Effect questions.

So I am the Avid guy who has finally decided to learn FCP after cutting like ten shows ( reality straight cutting ) on it. I ask allot of questions here that may seem basic so sorry for the overkill but I get allot of good answers here.

To answer these questions you have to actually watch a clip on my site. If you don't have the time no worries you have to be REALLY into effects, probably a clip show editor to even want to answer these question so sorry if I sound needy and I am sure this post will be ignored by most. As it stands, in broadcast post, popular opinion is ( maybe out of ignorance ) you can't do these kinds of shows in FCP and as it stands absolutely no one does. But I'd like to know if it's possible for me to bring this kind of stuff to the table but FAST on a FCP gig. I figure it has to be do-able. They are not crazy effects to look at but the architecture in the timeline can be quite nuanced for some of them and I am looking for FCP translations.

My website is ianrichardson.net

Go to clips and choose Anatomy of a Closet.

At 0:08

There is a flicker glow by placing like twelve add edits one frame apart dropping a sapphire glow in every other hole. I then collapse this, subclip it as a sequence and drop it on top of stuff from the source window at will whenever I want to use it. Can I do this in FCP?

At 0:28-35

Basic. Sapphire segment effect keyframed to work as a customized transition as an overlay. Any way to do this without nesting and being able to save as a template? If not, my show would have over a thousand nests as I always use segment effects as transitions so I can personalize it. I never use drag and drop to cut transitions, well other than dissolves, rarely. Will Mr. Apple color hate me if I go nest crazy? And can you step into nests in Apple color and individually color correct individual layers or in this case the end of the A shot and the beginning of the B shot without undoing it causing the effect to be lost?

At 0:37-40

Typical matted out image flying into itself and then into regular motion. Can this be done in motion considering that I have a push and a blur nested beneath the matte?

At 3:28-31 and 3:46-54

Basically if you place add edits on V1 you can use a sapphire texture effect on the track without footage as a background. I believe this is a texture weaves on V1 and above that a sapphire gradient in screen composite mode black and red. What I often do is place ftg above my ( effect only ) backgrounds and when I want to transition out I go to the end cut and and mark an out and go five frames back and mark an in and then copy V1 and V2 to the clipboard and place the copied material above all the tracks in the same place then trim the effect in trim mode five frames forward and then dissolve five frames in at the first frame and five frames back at the last basically making a ten frame transition consisting of my background. The end result is the background becomes the foreground for ten frames as a transition. I do something similar about 11 seconds later with a lens flare. So, how do I do this in FCP?

At at 5:05-07

I start on V1 by applying a move in stage tools then collapse it as to not erase the stage tools effect when I option drag a red color effect on it. Then I copy it to the clipboard and cut the duplicate onto V2 but stepping into the nest and changing the color effect to blue. Then I place an animatte on V2 and draw a triangle vertically and apply the largest feather to achieve a wash then I place a series of 10 frame 3D warps above on V3. The 3D warps are just three keyframes with a resize with first and last at 100% and the center at 160%. How do I do this this in FCP?

And 10:14-37

Can this section be built in motion since there is no animatte in FCP? I am an animatte fiend, used subtly though. I haven't tried the fifty point matte plug in but I hear it lacks bezier curves and a pen tool and a zoom into keyframe.

And no visual example just a question.

Also, can you import a sapphire effect into motion to use in one of the layers? Haven't learned motion yet but was wondering if it was worth learning.

Thanks.

Hi ian,

Good stuff you got there. Great job! I'm not sure how you got the frame size on the Mpeg4. The frame looked a little thin. Did you use one of the settings from Quicktime and set to preserve aspect ratio with a letterbox? You should do the encoding in Compressor and crop out the letterbox. You don't lose quality since you're already shrinking the frame size.

There was this shot i noticed in 1:16. When it zoomed out, you could see the stair stepping near the top of the frame. I'm not sure if it is caused by interlacing (interlacing drives heavy web compression nuts) or if it was caused by a bad rotation algorithm. If it was the first, you should use frame controls in Compressor for deinterlacing. It cleans up the fields nicely, so your encodes look better even at lower bitrates.

One other thing I wasn't so crazy about was the motion blur. The Foundry has a great plugin in the Furnace for really nice motion blur. I think you have that in AE. But to get nice motion blur without looking frame blended means you need to crank up the motion samples, and that really stings rendering time.


