Anyting big done on FCPX?

what is the "biggest" production done on FCPX anyone knows about ?

Define "biggest": most money, most number of cameras used, largest number of crew, largest distribution (then, commercial, social, etc), most popularly recognized director name, largest Event libraries, largest number of clips in a timeline? I don't think this is a question that, as worded, has a realistic answer.

Big Ben, just BIG

something to brag about :woohoo:

Yes, I am, and I do brag.

I work in the biggest post production company in Colombia, many of the most important films and documentaries of this country are being conformed, colorized, VFXed (does this word exists?), subtitled, printed in 35mm or delivered as DCPs by us and since FCPx launched we had only 1 (very) amateur movie done in FPCx, most of our clients are still working on FPC7 and we still work on FCP7.

I´m doing some testing on my own to see if FCPx is ready for our workflows and necessities and it is approaching...slowly but is approaching.

PS: We are not Hollywood, but we send movies to Cannes and Berlin every year.

very interesting, but reasons can there be not to move all to FCPX?

Ask this question again in about 3-5years and I bet you’ll see a bigger shift to FCPX amongst the bigger houses and more establish feature/network editors.

I mean FCPX has only been a viable option in a lot of workflows since 10.0.3 some may argue 10.0.6 which was just recently released in what Oct. Adopting a new NLE on major projects within already established workflows to my understanding is a very slow moving train.
I’m sure FCP7 will be in use for quite awhile and of course AVID will I’m sure remain dominate.
Once FCP7 is broken via hardware/software I’m sure many will move on and be forced to take a look at FCPX or Premiere (to run alongside an AVID or startups looking for a cheaper solution). Some I bet will keep machines running FCP6/7 until the end of time.

Feature set aside the launch of FCPX still has left a bad taste in many peoples mouths and Apple has a long road ahead of them to fix this. I personally think its going to take more then just periodic feature updates. The competition is fierce now amongst major NLE manufacturers.
Apple needs a few more feature updates (with collaborative/networking capabilities) and a major marketing campaign along the lines of “Its a final cut world”, they need “pro” stories like they used to do with legacy fcp on the front page of Apple.com.

A lot of the “cool factor” marketing mostly appeals to up and comers but Apple needs to shove the capabilities of FCPX down the throats of the people who are no longer going to bother looking into X after the disastrous launch and they need established named editors, features, major network shows and a few big post houses with them.

Getting back on topic, the “biggest” production I’ve heard about is “Leverage” now being cut on FCPX: www.apple.com/finalcutpro/in-action/electric/

interesting view,
not sure that I agree with you, or I dont agree with the opinion that FCPX not ready, there is very few reasons (or none) not to use it, the attitude sucks, I will never ever look back on FCP7, or PP, or Avid for that matter, they have not done anything new for years, its hard for me to understand why anyone would even consider one of them and not give FCPX a try , except for fear to get out of the routine, that blocks every step to development, creative as technical
I got FCP 0.8 beta on my G3 back in 2002, remember the same stupid show, it took years for anyone to take it serious, now its a reference, FCPX is going that way too, just faster...

and you are right, the guys on Apple should do something about the launch error, and use some energy on making some reference project to point the way, NAB might show something :woohoo:

Full Sail in Florida is an FCP X shop now.
Radical Media uses it, and they're pretty freakin' big.

Mester don’t get me wrong, I love FCPX and have never looked back to FCP7 (if I didn’t have to). IMO anyone not giving FCPX a serious try is really missing out.

However I can understand why most facilities could not use it day 1, no broadcast out was a no-go, amongst many other “missing” features and today a lot of post houses need the collaborative networking features and media management that AVID is rock-solid with.

You just said it “fear to get out of the routine”, some of it understandable but most I believe to be just close-minded.

Recently when I’ve sat down with directors and other editors they could not believe what I could do with FCPX. To me this was all common knowledge but I’ve been following these forums and keeping up with all of FCPX’s developments and been using FCPX extensively on many projects since release. But thats my point after the disastrous launch and terrible word-of-mouth FCPX got many are no longer following FCPX or at least not very closely so Apple needs to bring this info to them and make them believe they are in this for the long haul and have every intention of staying competitive with AVID, Adobe, etc.

What we’re getting now is great, fairly consistent feature updates but Apple needs to regain a strong presence through cut-throat marketing within the production industry.

