Tag workflow

Tag workflow

GraphiText from Luca Visual FX/FxFactory

December 16, 2014 Tags: , , ,
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So… as the neverending plugin machine continues to churn for FCPX… fewer and fewer of these plugin sets have a specific use case, I’m finding.  I really wish more of them did.

However, if you’re an editor that needs a quick, professional looking, highly customizable template for a corporate video/podcast intro/interstitial, especially if it’s tech/science based, GraphiText is probably the one you should check out first. Have a peek at this preview and you’ll see what I mean:

Bottom line is that these are designed to be for transition graphics… and if any of the 7 templates have the right feel for what you want, you buy the plugin package and have a reusable, high end graphic that you can customize around your own branding (it has dropzones and highly customizable text).  If you’re a one man band, plugins like these make you look good to clients.

Luca Graphitext 01
In general, I think this kind of plugin package is a great example of what Motion should be used for… and what more plugin developers should be building for editors – which is highly customizable effects/templates/transitions/titles that would be nearly impossible (or not worth the time spent) for the average person to learn how to make… and are extremely easy to integrate with the average edit.

I’m happy to spend a small amount of money on a plugin package I know I’m going to reuse constantly… and while I’m good with Motion… probably a solid B… I’m certainly couldn’t make the kind of stuff Luca does.

GraphiText is available from FxFactory (In my opinion, easily the best way to buy and manage plugins for FCPX) or from the Luca Visual FX site here.

Lastly, in case anyone was wondering… I did receive a review copy for the plugins… but I also only review the ones I like.  I like these… as I do most of Luca’s other stuff, which you can find here or on FxFactory.  If you want to know my favorites from his other bundles… the Lo-fi look, Film Leaders, Sprocket Slip, and Grunge Effects, are some of my consistent go-to’s.

Luca Graphitext 02

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Is Professional a Euphemism for Complex?

December 8, 2014 Tags: , , , , ,
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Sam here…. It’s starting to dawn on me what professional subconsciously means to a lot of people in the post-production world.

It means, “overly-complicated thing that is so confusing that the average person can’t use it. And the people who do know how to use it never need to explain why things with the particular product don’t work the way they should.”

When I look at at some of the software out there that’s considered highly professional I notice some common themes. User documentation tends to be inaccurate, not covered, or completely wrong… and yet the veteran users often say how much better it’s gotten.

Getting up and running with many of these products is often extremely difficult… almost like it was designed to keep people away from the interface and features. Basic functionality that you would expect from any piece of free consumer software can be touted as a “new innovation” that still often doesn’t work as expected (or without knowing which submenu or preference you need to have memorized).

The bottom line is that because many of these applications are so specialized and expensive, it becomes an excuse to explain away the entire product’s MASSIVE design and implementation flaws. Essentially, the attitude becomes “well, this is the most professional and expensive thing there is… if you don’t get it, you probably shouldn’t be doing this sort of work.”

My own recent experiences with some of these tools made me think a lot about whether the fact that I tend to use a lot of Apple products in my day to day has made me less capable, or whether Apple’s simplistic design has simply made my threshold for unnecessary complexity far lower than it used to be.

At the end of the day, my definition of professional is finding the most efficient, practical way to get from point A to B without having to sacrifice quality.

What I’m finding more and more in the post production world, though, is that a lot of professionals hide behind their apps’ complexity as a way of keeping their lack of actual working knowledge hidden and preserving their rates.

For most people, all professional really means is “have you created a system that the average person can’t use so that you can charge more money for this complicated, specialized product?”

I’m pretty sure the average colorist getting $650 an hour is not happy about Resolve Lite going free. Especially when the same exact application used to be much harder to use and part of a million dollar hardware package. And that was just a handful of years ago.

A real professional should be looking at the traditional production pyramid of cheap, fast, good (pick two) and doing their best to find ways to deliver all three in as painless a way as possible to their clients. That’s real value, and real professionals know that the faster you can do the same job (at an equal quality) as someone else, the more money you can make from that job.