>Will Mr. Apple color hate me if I go nest crazy? And can you step into nests in Apple color

No you can't. Apple Color works like any color grading machines in the market. It doesn't understand nests.

Frankly, if you're working like an indie one man post production team, I would go at it like your typical film workflow- offline with rough up effects, remove effects and grade in Color, then port segments into After Effects. AE is like a swiss army knife for video work. I won't compare it to an Avid, but for effects, composites, you should find that it's way better at effects work than MC. I hardly do that sort of edits, and when I want effects, I usually send them over to graphics/vfx when I'm done with my rough cut, and they will do a much better job than I can, and in half the time too.

If you don't have AE, you can get into Motion. That's what I do when the graphics people have gone home and the machine I'm working on doesn't have AE (happens a lot), I don't want to wait till the next morning.

I feel the main reason FCP doesn't need a pen tool, is because it isn't built for effects work. I hold the same opinion when it comes to color grading and audio mixing. For color grading, I can't stand watching editors muck around with the 3 way CC thinking they're working on a Lustre. Color is cool and I would use it if I don't have a colorist on the job. Not that FCP should only operate like a NLE, because it does save time to not to have to send a simple job over on a round trip. Eg. I have a shot that is a little dark and I want it to look somewhat decent so the network holds a little more faith in my cameraman... Stuff like that. Btw, Color is pretty damned cool in an NLE package. It's like having After Effects built in. (C'mon Apple get the auto rotoscoping brush into Motion for FCS 4)

Not to diss MC, as I don't know much about it. But I am a staunch believer that each specialized tool with a good professional behind it makes any NLE look like crap when you really get down to it.

ProTools has all the sound tools you need- multi band compression, faders, group faders, limiters, amp emulators, 6 band and parametric EQs, etc.., and a good audio department will have a synth with an effects module, a foley studio and a good library of sound effects and samples and someone with ears where I have eyes, to make my work really sound like crap.

For effects, you need a whole bunch of plugins and a good environment for it (GUI). FCP doesn't have a motion tracker, unless you get a 3rd party plugin. In AE, you have point trackers where you can do a corner pin track, and you have Mocha, which does planar tracking and that's even faster. Then of course, the pen tool, and the ability to do your comps in linear light, in full float (for some effects), and you have degrain, timewarp, ease in/ease out that works (the one in FCP will ease in for a while, then shake the shot a little bit), work in 3d space and you can simulate light sources and shadows, etc...

For the horizontal transition (0:34), you can animate the movement on a null object and parent it to the different layers. Or do it on one layer and parent everything to it but you get more control when you attach it to a null layer. In Motion you have to group the layers. In FCP, you gotta nest and it sucks to nest, unless you're a bird.

Sapphire has plugins for AE, and I would look into Colorista if I was to do a lot of work in AE, as I'm not wild about Color Finesse at all.

Moving between FCP and AE is pretty simple and free for the most part. I have a little tutorial on that:

[strypesinpost.com]

The only thing which doesn't always work properly is getting MM to properly copy the footage after the sequence has been sent to Color. Most of the time when I use it is when I send stuff out to graphics without going the Color route and it has worked pretty well so far.

For the background in 3:28, you can look at the reflecting water template in Motion, and tweak from there. But like I said, I don't know shite about effects, and I'm just waiting for Grafixjoe to come in and kick my butt.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks Strypes. I didn't think anyone would respond because my post was so lengthy and required homework and because I tend to use "Avid" in allot of my posts but I'm really just trying to translate my skills not have an Avid vs FCP debate but Avid is always my starting point in terms of technique because I have been on it so long. So I think it's relevant for a FCP forum since allot of guys learned on Avid and learning a second language is a total grind.

Truthfully I never really liked FCP at first after being on Avid for ten years but I am trying to give it a fair shake and learn it better after having had stumbled through a bunch of jobs on it already and I think it's better to make the effort than to complain.

Also my website claims I know FCS ( a bit of a stretch indeed ) and I am trying to actually add some validity to that.

No one is really doing this kind of work in FCP as far as broadcast goes ( all my FCP work has been straight cut reality stuff ) but at some point I think some producer will try and I want to be ready.

