We’re teaming up with Peter Wiggins over at FCP.co and the good folks at AbelCine to bring you FCP Exchange, a new Final Cut Pro X Workshop series. The first session is October 24th in Los Angeles. Just like our events at NAB and FCP EXPO, you’ll learn straight from working professionals. Some highlights:
Guest filmmaker workflows and case studies.
Tips and tricks to maximizing Final Cut Pro X from pros and developers.
Networking and interaction with fellow FCPX editors and enthusiasts.
We think you’ll find this series highly informative and useful. We hope to bring a wider audience to Final Cut Pro X and show way creatives are using it to maximize their workflows. These events are educational but also represent an excellent opportunity to meet other filmmakers and participate in the community. We welcome FCPX editors and enthusiasts at all levels.
This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Marketing Director, Noah Kadner. Prior to joining the company, Noah spent several years at Apple where he worked with internal Workflow and Editorial teams in support of Final Cut Pro X customers. Noah also directed a feature film available on iTunes called Social Guidance and wrote “RED: The Ultimate Guide to the Revolutionary Camera.” Noah’s ongoing career goal is communicating digital post-production workflows to experts and enthusiasts alike.You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
Our FCP EXPO event at IBC 2015 was a huge success.
We loved working with Alex Snelling and Soho Editors and watching to the great presentations and case studies. Some of the highlights included:
Dashwood 3D’s 360VR Toolbox suite of virtual reality plugins. If you’re interested in VR and the Oculus Rift you need these. Not only can you view live edits on the Oculus Rift you can also do cool things like adding titles in 3D space and transitions.
If VR ever really takes off, these kinds of tools will be essential. Tim also mentioned some secret additional cool features on the way soon. Keep watching this space.
The good gents at Intelligent Assistance again showed great ways to collect metadata on set and follow it all the way through post with Lumberjack System.
Frame.io showed off their cloud-collaboration integration with FCPX. Really a lovely workflow and aesthetically pleasing tool. Blackmagic showed how straightforward and cost-effective 4K production has become thanks to their democratizing gear. Their OB van was pretty awesome too.
Folks from the Apple Marketing team were also on-hand both to give a presentation about the current version of FCPX and profile some interesting case studies. It’s great to see interaction from the team with fellow filmmakers and editors.
Thomas Grove Carter showed off his truly groundbreaking editorial work with some quite impressive commercial spots edited in FCPX.
Other highlights included great networking with folks like Alex4D, whose IBC wrap-up is here and FCP.CO’s Peter Wiggins.
FCP EXPO was a fantastic event and the place to be for FCPX during IBC 2015. For even more information about it, please visit: http://www.fcpworks.com/ibc-2015-fcp-expo/
With any luck we’ll have some videos up from this event to share before too long. We’ll see you all next year.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FCPWORKS Noah Kadner
This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Marketing Director, Noah Kadner. Prior to joining the company, Noah spent several years at Apple where he worked with internal Workflow and Editorial teams in support of Final Cut Pro X customers. Noah also directed a feature film available on iTunes called Social Guidance and wrote “RED: The Ultimate Guide to the Revolutionary Camera.” Noah’s ongoing career goal is communicating digital post-production workflows to experts and enthusiasts alike.You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
FCPWORKS guest blogger Charlie Austin has addressed a cool workflow need with a new app. And the best part is it’s totally free.
For more details, here’s Charlie in his own words:
A couple weeks ago I released Role-O-Matic, a little app that, using FCPXML, allows you to batch assign audio Roles and Subroles and rename the components to match with lots of multichannel files. I cut trailers, and pretty much all my source files consist of 5-6 reels of picture with split DME audio, so 3-4 channels or more. Some of you may have multichannel audio files from production sound recording, it’s a pretty common thing.
And, as you know, the only way to set Roles on individual components (Dialogue/Efffects/Filled Effects/Music etc,) is to open each clip in a timeline one after the other and set the Roles on each component. Not bad with a couple files, drudgery with 5, 6, a dozen or more. I figured there had to be an easier way.
After a little more thought and fcpxml treasure hunting, I could see exactly what needed to be done. There was just one, little problem. I had no idea how to do it. Fortunately I found someone who *did* know how to do it, (Thanks Hiroto!) and with a little tweaking and fumbling on my part, Role-O-Matic was unleashed. Here’s how it works…
You create an Event in FCP X containing all the clips to which you’d like to assign common Roles. You can mix audio and video files, as well as files with differing numbers of channels, so It’s pretty versatile. the only thing to remember is the “common” part. If you’d like to assign Roles A,B,C,D etc, CH1 in every file will get Role A, CH2 in every file will get Role B, 3 gets C.. you get the picture. You need to do a little simple prep beforehand, (details in the instructions of course) but it’s super easy.
