Just in case you’re not listening to it, if you’re really into FCPX workflow, there’s a podcast you need to start checking out called FCPX Grill.
Hosted by San Francisco editor Chris Fenwick, it is maybe the best way there is to stay on top of how editors are integrating FCPX into their workflows.
A recent podcast you need to check out is from Mike Matzdorff (@fcpxfeatures), who goes in depth about the workflow on the mythical studio feature we worked together on that there were so many conspiracy theories about. Between that and the LACPUG event I mentioned yesterday… well, the thing was real, guys. Anyway, here’s a link to the podcast… Mike drills a little deeper into some of the specifics on the grill than he does at LACPUG:
Additionally… you should check out the recent episodes from Michael Glass and Scott Simmons. I worked with Michael to help get TED up to speed in X and it was a blast. In my opinion, FCPX Grill is the best podcast there is for FCPX users (and maybe post in general), and Chris Fenwick is a good guy and great host.
And if you want to hear more from one of our team, check out the episode with Noah Kadner. Some interesting talk from behind the iron curtain at Apple….
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.
So… that whole FCPX Feature Film Workflow studio thing that my name got dragged through the mud on… not a lie. It happened, we worked on it, and it’s great to see Mike Matzdorff filling the world in on how it was done in this recent LACPUG presentation:
We’re still not going to give you the name of the movie out of respect for our client (when they’re ready to officially talk about it, they will), but the truth is that a lot of really smart people worked on this, and it’s nice seeing some of them starting to talk about it.
If it wasn’t already obvious, FCPX can and will continue to be used at the highest levels… anything else you hear is basically just FUD.
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.
Some of the most interesting FCP X related stories to emerge out of IBC this year came from the broadcast world. Great news included EVS showing ProRes recording and edit-while-ingest connected to FCP X and of course we all know that the BBC have decided to use FCP X for news-gathering. To me, that shows some real momentum in the broadcast world for a fast, easy to use video editor and now some of the more well known developers have started taking interest in how deep their integration can go with FCP X.
Between the lack of transcoding with FCPX, options like Tools on Air, Softron and SIENNA– which can do amazing things for ingest and playout on off-the-shelf Macs, any modern broadcaster should take a close look at what’s happening.
Norwegian graphics powerhouse Vizrt have taken it just that extra bit further. First of all they released a very low cost MXF plugin for FCP X, but they also previewed an amazing piece of integration of their graphics system running inside FCP X. Just that by itself is amazing; Viz One is not a toy, it’s an ultra high end graphics system for broadcasters that’s been in use for years. Viz One is a really big step forward for FCP X as a serious broadcaster’s tool:
It basically works by presenting templates from their graphics system inside FCP X (complete with previews) and you can position the graphics layers anywhere you want on your timeline and preview what it will look like. That’s all well and good, you say, you can in fact do the same thing with regular Motion templates which essentially turns FCP X into a live production system.
However, the real magic happens on export. Instead of burning in the graphics onto your finished package, the system inserts timecode-based metadata into Vizrt’s database. So, when the time comes to play back the clip to air, the system knows exactly when to trigger the graphics based on your edit decisions from FCP X. This means that exports are much faster (no need to render those graphics) and also modifications can be made up to the very very last moment before going to air! Spot a typo? No need to go back to the edit bay to fix that, just do it from the news system even after the edit is finished!
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.
If you were curious about learning a little more about how to take advantage of the Thunderbolt busses in the new Mac Pro, I did a Moviola Webinar on September 30th, 2014 on the subject:
In general, it’s all about how to take advantage of the ports on the MP to make sure you’re getting the most out of it, and getting the largest bang for your buck. This is a follow-up to the article I wrote for FCPWORKS a little while ago- http://www.fcpworks.com/thunderbolt-bus-mapping-new-mac-pro/
Here are some tips for mapping out your thunderbolt devices across the individual buses from that piece:
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 is on bus #2. My Ultrastudio 4k for video I/O is on bus #3, and I’ll connect additional drives/peripherals when necessary to this bus.
We did a nice Q&A afterwards. Take a look, I think you’ll get a lot out of it.
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.
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.