The problem is that all of these effects and I don't really consider them effects when you compare them to the crazy work done in promos and spots by graphics guys and what not but they are just enhancements really. But they are all done in the Avid timeline and in terms of the speed at which you need to do this kind of stuff and it may be a dealbreaker having to go in and out of other programs. Also on these kinds of shows it all must be in the timeline for the offline during screenings because the effects essentially are the content and they are so interwoven in terms of layers and make up almost half of all of your editorial decisions in terms of timing because not everything is dropped on, often times effects over the clip determine the duration of the clips and music stings etc and you have to see the completed effect in order to do a good music edit which obviously must be present in the offline. Also, being able to change the duration of an effect used as an overlay by using trim is essential to the process being more tactile in terms of speed and just man hours. For example if I want a transition to be 14 frames instead of 10 you just lasso your A side and hit minus two and your b side plus two, done, if your keyframes are set to elastic. You couldn't necessarily just cut a show without and hand it off to someone else because where an "effected area" begins and ends is sort of a moving target and constantly flowing and finding a clean point of entry and exit could be tough. There is no, okay the effect starts here and now we are back to straight cuts again, especially with composites that have AVX plugins nested on lower layers. It would be like building a house without the foundation and then going back to do the foundation last.

In terms of the workflow of apple color that you described I don't think that would work unfortunately because in the Avid workflow you usually close your project in MC and someone else opens it in Symphony and it all comes up, no translation because Symphony is the exact same program as MC with color correction tools that actually do something. It would be nice if FCP worked the color workflow directly into the FCP timeline without having to dedicate another app to it therefore causing translation issues.

Basically in order for this to work in FCP or FCS in terms of speed and workflow/media translation issues it has to be all in the editing app, all by the editor, all in the offline timeline and with no translation issues in finishing. Although, after effects and photoshop can be incorporated but not every fourth cut because that would be too time consuming. Often times if you need to kick it up you use the Avid FX plugin which is essentially After Effects and Photoshop in your timeline. It's all centered around keeping everything in the same language, the fact that producers want this all integrated in the offline timeline and Symphony guys ( grumpy ) just want to uprez, render and tweak levels and that's it. Everything else is in the offline by one person in one application. I don't know enough about FCS yet to know if this is do-able, it seems like it isn't but that's why I posted.

I think these shows will stay on Avid for the time being because of workflow issues and my jobs will be split between these kinds of shows on Avid and other stuff on FCP.

These days no one uses Avid unless they have to but I think in some cases you have to, I assume but I could be wrong.

Oh, also thanks for the quicktime compression advice. I usually have assistants dealing with this kind of stuff but this was for my website and I did it myself so I have a way to go in terms of knowing all of the ins and outs of compressing. But I did de-interlace and select crop. I will have to re-examine my settings.

Reality is broadcast unless it's only for the web or a DVD release. And the bigger the show, the more likely it will be content-driven and require fewer editing tricks. So, as long as you can tell a story and pace things well (not necessarily fast -- well), "straight cut" editing is nothing to snicker at!

But the others have made a good point. You appear to be using the given Export - Using QuickTime Conversion presets for your export, and you're selling your material short in the compression. Learn to control the bit rate, codec, audio format, frame size etc. by exploring the manual controls. In fact, you should do it yourself and test multiple settings.

Export the same piece multiple times, with different settings. Make sure you type in some information about which setting you used into the file name of each export. If it helps you, take a screenshot of the settings. Then compare the many files yourself, see which one looks best to you. Best way to learn is by doing it systematically.

Also, picture quality is only part of the equation. A 30-second MPEG-4 in H.264 format at 500MB may look great, but it's not gonna matter if it takes a dial-up-using client eight hours to download it, or if it plays like stop-motion.


www.derekmok.com

I wasn't snickering at straight cutting at all. I love it and do allot of that verite based reality stuff on Avid and FCP. But allot of these effect heavy clip shows that are all Avid are in fact requiring tons of what they call flash and trash and that isn't changing and it isn't necessarily limited to small shows. They are in a sense non verite content driven shows with added bling. In terms of pacing and storytelling, yeah I have that down, but that doesn't work as a standalone on certain kinds of shows. My point of the post is that I work on all kinds of stuff and at some point someone producing a Behind the Music or an E! True Hollywood story will move to FCP and I might get the call and I have to be able to deliver the same way or they will move back to Avid which has indeed happened out here a few times on these kinds of shows. I was on a show like this back in 03 and we had to switch back. Allot of companies back then gave it a go on FCP and went back. We brought in a FCP guru and we were basically told we had to move back until FCP caught up. But 03 was a long time ago, maybe things have caught up and I feel that there will be a move again towards FCP in the future and this time I'd like to not fail at delivering. Allot of Avid guys back then would just do what the software was capable of, or what they were capable of on the software more correctly, assuming that they would have bad screenings and Avid would be back in the bay at some point and it was. I'd like to take it to the next level next time the switch is made on these kinds of shows if it happens again like allot of companies that tried and failed back in 03. I am always bout taking the tool to the max instead of just throwing my hands up and telling producers you need to get an Avid in here.

