Whether you’re shooting 4K already or not yet, the arguments against its coming arrival as the default new delivery spec are officially moot, with the release of the $499, 4K-capable GoPro Hero 4:
When you’ve got a $500 camera doing 4K at 30p the argument against a delivery falls apart. Whether or not your your camera does that may be open for debate, but the idea that 4K and beyond is where everything is going isn’t.
It’s become so possible now to shoot and edit in 4K there’s no reason to not have clients ask you to finish at that resolution as well. The good news is that at least in the short term it will be a nice premium deliverable you could charge for (or be paid extra for by distributors) as there is currently a shortage of quality 4K content being delivered… and there’s all these TV’s being manufactured that need content.
I believe that the HD vs. 4K argument will look back at this GoPro announcement as pretty much the final nail in the coffin. 4K is not going anywhere… not at that price point. 4K will not be the next 3D. It’s now to HD as HD once was to SD. The format you have in your camera and the workflow you want to learn for post. We’ve been in these waters for a while now and are happy to help, drop us a line.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Once you get past their not exactly to 2014 standards website and figure out how to pay for, download, and install the plugin, you’ll likely be blown away by how amazing this plugin really is. A few things to keep in mind as you use it:
Render times are LONG… and get longer the larger the resolution of your footage is. Don’t put it on until you’re as close to done with your edit as possible.
If you’re applying from FCPX, apply the Filter onto your clip(s), then go into the inspector and hit “select to open” and that will open the plugin interface.
Once you’re there, look at this page: http://www.neatvideo.com/howtos.html and watch some tutorials for best practices.
Also, for better performance, once you’re inside the plugin, make sure you go under Tools_Performance and then make sure you enable GPU rendering, and bump up the number of cores your machine uses to render. By default, these numbers are set low.
Avoid using on 4K stuff unless you’ve got A Lot of render time to spare. Quick tip is to bring your 4K stuff down into a 1080 sequence first. Also, if you’re dealing with RED RAW, it may make sense to export the segments requiring noise reduction first, then cut them back in over the RAW footage… then apply the plugin. Neat video works WAY better with ProRes.
The New Mac Pro is way better friends with Neat Video than the iMac and Macbook Pro are.
If you already have Neat Video, make sure you have the latest version (3.6)… among other things like (like Resolve support), there were some significant render and GFX support changes to the latest version.
You may want to turn off background rendering while you’re applying Neat Video and playing with the settings… and then render everything out when you’re done all at once. FCPX can hang a lot with this plugin if you’re not careful, especially on slower machines.
Once you’ve done the noise profile from within the plugin interface, there will typically be a huge improvement that will likely be pretty much what you wanted… however, if you go and play with the temporal radius setting in the inspector in FCPX, the higher you go, the higher quality (and render times) you will likely see.
Neat video is really great at saving shots you didn’t think you’d be able to use. Before you throw out a shot because of how noisy it is… try putting neat video on it. It’s saved me a bunch of times.
Review disclaimer – Yes, we do sometimes get free products and licenses (but not always). No, this does not affect our reviews. We only advocate and sell the products that we use in our own workflows. If we bother to review something, it’s because we use it in our day to day and like it. We also very much admit that we haven’t seen everything… if you think there’s a product out there that we should be talking about, please let us know.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.
Sam Mestman
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.
Up to 64 TB in an 8 bay thunderbolt 2 enclosure topping out at $7k for that 64 TB model. Ridiculous. Times have officially changed.
Daisy chain a few of these together and it’s just mind blowing how much storage that is for the price. Now, here’s the million dollar question that I know I’m going to start looking into… with the new data model in FCPX, hard links, and the consolidate media feature… with Yosemite coming, is Thunderbolt Bridging going to finally be safe and practical for a small workgroup?
If it is… well, things just got really interesting. More to come on all this. BTW, if anyone out there is reliably using Thunderbolt Bridging in your day to day editing workflow… can I talk to you ? Email me at sam@fcpworks.com. Would love to hear what your experience has been.
Bottom line is that I think Networked storage is headed for a major shift… just a question of how long it’s going to take. The size and speed of some of these Thunderbolt 2 boxes is pretty staggering.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Had a chance to check out the Canon DP-V3010 4K Reference Display last night. It was, hands down, the nicest small screen monitor I’ve ever seen. If you’re one of the people who say “4K resolution doesn’t matter, blah, blah, blah…” I offer this monitor as proof that it does matter, regardless of display size, and it is very relevant if the panel on the display is nice enough.
Anyway, It’s a 30 inch monitor and does 4K DCI (4096×2160) as well as Quad HD Resolutions (as well as a high quality upscale for 2K and 1080). Color is beautiful… and is DCI-P3 accurate as well as Rec-709 accurate.
It’s just an amazing looking monitor… and if you’ve been confused about what the deal is with 4K and why it matters, well, I think this is the starting point for a convincing argument
Anyway, there’s only one tiny problem with it… it’s $30,000.
A slightly smaller problem is that it doesn’t take HDMI… you’re going to need to run a Quad SDI signal to it to run the 4K into it… meaning you’re going to need either the AJA IO 4K or BMD Ultrastudio 4K to really work with it.