The FCP 1.0 release was before my time but I’ve heard stories and I believe history is repeating itself here. I also think you can compare the FCPX release to the iPhone/ios release in the corporate world. iPhone had many cool features (and obviously revolutionized the smartphone industry) but its didn’t even have copy/paste, mms, etc, etc, which made it a non contender in a blackberry world, well look how that turned out...

cool, we are on level

First of all, I totally agree with what @MickeyG said in his previous post ( 22312 ). All the Macs in this company are updating to the latest Mac OS X version, updating software, etc. Except for the FCP7 stations that remain the same, no drivers updates, no OS updates, no hardware updates just to keep FCP7 working. And the main reason is that all our clients work with FCP7 (only one works with Avid) so most of our work is done using FCP7 as a startup to start conforming and sending the media to the different departments of the company. And as our clients use FCP7 to edit on their facilities, we use FCP7 here to edit TV commercials too, making this a no need to change the editing platform. We could move to FCPx for ourselves and when we receive FCP7 sequences from the clients use 7toX as a workaround but it adds another step created by a third party and could be broken anytime.

All that information aside, I took this last days to create a list, as @mester asked. So here it is what I have found (list under development, maybe I remember more stuff to add later).

To use FCPx in our facilities we need:

- Broadcast monitoring with AJA KONA 3 (out of beta in 10.0.6 - October 23rd, 2012)
- Export OMF to Protools (X2Pro)
- Export EDL to the Laboratory (I think EDL-X fixes this)
- Capture/Print to tape (We use AJA KONA 3, so AJA provides the software)
- TC Generator (included in FCPx)
- TC Reader for each clip (external 3rd party plugin broken since 10.0.4)
- Export sequence (project) to Assimilate Scratch and ScratchLab 6.1 or later (doesn't work, I'll have to see if EDL-X fixes this)
- Export sequence (project) subtitles (text clips) as XML to be imported in our DCP software (I'll have to test this, pretty sure it doesn't work)
- Gang Sequences/Clips (there is a workaround if I have to gang only a clip to a project)
- Enable/Disable Secondary Storylines (there is a workaround for this, an on/off switch would be much better)
- A Window/HUD or whatever showing TC of all tracks at the same time
- 5.1 audio support (10.0.6 had a bug, fixed in 10.0.7)

Those are the minimum things the software needs to do flawlessly, version after version without breaking.

But there are many other features that FCPx needs, to make tasks faster. Without them, simple editing needs, become a waste of time (and I don't want to deal with workarounds or send feedback to Apple and cross fingers to see it they are implemented in the next version in 4 months, if we are lucky). Most of those are in Richard Taylor's FCPx top request list. From that list, and to make my life easier I need:

05) Dual Monitor improvement.
12) Adjustable Secondary Storyline parameters in the Inspector. Scale, X-Y position, opacity, crop and enable/disable.
17) Show Through Edit indicators and add Join Through Edit command with
18) True ramp speed effects.
24x) Attach a clip to a timecode. Instead of connecting clips to clips, let me connect them to the TC bar at the top, so they can stay locked at that position.
29) Renaming a clip in the Event Browser, renames the clip in the Finder option.
37) Select all clips forwards or backwards in a primary or secondary storyline command.
38) Drag an Effect from the Inspector to a clip or selected clips in the Timeline or save the preset in the Event Browser.
40) Individually drag-adjustable Timeline lane heights.
47) An easy and quick way to enable/disable specific audio clips/storylines only without having to detach audio first.
48) Go to next video edit point command.
57) Bars and Tone Generator.
59) Open sync and Lock gang sync modes.
66) Option to write metadata and keywords back to my media files.
68) Batch Export of Projects, Event Browser clips, Favorites, Keyword collections etc.
75) Add used media indicator to show that the media has been used in the project.
XX) Show number of frames out of sync
XX) I don't do color very often, there's a lot of room for improvement in the colorboard.

Well, this is much it.

48) Go to next video edit point command.

The up/down arrow keys do this. Right?

Sort of... up and down arrow jump to every audio/video cut (unless there is a modifier key for just audio or just video, which I don´t know).

Video only is VERY useful when comparing the offline cut (always sent as a quicktime movie) against the conformed version of a movie (400 cuts or more) to see if everything connected properly while using the gang option.

As I said, there is a workaround in FCPx... Connect the first frame of the reference to the first frame of the conformed timeline and set the opacity of the reference to 50% to check differences or you can start clicking randomly in each clip and enable/disable the reference to see any movement.