Also, what I need are tangible ways to recreate some of the things pointed out in the original post as posts sometimes have a way of just evolving into something else.

> I wasn't snickering at straight cutting at all.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you were. The style you're talking about is more a "sizzle" style. Both styles have their place, and these days most of us have to be fluent in both.


www.derekmok.com

I would definitely go into AE or Motion, rather than do those in FCP, but I have seen editors work in 50 layers in Final Cut and animating each one, and although I don't advise doing that because I feel you're really wasting your time, you can go ahead and try to do it.

At the very least you should give Motion a go, as Motion has the kind of GUI you need for effects work, so you can do that with a lot more control than in FCP. I really don't know Avid that well for effects, but I've seen an editor spend hours cropping and animating movements in Avid, and my graphics person was telling me that he could have sent it to him and he'll knock it out in 5 minutes flat but that editor was really more a "hands on" type of person.

Most of them are doable in FCP and definitely in Motion. I would substitute After Effects for Motion, but for stuff like backgrounds and simple effects, sometimes it's easier to reach for a Motion template IMO.

There is a Sapphire plugin for FCP and Motion (I believe they are FXPlugs, so they work between both FCP and Motion). I haven't used these myself, but you should take a look, and try them out before buying:

[www.genarts.com]

There's also stuff from FXFactory that is worth taking a look into:

[www.noiseindustries.com]


0:08: try a 1 frame transition from the free flashframe plugin: [www.mattias.nu] I'll do the transitions, then nest it up to animate the movement.

0:39: It's something that you'll do in Motion, because you can add a behaviour to map the movement to the glow layer. Or you can knock yourself out animating that in FCP.

3:28: Like I mentioned- slap on the water template and tweak from there. Same goes for the lens flare transition.

05:08: You can do that in FCP, but you'll take forever and lots of nests. You can do that a lot faster in Motion.



www.strypesinpost.com

Derek:

Cool man.

I have totally done sizzles on FCP in short form for pitch reels and promos and it isn't as if you can't because you can but some of the techniques in the original post require certain "timeline architectures" that are in my opinion Avid specific. I would like to, for my own benefit, be proven wrong. I don't want to have the "can't get there from here" attitude unless I know for a fact I can't. Keeping in mind that just getting it on the screen isn't enough. It's gotta happen in the editing application just for purposes of speed and translation to other aspects of post production workflow. It has to be accomplished fast and it all has to translate into the online without a snag. If I can't do it then it has to be because FCP can't and not because I can't. I am still learning FCP so I am trying to give it a fair shake like I said above in an earlier post.

Thanks Strypes for the specific references. It seems as if I need to become a "top ten percent" guy with motion and just get hardcore with it and allot of these issues will be solved. I haven't learned motion yet but wanted to make sure it was worth the effort first and it seems like it is. Also the fact that you can utilize sapphire in motion is just a whole other world of possibility. Seems like motion might be the thing that changes the game in terms of what happened at allot of places in 03 like I described above.

There is probably a motion guru out there reading this post and saying "dude just learn motion and it's a non issue" so I think I will.

Allot of editors throw their hands up and say you can't do this with this tool if it isn't their native tool. I can't tell you how many times I have heard one of the "new generation" say damn you can't do this on Avid when you can do it ten different ways ten years ago. I don't want to be that guy in the FCP world.

And thanks to Derek as well for your comments.

Thanks.

I'd really like to see how the Symphony grading tools work compared to Color. I see Color as a poor man's Resolve or Lustre. It's essentially the same workflow where you have to strip out the effects before pumping it out to tape for the colorist, so you also have to be at online resolution when you go to Color. You can skip Color by using the FCP 3-way (it's really clunkier because it wasn't made for it), or you can use Colorista from Red Giant and that comes with power windows for CC.

On the other hand, you can do preliminary "offline" effects work in AE then reconnect them back with the online footage and render them out once you've had it recaptured at full rez.

