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.

Sam here…

Does anyone know of a modern application that can rewrap Image Sequences in a quicktime wrapper (reference movie) the way Quicktime 7 used to?

Here’s a link to a macbreak studio episode that kind of explains what I’m talking about (go to around the 5 minute mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kgN5mJaHy0

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.

Sam here…

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.

Sam here…

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:

http://www.fcpworks.com/resolve-workflow-test-results/

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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).
5. 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.