FCPX 10.1.2 PRE-RELEASE DISCUSSION

"But there don't seem to be any takers for the job of providing an expanded CC toolset (a good one)."

There are LOTS of color grading third party plugin for FCPX. Probably more than any other category of addon. For example:
Nattress Levels
LUT Utility
FilmConvert Pro
CoreMelt Pigment
PixelConduit
Hawaki Color
mLooks
and more...

I personally consider most of them to be excellent. I only use two or three, depending on the camera we shoot with. But those take care of 99% of my work.

Ben, thank you for your suggestions. I actually think that most Color Corrector plugins for FCPX aren't really an improvement to the existing tools (which I think are quite good). So I stand by my statement. In that list there are two that actually do some version of what I specified. The rest are either 3 way CC tools, Looks generators, or the LUT Utility. I think Nattress is pretty poor. The location of the nodes on a curve are crucial to getting good results. Nattress has pre-selected points. Coremelt is the one that I use sometimes and get good results. You don't get to put points, but you can get the shape of the curve to do some interesting things sometimes. It is not exactly intuitive to use, though and really is very limited. The LUT Utility seems like an option, but I would really prefer to be able to access the controls for the look I create within the application. The tool that does the most for me is Magic Bullet Looks, but even with that, the curves have pre selected points.

I don't think that I'm saying anything controversial here. I could understand if this was the CC version of saying I wish FCPX had tracks or something. It's not like that. FCPX just doesn't provide a suitable replacement for curves in the CC. PP and Avid have this tool. Apple Color had it. Resolve has it. Why would you not want it?

And I get amazing results with those plugins. So, it is all subjective.

I think they should activate "roll edit" function between connected clips without having to create a secondary storyline, similar to the audio only roll edit that we have now in FCPX 10.1 in primary storyline.

It would be good to have HUD display simiar to Motion

I think they should activate "roll edit" function between connected clips without having to create a secondary storyline, similar to the audio only roll edit that we have now in FCPX 10.1 in primary storyline.

It would be good to have HUD display similar to Motion

I think the problem with the current setup is that all 3rd party CC plugins live "below" the stack of X's built in colour tools- and that can be limiting in some circumstances.

Unless Apple can find some new way for plugins to interact, you can't do curve adjustments to either a shape or colour mask. They'd need to be part of the built in correctors to do that.

Everyone has a list of functionality they'd like to see. For built in CC work, mine is pretty short.

• keyframeable parameters
• optional colour wheels instead of colour board
• curves
• simple shape mask tracking

I think that last one is unlikely, since you can already keyframe shape-mask positions. Tracking would be nice, but might be getting too far into specialized territory.

What Disproportionate Pictures said +1. I would love tracking in general in X, but it seems highly unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Although certain BCC effects have built in trackers that work very well. I've gotten used to the color board, so three-way controls aren't really a priority for me, but options are always good. I almost forgot about keyframeable parameters! That would also be welcome.

For me:

Curves
Round Trip To Motion
Better Audio Interface

Those all seem like reasonable requests for features that are (equivalently) available in most other NLEs and for which FCPX has no substitute.

I agree on all those Daniel.

The last two especially are low-hanging fruit for Apple to go after.

The issue with audio is that it's going to require a good deal of work in beefing up Roles as an organization concept. This would allow 2 things I think are important for X going forward.

1. adding some visual structure to complex Projects- keeping Roles together in some sort of group or "Roll Collection" so that you're not hunting for elements in the timeline.

2. providing an organizational structure to make adding group effects and mixing possible without having to compound audio elements and thereby break their clip connections.

I really wonder what is holding back round-trip to motion. I know I have been harping on about the bugginess of the Resolve round-trip, but the fact that a third party company has almost completely perfected a complex round-trip to another app makes me think that the obstacles can't be that big. In a way there is already a one way trip from Motion to FCPX. When you send a generator, you can pack it with whatever content you want (except audio, I think. I have never tried).

The audio mix seems like a bigger problem. I'm not sure how it would work in the trackless magnetic environment. It seems like there would have to be some sort of dedicated GUI that would represent the Roles/Tracks in a different way than the timeline. That solution seems counter to the whole philosophy of FCPX. My guess is that someone much smarter than me is getting payed way more than me to think of a solution that I won't be able to imagine until I see it, lol.