The thing about FCP is, like I mentioned, the GUI isn't made for effects. I'm not sure if it ever will be. I would like the pen tool in FCP with a point tracker and mocha incorporated into Color and the ability to stabilize shots with smoothcam in Color (just the part used not the entire clip). The ability to do better rough up effects within the NLE is one area that I wish could be added into FCP. Then again, FCP does have stuff like alpha transitions and incorporated Motion templates which I haven't actually used.


>But I did de-interlace and select crop.

I suspected you checked an option preserve the aspect ratio. You should go via Compressor, and do the deinterlace in the frame controls tab, and crop off the letterbox in the geometry room.



www.strypesinpost.com

My tip for Motion is to avoid the one in FCS 2. That one was buggy. I heard the current version of Motion is a lot better, but I really only dig into it for templates and I go into AE for a lot of things. Just the day before I had a 2.8k by 2.8k animated logo at full 60 fps (don't ask), and that went into AE so I can crop off the edges to 1080, and conform it down to 59.94 and do a field render. I could have done it in FCS, but AE is my swiss army knife these days.



www.strypesinpost.com

The advantage to the Symphony from what I have heard in terms of color correction is that you have secondary color correction and curves and in Apple color you don't. I am not a colorist and don't know Apple Color and can't really speak to that.

As excited as I was about your post about the possibilities of motion, it seems as if you may be able to get the same look in FCP in a different way but having to strip effects before going into color is an absolute deal breaker. It HAS to be done in the offline if your sequence is half bling and the bling determines your durations.

But in terms of the symphony again the main advantage is that you don't strip anything and its a literal move from the same program to the same program with better color correction tools as compared to the media composer. The timeline comes straight over with everything there is nothing to translate which is pretty sweet. Apple Color enthusiasts love the node based effect room that Symphony doesn't have but if you have to strip effects than you better have a node based effect room or else you are in trouble.

But this begs the question? Who does the bling? The offline guy or the colorist? I'd rather it be the offline guy because like I said earlier the effects are so interwoven with content in the same thought process and it must be in the screenings that I don't see any other way. Also, asking a colorist to think about the timing and pacing issues of effects and how it relates to underlying music might be a bridge too far.

Color has eight separate secondary color corrections as well as curves in primaries and secondaries. If you want to see what Color can do I would recommend taking a look at the Scone Looks created by Bob Sliga, who created the looks that come with Color.

[www.classondemand.net]

Steve Hullfish with Bob did the Class on Demand training DVDs for Color.

All the best,

Tom

Thanks Tom.

I never claimed to be totally knowledgeable about FCS Pro Apps actually just the opposite. I learn new things all the time. That's why I am on the forum. They say those who do not know they do not know are fools. At least I know that there are things I do not know and try to fill the gaps. I probably heard that from Avid guys not giving Color their full respect and attention. This stuff happens all the time on both ends.

But can I ask you, what's the deal with stripping effects? Have you ever seen some of these shows I am referring to? I mean the effects are at least half the timeline architecture. You just cannot cut these shows leaving the effects out until the end. Just doesn't work that way. My timelines look like Tetris on crack, they are as interwoven as DNA and striping down would mean there would be no show left. Can't get through network notes that way.

Thoughts?

Color has YRGB curves in the Primary in and out rooms. The curves in the secondary rooms are different. They're used more for qualifiers and to control certain tones, so you have a hue, saturation and luminance curve, where you select your color range and nudge that range up or down. There are a lot of similarities between Color and the Resolve, and with the new Resolve for mac, you can actually use the Tangent device on the Resolve. I don't think the Resolve is that big a leap from Color, mainly it's a different user interface but with more sophisticated tools and processing.

I'm sort of curious as to how they would match up, partly because I've never touched a Symphony before.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yeah, I truly cannot talk intelligently about color correction but only repeat what other, possibly uniformed Symphony guys say about Color which isn't really useful for conversation. Symphony might suck comparably, I don't know.

I don't understand the Apple Color workflow in terms of effects because I haven't done any effect heavy clip shows yet on FCS and the whole purpose of this post is to be ready when I do.

From what I am hearing on this thread and from the little I do know about the Symphony workflow as it relates to my duties as an offline guy is that ability to pull up your timeline as is and essentially go from there as opposed to stripping things down might be a huge stumbling block for certain specific shows in FCS.

>what's the deal with stripping effects? Have you ever seen some of these shows I am referring
>to? I mean the effects are at least half the timeline architecture.

