trim forward

Is Adobe Premiere the FCP8 upgrade we were waiting for?

So half a year or so into Final Cut X, and I still haven't tried it. It's taken me awhile to figure out why, but basically there is one reason, and one reason alone: Reverse-Compatibility, or lack thereof.

Basically what is comes down to is that I'm not interested in relying on two systems that don't talk to each other. If FCPX opened FCP7 files, I would be all over it, knowing that down the road, I would get used to it, and it would get better. But they say it's never going to open old files.

I'm an editor who decided that FCP was superior for my needs several years ago, and switched from Avid. I really invested in maximizing my efficiency with the software, getting Final Cut Studio Master Pro certification along the way. I turn down Avid projects because I don't want to waste time for no additional workflow benefit… I'm not interested in working in two environments at once, because I will become less efficient in both of them.

For those of us that have been editing more than six months, the reverse compatibility issue really sucks. Really, really sucks. It means I have to fight to keep Final Cut Studio installed on my system in the years to come in order to maintain old projects, and I know future OS upgrades will make that challenging.

I'm still working exclusively with Final Cut Pro 7. I haven't jumped in any direction because anything can happen, but I see the natural upgrade to FCP7 as being Adobe Premiere. Premiere will open FCP files, and you can get them back into FCP if necessary (the same way you would downgrade a project in FCP).

Apple has done something very strange with FCPX. They've created not an upgrade, but a new product. So it's a cross-grade. Down the road, the millions of happy FCP editors have no choice but to cross-grade to something. WHY would we cross-grade to another program from the same company that has killed multiple pro apps, when there is another program that has a very similar feature set to FCP, allows us to open FCP files, and quickly use our FCP keyboard shortcuts?

I love Apple products. Every time an iPad competitor comes out, everyone rightly says, "This is cool, but why would I get this instead of an iPad". Right now, the opposite is true for FCPX. Why would you upgrade to FCPX instead of Adobe Premiere? Why would you upgrade to FCPX instead of sticking with FCP7? There aren't a lot of reasons for either… and I feel that this is a defining moment for FCP… potentially a death blow.

I bought a copy of Premiere the other day to get in on the cross-grade price. I'm going to install it to make sure it works, but I likely won't use it at all for at least a year. Until I need it.

I'm a tinkerer. But this is also my business, and I have a family now. Every time I sit down to learn something or figure something out, there has to be a productive reason be spending time away from my family. Apple has given me no compelling reason to sit down and learn FCPX, and for that, I'm sad.

Side note: I'm focussing on Premiere here because I really think it's the closest competitor to FCP by far. Avid is great, but it's a completely different skill set, and a completely different learning curve. While it might be a worthy competitor, I don't think it's a natural upgrade/cross-grade from FCP.

Setting shot metadata in a shoot to REDcolor2/REDgamma2

One of my shooters shoots in REDcolor/REDgamma on the RED One, but prefers that it be post-processed as REDcolor2/REDgamma2. This is how I batch change the meta-data for all clips in REDCine-X before exporting.

1) Add all of the clips (from multiple folders) to a bin in REDCine-X
2) Create a new look, checking only color and gamma.
3) Double click on the look, then change the settings to REDcolor2/REDgamma2.
4) Ensure "Bin(all clips)" is selected in Look window, and click Apply.

Color won't open: Unable to initialize OpenGL.

The Problem:

When opening Color, a dialog box appears saying "Unable to initialize OpenGL. Make sure Video Desktop is disabled."

The Solution:

There are plenty of solutions to this problem if you have a decklink card (turn off desktop monitoring), but what if you have something else? For example, I'm using a Matrox MXO2 Mini. All of sudden the google results drop.

After a bunch of fiddling, I realized the thing that had changed since the last time I'd run Color was that I had a mini USB Mimo monitor plugged in. Turn it off, and the problem is solved.

