the first word on final cut pro x

firstwordfinalcutx.tumblr.com.

lastday/firstday: firstword moves to a new url

Today constitutes the last day that new posts will run on firstwordfcpx.  From now on all posts will come from the new url: firstwordfinalcutx.

For the past week I've gone through the process of transferring all of the existing infrastructure and archived posts to the new address.  (For an explanation of why I did that--including why I backdated all archived posts as well--see my post here.)  

Today, for one day only, both addresses release identical posts simultaneously.  Tomorrow, the transfer will be complete.

My Ongoing Storage Saga:

How is this for a Pegasus R4 alternative?  Apparently not Thunderbolt-ready, but I'm looking for a workaround for that.

The price point is better at $648.79.  I can certainly live without Thunderbolt-speed disk access--I've done it so far!

Okay, there is some weird time-travelling business going on here and I have a confession to make.

Not that I expect anyone to be seeing this--(other than my three spambot followers and my girlfriend)--but I'm currently conducting some tumblr trickery with this blog.  And it involves copy-and-pasting all of my past and current posts into a new blog.  And backdating all of the copied posts in the new blog so that they correspond with the originals.

Strange, huh?  Even worse, the new blog has been formatted to look identical to this one.  Same icon, same aesthetic theme, same subject matter, same html code.  In fact, the new blog is meant to continue the work of this blog as if this blog never even existed!

Pretty soon, once all of the old posts are copied into the new blog, this blog will be stop releasing posts.  By then the new blog will have taken up the work of firstwordfcpx.  Eventually this blog will probably be disabled, but into the foreseeable future I will leave it up as a reference and for the purposes of full disclosure.

So why would I do such a thing?  Because this blog was set up as a secondary blog.  And unfortunately, secondary blogs do not exist on tumblr the same way that primary blogs do.  They're like second-class citizens.  

At this point in the process I am committed to continuing the work of this blog and I want to have a public presence online and within the tumblr community.  Which means that I'll need to follow and be followed by other tumblrs.  While secondary blogs can be followed, they are unable to follow others.  So as a solution I've made a new account for which firstword can be the primary blog--able to fully express itself within the tumblr final cut community.

Which leaves one last question: why copy and backdate all of the old posts into the new blog?  The answer is that in the main, firstword is meant to be a reference for final cut x users.  In order to fully serve that purpose I need all of my posts to live on in the blog archive for easy reference via search.  However FCPX is an evolving software and so in the bigger picture posts become time relative as updates are released.  Backdating my posts is a way of time stamping the information so that users can better contextualize what they are seeing.

So that's what's happening now.  Serious time-slippage.  I'm interested to see if and how this works out.  Maybe it won't make any difference or maybe tumblr will step in and shut me down for twisting the natural laws of blogging.  Most likely no one will notice and firstword will continue to limp along with its spambots and sympathy followers in tow.

As for my part, I push on with the steady hope that my efforts will someday help someone solve a technical problem with Final Cut.

Cheers.

So I was watching this lame tutorial about the FCPX Ken Burns effect preset when I began to wonder, how many other people used to regularly doze off during PBS specials by that guy?

Well I did the only natural thing and I googled "ken burns puts me to sleep"--and that's when I found this gem.  Ken Burns seems like a pretty cool dude!

I'm researching my options for bigger storage solutions.  I really like what I see in the Pegasus system.  What I'm interested in is interchangeability--swapping out full drives for archiving--and a centralized disk array to replace the nest of mismatched portable external hdds I use now.

Well, the Pegasus system is all of these things and it's Thunderbolt compatible too.  So it definitely answers to all of my current needs.  However I need to find a way to knock down the initial entry price (~$1K for the R4) to a financial chunk I can bite off now.

Either I'll need to find a Pegasus knock-off, or a way to buy the system with only one of the hdd bays filled.  As time goes on I could fill up the additional bays as needed.

short and sweet:  how to record voiceover in final cut pro x

Thunderbolt.  Worth it?

I'm looking to get some big time storage for my editing system.  Since I plan on living with this one for a while--(who knows though at the current rate I'm devouring terabytes)--I have been considering a Thunderbolt-enabled device.  (If you're wondering why I need an external drive it's because I am currently editing on an iMac.)

So, is it worth it?  Consider the evidence:

Compare two Western Digital External HDs, both 6TB.  The Thunderbolt-enabled drive ($649 on B&H) is 1.83X the cost of the FireWire 800 drive ($354 on B&H.)

While the WD FireWire800 drive comes with a FireWire cable, the Thunderbold WD does not.  On B&H a 6.6' runs $49.  All told, if we go with the Thunderbolt drive, we're now at $698.  So let's adjust the price difference to represent that: now the Thunderbold WD drive is running 1.97X the cost of the FireWire drive.