You strip the effects because when you want to send out an EDL or XML to the color correction machine, let's say the Resolve, the Resolve won't read the FCP FxScript or FxPlug plugins. And neither will AE, because you have more powerful tools there. Not to mention if you're working with a film source, and you did your offline in video color space, all the effects will look wrong once you get to the online, where you are working in 10 bit log instead of the 2.2 gamma curve.

On some levels, the effects can be translated across. If you're using Automatic Duck or the Popcorn Island script to import your sequence into AE, it can approximate some effects like the transform tools in Motion, the dissolves, the speed ramps, etc... You really can't expect a good approximation of Keylight from the FCP chroma keyer. I'm not sure if those will import your blend layers, but like I mentioned, the color space will be all different, because in AE, you may be working in linear light instead of 2.2 gamma and that affects your blend modes a lot (you won't be using screen).

The idea is to do a rough up of effects in the offline, and the online guy recreates the effects and does the touch ups because his machine has significantly more power and control. Think of what you can do with those stuff, but on steroids. You have the ability to control movement and lighting in 3D space very easily and with different kinds of lighting, and you have point trackers and planar trackers so you can map the movement of one object onto another, you can build particle dust, have lens flares and blurs that look organic, and the machine is built for speed (not talking so much about after effects), so you can roto and organize your effects tree. In Nuke you have 3 super keyers- the IBK keyer, Primatte and Keylight. Let's say you have a blue sky behind a person, and you want to transition and float in the background like you did in that shot of the still, but it's a moving shot, so instead of using the pen tool, you could start by keying.

Let's say you have two layers and you want the animated movement of one layer to affect the movement on another layer, you have the gravity behavior and other types of behaviors in Motion. Not sure how that is done in AE, but in AE, you can create a motion path in Illustrator and import that into AE.

Sure, create the offline effects in FCP/MC. Just like when it comes to the look, I don't touch the color tools in FCP much, but if I needed to rough up a look, I would use the FCP 3 way CC, but I will skip the qualifiers unless it is absolutely crucial.



www.strypesinpost.com

Strypes;

Got it. But then again how do we define rough up? I mean either you go there or you don't in the offline? Correct? Meaning how do you cut the show in a way that will get you through a screening knowing network execs want to see exactly what is going to air in the offline and that the online is simply an uprez and color tweak to legal. I think for allot of broadcast nothing is temp as you go up the screening and approval chain except archival footage with timecode burn in to be replaced. I am totally hip to all of the crazy cool stuff you can do with effects outside of editing apps during finishing at least hip in terms of knowing what it is but not necessarily able to do it. But often times at least on the Avid side of things if you really want to step it up to that level you just go into Avid FX ( which I do know well ) which is a separate plug in and it's all right there. I don't think we are necessarily talking about possibilities as much as we are talking about what network execs expect in terms of workflow and what happens when and at what stage. They never look at it again after the offline ever, not once, because it has to be "all there" when that stage ends. You cannot change a frame after final offline approval, not even a dissolve because that is a huge broadcast no no unless of course you are using footage with internal edits and you have a flash frame of another shot in your show or something. You discover allot at hi rez, which is why I like working full rez on reality but it's never ful rez on shows with complicated timelines because of the rendering. Finishing is literally what the executive approved in the offline at a higher resolution, legal color and a mix. Anything else is a deal breaker with them.

If you are working in online resolution and your schedule is really tight, you could work with both AE and FCP open at the same time. Offline/online is not a rule, but it is a guide to a structured workflow, which lets you do certain things more easily and effectively and have everything look good.


>But then again how do we define rough up?

Think of it as a sketch instead of a drawing. You try to get the idea across and having it look somewhat presentable and not spend too much time doing fine tuning.

I did a corporate video once and I had a lot of green screen. Sure as heck I didn't key the green screen for the entire video. I did one shot for the look. Sometimes the graphics person does it. At the same time, while they are giving their approval for the rough up of the online treatment, I'm cutting the rest of the video, laying out most of the content. And graphics moves in once the client gives the approval and the cut is locked. For that video, if I was to do the green screen keys, I would be spending lots of time doing the composites in the background and spending hours waiting for the renders for each offline approval. For that project, you have to pull a key at some stage, and if you want to do a proper key in MC and blow the client away, be my guest, but they had Smoke and AE machines in-house. Even if they didn't I would key in AE, just that I would be slower than a compositor.

In most cases I would animate the movements (trying to simplify all the complex movements). The idea is to get that approved with the client knowing that it is just the offline, and that it will be touched up in the online. In your case, I may actually get cracking in Motion/AE right from the edit (you'll go into Avid FX, I'll go into AE or Motion). The key to doing that is to have a proper folder structure in your finder, so things don't get messy.

