Workflow for Transcoding Media Outside FCPX

Yeah we don't typically rely on the internal hard drives for projects. On our main editing systems we use eSATA two-drive RAID1 arrays that get dedicated to a client (they paid for the drives after all). I simply referred to working off the internal hard drive because by default that's where FCPX wants to put files at first. But no, we don't stick with that arrangement.

I'm in the market for a new workstation but I'm holding out for Thunderbolt.

Oh by the way, if anyone is interested in a really REALLY boring read, I've uploaded the Flying Radish (that's my company) "Video Workflow" document to my server. It's a whole lotta tedious stuff that someone could probably paraphrase in about 1/10 the words, but hey I'm no author.

Cheers.

www.flyingradish.com/extranet/alec/video_workflow.pdf

Why do you guys keep creating proxy media for DSLR footage, that's so unnecessary.

Speed.

I can't play back H264 clips in FCPX without dropping TONS of frames. It probably plays back at a stuttery 15fps if I'm lucky. Totally unusable for editing, regardless.

As soon as I transcode the footage into ProRes it plays back fine. With ProRes 422 it plays back but I can only get a few layered video clips before it starts to drop frames again. However with ProRes Proxy I haven't had a single playback problem on my notebook even with lots of layered video and audio.

This is pretty much in line with everything I've heard about H264 being incredibly processor intensive and not an editing format.

Oh and the specs on my notebook are as follows:
MacBook Pro, 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 6G ram, 500Gb 7200rpm drive


EDIT: It should be pointed out that the new MacBook Airs, at least the top range model, has a faster CPU than just last year's 2.8Ghz I7 MacBook Pro in most benchmarks. So while it might seem a bit bizarre to some to see the Airs work so well, by comparison to the older generation unibody MBPs it's probably 2-3x faster on the CPU side. Makes a good case for upgrading my aging MBP, believe me.

tpayton wrote: This is actually very cool, because you can actually remove the original media clips from the FCP event (at the finder level) and you can still edit everything because it will pull the proxy media because of the IDs. You can then kinda invent your own offline workflow there by removing the original files, and then copying the event to an external drive for remote editing. After remote editing bring back the event and put the original files back to the even (you'll want to merge the folder incase you added any more original media files during your remote editing).

Great advice! I wasn't sure what you meant at first but your comments got me thinking so I tested a few things out. I ended up hacking together a rather simple offline workflow based on those comments above. The only thing I couldn't figure out is how to get X to duplicate the events but only copy the proxy media. So there's a little Finder-based hacking in my workflow. For those who care, here's what I'm doing:

1. From my main editing computer, open my project
2. Plug in portable notebook harddrive, this will hold the project and proxy clips
3. In the Project Library, hold down option + drag the project onto the notebook external to duplicate it
4. Select "Duplicate Project and Referenced Events"
5. Close FCPX, open Finder, and navigate to the Original Media folder on the external drive
6. Delete the "Original Media" folder (since we're just going to edit with proxy)
7. Take your project with you on the road, edit with proxy on your notebook
8. When back at workstation copy the project file from the external drive back on top of the original
9. Use the Fix Referenced Events button in the Project Inspector to hook that project up to the original media

That make sense? The only rub I can see is if the Original Media is too big for your notebook external drive, in which case I guess (because I can't find any way to tell FCPX to not copy the original media) you'd have to briefly rename your Original Media folder before copying the project onto the external notebook drive.

This doesn't seem like a hard task for me, but someone tell me if there's an easier way because it does seem somewhat hackish.

"(because I can't find any way to tell FCPX to not copy the original media)"

If you un-check "Optimize Media" and "proxy", it will not copy anything to the Event folder. It will create "link" files (alias files) to the originals. These icons have a tiny curly arrow in the bottom left of their icon in the Finder.

I'm really baffled that you guys are making something very simple to freakin' complicated. DSLR needs no proxy media period. You need to edit everything for a "serious" project on a secondary drive, in which you make all your events and projects on that drive to start with.

You can use H.264 on a MBP with no problems, even with H.264 native, even easier with Optimized media.

I really don't get what this whole complicated, convoluted workflow is supposed to accomplish. You guys have lost me. And I work with broadcast stations, tons of professional post houses, I've worked on feature length indies using FCP X shot on DSLRs, no one ever had so many problems, which I think is because you guys are not planning out a really clear workflow to start with.

