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

parkerhqj wrote:
Having favorite clips viewable in thumbnails and not just lists.


They are viewable if you are marking favorites and then from the event browser in thumbnail view select "Favorites Only" at the top.


They are, but they lose whatever you've labeled them as. That's fine for b-roll where I just look for the thumbnail image, but a slew of interviews just show me the same person over and over in the thumbnail. In FC7, I would often just look at my bins and find a clip from an interview by just reading down the list. In X, if I switch from my thumbnails that have all my favorites and switch over to list view, I am presented with all of the clips that then have to be opened individually to find my favorites. Kind of laborious.

brain fart, never mind...

And to add to that, when you go to the trouble of opening all those clips to find your favorites (for interviews, I will often have ten clips with 2-6 favorites per clip), if you go to work on something else and come back to the clips you had opened, fcpx has inexplicably closed all those clips so you need to open them all up again to view your favorites. Frustrating. I sent this problem to Apple a while ago. thx

Yep, I concur. I was wrestling with that same problem just the other day.

You can open disclosure triangle to see your favorites labels simply by selecting all your clips (cmd+A) or a group of clips, then hitting right arrow key (left arrow to close).

But for this kind of use, you may prefer using keyword tagging.
If option "show skimmer infos" is on, keywords are displayed when skimming your footage :

Indeed, nothing is displayed with favorites:

Favorites are not either displayed in timeline index. Keywords are.
I assume that favorites are better used for fast editing, without much tagging or labelling, and keywords are preferred for organizational purpose.

Favorites are not either displayed in timeline index.

The timeline index is completely separate from the event library/browser. It only lists the content as it appears in the timeline.

@NocoDave : My point is to compare the use of favorites and/or keywords in organizing your media.

Keywords appear in timeline index and that's a big advantage upon favorites.
In fact I don't understand why favorites shouldn't appear in TL index.

But as I said, IMHO favorites are rather made for fast editing, without much need of labelling clips.

Keywords appear in timeline index and that's a big advantage upon favorites.
In fact I don't understand why favorites shouldn't appear in TL index.

I see what you mean. This is bit of a half thought, but I'm wondering if it relates to the Timeline Index information being taken from the Event Library where keywords are available, but favourites only from the Event Browser.

I don't think I'm seeing it as of great importance, as the reference in the Timeline Index isn't likely to be a complete version of that in the Event Browser. To the point that it could be that a favourite is added to the timeline then slipped/trimmed etc to contain no information from that favourite at all any more.

I would prefer to use just keywords for my organization around interviews, but I find that so much of the labeling is conceptual that it is difficult to organize that way. If I'm producing a school fund raising video, it's one thing to have a keyword "student testimonials", but it's harder if I want to break it down further. Maybe I could have keywords such as "curriculum", "sports", "school philosophy", etc. and then just bounce around them when looking for sound bites. Then I could just use favorites for b-roll where I can actually see the content in the thumbnails.

Good point. On the other hand, it might prove useful to break the keyword tagging further down, once you decide to use smart collections to identify appropriate clips. Works fine for me.

I think that's the way to go. I've created a bit of a mess with my present job, but it's a short project and next time will be much more efficient. Thanks.

A few things not mentioned yet, morning rant after a long night...

If you're using legacy FCP or an other NLE, you've been using it for awhile, and you understand how to get around it's workflow limitations. FCP X is new, we're just discovering as a community how to work around it's limitations.

Seeing as how the text search now looks at NOTES in the Favorites/Rejected tags, you can use Favs, and put notes with a quote or description of the dialog in that sub-clip.

The two rules to remember are, 1- Separate Keyword Ranges can overlap, 2- Separate Fav/Rej ranges can not overlap. And each can be renamed, and have it's own search-able notes, separate from the clips original log notes.

You can also create folder hierarchies to do a Finder level organization of your stuff. Then import it letting the folder hierarchy be how keywords are assigned.

You can create Smart and Keyword collections, then use Folders inside of the Event to further organize stuff.