A few examples, in the case of your first effect, I'll be doing the one frame flashframes with the TMTS plugin, and animating the movements with a nest. For the one at 0:37, I'll get the different layers as a PSD file or individual tga layers from my graphics artist, do the movement, leaving the glow and motion blur for fine tuning/online or I may just hit it in AE/Motion directly. 3:28, I would get the background from Motion, and the positioning of the PIP done either in FCP or in Motion/AE together with the background. 5:05, that section will be done in AE or Motion, or I may do a rough up in FCP without the color correction, just for the movement and the PIP. 10:14, that is two separate layers from Photoshop, brought in either as a PSD or two tga files. Or you could do that up in Motion or AE.

As you can see, the timing of the effects would largely be there (in fact, the online guys will be working based on the timing of my offline cut), just that the movement and the effects may need to be cleaned up, some of them built from scratch. The point of trying to keep it simple is that it reduces the time it takes to prep it up for the online, and the faster I'm done on my end, the more time they have on their end.

Some things won't be done in the offline at all. Like for example, the selective color grade in Schindler's List.

Depending on the complexity of the effect, and if it is too complicated for FCP, I may do the rough up in AE/Motion, or the graphics guy may do a simplified version.

The idea is to keep it simple, but sometimes the offline effects do end up going out for delivery if the producers feel that it is good enough.


>the online is simply an uprez and color tweak to legal

That would kind of defeat the purpose of having 8 secondary rooms in Color won't it? Ok, color builds the mood, but in your case most of the color correction will be done simultaneously with the elements especially since you weren't going for the organic look, with the exception of the interviews, but that is a really trivial color correction. (crap, was that a freeze frame at 47 seconds?)



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks Strypes. Lot's of good advice and seems like a workflow that would work. Haven't done one of these shows on FCP yet but I am printing out this thread to keep for when I do. Personally I and I think allot of editors who cut this kind of stuff are sort of the "single vision theory" okay well "vision" for these kinds of entertainment fluff shows masquerading as documentaries could be a little too self serious but you know what I am saying. It's all about having the sweater woven by one person for the sake of continuity and artistic ego, if you can even call this kind of stuff art. But I guess there are many ways of working and it's all about being adaptable and I appreciate allot of your suggestions on how to do so.

Cheers

>or if it plays like stop-motion.

I once had that on a timelapse shot when i encoded to wmv. Turned out I needed to crank up the bitrate to 5Mb/s. I tried encoding that section into h.264 at the same bitrate, and it didn't go stop motion. wmv sux.



www.strypesinpost.com

Although, there isn't really a forgivable excuse for not being able to use an effect as an overlay in FCP. I have had these conversations before and I always circle back to the fact that you just can't stack transitions on top of each other. I will learn how to do this kind of work in FCP but this missing feature just kills me every time and it always will no matter how I learn to work in FCP. I find allot of the transitions in FCP and Avid are very "off the shelf" and there seems to be much more possibility in the Avid structure of being able to stack three or four segment filters over a cut and personalize it as your own transition incorporating various elements of various effects into one. If your motion blur doesn't have a glow parameter, stack a glow effect over it and done. I wonder why FCP has not gotten on top of this? I assume it would be a much used technique. I think it would make the effect process much faster especially if you have built Avid effect templates over time which I usually subclip and just drop on as I go through. Drag, drop, done. I can't really see anyone brushing that off in the FCP world even if FCP just decided to outright steal it from Avid. I don't think it's ever a good idea to wish one software worked like another because you have to learn the tool on its own terms. But some things are just so obviously needed. It would be like opening up a can of whoop@ss on your timeline. Seems like it would be such an easy thing to write into the software.

Although, like you said above it can all be done in motion which is why I need to learn it.

> If your motion blur doesn't have a glow parameter, stack a glow effect over it and done. I
> wonder why FCP has not gotten on top of this?

?????

You do know how to keyframe filters, right?


www.derekmok.com

If I had a nickel for every time somebody said "There isn't really a forgivable excuse for not being able to (do some thing Avid does)," I wouldn't need to charge my clients.

Treating effects as if they were source clips is very much the exception, not the rule, in the nonlinear editing world. You don't handle effects as if they were clips in Smoke, for instance, and yet somehow ? miraculously ? the world has yet to spiral into the sun.

