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Someone really needs to set me straight on the Final Cut workflow. Here's my situation: My background is in Avid systems, but I've been assigned to use our one Final Cut suite at work for my current project. The main cut is mostly done, and I'm now starting on titles, graphics and finishing stuff. I still prefer Media Composer, but at this point I'm fine with the basics in Final Cut. The problem is that any kind of effects or compositing work is completely miserable when you have to render after every little change. Here are the technical details: 1080i footage in ProRes 422, dual-processor, quad-core MacPro of relatively recent vintage. I have worked in comparable setups with Media Composer and have never had any issues playing back the vast majority of my project in real time, even with color correction, effects and compositing. Even Unlimited RT with dynamic playback on everything chugs with anything but the simplest of effects in Final Cut. As a test, I thought I'd fire up my rarely-used copy of FCP on my own machine, a 2011 MBP, and see how it fared against regular old SD footage. It's even worse. Transitions need to render, in OfflineRT. Guys, come on - this is by no means the most powerful machine in the world, but you're telling I can't play back ultra low-res SD in real time without rendering blurs and dissolves? I don't believe that. Everyone at work I've bitched to about this says, "Yeah, welcome to Final Cut." Please tell me there's a better answer than that. Edit: I guess it probably goes without saying, but yes, this is an FCP7 system. Cyne fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Nov 2, 2012 |
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Nov 2, 2012 18:26
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RaoulDuke12 posted:Yep. Welcome to FCP7. Yeah, that threw me a bit when I first starting using FCP. I really like the Avid workflow of transcoding and just sticking everything you import into its own special folder where the program can always locate it. It's a lot less crap I need to micromanage before I can start working. I'm pretty sure the sequences are all matched up but I'll give it a check when I get back in - thanks. Edit: I've been monkeying with some things at home and have gotten FCP to run pretty smoothly with ProRes 422 sources in SD and I can do okay with 1080p in Proxy too if I turn on Unlimited RT. Given that I have to assume some settings just got messed on my work machine. Encouraging! Cyne fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 2, 2012 19:28
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Ziploc posted:You guys might hate this question. Nowadays that kind of stuff is all done with plugins. Text Anarchy is a popular one. If you're in need of sound effects for the keystrokes, you should be able to find some free material pretty easily with a bit of Googling.
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Dec 1, 2012 01:54
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I knew AE had to come with something in the stock package that did that, it just slipped my mind to check the animation presets because I hardly ever use them. Yeah, Text Anarchy is probably overkill just for that single effect, but if you are using After Effects, keep Red Giant in mind - they make some of the best plugins out there.
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Dec 1, 2012 05:49
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If you have a Lynda.com subscription they also have some technology previews for the new Adobe stuff up.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:15
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Moon Potato posted:Most of the editing work I do is for a client who wants everything in Premiere because that's what he knows, and I find myself constantly frustrated by the lack of keyboard shortcuts for selecting, nudging and trimming clips in the timeline, even after not using FCP7 for over a year. I've come to like Premiere for cutting short pieces with quick turnaround times precisely for its more mouse-driven operation, but that's also why it would drive me nuts on larger projects with lots of footage that require precise edits. I'm much more comfortable organizing my assets and doing serious cutting in Media Composer, so it's nice to have the option of using the best tool for the given job.
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May 25, 2013 01:04
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Tricerapowerbottom posted:Are there any programs that will randomize and mess with video on its own? Like, give it five videos, and tell it to randomly select cuts between .5 to 4 seconds, randomly select to slow it down, speed it up, play it in reverse, whatever. This is the kind of thing that would not be terribly difficult to cook up with Max and its Jitter objects.
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May 26, 2013 18:59
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Tricerapowerbottom posted:Neat. Imposing, but neat. It looks like doing that stuff would be no problem for Max, but can it be programmed to do it randomly? I want to end up with hundreds of hours of this chopped up stuff, but couldn't possibly do the cutting and effects for that much material manually. Absolutely, random behavior and processes are big parts of the Max concept.
