File management: they’ve taken a page from iMovie, and moved to “Events” and “Projects.” I’m not 100% sure why I need both, and can’t just have a folder with my FCP file, and video files. If you have a file management system you’re used to using, it appears you’ll need to rethink most everything.

Editing: by default the timeline isn’t visible. I spent about a minute and a half swearing and trying to drag clips around. Command+2 brings up the actual timeline you need to put a project together. Also, the default view for the audio portion of the clip is tiny. If you expand it so you can actually see what’s going on with the audio, it looks like you can’t trim audio and video with one move. Think of it like having linked selection off, permanently.

Audio meters are hidden by default, if you click on the icon next to the timecode, it’ll bring them up.

I’m having problems with playback lag. I pulled some 1080p30 ProRes 422 LT clips into FCP X, and it’s definitely dropping frames where it never did before. I’m on an i7 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM and GT330M, also connected to a 30 inch Cinema Display. Haven’t tried it without the display, but this is ridiculous. If I hit K (stop) while a clip is playing, it takes at least two seconds to respond. It’s set to high quality playback. Switching to “better performance” smooths out the video, but my audio meters still aren’t in real time. This is bad.

They also changed many of the keyboard shortcuts, so my six month old FCP keyboard is useless. They got rid of the F9-12 quick keys to insert clips. It looks like W is the new insert (old F9) and E adds the clip to the end of your sequence.

There is no pen tool. UPDATE: FCP X keyframe editor

Tracks in the traditional sense are gone, you get little bubbles for your clips, which can still be layered. Like this:

There’s no saving, everything is automatic a la iMovie.

I haven’t tried adding non-video media, so I’m not sure how it handles stills or audio yet.

I hate to sound negative, but it seems like they did everything I was afraid of when I first heard about FCP X. Making a video editor that works for absolutely everyone is a pretty tall order, and one I’m not convinced is a good idea at all. I’m not giving up on FCP X, but using it gives me a huge sinking feeling. Did the best video editing suite on the market just take a big step backwards?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the App Store purchase process. One glaring flaw with my actual purchase of FCP X was that the App Store offers very little control over how  you actually pay for things. If you have a gift card balance, it’s going toward your purchase whether you want it to or not, and it doesn’t support multiple credit cards. I had to go in and switch the payment card over to my business AmEx, then change it back, because I don’t want iTunes purchases going on that card all the time. I also lost my $15 gift card balance. I can write off the cost of FCP, but music isn’t tax-deductible, so it would’ve been nice to actually keep my balance.

For the workshop we settled on Apple Intermediate as an editing codec. We were bringing in footage from a wide variety of cameras, mostly Canon and Nikon SLRs, but a handful of dedicated video cameras too. We wanted everyone to be on the same page.

For the Canon and AVCHD folks it was easy, we just set up the plugins for Apple Intermediate, then did a standard Log and Transfer. For the Nikon shooters, it was a little bit more complicated. There isn’t a Nikon plugin, so they had to use Compressor (or MPEG Streamclip) to transcode from Motion JPEG to Apple Intermediate.

So … why not ProRes 422?

The most obvious reason is storage. We had people using a wide variety of hard drives. Some were USB, some FireWire. Some were big, some were small. Apple Intermediate gave us good quality at reasonable file sizes. The main drive of the workshop was creating content for the web, which means it’s going to get compressed down quite a bit anyway. We weren’t going to be doing heavy color work, and we didn’t need alpha channels. So there you have it, Apple Intermediate. We could’ve very easily landed on ProRes LT (which has a similar data rate), but there were a handful of people using Final Cut Express, which uses Intermediate exclusively.

Like I said earlier, a lot of it comes down to storage and use. For HD video, ProRes 422 averages around 66GB per hour. The same footage encoded using Apple Intermediate comes in around 49GB per hour, and the quality is still excellent. When Apple released Final Cut 7, they also introduced several new ProRes flavors, including ProRes LT, which comes in at 46GB per hour. Intermediate and LT are also much nicer to laptops.

