12 Questions from a new FCPX user (formerly FCP7/PPro user)

Hello forum!

So I'm a long time FCP7 user and a month ago I did the 30 day trial of both FCPX and Premiere CS6. Due to learning curve time constraints and a few issues with FCPX, I went with PPro. It's a great step up for that program (having tried previous version). But it didn't seem to be optimized for use on Macs and I ran into many errors and oddities. Then came 10.0.6 and I saw several features back that I was previously upset weren't there. So I'm back again on ANOTHER 30 day trial and liking FCPX a LOT more now. I may stay. I may not. I've got 28 days left to decide but I have a few questions if you don't mind that keep popping up as I test out this new workflow.

Before I get to the questions, I do have one bad issue with the import window as described in this thread: discussions.apple.com/thread/4469338?start=0&tstart=0
It's frustrating. I'm not sure if its an issue with the trial or my computer, but I guess I'll just bring in my iMac to Apple and see what's up. Ugh.

Okay, to preface, I have a 2011 27" iMac i7 with all the upgrades (16gb ram, AMD 6970M card, etc) running OSX 10.6.8 and I'm working right now with ProRes 422 and Proxy material from an earlier FCP7 project just for testing. I also often work with AVCHD material.


Here's my 12 questions in no particular order:

1) When working with multicam, the angle viewer window is significantly lower resolution. I even set playback to High Quality just to see if that made a difference but it didn't. There's no way to effectively see if one clip is in focus or not because the angle viewer is so blurry/low res unless I actually select that angle and see it in the main window which is crisp and clear. Any way to fix this?

2) After you "make a new multicam clip" by combining two clips, you can right click on it and select "open in angle editor". What's the point of this window since it appears you can't do the video edits here (the live switching between angles)? Is this window just so you can see the two clips individually and maybe apply affects to the whole clip? Curious what this window is used for?

3) Is there a way to adjust a cross dissolve so it expands in only one direction? Right now if you pull on one side both sides move outward.

4) How do you add a simple audio track/song to the timeline? I know you just drag and drop or press "Q" to add the connected clip and it adds it to the top above the primary storyline but is that it? Do added audio clips like this not go below the video like in other editors? Seems this is the new way of doing things which is fine I just want to make sure I'm doing it right.

5) Does anyone else here have the trial version of 10.0.6 and if so, do you have the import issues I mentioned in the link above? The top window of that import window does NOT show any video and if I hit play it freezes FCPX and I have to force quit. If I just import without using that viewer the app seems to work fine.

6) If I have other editors that work for me on certain projects, how can they share the project with me when they are done? We both have a copy of the source footage on our computers. In the past, I would just have them send me the project file. I would open it up on my computer, relink the media, and then ignore the fact that I don't have the render files and I could see and fix up what they've done. Does FCPX have "project files" like this? How do I do this?

7) Can FCPX edit native AVCHD? It seems to be okay in my few tests but I did notice that once I brought the clips into FCPX, I watched the "codec" column in my events window one by one switch from "AVCHD 720p60" to "H.264, Linear PCM". Wasn't sure if it was converting it or what. I don't usually import with the "transcode media" or "optimize media" selected. Back in the day I used to transcode all FCP7 footage to ProRes Proxy and then at the end of the edit relink to the ProRes422 version of the same media. I'm excited to not have to go through that step. Premiere was pretty good at it but had some issues with AVCHD so I'm curious on how FCP handles AVCHD natively.

Can FCPX handle 1080p60 footage (AVCHD) natively?

9) Stabilizer. Seems to work pretty good but I don't like how I can't see how much the video has zoomed/cropped in after its applied. I can see visually the clip crop in, but I can't see in the stabilization settings the % of the zoom like you could with FCP7's smoothcam and PPro's warp stabilizer. Also, if I wanted to not have it crop in so much and ease off the stabilizer, what do I do? Looking into Stabilization further (because I use it ALL the time) I see there's a 3rd party plugin CoreMelt's "LockandLoad" option that looks pretty nice and seems very customizable. Any thoughts on all this?

