Word of caution with FCP 6
by CharlieX
on
Nov 13, 2007 at 4:36:13 pm
We just migrated back to FCP 5.1.4 after the last FCP 6 headache. Be careful before upgrading, and keep a copy of 5.1 around - it seems pretty solid on some projects and types of media, but completely out of control on others.
Very odd problems we were having. If you put a widescreen filter on a clip, fine. Once you force rendered that RT effect, it would change the clip's sync from 2-39 frames off. You may have read my rants earlier about similar problems with FCP 6 rendering duplicate frames... I think it's all part of the same root problem. Whatever it might be.
FCP 5 doesn't flinch. Same media, same effects. Just exported XMLS of everything and reconnected.
So keep an eye on 6 for those brave enough to venture. It's wily.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by bogiesan on Nov 13, 2007 at 5:42:02 pm
[John Christie]"We had to bail on FCP 6 because we found multiclips to be completely broken."
Understand your frustration just not how you arrived at "completely broken." Multiclips work on my systems. I'll go ahead and say I think Apple's design paradigm for multiclips is lame but they do work for us.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: "For crying out loud, read the freakin' manual."
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by CharlieX on Nov 13, 2007 at 6:14:21 pm
Captured. What's funny is while FCP6 sometimes won't even Matchframe to what it's showing you in the timeline.... the same exact piece of media works fine in FCP 5.
there's something in QT and FCP reading frame rates, I think, that's at the heart of the issue. It's affecting us because we're loading 30fps material into 24fps DV files....and something freaks FCP6 out. i even tried batch conforming clips with cinema tools as per our earlier fix... no cigar. clip analysis revealed several frames that were 1.5 frames in duration (according to FCP), but long frame detection didn't catch them, and even when batch conform got rid of that problem, the clips still were corrupt. Again, any of the clips in any of their forms work absolutely fine in FCP5.
I tried all sort of stuff until *4am* last night, came up with no answers that made me confident in 6, so moved the project back to 5. now it's working like a charm and the clients are none the wiser.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by PaulD on Nov 13, 2007 at 8:35:28 pm
[CharlieX]"there's something in QT and FCP reading frame rates, I think, that's at the heart of the issue.
...we're loading 30fps material into 24fps DV files....and something freaks FCP6 out..
...clip analysis revealed several frames that were 1.5 frames in duration (according to FCP), ...and even when batch conform got rid of that problem, the clips still were corrupt. " Hi
I'm nowhere near FCP 6 yet, but I reckon that about 90% of the instabililty issues with FCP, and probably 99% of Render Error and Media Manager quirks, are directly caused by frame-rate/frame-length/frame-count irregularities.
Why hasn't there been a maintenance update for FCS yet?
Well, you and Apple are working on it, and maybe you have made better progress ;-)
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by CharlieX on Nov 13, 2007 at 10:52:37 pm
Yup. from what other have said on here, FCP would need to be re-written from the ground up to fix it's Media Management problems. It's a house built on the sand....
...maybe Apple should buy Avid. Avid has strong media management if nothing else.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by PaulD on Nov 14, 2007 at 10:49:33 am
[Peterd]"I think apple needs to completely overhaul media manager and possibly how FCP works with media altogether." [CharlieX]"FCP would need to be re-written from the ground up to fix it's Media Management problems. It's a house built on the sand....
...maybe Apple should buy Avid. Avid has strong media management if nothing else. " Hi
What Avid and Fast (now Pinnacle>Avid Liquid) introduced in the latter 1990s was a clip management strategy where captured clips were the total responsibility of the NLE, not the computer's OS. That way a rock-solid database would be available for 'media management', and Windows (or Mac OS with Avid on a Mac) was excluded from the process.
Apple rightly saw the limitations of this strategy - all data in such a locked system is eternally proprietary, and will carry an associated cost premium. With a Mac all data is managed by the OS, with freely available management tools.
But to drag Final Cut kicking and screaming into the 21st century, some such rock-solid asset database is essential. The Mac way of doing things means this has to be a shared responsibility, with Mac OS X being the main factor.
There seems to be signs that this development is under way... :-)
There are also signs that integrating Final Cut into all this is not a trivial matter, so it may be we'll have to wait for Leopard's successor for it to happen :-(
QuickTime, the OS X system component upon which all video on a Mac depends, also needs a rebuild. From its inception it has allowed variable frame-rates and frame durations within the same movie - this allows it to do slide shows etc.