I haven’t done much experimenting with it, but I may start using LT for future projects. Apple designed the ProRes family with multicore Intel systems in mind, so you can go longer between renders, and footage renders faster. The advantage of LT over Apple Intermediate is the extra color information (4:2:2 vs. 4:2:0). The big caveat here is that Final Cut 6 can’t handle the new codecs, so you’re better off using Intermediate (or normal 422) if you’ve got to go back and forth.

For web use, ProRes 422 is generally overkill, especially if you’re not doing color work. If you need an alpha channel, however, then 422 it is.

If you’re mastering Blu-ray, then by all means, use 422, otherwise, save some drive space for your next project.

For more info about ProRes and other codecs, check out Larry Jordan’s site and Apple’s ProRes page.

Then the hail started from Jamie De Pould on Vimeo.

First, export the videos using the File>Export>QuickTime Movie command. Create a folder on the desktop called “flv_convert” (or something like that), and export there. Make sure you check the box that says “Make Movie Self-Contained.”

Once that’s done, you can quit Final Cut.

Launch Adobe Media Encoder.


Click the Add button on the right side of the Adobe Media Encoder window.

Navigate to your flv_convert folder, select the .mov files, and click Open. The clips should show up in the queue.

Select the first clip and click Settings, this should bring up the export settings menu.

Use the following settings:

Format
Format: FLV

Video
Resize to 512×288**
Frame rate: select the frame rate to match your footage
Bitrate encoding: VBR
Encoding passes: Two
Bitrate: 900 kbps***
Set keyframe distance: 15 frames (More frequent keyframes give you higher quality, but with increased file size)
Quality: Best

Audio
Defaults should be fine

**NOTE: This is a good size for VuVox, but may not be the best size for other uses. More info about resizing video for flash here.
***NOTE: Larger sizes require higher bit rates, 900 kbps is plenty for this size, but is way too low for HD.

Click the floppy disk icon next to the preset name, this will allow you to save the preset.

Name the preset, and click OK.

Click OK again, and it should bring you back to the main window. Click the drop downs in the preset column, and change your other clips to the VuVox setting.

Once you set all of your clips, click “Start Queue” on the right side of the screen. You should get a yellow progress bar along the bottom, and when it’s finished you’ll have shiny new .flv files in the flv_convert folder ready to upload.

You can also set a custom destination if you want the converted files to go somewhere else. You can also upload directly to an FTP server.

Converting a QuickTime .mov to .flv by Jamie De Pould is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

You can also use an XML export to transfer a Final Cut Project to Adobe Premiere Pro, and from there to a program like After Effects or Photoshop. This cuts down on exporting intermediate files between FCP and other programs.

Whatever the reason, it’s a fairly simple process.

Open the project in Final Cut Pro, and click File>Export>XML

From there, you’ll need to select an XML interchange format. I found that XML 4 works best when you’re transferring back to Final Cut Express. I haven’t tried it with Premiere, so experiment and see what works best.

I generally uncheck “include master clips outside selection,” because this gives you all the clips used in the timeline, but doesn’t include any clips in the browser but not in the timeline. I prefer to import all of my clips at once, rather than try to figure out which ones I’m missing.

I save the XML file in the same location as my .fcp files, and give it a clear name like JAMIEDEPOULD_EXAMPLEPROJECT-XML.

Once that’s done, you can quit Final Cut Pro, and launch Express (or Premiere). From there, simply click File>Import XML from iMovie. Navigate to the XML file you just created, select it, and Final Cut Express will prompt you to save the new project. I generally like to call it YOURNAME_PROJECTNAME-FCE.

When it’s finished, you have your timeline, complete with edits, right there in front of you. Import your assets, and you’re ready to get back to editing. If you’re working on a machine with both Final Cuts Pro and Express, it’s best to control+click on your .fcp, and choose “Open With,” or drag the file onto the correct dock icon. That way, you won’t unwittingly convert a Final Cut Express file to Pro.