10) Is there a way to customize a fade in/out so it eases in/out more? I see that if I apply a "cross dissolve" effect I can select it and bring up the ease in/out slider. But I don't see that ability using keyframes, or the ability to adjust the level of ease in/out so it does it more slowly.

11) Do I have to render before export? In Premiere Pro CS6 one of the nice things was that I almost never rendered anything. It showed that it needed render but you could still work and see everything and the export would just take a bit longer. Do I have to render everything like I did in FCP7 before I export?

12) Finally, this isn't so much a FCPX question but I figured I'm on the subject so why not. I use many cross dissolves and fades throughout a typical edit and I've always noticed that web output and even DVD/Bluray out put shows compression on the dissolve (like I'll see it get pixelated in the sky during a fade in of a sky). The rest of the video looks great. Is there a way to "optimize" or flag these areas so that they are exported in a way that cuts down on this pixelation?


That's it for now. Thank you all in advance for your help! Looking forward to spending the next couple weeks with this program and see if its the right one for me. Since I edit 6 days a week, I want to make sure I'm making the best decision for me personally. Great site BTW!

1) You can put the viewers on a second monitor which might help.
2) The angle editor allows you to make changes to a clip like color correction or apply effects which will apply to all instances of that angle.
3) No.
4) Q should add the audio below. It does for me.
5) It's been reported as a problem with the trial version.
6) You can send them the CurrentVersion.fcpproject file, but the projects and the linked events do have to match so you may need to send the CurrrentVersion.fcpevent file as well.
7) AVCHD is rewrapped to QuickTime and the audio converted to uncompressed 48k. You can create proxy files as you import or afterwards if you want. Not much point for AVCHD media as the files are so small.
Yes, FCP does 1080p60.
9) Lock and Load is excellent, but broken at the moment in 10.0.6. There are some stabilization controls in the inspector, but not what you want. You can't see a scale value. Use feedback for feature requests.
10) No.
11) No.
12) If you encode with Compressor you can set compression keyframes at the transitions which will help a little. Usually no good way except by increasing the data rate.

Thanks Tom! You've been a great help for me in both sites

My follow up to your answers are in yellow:

1) You can put the viewers on a second monitor which might help. I don't have a 2nd monitor but I just was curious if this is how it is for everyone. All other windows the picture looks crisp and clear. Only the multicam window does the video look considerably more blurry/lower res
2) The angle editor allows you to make changes to a clip like color correction or apply effects which will apply to all instances of that angle. That's what I thought. Thanks!
3) No. Bummer.
4) Q should add the audio below. It does for me. I'll have to try it again but in my first shot, I dragged and dropped a song onto the timeline and it kept connecting it to the top of the primary storyline. I'll try again.
5) It's been reported as a problem with the trial version. Thanks for troubleshooting that with me. Good to know about the trial version issue. Hope it doesn't have other issues as I evaluate whether to switch or not. Thanks though!
6) You can send them the CurrentVersion.fcpproject file, but the projects and the linked events do have to match so you may need to send the CurrrentVersion.fcpevent file as well. Where are these fcpproject and fcpevent files located?
7) AVCHD is rewrapped to QuickTime and the audio converted to uncompressed 48k. You can create proxy files as you import or afterwards if you want. Not much point for AVCHD media as the files are so small. So FCP rewraps the AVCHD footage automatically?
Yes, FCP does 1080p60. Yay!
9) Lock and Load is excellent, but broken at the moment in 10.0.6. There are some stabilization controls in the inspector, but not what you want. You can't see a scale value. Use feedback for feature requests. Good to know. Will add feature request...wait, where do I do that?
10) No. Okay.
11) No. Great.
12) If you encode with Compressor you can set compression keyframes at the transitions which will help a little. Usually no good way except by increasing the data rate. I do encode with Compressor. I'll try to figure out how to do this and see how much it helps.

Thanks again!

Before I start, these are questions that show you really need to do some training for FCP X. No NLE is learned to a solid, professional level by just punching buttons here and there. macProVideo.com and Ripple Training are the two best on the market. I strongly suggest doing one of them, at lest the basics.

Questions 4 and 11 indicate you really don't have in depth knowledge, and again I highly recommend some proper training.