Delivering at that level of cheap, fast, and good would mean that you would want your tools to be as simple and easy as possible so that you can get done what you need to get done without the tools getting in the way… and so you don’t need to constantly apologize for poorly executed design choices while you work.

The general idea is that developers should design for simplicity and ease of use and with the end user in mind… very few people besides Apple do that. Give a 4 year old a Blackberry instead of an iPad and you’ll see exactly what I mean. And yet somehow they get slammed for applying that philosophy across the board to their professional applications.

At the end of the day, I’m just a little surprised that in order to be considered professional you have to have something that only a subset of people can figure out… when the truth is that the only thing that matters when it comes to being professional is the end product.

I wish more professional products followed that philosophy. We’d all be able to get more work done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

FCPX 10.1.4 – Why It’s a Good Thing

December 3, 2014 Tags: , , , , ,
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Version 10.1.4 of FCPX hit yesterday… and from what I can tell the general reaction was a mixture of disappointment/sadness/impatience… due to its not having perceptibly new tentpole features (and so close to Christmas too). Except for FCPX users that work in the Broadcast world, who I think all simultaneously pumped their fists. I think it’s a worthwhile maintenance update with the critical addition of native import/playback/export of the MXF format for higher profile clients.

MXF is a file format or container that for a very large segment of broadcasters is critical to workflow. As in, without it being supported directly there’s no uptake of FCPX, period. So even if you’re not using FCPX yourself, its complete inclusion in FCPX is a sure sign that Apple intends this application to be used in professional broadcast environments.

All this MXF goodness is likely a result of acquiring the good folks over at Hamburg Pro Media, which closed up shop mysteriously last summer. This used to be an expensive plugin that barred many broadcasters from getting into FCPX as a platform. Now it’s just a no-brainer and it means if you’re looking at the value proposition of learning FCPX as a platform for getting jobs in the broadcast market, your vista just got a whole lot wider. More on that here and here.

Now if you’re not one of these broadcast clients… guys, seriously, this is not the end of the world and it does not mean Apple has stopped caring about you and is going to stop innovating with this app.

As a person who has been lucky enough to peak behind the curtain and see how the sausage gets made, and has met the people on the FCPX team, and considers a lot of them friends… THOSE GUYS CARE. They are listening to you. They have not abandoned you.

The thing that was most difficult to me when I did my first stint and met the FCPX team for the first time was simply that I didn’t know how software development worked. Just because you want a particular feature doesn’t mean that it’s easy to implement… and just because you want a particular feature that used to be in another application (FCP7), it doesn’t mean that’s the way that feature should implemented moving forward.

The biggest thing I learned from working with those guys is that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know… and that things take time… and that the software was in good hands. The bottom line is this… if there’s something you really want to see implemented in FCPX, use the feedback form in the app and let Apple know. I know for a fact that they read those. If you think yesterday’s release was FCPX in its final form… you’re crazy. We’re going to have a special upcoming insider’s blog on how to give better feedback to Apple soon.

If you want my opinion… I think the FCPX team is just getting started and yesterday’s update was just a few bug fixes and some major fixes they knew they could address and deliver safely to certain customers while they’re busy working on bigger things. These are not educated guesses, these are knowing how the process goes.

So… all I can say to the FCPX users back home who are not happy about the lack of major new features in the latest update – keep calm, keep editing, and use the software in its current implementation… we’ll all be able to look back a few years from now and simply laugh about all the drama this kinda stuff caused.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

FCPX Yosemite Needs a Frame Offset

November 26, 2014 Tags: , , ,
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We still live in a world where Video I/O boxes are necessary (although… we’ll see how long that is once HDMI 2.0 or the next Displayport rolls out). The bottom line is that if you want to work in 10 bit HDMI or use HD-SDI/quad SDI, there’s no way around working without a video I/O solution right now (the Mac Pro HDMI port is only 8-bit).

Now, while all of these boxes work just fine with FCPX, there’s one small problem. What if you want to watch the signal through your I/O box and have it be completely in sync with desktop viewer?

