Fastest way to trim/save clips? (Mpeg Streamclip alternative?)

sodabiscuit12345 wrote: … So I can convert them to ProRes? …

what for?

I tried pressing reply but I may have reported you to..yourself I guess, since you're the moderator hahah

So why do I convert to ProRes? Well, good question. Maybe you're telling me I should not?

I started editing videos about 7-8 years ago but only did a couple of videos back then and then stopped for 6 or more years. I remember doing it at the time thinking that this allows for easier editing of the footage, but I may be completely wrong. Honestly, I did it out of habit from many years ago.

So yes...why would I or why would I not?

I shoot with a GH3 in MOV format. It plays fine on FCP, so why should I convert?

Thanks

So yes...why would I or why would I not?

well, YOU asked for it.

The following sounds more offensive as it is meant (or report me ) but, may I suggest to learn FCPX from the ground? Your workflow with Streamclip and manual transcoding and etc etc is so … mid 1990ies. Reminds me of splicing with blades and tapes.

You find an excellent tutorial for small money in the AppStore from rippletraining; or bigger and $$$ courses from their own website. There are other, Izzy or Larry Jordan.

And there are books, to recommend just one, honorable board member Tom Wolsky has a very nice 'tone' explaining things.

Finally, start reading with pg#1 in the included Manual…

FCPX tries to 'hide' as much 'tech' as possible. It is an creative's tool, not an engineer's.
It is made for convenience.
Makes no sense to out-smart the folks at Cupertino.

And a few posts on a board don't replace professional teaching… esp when you miss the concept of FCPX.

sodabiscuit12345 wrote: ... t when you have all your favorite clips showing, does FCPX offer some form of batch converting? So I can convert them to ProRes?

Tom Wolsky wrote: Yes and no. You can select the clips, right-click and select Transcode Media. The no part is that it's not confined to the favorite selection, but does the whole clip.

Not only that. You can't choose any flavor of ProRes, it automatically is the medium quality ProRes422. It's NOT optmized for optimal quality for every resolution, bit depth or degree of post, it's optimized for comfortable editing and a good compromise of real time and visually lossless monitoring. Nevertheless FCP uses only ProRes422 once it's available. You can't switch to Original Media unless you delete the Optimized Media. If you send a project to other apps, FCP again links to the originals, and if you prefer this kind of definite intermediate, you have to workaround this fact.

Many asked why they couldn't choose ProResLT (enough for GoPro HD in most cases) or higher bitrates for multiple generations of compositing and grading in different programs, but they are answered, if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you.

This is no rant against FCP, though it may sound so. It's still little else than my reasons to buy Kyno to get rid of some arbitrary limitations. I'd still import into the library, and I'd still tag within FCP, because everything just works more fluidly there.

ProRes is 10-bit and certainly a great deal better as a codec than the original H.264.

Apple ProRes 422: A high-quality compressed codec offering nearly all the benefits of Apple ProRes 422 HQ, but at 66 percent of the data rate for even better multistream, real-time editing performance. The target data rate of Apple ProRes 422 is approximately 147 Mbps at 1920 x 1080 and 29.97 fps.

FCPX.guru wrote: Apple ProRes 422: A high-quality compressed codec offering nearly all the benefits of Apple ProRes 422 HQ, but at 66 percent of the data rate for even better multistream, real-time editing performance. The target data rate of Apple ProRes 422 is approximately 147 Mbps at 1920 x 1080 and 29.97 fps.

This is probably quoting the official Apple description, but that's good, since it defines the purpose "better multistream, real-time editing performance".
The white paper also says how the other ProRes versions are meant to be used. From memory: 4444 if you need an alpha channel, HQ for multiple re-compression cycles in post and for avoiding giant uncompressed files, LT if you are forced to make a compromise between acceptable image quality and available disk space.

I am glad and thankful for ProRes. As for the user's codec of choice in FCPs ingest/transcode department, it's sink or swim.

Tom Wolsky wrote: ProRes is 10-bit and certainly a great deal better as a codec than the original H.264.

Depends. The FS7's XAVC-I for example- 10-bit 422 much more efficiently compressed - gets transcoded to ProRes422 at almost identical data rates. Yet I know what you mean - it's still visually indistinguishable.
And I'm not sure when the GH5 gets it's 400 mbit All-I codec upgrade. I really can't tell if it will provide less compression artifacts than the current interframe codec (sodabiscuit12345 mentioned GH3, of which I read reports that All-I mainly made the clips more edit-friendly). But it's 10-bit 422, and if I wanted to use ProRes for editing, I think I rather used ProResHQ then. Panasonic is (like Sony) famous for very good compression.
I wished all consumer cameras would record directly to ProRes, because to have heavy compression in the *acquisition* codec is the biggest crime of all. Fortunately there are ways to avoid that.

How much compression degrades perceived image quality and really is much more important than nominal resolution is impressively proven here . Long films (but worth watching), go to part two and start @ 38'18".

In short, once you became aware of this fact (=recompression slowly but surely degrades quality, ProRes in it's various forms addresses this issue ingeniously) you no longer rely on Apples don't-worry-be-happy attitude (which contradicts it's own white paper).

Finally, if you accepted for yourself that ProRes is superior to a consumer H.264 codec (which I do), FCP should respect this decision and not patronize you to keep the originals in parallel, even if you don't ask for more choices. Adobe always bragged about keeping the original quality from beginning to end, that there was just the one unavoidable step (that is, if you don't export in Uncompressed) of further compression in the final output, because at every stage all dynamically linked Cloud apps had to refer to the original data. But we don't see quality differences in the results between Premiere and FCP, which imo proves that ProRes is a valid alternative and nothing to be ashamed of. But still, I chose Optimized Media, FCP computes everything referring to those (ignoring the H.264), but the XML export doesn't reflect this choice!
I wonder if you can explain or defense this.

I'm confused...