generators are doing it. When I bring something to the timeline, it renders and makes thumbnails, but has the same problem. I think I could have a hardware issue, but I'm not sure why that'd be affecting simple playback. The only other thing I could think of would be an issue with Perian or some other codec that I have plugged into Quicktime, but I'm not sure exactly how I'd fix that at this point. I foresee that a very long telephone conversation with Apple Support is in my future. :x
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Kira_Douji
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Re: FCP X

Post by Kira_Douji » Tue Jun 28, 2011 2:31 am

Create another user and see if it does the same thing.
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gotenks794
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Re: FCP X

Post by gotenks794 » Tue Jun 28, 2011 3:04 am

Kira_Douji wrote:Create another user and see if it does the same thing.
It did the same thing :|
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Kira_Douji
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Re: FCP X

Post by Kira_Douji » Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:35 am

Ick. Okay. Well to uninstall, the usual method - dragging the app to the trash. You'll want to go through and pick up all the plists too, of course, and likely remove the folders it puts in Movies. Looks like there's a folder in User>Library>Application Support... And some files with Final Cut in the name in User>Library>Preferences>ByHost that you'll probably want to get rid of. After you delete all that, you'll probably want to restart before installing again.

I have Perian and a couple other things too... so while I suspect things aren't playing nice I doubt that's the sort.

Have you tried applying the ProKit 7 update? Or running software update at all after Final Cut was loaded? The system should recognize that you have other things to download after the FCPX install. I also updated to 10.6.8 and have seen ZERO issues - and the update was mainly for graphics/videos/FCPX etc...

Hope some of that helps!
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McDirty
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Re: FCP X

Post by McDirty » Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:25 pm

Kira_Douji wrote:I'm curious what happens when you recode it and reimport... :?:
It seems to fix the problem. Something to mention though, apparently it wasn't that FCPX didn't like the entire file, it was only one little segment of that file that seemed to cause the entire sequence to black out. All other segments of the file seemed to play ok. Weird. :shock:
Kira_Douji wrote:I've found it easier to clip exactly where I want before I hit the timeline. Select the clip, then use the left and right arrow to move frame by frame (shift+arrow goes faster!), hit "i" for the beginning, "o" for the end and drag it on down. Frame perfect grabs ;)

Also, you can tell FCPX not to both with the audio in the clips too - in your screenshot the buttons are right above your marker! Just hit the "Give me more options" triangle on the right of that group of three buttons and you'll be about to select "video only". (This button is also just to the left of your blue arrow "tools" button).
Once again the trimming takes a little time getting used to, but I did finally get it where I can frame it to exactly where I want it. Thanks. :D
Those Insert Tools options you mentioned to the left of the cursor are also very neat.

I really really like the Transition Editor in FCPX. When you double click a transition on the time line, it'll open up a Transition Timeline below, which allows you to properly fix your in and out points for your A/B clips. Pretty handy, I wish they had it in FCP7. Although, I've ran into some problems adding transitions between clips sometimes, where the cursor would flicker back and forth from the head of the clip to the tail, as if it can't decide where to put the transition. Really annoying. :x
I'm very happy with how they handled speed control on this.

I find FCPX has a lot of missing elements that were vital in previous FCPs, but apparently, the more I use this app, the more I like it. I just hope Apple expands this so it can one day suit professional video editors.

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