15fpx is too slow to do simple edits? Really? You Mac Pro rarely gets full frame rate on "playback" using any NLE, period. I use a two year old MPB with FW800 and have no problems with editing at all.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm not sure where I'm losing you, Ben. But with H264, straight from my Nikon @19mbps data rate, if I try to play back that clip either before or after I drop it onto the timeline, it drops frames. If I have "tell me when it drops frames" enabled I get about 3 seconds into the clip and then it dies. If I disable "tell me when it drops frames" then it plays back at far less than the 24fps it was shot at. Mind you, this is in the little viewer window, NOT full screen.

So tell me, what am I doing wrong? Because seriously if there's a setting I don't know about that'll make H264 clips playback at a usable rate, I'm gonna be all for it.

If you un-check "Optimize Media" and "proxy", it will not copy anything to the Event folder. It will create "link" files (alias files) to the originals. These icons have a tiny curly arrow in the bottom left of their icon in the Finder.

You misunderstood my scenario. I'm working with proxy media that i created from linked (aka aliased) clips in my project. However, when I copy that project to another drive and check the "Duplicate Project and Referenced Events" it goes and copies the clips themselves (not just the alias) into a new event on the new drive. Is that a bug? Is it supposed to leave the aliased clips as aliased even if you copy the project and event to a new drive?

@zeroscenecred You can copy the Events folder and the Project folder at the finder level and leave the referenced clips on your main drive, and just work off the Proxy media on the new machine, when your done you can move the project and the event back through finder and reconnect to the referenced media.

Nikon does have to be transcoded by a third party first, always has to, they've been to lazy to make a simple FCP plugin, the only camera company who hasn't. Their H.264 has proprietary quirks that make it not comparable, not that you specify Nikon. Canon and Panasonic H.264 have no problems at all.

"Duplicate Project and Referenced Events" Um, hello, "DUPLICATE" does just that, it DUPLICATES the project and associated Events to the new drive. What about "Duplicate" is a bug?

Nikon does have to be transcoded by a third party first, always has to, they've been to lazy to make a simple FCP plugin, the only camera company who hasn't. Their H.264 has proprietary quirks that make it not comparable, not that you specify Nikon. Canon and Panasonic H.264 have no problems at all.

Can anyone provide a simple 10 second clip right out of a Canon to confirm this? I'll throw it into my FCPX and see if it plays back without a hitch per BenB's claim.

Ben -

You can use H.264 on a MBP with no problems, even with H.264 native, even easier with Optimized media.

I think we may have some older Macs that you do. I have a 2007 MacBook Pro, so it is 4 years old and it can playback a Canon 7D generated h264, but barely. Drops frames alot, and makes the machine very unresponsive. Then when you add edits it gets quite bogged down. Same goes with HDV on that MacBook Pro. (For what it is worth, HDV on the same MacBook Pro with FCP 7 had excellent performance.)

So Creating Optimized or Proxies for this MacBook Pro improves things greatly.

It seems like that is the intent as stated in the Help Docs for FCP X, in fact they specifically mention an offline workflow taking less disk space for editing on a "portable computer".

Create proxy media: This option creates video and still-image proxy files. Video is transcoded to the Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) codec format, which provides high-quality files useful for offline editing at the original frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio. Final Cut Pro creates medium-quality (one-quarter resolution) proxy versions that increase editing performance. Video proxy files take up considerably less disk space, which often means you can work on a portable computer instead of a desktop computer that has significantly more memory and processing power. Still images are transcoded to either JPEG (if the original file doesn’t have alpha channel information) or PNG files (if the file has alpha channel information). Still-image proxy files facilitate faster processing and rendering when the original image is very large.

What is actually odd is that Apple didn't fully execute this offline editing workflow, which they speak of here. What still needs to be done is letting you duplicate a project to an external drive as "Proxy Only" so that you could easily take a smaller version on the road. Apparently this was just left out. The workaround that I have done is duplicate an event/project on my MacPro (where I have plenty of RAID storage) and then on the duplicated event/project I delete just the video files in the Original Media folder (FCP X doesn't create proxies of everything, just video and stills, not audio) then I move the project/event to an external drive and edit the offline.

I hope this make sense.

tpayton wrote: What is actually odd is that Apple didn't fully execute this offline editing workflow, which they speak of here. What still needs to be done is letting you duplicate a project to an external drive as "Proxy Only" so that you could easily take a smaller version on the road. Apparently this was just left out. The workaround that I have done is duplicate an event/project on my MacPro (where I have plenty of RAID storage) and then on the duplicated event/project I delete just the video files in the Original Media folder (FCP X doesn't create proxies of everything, just video and stills, not audio) then I move the project/event to an external drive and edit the offline.

