More Unrelated Stuff (Episode 2)

My first blog – A Whole Lot of Unrelated Stuff – was extremely popular. So, here’s the next edition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• FCP X: Export a Batch of Projects
• FCP X: A Faster Way to Delete
• FCP X: Revised Alert Icon
• FCP X: Export Warning
• FCP X: Paste Attributes
• FCP X: Create a drop shadow effect for Traveling Mattes
• Adobe Media Encoder CS6: Compression Problems
• Inexpensive archiving
• FaceBook looks for better archiving

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FCP X: EXPORT A BATCH OF PROJECTS

This was first suggested to me in an email, but I forgot to write down the name of the person submitting this.

One of the limitations of Final Cut Pro X is that it doesn’t support batch exporting. That is, you can’t select a bunch of projects and export them all at once.

EXCEPT, because FCP X does all its exporting in the background, you can achieve virtually the same thing.

Yesterday, I needed to export four ten-minute movies and one one-hour movie. So, I selected the first movie in the Project Library and exported it using File > Share > Master File.

NOTE: I always export all my projects as master files and compress them after export. This is because I like to have a master file of my projects.

The export took just a couple of seconds. So, I exported the next movie. And the next. And the next. Each one queued up as a background process. In fact, the entire process of exporting five movies took less than twelve seconds!

As a note, just as with Final Cut Pro 7 doing Batch Export, once the process starts, you can’t quit FCP X until all the exports are complete.

NOTE: And the other thing I noticed was that, because FCP X uses all my processors for exporting, movies were exported MUCH faster than FCP 7.

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FCP X: A FASTER WAY TO DELETE

One of the features I really like about Adobe Audition is the Time Selection tool. This allows you to drag out a region within a clip, or across a group of clips, and instantly delete it; closing up the gap.

While FCP 7 had the ability to set an In and an Out then delete between them, this took a lot of extra keystrokes and I never used it.

But, FCP X has something very similar to Audition:

• Select the Range tool (R)
• Drag across the range of a clip or group of clips that you want to delete
• Press the big Delete key (not the one next to the End key)
• Poof! Gone.

I found myself in a big edit this week and rediscovered this technique. It cut the time of cleaning up an interview almost in half!

NOTE: As far as I can tell, the Range selection tool only selects a range of clips that are in the same Storyline. It won’t allow you to select clips in multiple storylines. For that, you would need to use the Razor Blade tool.

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FCP X: REVISED ALERT ICONS

In the Project Library, there are icons that can tell you about your project, without you even opening it.

The “Broadcast” icon, illustrated here as part of the Manual Color Project, indicates that you’ve Shared (exported) a Project.

The Broadcast icon with an exclamation mark in a triangle, shown as the top icon of the Audio Project, indicates that you’ve changed this Project since the last time you exported it.

And the exclamation point inside a triangle, indicates that there is media missing, or unlinked, in the Project.

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FCP X: EXPORT WARNING

If you attempt to export a Project with missing media, FCP X now warns you.

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FCP X: PASTE ATTRIBUTES

New with the 10.0.6 update is Paste Attributes, the ability to copy effects from one clip to another clip, or group of selected clips. This has long been a favorite feature of mine from Final Cut Pro 7.

The way you use it is:

• Select the clip with the effects you want to copy
• Select Edit > Copy (or type Command+C)
• Select the clip, or clips, you want to add the effect to
• Select Edit > Paste Attributes

When you select this option, a dialog appears, illustrated above, asking you to select which effects you want to paste. A feature I particularly like is that this now lists all the filters and effects applied to the source clip.

By the way, this always adds effects to the selected clips, it never replaces them.

NOTE: If you want to apply all the effects attached to the source clip, without seeing this dialog, select Edit > Paste Effects.

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FCP X: TRAVEL MATTE DROP SHADOW

Neil Sinclair provides this solution to creating drop shadows on travel mattes inside FCP X:

• Put the Matte on Layer 3 and select it
• Open the Inspector and apply Compositing > Stencil Luma
• Put the ‘Fill’ on Layer two, set the Composite mode to Normal.
• Create a Compound Clip from theses two clips and place it over the Background clip
• Add the Drop Shadow effect from Effects browser to the Compound clip.

Larry adds: Very cool, Neil. Thanks!

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ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER CS6: COMPRESSION PROBLEMS

Ed Grogan sent this in.

I’ve done major testing with both the Mac and Windows version of the compressor that is part of the Adobe Master Suite.

I can repeatably demonstrate that a file (I have determined that it is not ProRes dependent) compressed with the setting “H.264-Blu-Ray” produces a compressed file that contains both repeated frames and dropped frames. Repeats start at just over one minute into the video. On five different files, made with VC-1, ProRes, Uncompressed, AVI and WMF all of length 00:02:07:27 produced compressed H.264 that was five frames too long. (Source was 720p59.94). Errors started about one minute in. All showed a random pattern of compressing a frame and then repeating the last two frames. The uncompressed showed more duplication and some frames dropped.

THe compressor setting H.264 (without the Blu-ray tag) worked perfectly. The only problem is this compressor does not bring chapter marks into Encore. Also, not verified, that Encore does not like mux’d files as sources. Still looking into issues as to why Encore wants to transcode anything intended for Blu-ray.

The H.264 Blu-ray setting also damages the audio file but I haven’t started to investigate that.

Larry replies: Thanks, Ed, for sending this in. I’ve already forwarded it to my contacts at Adobe.

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INEXPENSIVE ARCHIVING

I’ve written many times about the lack of affordable archiving options for our media. Richard suggested I check into the Sony ODS 55-U.

Here’s a PDF that describes what Sony announced.

This device was announced in April, 2012. It uses a stacked array of Blu-ray Discs as its archive. And, as far as I can tell, it is not yet available, nor has pricing been announced.

Aside from the fact it isn’t available, my biggest concern is that this is writing to Blu-ray optical media, the longevity of which is potentially not as long as LTO tape. It is also troubling that Sony has taken so long after the announcement to get this released.

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FACEBOOK IS GETTING INTO ARCHIVING

Thinking about archiving, even companies with the resources of Facebook realize we need something more than we’ve got.

Jeff Orig sent me this Wired article.

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That’s it for this edition. As always, let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Larry

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