How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Compound Clips

Well I've been pretty vocal in my dislike for the new way that FCP X handles Compound Clips.
Enough so that I sent Apple feedback about my issues with it.

Turns out I was totally wrong. Apple emailed me back with the answer to what I was missing.

So. When you duplicate a project that you want to be independent from it's previous version, select "Duplicate Project + Used Clips" seems weird I know. BUT

Below you will notice to check boxes. "All used clips" and "Multicam and compound clips only"



That's the secret. Using the second option will duplicate your Project and make it completely independent from previous versions.

THANKS APPLE!!!

Yep, not many folks know those options are there. They weren't there in 10.0.1, I'm not sure when they appeared, but yes, very handy for folks to know.

Thanks for sharing that

News for me

It certainly isn't obvious and normally when you're duplicating a sequence just to make a new version you wouldn't dream of duplicating clips. So this is a little unintuitive but I'm certainly glad it's there.

What I'm really pleased about is how quickly Apple responded to my feedback.

I have great confidence that Apple can and will solve this problem. The workaround for now will become something unique and great later on. My only concern is that it takes so goddamn long for Apple to actually do it. Like plugin support, this is not just annoying, it's essential and should be fixed and improved in days/weeks rather than months/years.

Thanks to that Magic Feather Inc. tutorial I saw on this forum last week, I've actually stopped creating projects at all now . So far, I have yet to find an argument against this new process. I'm curious to read the feedback.

This is great news. How did I miss that?

Programming takes time, it is not a fast process. Debugging programs is a very painstaking and long process, also. I'd not complain how long Apple is taking, that is not reality. I'd praise how fast they come out with these updates and bug fixes, as the rate truly is impressive for a software development company. No one else is creating new features and fixing bugs nearly as fast as Apple. That is reality.

This has been a really interesting discussion for months now. While I can see how separated projects may be beneficial to some workflows (multiple editors working from a common pool of footage on entirely different videos for the same client)- Projects as they exists aren't as easy to manage as CCs in the Event Browser.

Events allow for very fluid organization of information and assets. While the Project structure is currently very static and analogue in it's thinking.

Apple might be able to change how multiple users access Events in a way that makes a separate Project structure unnecessary, OR there may be future functionality to Projects that make them MORE than what can be accomplished with compound clips. Perhaps "versioning" of a project file so that you can have different gfx/audio elements for different delivery scenarios or languages, but all in one Project sequence.

FCPX is still defining itself, and I think the team are still making basic choices about core ideas, or they're still in the middle of implementing them. It's pretty interesting.

Versioning is an interesting idea. A bit like it works in iWork with its pseudo Time Machine?

Disproportionate Pictures wrote: This has been a really interesting discussion for months now. While I can see how separated projects may be beneficial to some workflows (multiple editors working from a common pool of footage on entirely different videos for the same client)- Projects as they exists aren't as easy to manage as CCs in the Event Browser.

This. If you're a one man band or everyone works on different jobs, no reason not to use CC's at this point. But... In a (future) collaborative environment, The Event functions as intended, all the common master elements go there. Perhaps multiple seats can open it read only, and one user updates it. You absolutely don't want multiple editors individual projects in that event. I'd be surprised if this isn't the reason for the separate spaces...

Seanus wrote: Versioning is an interesting idea. A bit like it works in iWork with its pseudo Time Machine?

Backwards versioning would certainly be one part of it. The other versioning for different languages. Once you're done English, you click a button to create a new "version" of the video, with perhaps French graphics, and revised audio for ducked dialogue tracks and so on. But it's not a duplicate sequence, the same sequence with alternate iterations in the same file. In this way perhaps if there were revisions to the cut made AFTER you'd done Both the English and French versions, then changes to the cut would be universal across all versions of the video.

Like a lot of FCPXs future development, I think this will depend heavily on the further development of Roles.

I have a massive article on Roles I've been working on for a while now, thinking about all the ways they can be used to solve many of FCPXs theoretical limitations. Need to try and push it out the door before FCPX updates again and it's all moot!