1- You should be quality checking clips before you get to the multicam stage, seriously. All multiclip systems show proxies in their angle viewer.

2- For adjusting timing, filters, adding/removing angles, etc, etc, etc. Super handy for tons of things.

3- Not at the current time, but you can roll a transition very easily.

4- Audio only clips do in fact go by default below the Primary Storyline when using keyboard shortcuts as your original question asked, and you can change that to your hearts content very easily in the Timeline later. Drag-and-drop, you can place it anywhere you want, it goes where you drop it, just like legacy FCP.

5- Need your system specs and what you're trying to look at.

6- Copy the "Currentversion.fcpproject" file between computers.
www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/872-s...istance-with-dropbox

Also more info here.
www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/finalcutprox204-managing-media

7- Yes. Know that AVCHD is actually a flavor of H.264.

8- Why not?

9- I'd recommend stabilizing your shots to start with. Seriously.

10- Create any sort of transition you want in Motion.

11- No, you never did, not even in legacy FCP. No idea where you got the idea you had to.

12- 8-bit video causes banding, always has. Compression markers sometimes help, sometimes don't.

Hey there, regarding question 1, you should enter the preferences. There you can eventually try to uncheck a box proposing to use optimized media for multicam clips (I haven't tried this setting myself), plus a dropdown menu asking if you want playback quality set for better performance or higher quality. Playing around with these settings might yield better looking results on multicam playback, but it also depends of course on what your footage is, how many angles you have, how powerful your computer is and how fast your media drives are.
Regarding question number 5, I had a look at the thread and didn't see anyone proposing to change the color profile for your monitor back to the default profile. I know that in previous versions of fcpx using a custom profile could cause serious problems on playback, like black screens, no playback, or simply crashing the app. It seems it's been resolved, but it could eventually help trying this. It takes under a minute to verify. Just quit fcpx, go into system preferences>monitor and change the color profile bac to the default imac one. Then reopen fcpx and try again importing. It might not work, but you never know. Hope any of this helps.

Thanks Ben!

I'm definitely back to the basics with FCPX for sure. Admittedly, I did go through 10+ hours of tutorials (Lynda.com and others) and training before I did the trial a couple months ago but hit a few snags and was missing a few features badly so I moved on. But now I'm back and I've probably forgotten many of the basics I learned a while back. I'm always in the middle of projects so I couldn't spend more than a couple days on it before I had to decide to switch or not. But I LOVE the new added features of 10.0.6 and I'll definitely check out those tutorials you mentioned. My questions, especially 4-11 as you say, are very basic yes, but sometimes even the best tutorial doesn't answer the stupidest and most basic questions, so that's why I'm here.

My responses to your answers:

1) Good to know they are proxies. And yes, I do check to make sure the clips look okay prior to multicam stage, but these are long events so I'd rather not sit and watch the whole thing each time from each angle first. Wish there was an option to not have the angle viewer be proxies but oh well.

2) Good to know. Figured that but its good to get confirmation. Thank you!

3) Got it. Thx.

4) I'll definitely test this again. I spent about 5 hours going through stuff and quickly messing around the other day with tons of stuff and in my haste at the very end it appears I didn't properly do this since its obvious that it does go below the primary storyline. Thanks!

5) My specs are in the first post. It appears to be an issue with the trial only. See the link in the first post for details. I posted in that thread too with screenshots, etc.

6) Thank you for that info!

7) Got it.

So it does. Great. FCP7 didn't recognize 1080p60 footage in my experience and I was pretty sure FCPX has no issues with it so I was just double checking here. Thanks!

9) That's a lot of clips. I do mostly Weddings and I often have 500-600 clips. I'd imagine that would take a LONG time. Plus many clips only need a section to be stabilized (eg. the beginning and end of a shot are not going to be used as the camera get's into position but the middle part if fairly steady and just needs a little stabilization). It's great that stabilizer now only stabilizes the part of the clip thats used on the timeline rather than Smoothcam which had to apply to the entire clip. But it's good to have the option of stabilizing all clips prior to importing.

10) This is interesting. I have no experience with Motion in all these years. So forgive my lack of knowledge. But can I somehow create or modify a transition and then save it to be used in FCPX whenever I need it? That would be great. Any ideas/links that show how to do that?