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May 26, 2013 19:12
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TravellinDan posted:Would anyone recommend going to school for editing as opposed to self research and practice? I'm not sure if I want a career as an editor (well that would be pretty awesome, I'm not hopeful on prospects). I'd say it really depends on if you've already gone to school for something else. If you have, my advice would be to not bother - it will just be a large amount of time and money that could have gone toward you gaining practical skills and experience. Also, if you're thinking about some kind of media trade school, that's dicey... most of them are designed to separate you from your money, not give you a good education. People in this industry really want to see what you can do, not how many degrees you have, however, it's helpful to at least have an associate's degree to prove that you're capable of learning and following through on your commitments. Of course, if you decide to go it alone, bear in mind that there's a lot more to a good editor than knowing how to drive the software - you should understand at least basic cinematography, composition, camera and media formats, lighting, etc. The advantage of a proper film or media program is that it prevents you from being too narrowly focused and having conspicuous gaps in your knowledge. Just some things to think about... also, if you've only been editing for a week, spend a bit more time with it before deciding on your future. 
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Oct 11, 2013 19:33
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It's worth noting that the new Mac Pro will be out shortly if you think you might want a real workstation, though it may be overkill for the work you're doing. If I were in your situation I think I might keep the old MBP around for offline editing and grab the iMac for finishing work.
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Dec 5, 2013 08:34
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RaoulDuke12 posted:That sentence is blowing my mind. Well, my idea is that he would have an old beater laptop he can carry around to do some quick edits or show rough cuts to clients and a desktop machine that's more than capable of handling anything he could likely throw at it and could grow to accommodate more demanding work if needed down the road. It's true that if you go by raw power you could easily build a workable or even equivalent PC setup for less, but I've been using Macs exclusively for nearly a decade and I've come to not mind paying a bit extra for the benefit of an operating system that I enjoy using and makes me more productive on a day to day basis. Obviously, that's entirely subjective, but if Peacebone wants to continue using Macs for his editing work I think my suggestion is worth considering.
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Dec 5, 2013 20:30
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RaoulDuke12 posted:No, you're right, it's just historically, iMacs would never be used "for finishing work." Oh yeah, that was a poor choice of words on my part. I just basically meant that would be his machine for the final edit / output and rendering, not necessarily finishing in the classical sense of the word. I definitely wouldn't want to use an iMac for serious color grading or anything like that.
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Dec 6, 2013 20:11
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If you learned editing on Avid systems like I did you didn't really have a choice since it was so obnoxious to try manipulating anything directly in the timeline prior to the most recent versions of Media Composer. I imagine most people find three point editing unintuitive at first, but I'm definitely glad to have that foundation now. Ultimately it's about having a greater degree of precision and being forced to actually think about your cuts rather than just plopping everything on a timeline and trying to sort it all out. Organization is the key here... you should already have a basic idea of the flow of your piece before you make a single cut.
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Sep 29, 2014 21:33
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the_lion posted:For the nerdier among you, I just found out that Autodesk matchmover and Autodesk composite are now free on all platforms and have been for some time. I'm not sure if the Windows / Linux versions fair any better, but for what it's worth both of these programs are just awful under OS X. You can tell MatchMover hasn't been optimized for the platform at all, given that it nearly maxes out my CPU just sitting idle and is just slow in general doing anything else. Composite is literally unusable because it crashes when trying to open a project, start a new project or import footage (best part: the Autodesk crash reporter that pops up after this happens hangs while trying to submit my report and has to be force quit). The reality is that both of these applications are showing their age and I'm sure Autodesk is perfectly aware that they are well out-paced by the competition in their respective categories (and even by some of Autodesk's own packages, e.g., Flame and Smoke), so I see this as Autodesk basically saying that they don't give a crap about continuing to support them in any serious capacity and just turning them over to anyone who might find them useful. It's great to have free options for VFX work, but I'd advise anyone looking to adopt these applications for their project to give them a serious trial run and consider paid alternatives before diving in.
