Film Style

FCP experts

I need some help in suggestions on how to make a video smilar in coloring to this on

on FCPX. Any filters, tips, etc... would be most welcome

and I also am learning to do slow motion effects more professional in FCPX similar to this



I am assuming it really depends on the type of camera and fps in which you film on?

Lastly, anyone know how to get the best quality of footage shot on a 7D, especially when Importing, I have tried different streams, but upon to anything else.

Thanks

Short of hiring someone to color grade for you, your best bet is to learn how to do this.
There certainly are scores of looks filters for FCPX but short of seeing all their variations, it may be difficult/time consuming to find one that closely matched.

Your options are hunt through the many available plugins or learn. After learning FCPX color board, the other tools worth looking at are DaVinici Resolve (the light version is free) or Magic Bullet looks. Nattress has some very interesting plugins in the NoiseIndustries FXFactory environment.

FCP.co did an interesting introduction of a very inexpensive app to learn the basics of "color timing" www.fcp.co/hardware-and-software/pro/102...-app-from-crumplepop

Key to learning this is developing the "eye" to evaluate what you're looking at. That's what the above app can help you with. Another thing you might do is download the YouTube video and put it into FCPX and look at the RGB Parade for clues.

As to slowmotion the best way is with a high speed (high frame rate) camera. The Phantom is one series but they're very expensive. The Sony FX700 is a good lower cost solution.

If you don't have the frames, software will have to estimate the motion and invent frames. FCPX has an Optical Flow feature. There's also the plugin Twixter. The issue with Optical Flow is that the results can vary depending on how easy it is for the software to invent the frames needed.

The Color Correction Handbook by Alexis Van Hurkman.

Or for about the same amount of money go and buy something like PROFILM from Pixel Film Studio.
Save the brain cells for something else.

- Puts on flame retardant suit. -

Here's an overview of Twixtor for slomo, still you should try to film it in at least 60FPS.

www.larryjordan.biz/product-review-twixtor/

As to the first video, there seem to be two main colour palettes in use and a decent dose of vignette use with some diffusion and blur. Everything do-able in fcpx.
A really good intro to speed work is on the crumplepop blog
www.crumplepop.com/blog/?p=85

Thanks Lee. The slowmotion on those videos is really impressive, but the Crumplepop article says they were done in Apple Motion using OpticalFlow, but on the Vimeo pages with the video it says they were slowed in After Effects.

Personally I don't find Adobe products as user friendly as Apple's, & would much prefer to master Motion & hope it develops into a real contender against AE, but maybe Crumplepop should clarify?

EDIT >>>

Oops, sorry, it appeared they were talking about the links at the top of the page, which were done in AE. But further down I see the stuff done in Motion...

Now I can't delete this post & I look rather silly. Hehe... blushing now.

Well, by all means enjoy the slowmo, especially the Motion created stuff at the bottom of the page.

I'm also hoping someone here will explain more about Cinema Tools. Specifically, the Crumplepop tutorial says we need Cinema Tools to complete the process. Searches show me that Cinema Tools was a part of Final Cut Studio, not FCPX. Some people are having difficulties with Cinema Tools crashing on Lion or above. The Apple site has what appears to be the latest version of Cinema Tools as 4.5.1 but this was released in 2010. Does this thing work as a standalone piece of software, since it predates FCPX by a couple of years? Is 4.5.1 going to produce something compatible with FCPX 10.0.7? Any tips on the process? Thank you

The basic function of Cinema Tools is built in to FCP X. It is the "Conform" function of the retime menu.

Basically it was a database app that could retime EDL's from 24fps to 30fps and back. Generate EDLs, XMLs, etc. It was built to be the database tool that went between 35mm & 16mm celluloid film and digital editing in FCP, since your digital video edits were only "decisions" that had to be passed back to a negative cutter. Apple has stated they've dropped this type of workflow and concentrate only on pure digital workflows. I.E. shooting a feature film with Arri, Red, etc. But then, indies are shooting features with DSLRs now. So most of what Cinema Tools did is sort of obsolete, mostly.

I would love to see, and everyone should be filling out the feedback page, for the "duplicate list" function. It would detect and show you duplicated media in a Sequence. Not unique clips taken from the same Master clip, but clips from that Master clip that shared the same timecode. Literally duplicated footage.

From the user manual:
What Cinema Tools Does
Cinema Tools tracks all of the elements that go into the making of the final film. It knows the relationship between the original camera negative, the transferred videotapes, and the captured video clips on the editing computer. It works with Final Cut Pro to store information about how the video clips are being used and generates the cut list required to transform the original camera negative into the final edited movie.

Cinema Tools also checks for problems that can arise while using Final Cut Pro, the most common one being duplicate uses of source material: using a shot (or a portion of it) more than once. Besides creating duplicate lists, you can use Cinema Tools to generate other lists, such as one dealing with opticals—the placement of transitions, motion effects (video at other than normal speed), and titles.

Cinema Tools can also work with the production audio, tracking the relationship between the audio used by Final Cut Pro and the original production audio sources. It is possible to use the edited audio from Final Cut Pro when creating an Edit Decision List (EDL) and process (or finish) the audio at a specialized audio post-production facility.

It’s important to understand that you use Final Cut Pro only to make the edit decisions—the final edited video output is not typically used, since the video it is edited from generally is compressed and includes burned-in timecode (window burn) and film information. It is the edit-based cut list that you can generate with Cinema Tools that is the goal.

Thanks for all the information, Ben, I really appreciate you taking the time. So, it sounds like I don't need Cinema Tools anymore, if I have FCPX 10.0.7, & that the retiming & especially the Conform function will make the fps .. well, conform. Sorry, for not being the most technically proficient in all these areas yet.

It's just that while reading that Crumplepop tutorial it sounded like I needed Cinema Tools to get the nice slowmo everyone likes. Especially since they also said they were using FCPX. But if you say it's built in, I trust you.

Maybe the Crumplepop guys were using one of the earlier versions of FCPX?

Conform in FCP X has been there since day one.

The tutorial/blog post you site is using FCP 7 and Motion 4, when you did benefit from Cinema Tools, and Optical Flow was only used in Motion, not FCP.

The Conform command in FCP X is doing exactly what Cinema Tools would do for legacy FCP versions, and we have Optical Flow inside FCP X now, also. Out of date tutorial, needs to be done for FCP X.

Perfect! Got it. Now I understand fully. Thanks Ben.

Got confused since I wrongly assumed tutorials posted in the FCPX section were referring to FCPX, or current version of Motion.

Hopefully I'm finally up to speed now.... just as long as there aren't any sudden pop quizzes.

TrixTrax9000 wrote: just as long as there aren't any sudden pop quizzes.

Uh oh... they didn't tell you about that? Um, well...

My bad, i was only posting it up to show the workflow from the shoot to the output as it gives a great overview. But yes to everything bb says about conform and optical flow being built in.

That blog is an FCP 6/7 blog. But you can do the same thing in Motion 5 and FCP X. You just don't need the Conform tool in Cinema Tools, as you have that tool (rewritten new code) in X. I'd offer this as a supplement to transitioning the FCP 7 workflow to FCP X.
www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/slow-m...nforming-frame-rates

One of my user group members shoots BMX events and other stuff and swears by the FCP X retiming. He shoots 60fps, brings that into a 24fps timeline, uses the Conform tool, then slows it down from there with the retiming tool. I'm amazed at what he can achieve, very smooth, very nice.