11) I had a feeling after I wrote that that someone would say that. You're right. I didn't NEED to. Well for video anyway (added songs always needed a quick render). I was just making sure I didn't need to here with FCPX. Thanks!

12) I also had a feeling it might have to do with 8 bit video. Bummer. Thx!


Thanks again Ben for your time and input! Much appreciated!

Tom Wolsky wrote: 9) Lock and Load is excellent, but broken at the moment in 10.0.6.

There has been a 1.5 update issued by CoreMelt which brings 10.0.6 compatibility. You can get it here .

Mals82 wrote: Hey there, regarding question 1, you should enter the preferences. There you can eventually try to uncheck a box proposing to use optimized media for multicam clips (I haven't tried this setting myself), plus a dropdown menu asking if you want playback quality set for better performance or higher quality. Playing around with these settings might yield better looking results on multicam playback, but it also depends of course on what your footage is, how many angles you have, how powerful your computer is and how fast your media drives are.
Regarding question number 5, I had a look at the thread and didn't see anyone proposing to change the color profile for your monitor back to the default profile. I know that in previous versions of fcpx using a custom profile could cause serious problems on playback, like black screens, no playback, or simply crashing the app. It seems it's been resolved, but it could eventually help trying this. It takes under a minute to verify. Just quit fcpx, go into system preferences>monitor and change the color profile bac to the default imac one. Then reopen fcpx and try again importing. It might not work, but you never know. Hope any of this helps.

Thanks for your response!

It appears from another post that the angle viewer shows proxies of the clips. Bummer. I did switch the preferences to High Quality which did make a difference on my screen for the other windows but not for the angle viewer. I only had 2 angles and I have the latest suped up 27" iMac from 2011. As for #5, I've never changed the color profile. I went into display preferences and everything is at the default setting as far as I can tell. But it appears to be an issue with the Trial Version according to Tom's earlier post (as well as one of the people in that thread who had the same issue). Thanks again for your suggestions and feedback.

kyletron2000 wrote:

Tom Wolsky wrote: 9) Lock and Load is excellent, but broken at the moment in 10.0.6.

There has been a 1.5 update issued by CoreMelt which brings 10.0.6 compatibility. You can get it here .

Awesome! Thanks Tom!...again.

"FCP7 didn't recognize 1080p60 footage"

I edited DVCPRO-HD 1080p60 footage daily in v.7. Maybe it wasn't there for AVCHD, but from what I remember, it was.

As for music needing rendering in 7, only unsupported formats such as mp3 needed that render, and files who's sample rate was different than the Sequence settings.

You have all of your Events and Projects on a secondary drive, not the OS drive, correct? Just like in 7, don't put that stuff on the OS drive.

Happy Editing!

BenB wrote: "FCP7 didn't recognize 1080p60 footage"

I edited DVCPRO-HD 1080p60 footage daily in v.7. Maybe it wasn't there for AVCHD, but from what I remember, it was.

As for music needing rendering in 7, only unsupported formats such as mp3 needed that render, and files who's sample rate was different than the Sequence settings.

You have all of your Events and Projects on a secondary drive, not the OS drive, correct? Just like in 7, don't put that stuff on the OS drive.

Happy Editing!

Well, I haven't worked with much 1080p60, but in my one experience working with AVCHD material the old log and transfer window didn't show the clips. And I usually bring in mp3 files converted from iTunes downloads so that's why I've always had to render. Is there a better way?

Finally, I'm glad you brought up the storage. I know that it makes the Events and Projects folder on the OS drive in the Movies folder right? But then when I create a new event or project I can store them on an external drive which will make new Events or Projects folders corresponding to that project. So the one in the movies folder will be left unused, right? Just want to make sure I'm doing that right.

Thanks Ben...

Inside FCP X move the ones in the Movies folder to the external drive. FCP X launches, it looks at all hard drives for a "Final Cut Events" folder and a "Final Cut Projects" folder. Then it looks for valid event and project databases and content inside them.