The short answer is that you can’t really do it currently without a complicated, clunky workaround. No matter what you do, FCPX running through Thunderbolt/Displayport/HDMI is going to be slightly ahead of what you’re seeing through your AJA/Blackmagic Box.

Now, while you can run multiple signals out through these boxes, and have a client monitor/2nd display be in sync out of your I/O box… I mean… wouldn’t it be nice if everything was running at the same speed… especially if you’re running your audio through an interface like the Apogee Quartet as I do most of the time?

Additionally, if you’re running your Mac Pro to a monitor over HDMI through the A/V out setting, you’ll probably end up being a frame off with that display as well, which can drive you a bit crazy until you realize what’s going on.

It’s why I’d love Apple add a frame offset either into FCPX or into the Mac OS X in general. While I’d love to live in a world where the Mac is driving everything, the truth is that we’re just not there yet… I can’t run three displays through the Mac Pro and have them all be completely in sync (or have any of it be 10 bit), and until I can get there, a frame offset is going to be something I want.

To complicate matters further, though, even if you are running your sound out of an I/O box, well, depending on which one you have, you might not be able to do certain things.

FCPX can monitor surround sound. This works great with the Apogee Quartet without an I/O box. If you have something from AJA, you’ll be in good shape too, as it has 6 analog outs that you can monitor from.

The problem you’re going to run into is if you’re a Resolve colorist and you have something like the Ultrastudio 4k, which only has a stereo analog out. Because of this, if you want to work with your BMD box and monitor surround in FCPX… you’re pretty much out of luck if you want things to be in sync.

While the Ultrastudio can feed out a digital audio surround signal through HDMI or HD-SDI, that signal is going to need to be de-embedded somewhere, so keeping that in sync with your 4k display connected directly to the the Ultrastudio becomes EXTREMELY difficult.

So… anyway, if you’re a day to day editor who doesn’t have a degree in physics, and you want to work in 4k in FCPX, monitor in surround sound, and have a color accurate image you can color correct, I recommend you do either of the following:

– Run a dual monitor setup (see my Eizo blog from the other day for some good recommendations on this) with your viewer on a second monitor, monitoring surround sound through the Apogee Quartet, and then running your client monitor through FCPX’s A/V out, and just be okay with being a frame off sync-wise.

Or:

– Run a single monitor setup, buy the AJA IO 4k, running your surround sound through the analog outs, and your video outs powering both your second display and client monitor… and you’ll need to be okay with your desktop being between 1-4 frames out of sync.

Sadly… there is not a good scenario that I can recommend that will run with the BMD Ultrastudio 4k at the moment for playing back 4k and monitoring in surround with FCPX… but you can certainly get away with the AJA scenario if you just need stereo.

And while I’m certainly able to get done what I need to get done with any of the above, none of this would be necessary if I just had a frame offset in FCPX or in Mac OS X.

On-set 4K Post with the Mac Pro

November 17, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Was on a commercial shoot this weekend. The traditional setup people normally use is to have a DIT copy the footage onto a drive and then either have a lab transcode dailies, or just send a drive back to have editorial deal with it later.

If you happen to have a Mac Pro and can get your editor to come to set, you can do what we did instead, which is save time, money, and have a fully prepped library ready to go for editorial when you’re done shooting.

It’s ridiculously simple.

Working with RED Dragon footage, we copied each RED mag to separate drives (which over USB 3.0 only took a few minutes) and once that was done, I just dragged the Dragon footage into FCPX, quickly batch renamed the clips as they came in, and just started putting the edit together.

If the camera department had a question, I was able to figure out if there was a problem/make sure everything would cut together, and I was even able to transcode the footage down to proxy in the background while I was doing it (which didn’t take that long either because of the Mac Pro).

I was able to monitor in 4k with a 31” Eizo monitor (see an upcoming blog for more on that), and basically, I was able to work with my footage as I normally would if I was at home.

