Sam Mestman, Author at FCPWORKSFCPWORKS

Resolve Workflow Test Results

August 6, 2014 Tags: apps, Sam Mestman, workflow

Hey guys,

Sam here. Did some pretty comprehensive FCPX roundtrip tests today using a whole bunch of different types of media in the new Resolve 11 Beta (#2)… tests were done in a 1080p 23.98 timeline… but so far, the results are really promising. At this time, there are only two major issues with the roundtrip:

1. Synchronized clips were not working at all.
2. Synchronized clips created through Sync N Link were also not working (might be part of the same problem).

If you’re using synchronized clips, the workaround right now is to use “Break Apart Clip Items” in your FCPX timeline and then send to Resolve. The only real issue about this is that you’ll need to reapply keyframes and transforms in your timeline after you do this if you want those to come through into Resolve, as they get wiped away when you break apart your sync clips. As always, before getting into the conform stage, you should duplicate your master timeline beforehand so that you can reapply anything you need to later by using Paste Attributes.

Anyway, while there was some other weirdness, this is pretty much ready for primetime on big projects for roundtripping so far as I can tell… and there are some MAJOR XML roundtrip improvements with the new version of Resolve 11. Here’s a quick rundown of what is/isn’t working:

Spatial Conform – Correct (although it doesn’t appear so right away as you have to set the renders back to Fill when you roundtrip into FCPX)
Markers – don’t roundtrip
Multicam – Works
Transform – works, even with keyframes
Crop – Ken Burns does not work… only exports with “end” animation
Primary Color – sort of works… Color tab mostly correct except for slight highlights adjustment, exposure tab works, saturation tab not accurate at all
Secondary Color – Secondary and masks don’t work
Effects – Didn’t translate/roundtrip correctly (settings went back to default on roundtrip)
3rd party plugins – The one i tried from Luca VFX actually works… even bringing over the adjustments I made to it. This was surprising
Titles – worked correctly, except that font didn’t carry over on roundtrip
Compound clips – kind of worked… compound clip came in as a single clip, but there were a whole bunch of inconsistencies inside it. In general, these probably aren’t too functional for color correction anyway. You should break apart before sending to Resolve.
Speed changes:
HUGE improvements here over previous versions. Here’s what I found-

Worked on import and roundtrip:

Fast speed
Slow speed
Reverse
Normal speed quality
Blade speed (variable)
Range speed (variable)
Custom speed
Ramp to 0
Ramp from 0

What didn’t work:

* Frame Blending and Optical Flow didn’t carry over (reset to normal on roundtrip and couldn’t determine what they were set to in Resolve). You should set these after the roundtrip in FCPX.
* Instant replay (combining a forward and reverse speed adjustment in the same clip)

Overall – the fact that the speed changes worked so well was HUGE, and most of the issues I described above are holdovers from the current XML implementation (although Spatial Conform works considerably better). Really, if the BMD team can get Sync clips (as well as Sync N Link versions of those) working, the FCPX-Resolve roundtrip becomes about as good as anyone can reasonably ask for… and I think it’s already better that what any of the other NLE’s can do as it currently is right now. Lots of progress here.

Thunderbolt Bus Mapping on the New Mac Pro

August 5, 2014 Tags: fcpx, Sam Mestman, workflow

Sam here… Before we get to the Thunderbolt busses on the New Mac Pro, here are a few things you should probably know about Thunderbolt and modern macs:

Macs that are still Thunderbolt 1 only: Mac Mini, iMac, Macbook Air
Thunderbolt 2 supported Macs: Macbook Pro, Mac Pro
You can connect up to 6 Thunderbolt devices on a single Thunderbolt bus. On a Mac Pro, you can do up to 36 Thunderbolt devices. Note: this is very device-dependent. In real-world testing, depending on what kinds of devices you’re trying to hook up, you may only get up to 2-3 per bus before you start having problems.
The Mac Pro is the only Mac that has more than one Thunderbolt Bus (it has 3, actually). This means that even if you have more than one thunderbolt port, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily getting the full 10 or 20 GB/s to your device from each port. It’s all pulling from the Thunderbolt bus that the port is connected to. This means that if you have multiple displays (even Apple Thunderbolt Displays), these devices will affect Thunderbolt performance as you continue to add devices to your bus.

How you attach your devices to the new Mac Pro is really important as it will affect performance across all of your devices. Here are some tips for mapping out your thunderbolt devices across the individual buses.

Do not attach more than 2 displays to a thunderbolt bus. If you do, expect to see problems.
You can connect up to 6 Thunderbolt/mini DisplayPort displays (2 on each bus) to the new Mac Pro.
You can connect up to 3 4K displays (1 each on buses #1 and #2) and a third through the HDMI port, which connects to the third Thunderbolt bus.
On my setup, I have my ports configured this way: my two desktop monitors are on bus #1. My Promise R8 and some additional thunderbolt storage are on bus #2. My Ultrastudio 4K for video I/O is on bus #0, and I’ll connect additional drives/peripherals when necessary to this bus.

When you take full advantage of the Thunderbolt mapping on the New Mac Pro, you can do something like what we did at the RED booth at NAB. We had two LG 21:9 Ultrawide monitors (3440×1440) each hooked into buses 1 and 2, as well as a large 4K Sharp HDTV (think it was the 70”… but I could be wrong) hooked up to the HDMI port. We were able to get realtime playback of 4K Prores (playback set to High quality) in FCPX off a Promise Pegasus while simultaneously getting realtime 6k Dragon Playback in Resolve off the internal Mac Pro SSD (yes, both programs were open and playing back at the same time). We had FCPX on one of the LG’s with the AV out to the Sharp, while resolve was open on the other LG Monitor.

And while you would never actually have a reason to do this in a real-world workflow… the fact is that you can if you wanted to, and you knew how to map your Thunderbolt ports correctly on the new Mac Pro. We are living in interesting times.

Welcome To FCPWORKS – Workflow Central

August 4, 2014

Hey guys,

Welcome to the FCPWORKS Workflow central. I’m Sam Mestman, this is our blog, and what we’re really hoping to create here is a place you can come to get some tips you can really use in your professional Final Cut Pro X workflows. The FCPWORKS team will be be covering a wide range of topics that are going to be all about ways to get your work done faster and make sure that more of your time ends up getting on the screen and less on troubleshooting and busywork.

Whether it’s tips for FCPX, Motion, Compressor, or Resolve, or thoughts on other Apps, Plugins, and products we like here at FCPWORKS, the goal is to take bits and pieces of things we’re finding in our projects and sharing them with you so that hopefully you’ll be able to turn your edits out a little bit faster.

And if you ever have any questions, comments, or things you’d like to see us cover, absolutely shoot those over. Also, we’d love to know if you’re finding apps or products you’re using that you think other people in the FCPX community should be using too. At the end of the day, we want to help create a better, smarter FCPX community… and because FCPX workflow is so different than what most professionals are used to, we felt like creating a place that people can come to get some real world tips was really important.

Anyway, we’re going to try and get a little something up here for you regularly and if you want to stay current on everything we’re doing, go ahead and sign up for our newsletter using the form on this page.

If you’re ever curious about what kind of system you should buy, or you feel like you’d like to buy your gear from people who can actually answer your workflow questions… well, that’s what we do here at FCPWORKS.

Sincerely,

Sam Mestman
Workflow Architect – FCPWORKS
www.fcpworks.com

Author Sam Mestman