But to work properly with an NLE where constantly variable frame rates and frame durations are not acceptable, due to sync issues, QuickTime has had to be kludged, variously by Radius, Media 100, and Avid, to give the stability that those NLE systems were renowned for.
Now, with Open Timelines, and the multitude of new frame rates and pull-down options that HD has introduced, there is plenty of scope for QuickTime's legacy architecture, in partnership with FCP, to screw up.
On top of that there is the necessity for transparent future-proof compatibility with MXF and other new-format video.
Because Leopard was delayed, QuickTime had to be prematurely upgraded to v7.2 to introduce Leopard-based core code, in advance of Leopard itself, so FCS 2 and iLife could work.
This has meant more opportunity for conflicts ;-(
Then there's the current security-issue scaremongering, which means that a new version of OS X and QuickTime are needed ever few weeks to repair notional security weaknesses... ;-(
There was a tiny rumour at the time of the big FC-Extreme/FCP6-at-NAB-2006 rumour, that reported that Apple had a second Final Cut development team working, independently and in isolation from the main maintenance upgrade team, to produce a completely new version of Final Cut Pro. Well rumours receive short shrift in these parts, but....
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by CharlieX on Nov 14, 2007 at 6:17:08 pm
Great post Paul.
I never thought to really why Avid had their own versions of Quicktime codecs, and all those OMF variations -assuming they were just being different for the sake of elitism - but it totally makes sense now. They had to strangle QT so it would act in a more sensible manner.
I still like the rumor of FCP Extreme. I think Apple has a goldmine on their hands with the possibility of tapping an oil field.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by Sean ONeil on Nov 14, 2007 at 4:35:34 am
Here's my FCS2 laundry list. FCS2 has been out for 6 months now and these issues have not been addressed:
- Multiclips ARE broken. No simpler way to explain it. They work at first, but when you start doing things like copying sequences to other projects, nesting sequences, batch re-capturing, etc., all hell breaks loose. And whatever you do don't send anything that was once a multiclip to Color. It's hard to pinpoint and explain what's happening, but basically it seems that once something is a multiclip you can never go back. The XML never forgets - it always remembers the multiclip relationships. And many functions of various workflows cannot handle that.
- The Widescreen filter has a missing/transparent video line (2nd to last line on both top and bottom). Have to use mask shape. This is just annoying, if nothing else.
- Exporting interlaced footage (only tested ProRes NTSC and 1080i) to Compressor is completely useless. The Deinterlace filter won't work. It combines the wrong fields regardless of the settings. I'm doing more and more web clips for clients, so the amount of time this has added to my workflow is becoming a serious problem.
- The "open timeline" has shortcomings. It doesn't properly mix NTSC 480 and 486 footage. Final Cut Pro 4-5 did not have this problem. FCP 6 also does not add 3:2 pulldown when placing 24p footage on a 29.97 sequence. Instead it adds 2:2:2:4 pulldown which is unsuitable for any tape master. This is obviously not unique to v6, but v6 was marketed as having an open timeline as a new feature - so I take issue with it not delivering as advertised.
- Capturing 23.98 footage from a Kona 3 is broken if you use ProRes(HQ), but oddly enough works fine with non-HQ ProRes. See my posts in the AJA board - Gary Adcock also confirmed this.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by CharlieX on Nov 14, 2007 at 6:22:48 pm
Is is a bit sad for 6 months of being on the market that these glaring problems exist. You have the feeling Apple got so excited to bundle Color in and show off at NAB that they made this crap upgrade to FCP6 without fully testing it.
They love showing off how you can have 5 streams of HDV with RT effects and how you can easily edit with it..... but flash is not substance.
Does Apple have a beta program in place for FCP? it could use the input of trench warfare editors that really beat on it.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by Aaron Lucich on Dec 12, 2007 at 10:18:00 pm
Wish I had read this before I upgraded. I'm trying to move a 2 year project over to 6 to do my final edit and a fair % of source files are significantly out of sync, fine in quicktime just out of sync in FCP. I'd be happier if it was the other way around. Support claimed that it wasn't a software issue and suggested that I recapture the files that I'm having a problem with (implying that the problem existed in my media management skills). Fair enough. I had to check my watch for the date to make sure it wasn't 1994 and Mediacomposer support on the the line.
Re: Word of caution with FCP 6 by Jeremy Garchow on Dec 13, 2007 at 2:42:01 am
And you removed pulldown on capture? If yes:
Do me a favor and on one of the clips, open it in Cinema Tools and conform it to 23.98. Do this on one clip only. After doing that, watch it in FCP. Is it in sync?