Because the Mac Pro is so portable, transporting the gear and getting set up for this wasn’t a big deal, and the truth of the matter is that I have absolutely no idea why more people aren’t doing this.

4k is easy. RED is easy. Getting the Mac Pro editing on set with FCPX is really straightforward.

Why wouldn’t you want your editor on set? Who wouldn’t want a fully prepped library going back to post when the shoot is over? Why would you want to wait? If you have someone whose job already is to work off a computer handling footage (the DIT)… wouldn’t it make more sense if that person could also be doing work with that footage that’s actually going to save you time in post later?

Post Production becoming a larger part of the production process is inevitable. The workflow is straightforward, all the tools are there, and there just isn’t a good reason that people aren’t already doing it. It’s just a matter of time before producers start connecting the dots, and start saving themselves a bunch of headaches.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Sam on Virtual User’s Group Wrapup

November 13, 2014 Tags: , ,
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In case you missed it, check out the latest FCPX Virtual User Group that the Pixelcorps guys were nice enough to let me be a part of:

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/1549-replaying-the-november-virtual-final-cut-pro-x-user-group

If you skip to around 1:11, you can check out my tip on using Hard Links with FCPX… which in my opinion is the biggest thing in media management no one really knows about.

Any, huge thanks to Alex, Steve, and Mark for having me on. As always, was a blast… I know I’m certainly learning a lot on these… hopefully you guys are as well.

p.s – for you Resolve fans out there, Ripple’s new tutorial on Resolve 11 color grading from Alexis Van Hurkman is pretty awesome. If you’re looking to get up to speed with that tool, it’s a must have.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Sam on Virtual User’s Group/Macbreak

November 10, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Check out Sam’s recent appearance on MacBreak with some great tips for keyboard-centric editing with FCPX:

And if you’re interested in seeing more tips from Sam and other masters, be sure to check out the Virtual User Group Volume IV: http://www.hazu.io/pixelcorps/fcvug-4

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Phillip Hodgetts – Metadata Genius

November 8, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Yet another great story on fcp.co with far reaching implications:

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/1542-the-power-of-metadata-views-in-final-cut-pro-x-by-philip-hodgetts

The moral of the story is that Phillip Hodgetts is still smarter than the rest of us when it comes to metadata… but in practical terms, the things he’s talking about are extremely useful as post production continues to step into the 21st century and begins to embrace concepts found in the rest of the computing industry… tags, metadata, spreadsheet style editing, etc.

What it really boils down to is… “what kind of information do you need to know/need to share?”

At this point, there is so much info living within the files and databases that a more curated approach to delivering XML’s, etc. is becoming needed, and that’s why playing with the built in/custom metadata views in FCPX matters.

You need to send specific reports specs for a music supervisor? Make a custom metadata view for it.

You need to get to Logic X? Make an audio XML.

You need to send a markers only XML for producer’s best friend? Make a marker review XML.

And when you start bringing in bigger picture products like data asset management and automated dailies/proxy/batch exporting they type of information that is being read or written becomes critical. As camera manufacturers are now finally coming around to embedding metadata on files directly, or even sending it out wirelessly, managing and tracking what’s in clips and passing it out along the chain from camera to script supervisor to DIT to the studio in the cloud to the assist editor to the editor to the sound designer to the colorist to the VFX department to the archive vault… well, when all those people need to see something, maintaining correct metadata from department to department quickly becomes the biggest time/cost saver you can have in the post production process.

The less time you have to spend looking for/manually fixing things, the more time you get to spend on what ends up on screen, and the smaller your post budget becomes.

Metadata matters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

5K Retina iMac for FCPX

October 16, 2014 Tags: , , ,
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Apple finally brought in a key missing piece to its 4K editing workflow/ Thunderbolt 2 Mac pipeline. On the high end, you’ve got the Mac Pro with dual GPUs, Thunderbolt 2 buses and the ability to run up to 3 4K displays. On the Mobile end, you’ve got the Macbook pro which has a 4K HDMI out.