So… basically… it’s expensive and still a bit complicated… but it also looks awesome.
As soon as the price point for a monitor like this becomes manageable (let’s say 5 grand), and HDMI becomes a legit option, 4K will officially become the standard we’re all working in.
Regular HD monitors started this way too… the good ones were really overpriced and complicated at first… so this is nothing new. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s worth checking out if you ever get the chance to see one in the wild.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
No price or availability yet, and it looks like this is going to be a rental item only… but even so, it would seem to be officially “Game on” in the camera business with Arri’s upcoming Alexa 65:
Looks like Arri is doing 6k and the RED Dragon officially has its first bit of 6k competition.
And if you’re wondering why you should be shooting 6k… well, in my opinion, you certainly don’t need to deliver in 6k, but for the same reasons that it gave you a lot of flexibility to punch in from 4k down to 1080… well, it’s basically the same deal going from 6k down to 4k. It’s all about flexibility.
As far as I’m concerned, the Dragon is still my first choice on the high end if I had to shoot a feature… but, well, when we know a little more about this camera (price/ship date), that may change a bit.
It seems like every day some crazy new camera comes out that changes the whole game. Whether it’s the Panasonic GH4, Sony A7s, RED Dragon, the AJA Scion, all the BMD Cameras (I can’t keep track of what’s current), or the Alexa 65… I guess all it really means is that we as filmmakers have a lot of great new options… and as editors, a lot of different formats and styles we’ve got to keep track of.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but I was listening to a recent podcast of FCPX Grill with Austin Flack who is a professional Avid editor, and he’s talking about what he does and how he does it. There came a point in the interview when he literally said that (and I’m paraphrasing) “he has no idea how his assistant does his job and how his files get prepped”.
I’ve been on a lot of those jobs where the editor I’m working with doesn’t know how his assistant does what they do or even really how to turn their computer on. They only know how to cut and trim. It’s going to become harder and harder to find jobs where that’s going to be acceptable. The budgets just aren’t there to have a “creative” editor who doesn’t know the how the tools they’re working on fundamentally work… or even worse, the rates for those jobs of “creative editors” are going to drop dramatically. They’re going to become commoditized as editing continues to become demystified for the masses and turnaround on the typical job continues to shrink..
I will admit that one of the primary advantages of being an Avid editor is that once you figure it out, you get to do the Wizard of Oz thing a little bit because there is such a steep learning curve with the app. It’s hard for producers or directors to check your work, and people tend to be a bit at the mercy of the editor they’re working with as they can’t actually make the changes themselves. Rates stay higher for Avid editors on many jobs as scarcity persists, and the status quo stays enabled.
The main problem with all of this is that directors are figuring out how to edit, and so are grandmothers. The standard excuses of why things are taking so long or why certain things can’t be done are not working as well anymore.
For me, the number one thing that allowed me to get clients/jobs that I had no business getting with FCP7-Color was the fact that I was able to do the whole widget. I could bring the media in, put it together, edit it, color it, do some GFX, and even a basic mix… and if there was a hardware problem, I could even replace the RAM in my Mac Pro if I had to… I was able to be a one stop shop where I could reasonably deliver an entire piece for a client from beginning to end, and do each of the parts of the job as a reasonably high enough level where they could just let me do the whole thing. I’d make more money and they’d spend less. It was a win-win.
That was a few years ago, where that type of service was a bit of a bonus. Now, I think it’s largely expected. For most projects, especially new media/internet, it will be expected of the editor/filmmaker/whatever to be able to get the shoot done, put together an edit, do the basic mix and color, and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll be able to bring it to someone else to do a polish and some of the finishing… producers/clients/companies will be/are expecting post to deliver more in dramatically less time. If you’re only able to do one thing really well… you’re not nearly as useful anymore.
The truth is that between the FCPX-Resolve ecosystem, and what can be done with the cloud apps, there’s really no reason that a producer shouldn’t expect this anyway. The tools are that good now. The question is simply whether the producer has had the opportunity to work with people who know what’s possible with these tools… and once they find someone like that, that person is going to keep all of that client’s jobs.
The era of the specialist is coming to a close. For most projects in the future, I think the average editor is going to be expected to know how to do a little bit of everything. The strange thing though is that while the “jack of all trades-master of none” quote still rings very true, because of how great the post production tools have become, it’s way easier to master a whole lot more things these days. You’re no longer limited to only having time to become really good at one thing.
Instead of being a master of editing… you can now become a master of post production… and I think that’s what clients are going to be looking for from the people they hire… or at least, that’s what they’ll be looking for out of the people they’re willing to pay a lot of money.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
I’m trying to make Quicktime 7 EOL in my workflows and this is really the only thing left that I’m still using Quicktime 7 for.
Anyone out there know of anything that can do this?
If Edit Ready from Divergent Media did it, I’d just break down and get it already as it seems like a really useful piece of software that I can’t quite convince myself to buy yet (I already own Compressor that does most of what it does), even with the recently added MXF functionality. Ironically, Divergent Media has another piece of software called ClipWrap that will “wrap” other codecs, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything like that for Image Sequences.