In Avid Mediacomposer you just need 3 keystrokes and no mouse operation. Set the reference in the viewer, the conformed version in the record monitor, gang and press up to go to the next video cut, press TOGGLE VIEWER/RECORD twice to see any difference and repeat until the movie ends.

Hi Matias, and thank you for your list, which leads me to understand that someone has a different reality than my own;)

I'm not sure if it's because you get stuck in old habits that you have so many requests for improvements to FCPX, or because your work routine is very special, because I do not feel that I am missing any of them, maybe a TC generator occasionally, but otherwise not

ASSIMILATE Scratch and ScratchLab is completely unknown to me, have no idea what they are used to, but I understand that they are important elements in your daily life.

that you use a tape machine is also a thing of the past, I have not delivered anything on tape in the last three years, and if I were, I would use FCP7;)

but I respect the course, your arguments, I asked for it myself, thank you for the answer

Hi Mester!

To be fair I think some requests taken from Richard Taylor's list are old habits but I do think they improve editing workflows, and as I said those are personal favorites, but if an "old school FCP editor" as he is, is asking for them there has to be a reason.

Just to explain a little more in depth:
- TC Readers are requested by the lab before printing 35mm.
- TC Generator are requested by the ProTools guys.
- Assimilate Scratch is used basically for color grading movies and tv commercials (similar to DaVinci Resolve which does work with FCPx)
- Assimilate ScratchLab is used to create DPX to print to 35mm or to create DCPs.
- I will have to check but I think XML is way more powerful than vintage EDLs. Scratch imports FCP7 XML but not FCPX XML. So moving to EDL might be a step backwards.
- All the movies are spoken in spanish so we subtitle all of them to english to send to other countries screenings.
- All the movies are backed up in tape HDCAM SR for our records, and the clients take a quicktime movie and many times a HD CAM SR. We also send tapes to tv channels to air commercials, tapes to festivals (this is moving to DCP lately), make tape-to-tape color grading using DaVinci (the old school daVinci, not Resolve) because many times is faster than Scratch.

it is also hard for me to understand why you can not make a timecode readout anywhere in the program, it should be pretty simple, especially because it can do so via xml

I work almost never in film, but obviously knows both DPX and DCP

HDCam SR is a powerful format, and well perhaps the only serious bid for a "video" back up format, possibly until this
Sony
I saw it a few months ago at Sony, it looks promising

about to transcode, this is a strong bid for almost all formats ( you properly already know)
HamburgPro
but again, I do not know much about the film workflow, but I know that FCPX is the wildest boost in NLE since FCP 5.5, and it is a pleasure to rock, I am pleased and look forward to every time I have to work, FCPX gives one enormous creative freedom and working with an ease that can only make me happy :woohoo:

mester wrote: it is also hard for me to understand why you can not make a timecode readout anywhere in the program, it should be pretty simple, especially because it can do so via xml

about to transcode, this is a strong bid for almost all formats ( you properly already know)
HamburgPro

Sorry, but I don't understand what you are talking about here, could you be more specific?

Thanks!

sorry if its unclear :huh:

the fist part was a response to the TC generator issue

the link (Hamburg Pro), was regarding DCP delivery, its my understanding that it makes that as well (MXF)

We are getting a little of topic now, but those two instances are away of my control. The audio and lab guys ask what they need and I have to deliver that. If they need a reference movie with TC Generator burned in or TC Reader burned in, is not my business to ask why. As so is the thing with DCPs, there is a guy whose only work is to make DCPs, we have to give him DPX files so he can create DCPs with the software we already own. And he does other related stuff on his working station that is not our business and it was thought that way so the FCP stations can be free to keep on working on other stuff.

We could start doing test and find better ways to speed up workflows, but that´s the job of the engineer of the company, I tried to help him once and when you start asking and thinking possibilities, there are so many pieces that you have to move/update that makes this almost impossible. That´s the problem with big companies. I could go and tell my boss to move to DaVinci Resolve because it works great with FCPx and he will ask me what should we do with the U$S 40.000+ we spent in software licences for Scratch, for example. And then test if DaVinci works with all the hardware/instruments we are using with Scratch and if not, we have to buy new hardware that does the same as the hardware we already own but now is for another brand.

So I think is easier to move as little pieces as possible. If we can get FCPx to deliver the files all the other departments need without modifying their workflow, then I could say that FCPx is ready for our company and start doing big stuff with it.