After your Event is set, export xml, and launch Role-O-Matic. Open the file you just exported and tell the app where to save the new one it will create. Role-O-Matic will then prompt you to enter Roles and Subroles for video clips first, then audio clips. You’ll have an opportunity to confirm what you’ve entered and redo it if needed.
It will then set all the Roles, rename the components to match the Roles, and create your new fcpxml. Import that into FCP X and you have a new event, with all your clips Roles set and nicely renamed. If your clips have existing custom names, you’ll get an additional prompt asking if you’d like to change them, or leave them as is. Easy, and an enormous time-saver.
If you need to work with a lot of multichannel audio, I think you’ll like it. The only limitation is that it can’t set Roles or rename the components of interleaved files. Stereo pairs, 5.1 surround files etc. Anything where FCP X sees the file as a single component in a timeline. You can set the Role on the component, but not it’s contents. Once again, I can see what probably needs to be done to be able to do this but, uh… don’t hold your breath. Much more exciting detail is in the Manual,which you really should read. Give it a try!, It is free after all. If you’re bored, here is a little 7 minute tutorial/demo, in my trademark rambling semi coherent style:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlie Austin.
This blog post contains the personal musings of Guest Blogger Charlie Austin. Charlie Austin is a fancy, award-winning editor. He began editing with Media Composer, has worked in FCP Classic, FCP X, Premiere, and has dabbled in Resolve, Lightworks, and Hit Film. He likes FCP X best of all. Over the course of his career he has worked as a professional musician, a post production mixer, and worn a variety of hats in film, TV, and live production.
He currently cuts trailers and other advertising for the talking pictures in Hollywood. You can read his blog over at fcpxpert.net
Noah here, if you’ve ever met the FCPWORKS team during a trade show like NAB or IBC, you may know we occasionally host after show karaoke parties. We even carry a portable karaoke kit in a lovely Italian HPRC case (more on that in another blog). For some folks it has been a life-changing event.
For example, Philip Hodgetts from Intelligent Assistance became so emboldened by our karaoke round at NAB 2014 in Vegas that he decided to take pro singing lessons and up his game.
Inspired by Phil’s recent singing presentation during a session at the FCPX Summit in San Jose, I wanted to get in on the fun. I set out with a specific technical challenge: record songs without a recording studio or a crew and then master them using Final Cut Pro X.
The Mobile Studio
Recording music ideally requires a enclosed space with great acoustics. So how about we do it with a truck instead? In this case I went with a Honda Odyssey minivan. It’s not quite Abbey Road but it’s got it where it counts. And where it counts is in this case is that I have access to one.
Audio Recording Setup
With the studio set, I went for the recording equipment. For my “backing band” I chose the Karaoke Anywhere app on an iPhone 6+. (We use this same app for our FCPWORKS parties.) The song selection is not always vast but it’s easy to pick new songs and download them instantly.
The iPhone can record the singing directly. But then the vocals are pre-mixed with the music tracks and I wanted flexibility in post. So I went with a Zoom H1 Handy recorder. The H1 is extremely compact with decent built-in microphones and preamps.
The H1 is also capable of WAV recording at up to 24-bit/96kHz quality. And it’s easy to mount just about anywhere. This is handy indeed inside my mobile minivan studio.
Video Recording Setup
This is FCPWORKS so we’d need some video too. Considering the compact space and the no crew aspect, a GoPro seemed like a good match. I went with a GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition shooting in 1080p with a suction cup mount. What’s lovely about the GoPro is you can mount it and then trigger it with the GoPro App. This proved a little tricky for me because I was already playing the music on the phone. But I could start recording and then switch apps to Karaoke Anywhere.
Production Workflow
Now I don’t necessarily recommend driving and singing karaoke at the same time. There is of course Carpool Karaoke. Then again it’s fairly possible that James Corden is being towed or at least escorted for these segments. There’s also this as precedent.
The actual production steps were straightforward:
Start GoPro recording via the GoPro app.
Start audio recording on H1.
Choose and start song on Karaoke Anywhere.
Sing.
I did this for a number of longish takes where I’d do at least 2 or 3 songs per take. Occasionally, I’d cut if a fellow driver started eyeballing me at a stoplight or if traffic conditions got especially challenging.