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Nov 5, 2014 18:58
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Is there a way to have Media Encoder add a custom suffix to files in the render queue? Here's my deal: I've got a big load of video files that I need to bounce to image sequences, and these files have a complex naming structure that needs to be preserved. The issue is that most of them already end with a number, which Media Encoder latches on to when it starts the render, so if the filename ends with 001.mov I get rendered images ending with 001.jpg, 002.jpg, etc., while what I want is 001_001.jpg, 001_002.jpg, etc. I'm open to alternative workflows here but I don't want to spend more time messing with this than it would just take to do it manually. Thanks guys! Edit: Found a little hack. In the Media Encoder preferences you can append the name of the preset to the output, so I can just make a preset named "0" and get the behavior I'm looking for. Still open to a more elegant solution in case I need to do this again, but this will work for now. Cyne fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 22:40
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Oh yes also remember not to render a 24 FPS sequence from a 23.976 video file otherwise you'll end up with a duplicate of the first frame and no last frame and you'll have to render a hundred shots worth of image sequences for the third time in a day fuuuuuuuuck. I'm sure there's some fantastic technical reason for the 23.97 / 29.97 thing but I sure as gently caress can't remember what it is right now.
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Mar 6, 2015 04:04
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...and there's the brilliant technical reason. Thanks, interesting read. The history of technology is littered with hacks like that developed by necessity and perpetuated simply because they become de facto standards and not because they're actually the best way to do things.
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Mar 6, 2015 18:44
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There are a few tools out there made for that kind of thing. Off the top of my head there's the Glitch effect in the Red Giant Universe subscription and the Twitch plug-in from Video Copilot, and I'm sure there's more. Probably neither will give you that exact effect out of the box but they're worth looking into. That video and song are amazing by the way. I love how perfectly it captures the look of a high school a/v club dweeb in the late 90's loving around with a pirated copy of After Effects.
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Mar 21, 2015 05:03
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What the heck is / was Specular Infini-D? We had a lot of cool old software laying around at my old job too. Probably that exact same version of After Effects and a shitload of funky old Digital Juice b-roll and graphics on CD and tape. The inclusion of Marathon is definitely what makes that collection though.
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Mar 27, 2015 23:07
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Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye is another great book on film editing.
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Jun 21, 2015 18:28
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OpenEXR encode / decode in Media Encoder is pretty cool too. Or at least it would be if I could install it - I've been getting repeated "Update Failed" errors for Photoshop and ME.
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Dec 5, 2015 05:02
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In the videos you're watching they are most likely using the full Mocha Pro application and not the stripped-down Mocha AE. Mocha AE is still a fantastic 2D tracker but it lacks the camera tracking and some other features of the main application.
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Dec 28, 2015 07:49
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Armagnac posted:Avid: Sigh. It's the best of the worst. The way it handles projects with 'bins' is really the best idea for any NLE. And it has the best media management, and it's *by far* the most versatile, for heavy lifting. On the other hand, it's obtuse as gently caress, the interface is hot garbage for no reason. There's a reason it's *still* the industry standard. But it is the worst garbage when trying to anything other than a cut or a dissolve. VFX suuuuuuck in Avid. And let's hope they stay solvent as a company, because, since now they went subscription... When they go under, our software dies. The truck analogy was spot on. I remember a video of a dude cutting on one of the original Mac II systems and it looked exactly the same as what everyone was using until the recent facelift that improved things a little. The funny thing about industry standards is that they tend to be progressive in some areas and extremely conservative in others, because when it's your marquee product you really have to make sure not to piss too many people off, whereas a company like Apple that could honestly get by just fine selling zillions of iThings can afford to come out of left field with something like FCPX and just say gently caress it and cut their losses if it tanks.
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Mar 29, 2016 07:23
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