Wish List for FCPX 1.0.4 (or whatever comes after 1.0.3)

I would like to see an option to have the scopes automatically switch to the proper scope depending upon which color correction you are adjusting. So for example, If I switched over to make some adjustments to the exposure, it would be nice to have the scope auto switch to the waveform monitor, or when switching to adjust saturation I would like for it to auto switch to the vectorscope etc... I suppose to please everyone, Apple would have to set it up so it's totally user definable.

Whoooo boy where to start? I'll just pick 5.

1. The ability to mark a section of timeline that goes across ALL tracks. So often I just want to rip a section out but it's a pain to do so.

2. The ability to put windows where I want them. (this should probably be no 1) If I can't have that, then could I at least have the ability to view things like scopes as a HUD like in Motion or Aperture. I hate the way it takes up half the screen when you have the viewer on the second monitor.

3. Send to Motion.

4. Export to OMF

5. An audio mixer that can adjust levels on the fly.

Here's mine, I stuck to 5 too but number 4. could be at least 5 in it's own.

1. Rolling an edit point to meet the next to overwrite the clip between.

2. Loop playback to continue looping when a trim is adjusted or any other change is made.

3. Trim tool to be carried when skipping through edit points, ideally taking loop centre with it.

4. Trim monitors to operate properly.

5. Range Selector tool to be vertical range enabled.

Id start by saying I'm pretty happy with 10.0.3, just to get that out of the way. Despite discussions on these boards, the ability to relink media is a MAJOR headache out of the way for my workflow.

Top 5 off the top of my head:

1. Being able to place time markers independent of any clips (i.e. if I have to make a clip 3 minutes long exactly, I can put a marker at 3 minutes that is clearly visible and doesn't move. Yes, there's the time divisions but these are not snappable, only occur at certain increments and vary in accuracy according to zoom level).
2. Paste attributes back. I'm often copying and pasting attributes between clips - grades, fx, audio levels - and I'd like to be able to chose what gets pasted, not all or nothing.
3. Linked to the above, I'd like to be able to actually select clips in the timeline by selecting their role so I can apply pasting effects to certain clips all at once. Maybe roles isn't the place to do it but if I'm grading and want to apply a grade to multiple clips in the same location but different parts of the edit, this would save a lot of time. Similar to the node view functionality in Color.
4. Batch export functionality back. I don't have the updated Compressor. Personally, I've never liked Compressor for encoding and prefer using 3rd party software. I like to export my masters in batches from FCPX and go and have a cup of tea.
5. FIX THE UNDO/AUTOSAVE GREYING OUT - this still occurs to me when doing grading and switching between exposure, saturation and colour (too quickly?). Fortunately the duplicate project trick forces an update but its still too risky.
6. Audio transcription like in AE. I don't need it word accurate, just enough to understand it so that I can scan an interview and jump to places in the timeline by clicking on relevant words.

Okay, that was 6...

"I would like to see an option to have the scopes automatically switch to the proper scope depending upon which color correction you are adjusting."

No way, I switch between scopes doing all of these corrections. One scope is not married to one type of grading adjustment.

• In and Out export for projects


• Send to Motion


• Audio Mixer


• Search option in relinking media


• better Project & Event sharing


• FCP7 style Pasting attributes

Forgot to add the option to set a noise sample!
Since we are on the wish list, I would like to see in Motion...

• Plane tracking


• Clone stamp & brush tools


• 3D text geometry

1. I miss FAVORITES!! for effects/specified transitions-
2. Maybe toolbar where I can stash stuff like FCP 7 - YES INDEED!!
3. Loop-able range select that doesn't reset
4. send to motion
5. and of course specific copy paste attributes!!!- such a pain:pinch:

Apple, You out there?

While we're talking about things not resetting, I'd like the I/O points that are marked on clips in the event browser to be retained when I (usually accidentally) move from one clip to another.

I'd also like my 3 way colour wheel back while I'm being demanding...

while we're in the color board, can we have our white/grey/black eyedroppers back too? =]

1) A real trim mode, at least as efficient as fcp7 one :

-trimming infos showed even if I use keyboard for trimming (double screen, frames counter for out/in going clip)
-proper dynamic trimming. I'd like to be able to hear what I'm doing, and to do it while watching the picture, not the timeline.

2) Expand all clip items (multi-channels audio...) in my timeline, and be able to recondense them.

3) Out of sync indicators for detached audio.

4) More control over transitions behavior (video/audio only, start/end on cut)

5) Digest, be able to resize search windows. I can't see all my keywords !

ptrush: 5. and of course specific copy paste attributes!!!- such a pain:pinch:

Yes please. Why this was not included, I cannot fathom. This simply must come back.

bm

All of the above.....
Plus since some of us are dreaming, how about the ability to import FCP 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 projects...have them autoconvert to X and ready to edit/export:woohoo:

While we're at it...being able to recognize a QT7 file perfectly would also be nice...

"Plus since some of us are dreaming, how about the ability to import FCP 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 projects...have them autoconvert to X and ready to edit/export:woohoo:"

I think that's done with 7toX from Intelligent Assistance. Don't know about early versions that had no XML capability.

"being able to recognize a QT7 file perfectly would also be nice"

QT7 is a video player. QuickTime is a multimedia architecture that supports a great deal more than video, so I'm not sure what you're asking. If every kind of QuickTime media can be imported into FCP: it could never happen in the past, and it will never happen in the future. Well, not before QuickTime's long gone.