Post-Production Workflow — Ingest
With the videos and audio recorded, it was time to get off the road and into FCPX for some editing. I actually wanted to try Logic Pro X for this occasion as it is geared toward audio editing mastering. But as soon as I started to work in Logic I felt like it was overkill for my two little audio tracks. Also I wanted to do some video edits and color correction so I’d need FCPX anyway. Also and this is key, most of the Logic filters and plugins are available in FCPX directly including their customer UI’s so it’s best of both worlds.
Once in FCPX I’d first import the GoPro video clips, the Zoom H1 audio tracks. I’d also import the isolated music tracks from Karaoke Anywhere, which can be copied from the iPhone onto your Mac via iTunes. Before this I brought the MP3 from Karaoke Anywhere into Twisted Wave (my favorite audio swiss army knife) to convert them to 96/24 AIFs. Technically this step could be skipped but then you’re doing live sample conversion on the fly, which increases system overhead and can lead to audible popping/sync errors.
Twisted Wave Audio Editing
I wanted to have the audio and video on different lanes so my workflow was a bit of a special design. First I’d match up corresponding GoPro, H1 and music track takes in the Event Browser and then File>New Multicam Clip. Then I’d step into the multicam clip and confirm audible sync between picture and sound.
Sync markers in a Multicam Clip
Finally I’d add a marker about halfway through each song on the 3 pieces of media. Next, copy the tracks and step out into a new Project Timeline, paste everything and make sure the markers from the multicam still line up so everything is in sync. I could have done it entirely in the Multicam editor but other than the initial sync I wanted magnetic editing so I could make quick changes/edits.
Project Marker Sync
Post-Production Workflow —Edit
Generally speaking I didn’t make many cuts. The songs were complete takes from start to finish so I’d occasionally do a blade halfway down the track and slide the audio a few samples if sync was slipping. But generally I didn’t on these relatively short takes. I added a nice fade in/out for each song and that was about it. The rest was mixing.
Original GoPro Take
Post-Production Workflow —Mixing
I’m not an audio engineer by trade but I know a few things. First was getting the balance between the singing track and the karaoke music right. That meant looking at the audio meters and carefully raising and lowering the volume levels until it sounded right to ear. Also the original GoPro audio was redundant and didn’t sound nearly as clear as the H1 audio so I’d just disable it entirely but keep it attached for sync reference.
Post-Production Workflow —Audio Filters
For most of the songs I added 3 audio filters: Pitch Correction, Fat EQ and PlatinumVerb. The pitch correction is fun because it shows you where you’re actually singing on key or not and you can apply some degree of correction. You have to be judicious as too much sounds unnatural (don’t tell this to Kanye). I found a little really helped.
Pitch Correction Custom UI in FCPX
Fat EQ helped overcome the limitations of the car as recording environment and its boominess. It also helped a bit to overcome the solid if not amazing built-in mics on the H1. I have a Sanken COS-11D lavalier and a Shure SM58 handheld mic I’d probably try next time for better sounding recordings.
Finally, PlatinumVerb adds some nicely shaped echo into the mix. This also helps overcome inherent singing mistakes and makes the environment sound less flat and dry. Again a little goes a long way and you don’t want to sound like you’re in a cathedral choir.
Audio Filters in the Inspector
Post-Production Workflow —Video Filters
I felt like this footage should be black and white and grainy like a behind-the-music special or something along those lines. So I removed the color with the Saturation tab in the Color Board and added a Film Grain filter with the Realistic Grain style. I also added a vignette with a Color Board Mask to boost up the exposure inside the car while keeping the streets outside the window from totally blowing out.
Shape Mask in the Color Board
I also enlarged the GoPro 1920×1080 footage to 125% for a little better framing. I was impressed with how well the relatively highly compressed footage held up to grading and scaling.
Exporting
With the edits for each song pretty much complete, I went to export to Master Files as ProRes HQ. I could have gone directly to online sharing services or to H.264 but I wanted to have a high quality master.
From there I opened up in the QuickTime Player and exported to the stock 720p setting. I could also have done this as a Share Bundle within FCPX but sometimes you just want to bang some out as quickly as you can.
Conclusion
Without further adieu, here are the results. Hope you enjoy these and maybe get inspired to let your own inner voice bust out:
I also did one song without the camera running but it turned out decent, so here we go:
Through this fun experience, I learned the following:
The GoPro is perfect for unattended camerawork within a moving vehicle.
The acoustics inside a moving van are surprisingly decent.
The good folks on the road in San Francisco are very accepting.
FCPX alone can be used to produce music.
We’d love to share the singing fun with you in-person at our next show. Maybe NAB? IBC? We’ll see you. Please drop us a line and we’ll add you to our guest list.