Macbook and magic trackpad stuck and won't unclick

I've been having this perpetual but unreproduceable issue over the last week where my magic trackpad would all of a sudden lock in click mode, making my computer fairly unusable. This would carry through to the trackpad on the macbook.

Yesterday, after googling for an answer (which returned results from swelling batteries to driver suspicions) I decided to just turn bluetooth off. The problem disappeared immediately.

Today, I turned bluetooth back on, and the problem returned. When I went to turn bluetooth off again, I noticed that not only was the magic trackpad connected, but a mouse was also connected!

After some searching, I found the culprit. My magic mouse was in my bag, turned on, button depressed. As soon as I turned it off, the problem was fixed. The irregular appearance of the problem was simply caused by me moving my bag around the room.

So, if you're having this problem, first check to make sure you don't have a connected mouse hidden somewhere before you start thinking about chucking that Mac!

FCP Trick: How to delete all transitions in a sequence

If you have to remove a ton of cross dissolves, cross fades, etc, from a Final Cut Pro sequence, do the following:

Open the sequence, hit Command-F, type the name of the transition, and click "Find All". This will select everything in your sequence that meets the criteria. Then simply hit delete on the keyboard to get rid of them. Magic!

Example: search for "Cross" to get rid of cross dissolves and cross fades all at once. Of course, if you've got clips with "cross" in the title, think before you delete.

This trick comes in handy when preparing video for export to another application, or in my case, to fix other people's work.

After a fruitless google search, I found this in Diana Weynand's book "Final Cut Pro 7", part of the Apple Pro Training series (highly recommended).

Headphone jack won't work in new Mac Pro?

I'm using a new Mac Pro today, and couldn't get the computer to recognize headphones.

Solution: Push harder than you'd think. The new Mac Pros have a clicking socket. If you push it in all the way (requires a little force), you'll feel a click, and you're good to go.

Also, the new Mac Pros have no Firewire 400 ports at all (only 800)! I didn't realize they'd carried that through from the Macbook Pros.

Save: "Operation not allowed"

I've been working with FCP for years, and just got this message for the first time when saving. You're in the middle of a project and you can't save, can't save as, or anything. From the google results for this problem, it seems to be very rare, and very random.

Solution: Create a new project and copy and paste everything from the bad project into the new one, then save that one. Not ideal, but it works. Alternatively, revert to your last saved or autosaved version.

Side note: If you haven't lost much work, just close the project and reopen it. You'll be able to save again.

Don't know what causes this and I hope I never see it again!

7D to ProRes: MPEG StreamClip vs. Compressor

While testing a couple methods of transcoding Canon 7D H.264 to ProRes, I discovered that MPEG Streamclip kept more accurate colours than Compressor.

Here's an example of why I chose to use MPEG Streamclip to transcode 5D and 7D footage, rather than Compressor (click on the image for a full size):

7D H.264 to ProRes (LT) Compression Test
MPEG StreamClip vs. Compressor

- File sizes were nearly identical.
- MPEG Streamclip was faster.
- Reds were different in both. MPEG Streamclip was closer.
- Contrast was higher in both. MPEG Streamclip was closer.
- In a separate test Compressor ProRes(HQ) was almost identical to (LT)

Stuttering desktop preview in FCP 7.01

I recently had an issue where desktop preview was stuttering on a rebuilt Mac Pro. I attributed it to the graphic card, but today discovered that this is a widespread issue with FCP 7.01.

I found the solution here on the LAFCPUG forums. It has to do with FCP 7.01 only (systems that haven't been upgraded are fine), and is a simple fix: a quicktime component needs to be replaced from the install discs. Five minutes and you're back up and running.

Corrupted frames from Color 1.5 with RED footage.

When working with the new RED quicktime codec, I've had an issue where rendering in Color would produce quicktime files that are full of gobbledeegook. After much searching, I found the solution in the Apple forums. It seems to be related to having two monitors set up. If you do your grading, save, close Color, unplug the second monitor, open Color again, and Render, it works perfectly. Must be a video card issue, but what?