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.
Mostly as a public service announcement to those of you running MXF workflows with FCPX 10.1.4 and above:
If after installing Pro Video Formats, MXF clips appear to only be 30 seconds long, it may be due to a conflict with the demo version of Calibrated{Q} MXF Import. To solve this:
Quit Final Cut Pro.
In Finder, go to /Library/QuickTime and trash the Calibrated{Q} MXF Import component.
Launch Final Cut Pro, and reimport any clips that were previously only 30 seconds long.
From there, things should start running smoothly. Stay tuned on this blog. We’ve got more Secret Sauce vids and NAB 2015 preso announcements coming soon!
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.
As many of you guys know… a really cool app called Primaries Exporter got released a week or two ago that solved a MAJOR issue FCPX users have been facing… the lack of batch exporting.
You can find all of the info about it on this fcp.co report.
Anyway, this app largely came about because Mike Matzdorff and I reached out to Thomas Szabo after he’d updated an app that many of you know called Clip Exporter which fixed FCPX users’ After Effects workflow issues and asked him, “Clip Exporter already kind of does batch export… but it’s not exactly what we need for dailies… is there any way you can make an app that takes advantage of FCPX’s metadata capabilities to easily turn around dailies in batches from the timeline… and can it do thumbnails and make spreadsheets?”
Next thing we knew… we were beta testing an app that solved all of our problems. Congratulations and many thanks to Thomas for putting in the time to fill this need. I think the app is a game changer for on-set post and dailies delivery for high end productions.
For high end feature film and stock footage workflows, Primaries Exporter is a godsend as it allows you to easily take advantage of the advanced metadata capabilities in FCPX to allow you to deliver extremely high quality dailies and exports based on the metadata you’ve entered in your events.
If you’re making a feature right now and your producers want dailies… this is the app you’ve been waiting for.
If you’re wondering why, well, I made a pretty comprehensive video all about it. Yes, it’s long, but I cover a lot of topics. Basically, I take you from FCPX to Shot Notes X to Sync N Link to Resolve to FCPX to Primaries Exporter to show you how all these tools can combine to create a fully synced, properly renamed library with completely searchable metadata with high end dailies deliverables that have source timecode embedded in a highly automated way… also, you save a ridiculous amount of money in comparison to industry standard high end dailies software like Colorfront… and there’s far less metadata entry with this workflow.
Anyway, not all of you will need all of the things I cover here, so if you want to jump ahead to the section that’s of most interest to you, here’s some timings of where to jump to:
6:38 – Adding footage and batch syncing audio in Davinci Resolve
8:28 – What to do in the Resolve Edit Page
9:50 – Adding Source Timecode in Resolve to your dailies
11:33 – Resolve deliver page settings
12:46 – FCPX – Add metadata to Resolve dailies with Shot Notes
The purpose of this video is to show you what you CAN do with all these apps… and hopefully it’ll help you work smarter and easier, and get started editing a whole lot faster.
We’re going to have a lot more workflow videos coming your way over the next few weeks… and stay tuned for some official FCPWORKS NAB announcements. For the moment, check out this special page and sign up for our FCPWORKS NAB updates: http://www.fcpworks.com/nab2015/
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 you can follow Sam on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.
Sam here… Chris Fenwick and I are trading podcasts this week. Yesterday, on the inaugural episode of my podcast, We Make Movies: Film Central, Chris and I talked about the business side of editing… and we followed it up with today’s episode of FCPX Grill, where Chris and I talk Logic Pro-FCPX workflow and why it might be time for you to take another look at it as your go-to DAW … and we also dive into some bonus topics, including a brief discussion what FCPWORKS NAB plans might be this year… and I’m pretty confident in saying that I think the FCPX community is going to LOVE a lot of what we have planned there.
Anyway, it’s been a blast talking with Chris… and if you aren’t listening to FCPX Grill or Digital Cinema Cafe, you’re missing out… and if you caught the first episode of my podcast, and you liked it, there’s a whole lot more of that coming your way soon.
Sam here… just wanted to take a second and talk about my new podcast, sponsored by FCPWORKS, called We Make Movies: Film Central. While this isn’t exactly a FCPX podcast (although it’s going to come up quite a bit), if you’re a person who’s interested in making and distributing content in a smarter and more efficient way, this is something you’re going to want to check out. Pretty much, it’s going to be a bunch of conversations between myself and a lot of other people who are much smarter than me about the best way to navigate the Wild West of digital content creation that we’re all living in now.
Helping me kick it off is someone most of you guys already know, Chris Fenwick, whose podcasts FCPX Grill and Digital Cinema Cafe are two of the main inspirations for WMM Film Central. Chris and I don’t talk much FCPX on this one, though (we’re saving that for an upcoming episode of the grill)… instead, we spend a whole lot of time talking about the business side of editing and how to build and sustain a career as a freelancer in the film/tv industry, and what some of the strategies for success are for that.
In the coming weeks, we’re going to be all over the map on what we’ll be covering, from a rundown of what creators should be thinking in terms of modern online distribution with Yekra CEO Lee Waterworth to a really fun discussion with Alex Gollner (Alex4d) about the Apple Pro Apps code of silence and how we see FCPX workflow developing for editors. From there, we’re going to be all over the map with editors, colorists, broadcasters, mobile filmmakers, sound designers, and pretty much anyone I know that’s doing something cool in the film business who I think is going to be interesting to talk to. Expect to see some familiar faces from the FCPX community.
Anyway, you can find new episodes right here on Mondays on the FCPWORKS blog, over at wemakemovies.org, or just go ahead and subscribe on iTunes.
2015 is going to be a really interesting year, and I’m hoping you guys are going to find Film Central to be a useful resource in helping you navigate all of the change that’s happening in our industry.
If you have any requests for people or topics you’d like to see me cover on the show, feel free to get in touch.
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.
Aliases, symbolic links, and hard links are often confusing terms for representing data on hard drives. Managing FCPX hard links can go a long way toward helping your workflow and maximizing your storage space. For the purposes of this article, let’s get some definitions out of the way (thanks to About.com for the details here):
Different File Pointer Types in OSX
Alias When you create an alias for a file, the system creates a small data file that includes the current path to the file. Once you create an alias file, you can move it to any location in your Mac’s file system, and it will still point back to the original.In addition to the moving the alias, you can also move the original item anywhere in your Mac’s file system; the alias will still be able to find the file.
Symbolic links Symbolic links are similar to aliases in that they are small files that contain the pathname to the original object. But if you move the object to a different location, the symbolic link will be broken, and the system won’t be able to find the object.That may seem like a weakness, but it’s also a strength. Since symbolic links find an object by its pathname, if you replace an object with another object that bears the same name and is in the same location, the symbolic link will continue to work. This makes symbolic links a natural for version control.
Hard link Hard links don’t contain the pathname to the original object. You would typically use a hard link when you want a single file to appear in multiple places. Unlike with aliases and symbolic links, you can’t delete the original hard-linked object from the file system without first removing all hard links to it.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at how FCPX hard links can enhance your workflow. This episode of MacBreak Studio features FCPWORKS’ Sam Mestman discussing this subject with Steve Martin:
We hope that clears things up a bit on how FCPX hard links work compared to original media, aliases and symbolic links. Knowing this stuff under the hood is key to mastering your workflow and managing storage space.
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.