This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Marketing Director, Noah Kadner. Prior to joining the company, Noah spent several years at Apple where he worked with internal Workflow and Editorial teams in support of Final Cut Pro X customers. Noah also directed a feature film available on iTunes called Social Guidance and wrote “RED: The Ultimate Guide to the Revolutionary Camera.” Noah’s ongoing career goal is communicating digital post-production workflows to experts and enthusiasts alike. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
FCPWORKS fans can get a special 15% discount with coupon code, FCPWORKS15.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FCPWORKS Noah Kadner
This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Marketing Director, Noah Kadner. Prior to joining the company, Noah spent several years at Apple where he worked with internal Workflow and Editorial teams in support of Final Cut Pro X customers. Noah also directed a feature film available on iTunes called Social Guidance and wrote “RED: The Ultimate Guide to the Revolutionary Camera.” Noah’s ongoing career goal is communicating digital post-production workflows to experts and enthusiasts alike.You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Marketing Director, Noah Kadner. Prior to joining the company, Noah spent several years at Apple where he worked with internal Workflow and Editorial teams in support of Final Cut Pro X customers. Noah also directed a feature film available on iTunes called Social Guidance and wrote “RED: The Ultimate Guide to the Revolutionary Camera.” Noah’s ongoing career goal is communicating digital post-production workflows to experts and enthusiasts alike.You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
There was a little movie called Focus that just got released which was edited using FCPX. I was lucky enough to be part of the team that made that happen. Just wanted to send out a huge congratulations on the release to Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, Jan Kovac, and Mike Matzdorff (and everyone else who was a part of post). It was a long journey and a fun ride. It’s really rare that you see people with the courage of their own convictions to go against the tide, trust their own instincts, take a risk, and be willing to take the plunge with an unpopular idea… so the real question is… was it worth it and should they have done it?
I think the easiest way to answer that is that the guys are already off making another movie based on the workflow Focus was made with… so obviously it couldn’t have been that bad.
FCPX is ready for prime time, guys… regardless of what some of your friends might tell you. If you want to see some really good reasons why, you’re going to want to check out what we’re doing with the FCPWORKS NAB Suite this year. Among a whole lot of other things, we’ll have Mike Matzdorff in for a session to talk about the workflow from Focus, as well as a whole bunch of other case studies and panels centered around FCPX workflow.
On top of that… things have not stayed the same in the FCPX world. The story of Focus is a snapshot of where workflow was a year and a half ago. A lot of has changed, and if you’re an editor or a facility who’s looking to upgrade your tools and leverage them in the smartest way possible, well, that’s why we exist here at FCPWORKS. Drop us an email at workflow@fcpworks.com if you want to know more.
Anyway, in the spirit of the release, I figured I’d post a series of relevant links about the movie if you want to get caught up:
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.
"Jan [the main editor] told me at the meeting that he was thinking of cutting a film on FCPX and I didn’t really understand the scope of what he was planning! I’d already cut a film myself on FCPX 10.0.8 and on that basis I ended up becoming a consultant on the project."Sam Mestman FCPWORKS
Please keep watching this blog for more details about this important milestone in the development of Final Cut Pro X and check out:
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.
FCPWORKS gets a nice shoutout in the long-awaited official Apple In-Action Story about Focus featuring Final Cut Pro X.
"There’s no mysterious industry tool or process anymore. The bottom line is that all of these deliverables can be created from your living room. With just a few third-party apps, you can easily take your media through Final Cut Pro X to 4K output. So anything the big guys are doing, you can do too."Sam Mestman FCPWORKS
Check out the rest of the story about the FCPX focus workflow on Apple.com:
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 you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
New secret sauce all about whether you should be using synchronized or multicam clips in your workflows (I’ll spoil it – use multicam)… especially when it comes to trying to sync multiple audio sources to the same video clip. This can happen occasionally… especially in music video or if your sound guy screws up and exports microphones as individual files instead of a single multichannel WAV file (as you’ll see in the tutorial example).
You’re going to have all kinds of problems doing that unless you make a multicam clip instead, and spread your audio out across multiple angle. Also, if you’re curious about how to do that quickly, here’s a blast from the past tutorial from a couple years ago I did on Batch Renaming and Advanced Multicam sync that should give you a really good sense of the best ways to prep your multicam clips:
The truth is that multicam clips are a far more powerful and flexible way of putting your clips together… and because the FCPX XML has improved so much, and multicam clips now transfer easily to places like Resolve, in my opinion there isn’t much of a reason for synchronized clips anymore outside of Timecode based workflows like Sync N Link.
Anyway, if you’re into this kind of thing… just wait til you see what we have planned in the FCPWORKS Suite at NAB this year:
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.