These folders sit on the root level of each drive. The OS drive being the exception, as different folks can log in with different names and see different desktops. Thus on the OS drive it puts them in the user's Movies folder.

You can manually drag them from drive to drive, or have FCP X move them for you. Either way works. BUT, if you drag-and-drop in the Finder, be sure to delete the original once you've made a copy.

Each database (event and project) is a unique micro-database. Each has a unique ID number. When you manually duplicate them in the Finder, FCP can see two or more with the same ID and only accept the first one it finds. The rest are ignored. If you duplicate them inside of FCP X itself, FCP assigns the new copies unique ID numbers so they don't clash.

That's all there is to it.

As for iTunes and FCP 7, I have it convert my stuff to AIFF, not MP3. As a musician and composer I'm simply picky about the dynamic range and fidelity of my music files. And in FCP you want AIFF anyway, not MP3.

Now, that said, you already have a mass of MP3 files in iTunes already. Here's what I'd do. Get the free Audacity audio app. In iTunes right-click a song, "Show In Finder". Right-click that and choose "Open With..." and then select Audacity. Export as an AIFF. Import that into FCP 7.

FCP X doesn't have this issue, so that's that.

FCP 7 needed a Log & Transfer plugin from Sony or whoever to ingest AVCHD. So does FCP X.

Wait until the new Sony proprietary codec "XAVC" comes out. Yay! New proprietary codecs! Just what we all MUST have is MORE and MORE proprietary codecs! Yay! :sick:

Why not just right click in iTunes and make an AIFF there?

Then you have two copies in iTunes of the same song, and nothing in iTunes tells you "easily" which is which copy. That's what I did years ago before I knew I could set iTunes to make everything ACC or Aiff right off the bat.

But in FCP X, it is a non-issue as MP3 is now supported.

Thank you guys. Just a few more post-tutorial newbie questions.

First off, the file database thing makes sense now that I watched a couple videos on it and your post makes it all come together. I'm sitting here with several projects to do and I have FCP7, FCPX and Premiere CS6. It's hard not to just say screw it and go back to FCP7 cuz I'm fastest there, but like I did with PPro for a month, I'm gonna jump with 2 feet into FCPX and see what happens.

My remaining questions:

1) Earlier in this thread Ben said that I could "create any kind of transition in Motion". So does that mean I can somehow create or modify a transition and then save it to be easily accessed or used in FCPX whenever I need it (without reopening motion)? That would be awesome if that's possible. Any ideas/links that show how to do that?

1b) Also, is there a fade out/fade in transition already? I know that I can hit ctrl + V and then drag the opacity keyframe over but just curious if I'm missing something.

1c) Can I create a custom effects folder where I could put my favorite effects/transitions, etc?

2) I've read several back and forth threads about Compressor vs. Just doing the "File>Share" method but just so I'm clear, is one faster than the other (I think I read the share way was) and is one better quality than the other? Obviously I'm comfortable with Compressor but I just want to know whats easiest/best. What I normally need is DVD files, Bluray files, a Web file (for Vimeo) and a master Archive file. I use DVD Studio Pro template for my DVD, and an Encore template for my Bluray. Again, I'm used to Compressor, just wondering if I should stick with that route for export or is there advantages in using the Share option. I would say maximum quality is my ultimate goal even if it takes a bit longer.

3) For many projects that I hire other editors to do for me, when I get the project back I want to quickly look over which (of about 500 clips) were NOT used. I check those just to make sure nothing in there was not used that should have been. Now I know FCPX has a great Timeline index for quickly seeing and searching for clips that WERE used, but I'm looking for a quick way to see if they are not. In PPro, icons are marked with a little icon showing if the audio or video or both have been used in the timeline, and in list view there's a metadata display column that you can add showing at a glance which clips have been used and which haven't. Is there a way to show this in FCPX? I have found a work around sort of which will work, see THIS link...but I'm just curious if this is the best option.

4) If I ever wanted to make feature requests, whats the link to do so? There's a few things I'd love to see back like "join thru edit" etc. and I'd love to know where to put in my vote.