Anyway, if anyone knows a good way to do this on a non-extinct piece of software, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Yet another reason to get a Tangent Element. A long running problem has been the bizarre mapping of the Tangent Element buttons with Resolve and how you couldn’t modify any of it. This was the Resolve team’s fault, and was a continuous source of angry forum threads and conspiracy theories.
Anyway, they finally gave the Element Mapping a once over and some much needed love with the 11.1 release of Resolve and it’s a HUGE improvement. Some of my major gripes have been addressed, like being able to now quickly switch from the Primary to Log tabs right from the Element. It’s a pretty big timesaver.
While I still really wish Resolve allowed for custom mapping… the latest update fills in a ton of holes and was much needed.
When you throw this in with the fact that the Element also supports FCPX and Premiere mappings now (but not sliders and color wheels), if you’re an editor looking to buy a control surface, it’s clearly the one to own (BTW, shameless plug, but FCPWORKS is a reseller for all Tangent and Blackmagic Design products… and buying them through us helps keep the lights on and these fingers typing… and gets your support questions answered).
On a side note, I just did a custom element mapping for Motion as well, and I’m getting ready to update the FCPX one for the element. If you get your element/have purchased your element through us, I’ll send those your way. More details on that custom mapping over at FCP.CO.
I can speak from experience… having a control surface with mappings for all your commonly used commands is a huge timesaver with the only real drawback being if you’re stuck on a machine that doesn’t have a control surface… you really start to miss it.
Anyway, thanks Blackmagic. The 11.1 Resolve release made me really happy.
So, looks like the BMD guys with the latest Resolve update have filled in some MAJOR holes in the FCPX-Resolve workflow and it is now approaching “I’m not really too worried about it” roundtrip status which, I think, as a colorist, I don’t think I’ve ever said out loud about any 3rd party color roundtrip workflow.
We’re almost there with FCPX-Resolve now, so hats off to the BMD team. It’s kind of awesome what they’ve been able to do.
With the Resolve 11 Beta, I wrote a revised list of what was/wasn’t working on FCPX-Resolve roundtrip here:
The basic takeaway was that things were getting really close, and I was pretty blown away with how much work they’d been able to do with speed changes… and my only real major complaints were with synchronized clips.
Anyway, I just ran those exact same XML’s through the same roundtrip in Resolve 11.1 and everything worked pretty much perfectly (except for the usual suspects that have never worked like color and Ken Burns).
Synchronized and multicam clips came in without issue. Sync N Link clips came through fine once I added the media into the media pool directly. Even the Speed changes that I was having difficulty with previously imported without issue (although I did need to fix a few things on roundtrip).
The point is that my ins and outs for everything came in correctly, and I didn’t was able to get all of my footage from FCPX to Resolve with all kinds of effects and craziness largely without a problem.
I’ve been a colorist doing this stuff since FCP7 was in its heyday, and I’ve never been able to get a timeline in and out of an application with such a small amount of conforming.
This is a pretty huge accomplishment by the Resolve team. On behalf of editors/colorists everywhere – thank you. You’ve made our lives easier.
A couple quick workarounds that may help you if you run into problems:
Detach audio from your FCPX sequence – Resolve still doesn’t do the audio thing so well. When you have a locked FCPX cut, duplicate your project (you should already be doing this anyway), then in the one set to go to Resolve, select all your video clips, detach audio, and then delete all the audio out of your timeline (you can also just disable all the audio from your clips in the patch panel from the inspector).
For Sync N Link Clips – If you find they aren’t coming in correctly through direct XML import, add the original video media into a bin in the media pool directly and things should reconnect in Resolve automatically.
Speed Change Roundtripping – If you see a speed change roundtrip into FCPX as a still frame… something weird happened, but your clip should actually be fine. In your roundtripped FCPX timeline, simply select the clip that is appearing as a still image and matchframe it. Your ins and outs should still be correct for the overall clips. Cut it back into your sequence, and just reapply your speed change, and things should be fine now (at least they were for me).
Just send your video and don’t expect your effects to work – Expect to do some copy pasting of titles and paste attributes for effects when you roundtrip (although you might get lucky which is sort of awesome).
Double check spatial conform settings on roundtrip – If you did some spatial conform work, double check stuff, especially when it comes to Sync and Multicam clips when you roundtrip. You may find that a clip may come back in incorrectly on roundtrip, but if you adjust the spatial conform setting, it will fix the problem.
Bottom line – This workflow is now rock solid and in my opinion is the best roundtrip workflow for any NLE-Color Software I’ve seen (even better than FCP7-Color roundtrip).
Things are really starting to come together in post, and it’s nice to see companies actively working together and improving things for the end user.
Add tracking markers to moving green screen footage
…would be towards the top.
Bottom line is that, you know, we’re all on the same team, guys. We all want our projects to look good. If one of the departments on a project is out of sync with another, the overall project is going to suffer, and our clients will be less happy with us… and when that happens, it makes the whole reason we’re doing the shoot pointless. And while sometimes this is due to hurrying too much or just basic apathy, it’s also a lot of times due to not being in communication between production and post to confirm the needs.