Now to compare them from a performance perspective.  According to the Apple website FireWire 800 data transfer maxes out at 800Mbps as compared to Thunderbolt's 10Gbps.  No contest there.  If we can trust Apple's numbers, then Thunderbolt stomps FireWire at 12.8X the speed of FireWire 800.

So okay.  From the performance perspective, Thunderbolt is more bang for the buck.  However money is of object to me and I have a budget to think of.  

But another thing to think of is this: what about USB 3.0?  At 5Gbps--according to Apple--USB 3.0 is still 6.4X the speed of FireWire 800 and evidence indicates that Apple is going to make USB3 a regular option in the future.  How that bodes for Thunderbolt I don't know.  But If I could somehow adapt a USB3 drive to my Thunderbolt port then I assume I could find a 6TB drive comparable to the Western Digital units for a price lower than that of the Thunderbolt drive.  (No 6TB USB3 devices are currently listed on B&H.) 

In conclusion I have yet to come to a conclusion.  This will be an ongoing story on this blog as I figure out my solution.  In the end I have to go with what's right for my purposes.  Sometimes at the last minute on the day of a shoot I realize that I have 15GB left in my system and 22GB of footage left over from the last shoot on my camera cards.  On days like that my purposes require buying another overpriced 1TB travel drive from Best Buy and hating myself for it afterwards.

how to share final cut x project files

Okay, for the first half of this video I was pretty skeptical of where these guys were going with this.  I had some smarmy blog entry titles cooking up in my head: "how to make a jacked up video tutorial," etc.

However, I'm pretty interested in what's going on here.  While their technique seems at first like a glorified workaround--and maybe that's all it really is--it is definitely a useful tidbit.

I will be running tests on this as soon as I can find another fcpx editor nearby and will get back to y'all on the results.

Hang in there.  Pixelcorps videos are real long, but this one is worth watching if you ever plan to tagteam an edit with somebody else.

Since I've discovered secondary color corrections my eyes have been opened to a whole new world of options for boosting image quality in postproduction.  I'm still a big proponent nailing the right lighting on set, but I'm starting to understand better the "we'll-fix-it-in-post" folks.  Our postproduction tools are increasingly sophisticated and sexy and fix-it-in-post is a tempting proposition within the high-pressure atmosphere of a shoot.

Anyway, this tool employs the use of color correction shape masks.  Enjoy!

The Big Three FCPX media types.  What they are, when to use them and why.

Here's an oldie but a goodie.  I found this among some old search results from way back when I was just getting up and running with FCPX.

Within the first two weeks of my initial foray into the new software I filled up my brand new (and initially very empty) 1TB hard drive.  Now in some instances I would not think twice about that much data--like for instance my month-long cross-country tour with a friend's band--but for simple editing of videos stored on an external device?  No way, José.

So I looked into it.  What I realized for the first time was just how radically different the FCPX organizational system was from legacy Final Cut.  In fact if you ask me, which you probably wouldn't have, this is the most radical difference moving from FCP7 to FCPX.  And I owe it all to Mr. Larry Jordan.

Give it a look, it's a good overview.

7680 × 4320 resolution?!

50% bit rate reduction with the same quality as H.264?? as low as QVGA 320x240??!

Panasonic 145" display???

$1 million cameras!?!

just some more fcpx minutiae:  video clip drop shadow function missing

As may or may not be made apparent by the illustration above, I have embedded (for lack of a better word) a video onto this title card.  As such, the video clip works within the video project as an autonomous graphic element rather than an immersive element of the diagesis.  (Really, bear with me here, i'm making more of this than what it is--)

The text above is animated as well as the background behind the video.   So, in keeping with the overall look I want to drop a shadow from the video clip.  But final cut x does not include such a feature as it does with say, text elements or shape elements.

Major bummer dude.

:(

Anyway, this is a solutions blog, not a complainer blog, so in the interest of keeping a productive attitude about this here's my workaround:

1.  Make a rectangle shape with the shape generator (square edges, not rounded.)

2.  Size the rectangle to fit, matching the size of the video element.

3.  Drop shadow in the rectangle inspector dialoge.

4.  Bury rectangle shape under video clip (see green arrow pointing down) in the timeline--thereby placing the rectangle behind the video.

5.  Et voilà!  Video has a shadow.

on the limitations of disclosure triangles in the final cut x event browser

Man, I just like listening to some pros talk shop.  It's been a minute since I've worked for somebody else and enjoyed the benefit of their expertise.

The post itself is kind of quirkily neurotic but the discussion following in the comments section digs in to some other interesting points.