I have no gripe with the way Avid handles effects in the timeline. I also respectfully submit that it is neither obvious nor needed.

As Derek points out, some of the things you've been talking about here are utterly trivial in Final Cut, just as they are in every NLE. (Well. Every one I know at all, anyway.) It's just that they're done differently in different programs. Not better nor worse, just different.

>Although, there isn't really a forgivable excuse for not being able to use an effect as an overlay in
>FCP.

I agree with that. There should be an option to do that in FCP. In After Effects, it's called an adjustment layer. In Motion, I guess you'll group it and apply the effects to the group. I'm not an effects based editor, and I really use Motion mainly for the templates.



www.strypesinpost.com

Derek;

Yeah I know how to keyframe filters. When they are on a clip. I am talking about stacking them as transitions over a clip. I am hip to the nesting workaround but as I have discovered in this thread that may cause issues in color.

Jeff;

Seriously, I am trying to learn here not get into a scuffle. But treating effects as a source clip is the absolute rule in the kinds of shows I was referring to in the original post. Look at the timeline. One or two layers of footage and ten layers of sh@t above it all effects as source. Do you see allot of E or Vh1 timelines in Washington DC where you are? Didn't think so. Probably a good thing you lucky duck, probably working on something interesting and important. Anyway, this is the main reason 100% of these shows are on Avid and most of the shows that go to FCP on these kinds of programs switch back. The reason for the post was to learn a way to achieve this in FCP even if it is done differently so whatever company I work for next that tries to do one of these shows on FCP doesn't have to go back to Avid and I could get the show done. I don't care about better or worse or different, just possibilities. I have even worked at companies that switched over to FCP for their reality but had to begrudgingly keep Avids for clip shows. They don't keep $30,000.00 bays across the hall from $10,000.00 bays because they are stupid. I don't think much is done in LA media out of stupidity. They tend to have this TV thing down pat. Yes, I do think the function is obvious and needed if FCP wants to make larger inroads in broadcast. I have been enlightened to many workarounds in this thread and they are much appreciated but none of them are as fast as dropping a pre built template ( three to four layer effect used as a transition subclipped as a sequence then thrown into the source monitor and dropped over as needed ) ... this is the fastest way, you know it and you would darn sure use it if you could in FCP. I know I would. Often times the decision to go Avid or FCP comes down to this one function on clip shows. If this function existed then E! and Vh1 would be dumping a hundred Avids in the garbage in exchange for FCP but they haven't yet and this is why wether you believe that or not. These things I know to be true.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before..

One way to save your keyframed effects as a reusable transition, is to apply them to a text object and save them in folders in the FCP browser. And you can save a separate project file with only the collection of effects and copy that into your working FCP project. And when you need to apply the transition, blade at the in point of the transition, copy the text object (cmd c), select your clip and paste attributes (option v), so you would get one transition for outgoing clip, then another for incoming clip. If you hit option T for toggle clip keyframes, you can drag the keyframes around (a little clunky for this option) and if you hold shift while dragging, you drag all the keyframes on the clip.

You can also check out the alpha transitions that is available for download. You select an alpha wipe from the effects transitions, then pop in the clips into the image well. It's not a one click thing, but I'm sure you can save them in a bin in the browser.

[www.apple.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

> Yeah I know how to keyframe filters. When they are on a clip. I am talking about stacking them
> as transitions over a clip.

You're thinking in Avid. The FCP way is to use the transition and have a keyframed filter on the clip the transition is working on.

There are ways to save these templates as drop-and-forget items. You just have to get out of the Avid mindset and learn how to do it in FCP.


www.derekmok.com

"You just have to get out of the Avid mindset and learn how to do it in FCP"

Absolutely but you don't learn to speak another language overnight and I am trying, hence my post.

So I would use the transition and let's say if I wanted to "stack" in FCP and the transition was ten frames then I would effect the tail of the A clip and the head of the B clip for five frames each?

Thanks, never thought of that.

>So I would use the transition and let's say if I wanted to "stack" in FCP and the transition was ten
>frames then I would effect the tail of the A clip and the head of the B clip for five frames each?

If you're using the text object, you'll start your transition at the start of the clip. Then you blade the transition start point of the outgoing clip, and apply your transition. Then go to toggle keyframes (opt T), and drag the keyframe positions to taste. Or you can do it in the effects tab in the viewer. You don't have to blade for the incoming clip.



www.strypesinpost.com