Yes...aware of 7 to X. My previous jobs were from 4 to 6...bummer.
With regard to QT7 what I am referring to is this:
I use a second Mac G5 system with Tiger OS to capture video when I don't want to tie up my Mac Pro. The result is a QT7 .mov file. I offload that to an external drive that I can access from the Mac Pro. FCPX imports it and I have audio but no video (although file size indicates video content exists). I have to reopen in QT10 and export for it to be recognized in FCPX). I understand fcpx is not quicktime based and so basically understand the problem.

7toX officially works with FCP 6 and 7 XML files.

There's no such thing as a QT7 file. Or a QT X file. There are QuickTime files. It's most likely in a codec that's probably not used in FCP. I'm guessing from the G5 that you're capturing using a card or box that produces M-JPEG video. Really old codec, but still good, though clunky.

The QT X export route is horrible. It's for making Apple device video, i.e. compressed to hell and gone. Doesn't even make QuickTime most of the time. Try using Compressor or MPEG Streamclip and convert to ProRes.

Tom..I am wording this whole dialog terribly. Let me try to clarify. I am aware of what Quicktime is, so appropriately worded I should have said " a .mov video file created in Quicktime..."
But further to your point - I am capturing VHS through a bi-directional Canapos ADVC 300 converter which is connected via firewire to my G5 and also to my Mac Pro. This produces upon import in either FCP6 or FCPX standard def DV NTSC file 720 x 480 of .mov extension. It is not a motion JPeg codec. I have used Motion Jpeg in other situations and they are reported differently by FCP in the event browser detail.

So my original point was that if I capture in FCPX this way, everything is fine and I can edit and share to DVD with no problems. Usually I import and reference the original media, but I have also imported and converted to prores....not much of a difference when simply doing the conversion, adding a title and outputting to DVD. I've since eliminated the proress optimizing for these 2 hour VHS conversions since it gave me no real benefit.

If I capture the same way in FCP6, then the resulting .mov file is not accurately readable when imported into FCPX...I get the audio but no video. So the couple of ways I was able to fix this was by opening the file in QT10 and re-exporting (and I believe also I could open it in QT7 on the Mac Pro and re-export) and then the file was readable with audio and video when imported into FCPX.

Hence my original post " make fcpx accurately read QT7 files" --- again worded poorly.

I am not sure if I am leaving some things out here, but I can tell you this is what has been working for me for the past 3 months as I have converted probably 50 VHS tapes for clients, some on the Mac Pro and some on the G5...but all of them edited and shared to DVD from the Mac Pro.

Did I clarify anything here or just make the issue worse?

I've not run into this problem, and I have bunches of DV media captured in various shades of FCP going back to the original version in the last century. Could you maybe post a bit of this FCP6 DV somewhere on the web to have a look at? I can't see what could cause this problem.

If you can open it in QT Player, I'd like to verify that, and see video, hear audio?

Could be FCP is creating a .mov without TC, since your original footage had no TC. And that could be throwing FCP X for a loop.

Are you dropping this stuff into an actual Sequence first? Make sure that Sequence is in fact NTSC-DV. That forces the export to have the TC of the Sequence. You may know this already.

I've seen stuff encoded in legacy versions of FCP not be fully compatible now. Even the ProRes files that the Focus Enhancements "Firestore" devices recorded won't read in FCP X. Some minor little coding thing that threw some folks. I've seen it happen with FCP X before.

Trans-code that footage to NTSC-DV again. Make a Droplet in Compressor, and drop your whole master folder on to it, and wait till it's done.

Just thinking out loud...

@Tom Wolsky and Ben Balser
OK, guys...here is exactly what I am talking about.
I captured a VHS clip tonight from tape in FCP 6.06 running on Tiger 10.4.11 on a dual 2.7ghz G5. I was in a previous NTSC SD sequence, but simply dragged the resulting .mov file from the capture scratch directory to a firewire 800 drive. I never even brought it into the fcp 6 sequence.
The file plays fine with audio and video in QT7 both on the G5 and on the Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro is running Lion 10.7.3 and when I open the file with QT 10.1 it is only audio. A get info reveals that it is PCM Linear audio only and shows no video codec information. The file size remains the same. If I open the file on my Mac Pro using QT7 and export then I am able to open it with QT10. Obviously on 2 hour VHS videos I don't want to waste time having to do this but it is the only way I can get conversions from the G5 to work.

I was incorrect earlier stating that I could use QT10 to do the export. This does not work...it has to be opened with QT7 and then exported in order for it to play correctly in QT10. Once it plays correctly in QT10, then importing to fcpx is fine.

I export the file using the DVCPRO NTSC codec and I change the current settings from 640 x 480 to compressor native of 720 x 480. I don't know why the G5 info shows 720 x 480 but when trying to export it shows the current settings as 640 x 480....maybe another piece to the puzzle.

Also, I have opened several previously G5 captured clips in QT10 on the Mac Pro and they seem to work. But anything recently captured seems to have this problem.

You may recall that this topic was discussed on this forum several months ago and many other users had the same problem. I believe, Ben that that thread was were you suggested to me to download QT7 and install it in my utilities folder to solve problems like this and with legacy QT video files.

You can view a short 24 second segment of this on vimeo. This is an untouched file dragged directly from fcp6 capture scratch folder...no processing whatsoever. I made it available for you to download the original .mov file (about 88 mb).

Click here: vimeo.com/39514593 the password is qt7clip

I am eager to find a workaround to this. Anxiously awaiting your feedback.