Now for your everyday editor, you’ve got the new Retina iMac, which has a built in 5k screen, and Thunderbolt 2 capability. At 5120‑by‑2880, that leaves enough screen real-estate for 4K at 100% with space left over for the UI. For your average FCPX editor, this is an amazing sweet spot. Check out the full tech specs here: http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/specs/

You’re going to be able to easily monitor pixel-for-pixel 4K footage on a solid display and in many ways, the new iMac represents the missing piece for 4K workflow: a very high quality, affordable 4K workstation to watch/edit all the 4K material that the new cameras from BMD, AJA, Sony, RED, GoPro, Panasonic, and pretty much everyone else are now recording to by default.

The main challenge up to this point was that even though you were recording to these formats, it was hard to actually monitor the resolution. Now, your average editor is going to be able to do that, and I think that this iMac release is further confirmation that it’s time to get your 4K workflow together.

The price point for the 5k Retina iMac is also really astounding at $2499. 4K editing is here. Let’s all get back to making movies now. My real takeaway from the 5k iMac is that we’ve finally got a machine with a proper standard 4K ready panel that makes it easy to view and edit in a great form factor.

As usual, Apple took something that everything else was making really difficult (4K display/editing) and put it all together into a computer that makes the workflow a lot more straightforward and makes you wonder why no one else is offering something like that already. (No doubt Apple’s scale of manufacturing and ability to source exclusive vendor arrangements helps a lot here).

4K is here. Time to upgrade if you haven’t already… and if you need an iMac-based Final Cut Pro X package, FCPWORKS is a full Apple reseller with unique workflows and tons of experience with FCPX. We’re ready to get you up and running now. (One hint, you’ll probably want to get the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GPU option and not the stock configuration).

TED Goes FCPX with the help of FCPWORKS

October 10, 2014 Tags: , , ,
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In what may be one of those Cold Mountain moments for Final Cut Pro X, TED reveals it has made the complete move to FCPX for all of its editorial work. Our own Sam Mestman was privileged to be a big part of TED’s transition plan as he worked directly with Michael Glass, TED’s Director of Film + Video. For the full story, please head over to Studio Daily. Some nice excerpts:

TED made the official transition to FCPX on September 1. “There really was a long runway before officially switching,” says Glass, “but we made that the date at which we would never open FCP7 again in order to edit a talk from scratch,” he says. “If we need to go back into a previous edit, instead of trying to translate from one to the other, we’ll edit in the old software.” Assisted by Sam Mestman from FCPWORKS, the TED editorial team spent six months training in the new version, starting with tutorial on Lynda.com and Ripple Training and moving to one-on-one tutoring with Mestman, especially at the beginning and again during the week “marathon” leading up to the official transition.

“This whole process really started almost two years ago,” says Glass. “We knew Final Cut Pro X was there, but we also looked at Premiere, Avid, even Smoke at one point. We narrowed it down to Premiere and FCPX, and once we had the lay of the land from the press and what we could read about it, we took two-to-three-day intro courses offsite to both softwares. That gave us a good handle on where the problems would be, whatever we took on, and also what the advantages would be.

People were starting to come around to the idea of FCPX before Sam showed up for a week here, rotating through two-hour sessions one-on-one with each of the editors and assistant editors. I think having someone be able to walk you through the nuts and bolts of how it all worked, as well as give the context of how to think about this new-ish approach to editing made the editors finally feel safe and excited about taking on the new technology.

"I think having someone be able to walk you through the nuts and bolts of how it all worked, as well as give the context of how to think about this new-ish approach to editing made the editors finally feel safe and excited about taking on the new technology."

But to make that leap you still need someone to encourage you along the way that you’ll land safely. That’s when everyone came around. They went from saying, half-heartedly, ‘OK, I can use this,’ to ‘Wow, this will actually improve my workflow, and even makes editing kind of fun again.’ That was better than even I expected.

The meme has been stated over the years that Final Cut Pro X isn’t a professional tool… And yet a company as intelligent, world-renown and respected as TED is now using it as their primary editorial platform. It appears that the game has changed…