Assets can exist inside of more than one collection very easily, more easily than any other NLE.

It's interesting to see how folks are doing things with FCP X. I know with FCP 7 and back to 1, media management was so helter skelter, most folks didn't bother, and just had this one Browser window full stuff, and most users I ran across just used Cmd-F to find what they wanted. And that wasn't always as quick and efficient as you'd think. It's good to see FCP X is forcing some level of media management. The better you work out your system, the faster and easier you get through your editing project.

Multiple keywords, ranges, tags, ROLES and SUB-ROLES, markers, notes, CUSTOM METADATA FIELDS, you have camera angle names, camera names, take names, tons of metadata fields not being use, that if you thought about it, you could be using to your advantage. And you can create your own custom metadata fields.

It'll be interesting to see who utilizes these untapped resources first, and how they use them. There's way more to it than just tags and keywords.

It's a phenomenal system for sure. I have a feeling I'm going to settle with this work flow.

Initially marking Favourites/Rejected, giving the ability to hide rejected and show everything else but with favourites highlighted.

Then building a log with keyword/smart collections to work from and still with the possibilities of accessing rejected for scraping the bottom of the barrel emergencies.

It seems simple and effective. Time will tell.

Wow, great discussion here!

Thought of something today while outputting 8 short films for a client - what happened to batch export? I'd like to see that come back. Yes, I know you can send them to compressor one at a time and export from there, but for the life of me, so far I can't figure out how to select several projects and just hit "Go".

We have Droplets and Folder Actions in the mean time.

I want to see
1)Zoom Out on Playhead in Timeline
Zoom in on Playhead in Timeline
www.geniusdv.com/news_and_tutorials/2010..._button_in_final.php
and

"New Playhead-Centered Zooming Commands in the Timeline
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 includes three commands for playhead-centered zooming and navigation in the Timeline:

Zoom In on Playhead in Timeline: Keeps the Timeline playhead centered while zooming in (regardless of the selection in the Timeline).
Zoom Out on Playhead in Timeline: Keeps the Timeline playhead centered while zooming out (regardless of the selection in the Timeline).
Scroll to Playhead: Horizontally scrolls the Timeline so that the playhead is centered in the window.
These commands can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts using the Keyboard Layout window (choose Tools > Keyboard Layout > Customize)."

www.apple.com/support/releasenotes/en/Final_Cut_Pro_6.0_rn/
2(Color Corrections-Realtime
(In the 7-th version color correction did not require rendering, it is unclear why the advanced 10.03 miscalculation require everything effects.? )
3)The history of the autosave
4)Export from timeline on in out.
5)The ability to save filters, transitions and generators favorites.
6)Ability to change the layout of windows and burn it.
7)Ability to lock the clip on the timeline.
8)Assign responsibilities for processing video graphics subsystem that supports CUDA.

Gennady wrote: I want to see
Zoom Out on Playhead in Timeline
Zoom in on Playhead in Timeline

But, can't we already do that in FXPX? Even with a clip selected in the project, when you zoo in, it will zoom in on he position of the playhead, right?

If only it did. The playhead is almost always offset to being either near the left or right end of the timeline panel.

And really, 2012, still no centered scrolling playhead? This is someone's idea of a joke, albeit a sad, pathetic one.

Oh, I see what you guys are saying. Okay yeah, it's not actually centered. Im sure they are all over it like a fly on honey, right? :whistle:

Here's what I've found as one of the behavioural issues with metadata. If you're the person that's entered all the metadata, you're the one that needs it least, because the process of entering it means it's pretty much all in your head. As a result of entering the metadata you largely know what there is, and where to find it.

Metadata is actually more useful when someone else has to browse the material that you've catalogued, or vice versa. Going from a position of knowing nothing about the footage in front of you to finding the perfect shot in a few seconds is infinitely more efficient that spending all that time in the first place cataloging it.

So what I'm trying to get at is metadata is at it's most advantageous when used in group situations.

The biggest problem with FCP-X is in its current state is it's probably the least "workgroup friendly" NLE around.