I think that's all for now. Again thank you Tom, Ben and everyone else who have been a great help. I know many of my questions are newbie-type and I have learned a lot from tutorials and videos and google searches but sometimes the simplest questions remain unanswered in my head. And right now, admittedly, my head is swimming a little with tips/tricks/shortcuts for 3 different programs having just learned Premiere and now FCPX. So thank you for your help!

1) Yes. You can right-click on a transition, title, generator, or effect and open in Motion and modify it. It will appear in FCP effects browsers.
1b) It's called Fade to Color. The default color is black.
1c) If you make effects in Motion you can create custom categories.
2) Share can be faster, but it's limited to specific formats and sizes. The DVD, Blu-ray, and web selections are pretty limited and not customizable.

4) Use feedback in the FCP menu.

Thanks Tom!

Okay I have another question...

I'm starting my first full project using the trial even with the "broken" import window for Trial users. I am importing AVCHD footage shot on Panasonic cam. I selected the 2 main folders where each of my two cards were copied to and clicked import. There is about 650 clips (3 hours of footage). The import took about 3 or 4 minutes to finish processing, etc. Is something wrong?

That's not my main question though. This is:

I have all my IMPORT settings unchecked and my playback settings as "play original or optimized media" and playback set to high quality instead of performance because I did notice a slight bump in quality/clarity which is meaningful to me when deciding which clips to use, etc.

If I look under "Codec" in the EVENT BROWSER it shows as "AVCHD 720p60" and one by one they are switching to "H.264 Linear PCM". Earlier in this thread I learned that what FCPX is doing is "rewrapping the AVCHD footage as quicktime". This is a fairly slow process here. Granted, it says its a background task but its slowing the program down a bit too as I watch each one by one change. I can't really scrub much and my memory shows its gone from 10gb free before I started and its down to 1.82gb right now and I haven't even made an edit. The longer clips take much longer of course. While this is going I figured I'd ask a few questions here...If I go to FINDER, I see that in my EVENTS FOLDER in the "Original Media" folder it is one by one adding each clip (I guess re-wrapped) as .mov files to this folder. The file name is the same as the clip in the event browser except here in the Original Media folder it has a "...(id).mov" at the end. My question is why does FCPX have to do this when it supposedly can edit the NATIVE files? I didn't ask for FCPX to optimize or transcode anything in Preferences and I deselected the part where it asks if I want to copy to the events folder so why is it doing it anyway??? Granted the files aren't THAT big compared to if I optimized it (eg. a clip that is 13 minutes is about 2.1 GB in size in this new .mov format in this Original Media folder) If this does it automatically and there's nothing I can do about it then fine. I'll just know that for each of my projects I'll have to plan for a bit more room for just the footage and then hit import and give FCPX a good 30 minutes to do its thing for this size project and convert. (I'm guessing 30 minutes as its already been about 15 and its more than halfway done). So what exactly is the deal here? Please explain for me with as much detail as possible as I'm trying to learn what FCPX is doing and why for all steps.

Thank you all again for your help!

EDIT: It's done "importing" (or rewrapping) the footage. It took about 30 minutes. The resulting "Original Media" folder is the same size (26 GB) as the actual original media files which makes sense. But I'm still surprised it made a copy since I left the "copy to events folder" UNCHECKED. Also, according to my Activity monitor, I now have only 66 MB (yes, MB) of free memory and over 11 GB "inactive". Is this normal?

Hey there, this problem has been already discussed in this thread: fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/1538...r-footage-and-10-0-6
Take a look at it. I had the same issues as you and also found fcpx's behavior confusing.
Basically what seems to be happening is fcpx is considering your folders as camera structures that need to be preserved, so it forces a copy of the material in order to create a backup and leave the originals untouched. It does this REGARDLESS of your import options. We have discussed this in detail in the other thread. You should know that if you take your files into fcpx by just dragging and dropping them directly, it bypasses the card structure and considers the files as regular files, at which point your import preferences DO apply, so you can actually choose if you want your media copied or not into the events folder. This also happens if you change the card folders' structure and use the import window. If it doesn't recognize a card structure it will treat the files as regular ones. At least this was the case for me with 7d footage, and another guest had the same issues. From what you're saying this will apply to you too. Hope any of this helps, cheers.