That's the exact process I was describing with a numbered list above, but you put it a bit more succinctly. The part where I asked if it was a bug was me trying to find out if there was a way to duplicate it with Proxy Only, like you suggested. Tpayton gets what I'm talking about.

More in line with the topic as originally intended, I did some testing and found out that basically any files in Original Media, High Quality Media, or Proxy Media, are totally off limits to modifications by apps outside of FCPX once you have put them into your Events AND as tpayton mentioned earlier, you can't drop a file with the same name onto an Event-managed clip and have FCPX read it properly. This is terribly disappointing because it trashes any plans for roundtripping the files through other apps and basically forces whatever you do your edits in to either A) work off the new XML export which is materializing albeit slowly, or rely on your exporting your media then (I guess) reimporting it and doing a manual replace clip for each and every cut.

I really REALLY like the new style of managing things through the Events, but I can see no particularly good reason for Apple to have made the dependancies between entries in the Events database dependent on the files they point to never changing. Totally retarded.

zeroscenecred wrote: I really REALLY like the new style of managing things through the Events, but I can see no particularly good reason for Apple to have made the dependancies between entries in the Events database dependent on the files they point to never changing. Totally retarded.

Retarded is putting it lightly.

I can't think of a single project that I haven't had to roundtrip certain files to After Effects for a bit of touching up/compositing/etc.

I can't even OPEN files up in After Effects without corrupting their "links" in FCPX. It's a joke. Apple seem to think that I should do EVERYTHING within FCPX.

Until Apple fix this god awful problem and allow us to modify and relink media, I can't use FCPX for anything but the simplest of projects.

I've sent them feedback on this issue and I suggest others do the same if we're to have any hope of it being addressed.

Otherwise, it's off to Premiere Pro for me.

Or you could just use Motion instead of AE.

That sort of attitude is why many editors are deserting FCP for other alternatives.

I don't know any professionals that use Motion for serious effects work. It's not even remotely close to AE.

But that's beside the point - as professionals we need to have the ability to roundtrip our media to a range of different programs that suit our different needs. We need that flexibility.

Being limited to just FCPX and Motion is not an option for many (if not most) serious editors (the ones that go beyond just cutting and slapping a few titles on here and there).

If Apple continue to stick their head in the sand over this, then I'm afraid it will be a dealbreaker for me.

"I don't know any professionals that use Motion for serious effects work. It's not even remotely close to AE."

Um, I know lots of professionals using it, and it will in fact do anything AE will do. I know fellow trainers cert'd by both Apple and Adobe, teach both Motion and AE, and use Motion in their own professional production work.

As of now, I can take my FCP X project to Color, Resolve is supporting FCPXML now, there's lots of third parties who are supporting FCP X.

Adobe will have an update shortly to support FCPXML, or they lose a larger segment of the market than they have now (18%).

So again, why not just use Motion?

Because despite what you say, it's an inferior product. It doesn't have anywhere near the level of functionality, plugin availability or interoperability of AE. It's not even close, so don't tell me that it is.

But, horses for courses... you like it, I think it's a buggy waste of space.

My point is that we shouldn't be railroaded (or limited) into using certain programs. Even if I thought Motion was a better program, why should I have to take time to learn it? Why should I have to ditch AE which I paid good money for and know inside out?

At the end of the day, professionals in the video field need to use a variety of programs to get the job done. Sometimes it's Motion. Sometimes it's After Effects. Sometimes it's Photoshop. Whatever. The point is, not everything can be done in FCPX or Motion. Anyone who thinks it can, doesn't do anything very advanced (which is fine, but it's not applicable to all). We need to be able to roundtrip and relink files. I don't want to have to go through a damn XML export/import just to fix one clip out of hundreds. I don't want to have to manually replace clips everytime there's a change to a file. It needs to be fixed and I'm sure I'm not alone on this.

(And don't get me wrong - I see huge potential with FCPX. I just think they need to rethink a few fundamental workflow issues)

Hey thanks! I was trying to be a good-user and not hack around in Finder but you're right about just copying the folders and then go. Worked pretty well in my brief test.

FCP X does in fact integrate with Avid, PPro, AE, etc. And the Automatic Duck utilities that do it are FREE (and yes, support FCP X now, too).
www.automaticduck.com/

I can do anything in Motion you can in AE, faster, easier. Sorry you feel so harshly about Motion, but the fact it, it's just as powerful. I've made the challenge for a long time, and yet have anyone meet it; give me an AE project that can not be done in Motion. Have a nice day.