Curves, on the other hand, seems so easy. It is just a UI element that performs a slightly different interaction than the existing UI. I can't imagine that it would be difficult to implement. I think that it just somehow doesn't fit into the simplified interface they are striving for. Maybe it could be a pop-up HUD like they have for various audio tools like the EQ, etc.

I think organization of Audio by roles can be relatively simple for them to make, and it won't be counter to the trackless design. In essence, you just need to have horizontal "bar" areas where everything from one role will be organized. You may say, "well, isn't that just a track?" But it won't be, because you can keep on stacking audio in a role area and it should grow to any vertical length. Each role area can have a different color, and a subrole can be in the same area but just have a different shade of the same color. You'll get the vertical organization of tracks, but it will still be dynamic like we currently have it.

This may also be possible for Video roles, but unlike audio, the stacking order of video matters, so you will end up with something with more of the limitations of tracks. I don't think it's necessary to vertically organize video. The most you will ever want to do is turn on/off titles or a set of video layers, and you can already do this with roles.

This is very much what I'm hoping for. Grouped Roles.

Whether there needs to be a hard "line" separating Roles, or if it could all just be done with color; the idea is that all clips belonging to a Role share horizontal space. So you don't have what happens now, where audio clips can jump here, there and everywhere as you're working with the primary storyline.

Visually, this also means you can make sure that a clip doesn't have the wrong Role applied.

Once you have this organizational structure, you can then apply a common effect to a Role (think of it as a sub-mix), or globally change the level of all items in a Role.

Think of it like this

If Keyword Collections group Keywords in the Event Browser.

Then Role Collections would group Roles in the Project timeline.

"Whether there needs to be a hard "line" separating Roles, or if it could all just be done with color; the idea is that all clips belonging to a Role share horizontal space. So you don't have what happens now, where audio clips can jump here, there and everywhere as you're working with the primary storyline."

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I'd like this too. If I had to make an educated guess, I think the difficulty arises from multichannel component audio with multiple Roles. How do they deal with that? Say a picture source with 3 stereo pairs, DIA/FX/MX. If it's riding with the picture, or even just one audio only clip with multipIe Roles. I don't know the answer, and since I know they're aware that many people want this functionality, I suspect apple doesn't either right now...

They have sorted out Role highlighting with components fairly recently. If there's more than one Role, the collapsed clip will highlight even if only one Role is selected, but if you expand the components only the selected Role will be highlighted. So... theoretically, you could *mix* by Role. But moving specific roles to specific lanes won't work with some audio sources. Maybe connected (to picture) Roles stay where they are, and multichannel/multiRole clips go in an "Other" area? I guess we'll find out. Maybe.

As I've been working on visual mockups for an egregiously long in the works blog post about my views on the expansion of Roles- I've thought about the issue of audio components, and connected audio in general, and how that would work.

I think either the components would have to be able to be split up and reordered as per their Role assignments. Either in the primary Project view, or perhaps in an alternate "audio view".

It's a tough nut to crack. But I think the overall goal needs to be twofold:

1. Provide a more visually organized structure to the timeline.
2. Maintain clip connections and the flexibility of the magnetic timeline.

We're less than 60 days away from NAB- hopefully Apple will have more for us than a maintenance update with 10.1.2.

Where can i see these mockups?

I have a majority of the post written, but the mockups are in-progress.

I actually stopped working on it in the back half of last year, thinking it might all be addressed anyway in 10.1. Since I'm doubtful we'll see this implemented in the next update, I'll probably finish it up this month before I get going on the TV series that will be dominating my time over the summer.

This will be the first place I post it when it's done.

Great! What series will you be working on?

It a kid's show for public broadcaster TVO here in Ontario. Starts shooting April and airing in the Fall.

Shot on RED. Tying to use Lumberjack for on-set logging. Cutting in X (naturally). 39x7min episodes.

Have fun! I am about to start editing the last three episodes of the final season of Danni L. here in Germany.

Looking at the MacPro I haven't had time to unbox yet and wondering what sort of update Apple might have in store for us at NAB. Just bug fixes, or something more...?

I really hope it's the last piece of the puzzle. Exporting audio for professional mixing programs.

as well as:

1. Customizable interface with multiple keyword collection windows with their own individual views that can be saved.

2. Consolidate used media with handles.

3. A much better Match Frame

4. Motion round-tripping

5. A much better Precision Editor.

6. A much better Clip Viewer. More like the import tool

7. Remove attributes controls.

8. Keyframeable Color Correction

9. Save effects to browser

10. More control in preferences. Like set fade lengths for range tool.

For a start.