A Hitch in my FCP Workflow
Sunday, September 12 Filed in: digital media
I’m still trying to find the perfect workflow that
fits the bulk of the editing I do on a regular basis.
As unexciting as it is to admit, that editing job is
simply taking footage from my
Canon T2i
and turning it into, well...a home movie.
A perfect workflow scenario for me would look something like this:
Phew! Now, I’ll be the first to admit some of these steps might be overkill, and some of these steps might get skipped all together or, at the very least, shortened to the least amount of effort. (For example, step 7 might just mean hitting Command-A to select everything in the Timeline and Command-Opt-T to crossfade audio.) But the steps that bother me most involve the task of putting music to the Timeline. Logic might not be the best choice, but I find Soundtrack Pro to be a little bit cumbersome, especially if I’m looking to build a loop-based project. If I had all the time in the world I might use Logic or Reason to create the perfect audio track -- even before starting the video edit -- and put my years of musical experience to work.
Every time I post a video online I should be legally required to admit that I have a master’s degree in music composition. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be so quick to build a music bed with loops or -- gasp! -- prepackaged pieces. As it stands I spend a lot of time on everything else and don’t put enough time into the music. For me, Final Cut Pro would be perfect if there was some sort of integrated musical features built in. I’d settle for an easy way to browse and import loops that ship with Final Cut Studio.
If you’ve ever added a loop from the Soundtrack Pro library you know it’s a cumbersome 5.1 .caf file. Great for serious projects to be sure, but I’m just working on videos of my sons playing sports! I don’t need 5.1 audio, and I definitely don’t need a .caf file that Final Cut Pro can’t even play back in the Timeline without rendering or first converting to .aif. I’ve tried creating a Compressor Droplet to easily convert these files and I’ve tried using Batch Export among other things. Each has its own set of hoops and extra steps.
If you’re editing different clips of the same music file together in the Timeline the Final Cut Pro manual suggests “Checkerboarding” the audio (alternating the pairs of audio tracks the clips are in) so you can control the cross fades. Being able to snap to a beat would be handy during the process of shaping the fades to work best for the given music. Having a tempo setting in Final Cut Pro is probably a bizarre thought, but it’s one I have so I have to own up to it.
To make a long story short, I generally find the process of adding basic music to my Final Cut Pro project a chore. What I’d like to see in the next version of Final Cut Pro is some sort of integration into the music library that exists on my hard drive: loops, beds, sound effects -- everything short of software instruments! Even my iTunes library, which I guess would make it more like iMovie. If you listen to some of the rumors floating around, you’d think Apple was planning to turn Final Cut Pro into iMove Extreme thus alienating pro users and giving casual users something more advanced. While I don’t believe this is going to happen, I would like to see a little bit of love when it comes to working with music. I’d love to be able to do it from within Final Cut Pro.
I teach Digital Media to high schoolers and I make it a point to teach a lot of the buzzwords that are essential for “talking the talk” when it comes to editing. It starts first with calling FCP “nonlinear” and then by the end of the year we’re “nesting” sequences, etc.... One favorite term is “round tripping” -- taking something from one application to another and then back again. In the case of music for video, the best solution might be to round trip the file to STP or Logic then back to FCP. This is one case in which I’d rather stay home than “round trip.”
What’s your workflow? Let me know if you’ve found the perfect way to pull this off, or if I’m missing a great solution.
and turning it into, well...a home movie.
A perfect workflow scenario for me would look something like this:
- Copy footage from SD memory to external FireWire drive
- Use Canon’s EOS import utility to mark and select footage to convert to Apple ProRes 422 -- usually (LT) to save space
- Create a rough edit of the footage either straight into the Timeline or by storyboard editing
- Export a QuickTime version (LAN/Intranet default setting) to open in Logic 9 to create music
- Bounce the music from Logic and import it into Final Cut Pro
- Fine tune the edits to the music - hitting some beats and avoiding others
- Set the overall audio levels, cross fade all audio edit points
- Color Correct using 3-way color correction in FCP
- Export a full quality QuickTime file
- Use Compressor to create an H.264 version I can upload to Vimeo or Youtube
Phew! Now, I’ll be the first to admit some of these steps might be overkill, and some of these steps might get skipped all together or, at the very least, shortened to the least amount of effort. (For example, step 7 might just mean hitting Command-A to select everything in the Timeline and Command-Opt-T to crossfade audio.) But the steps that bother me most involve the task of putting music to the Timeline. Logic might not be the best choice, but I find Soundtrack Pro to be a little bit cumbersome, especially if I’m looking to build a loop-based project. If I had all the time in the world I might use Logic or Reason to create the perfect audio track -- even before starting the video edit -- and put my years of musical experience to work.
Every time I post a video online I should be legally required to admit that I have a master’s degree in music composition. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be so quick to build a music bed with loops or -- gasp! -- prepackaged pieces. As it stands I spend a lot of time on everything else and don’t put enough time into the music. For me, Final Cut Pro would be perfect if there was some sort of integrated musical features built in. I’d settle for an easy way to browse and import loops that ship with Final Cut Studio.
If you’ve ever added a loop from the Soundtrack Pro library you know it’s a cumbersome 5.1 .caf file. Great for serious projects to be sure, but I’m just working on videos of my sons playing sports! I don’t need 5.1 audio, and I definitely don’t need a .caf file that Final Cut Pro can’t even play back in the Timeline without rendering or first converting to .aif. I’ve tried creating a Compressor Droplet to easily convert these files and I’ve tried using Batch Export among other things. Each has its own set of hoops and extra steps.
If you’re editing different clips of the same music file together in the Timeline the Final Cut Pro manual suggests “Checkerboarding” the audio (alternating the pairs of audio tracks the clips are in) so you can control the cross fades. Being able to snap to a beat would be handy during the process of shaping the fades to work best for the given music. Having a tempo setting in Final Cut Pro is probably a bizarre thought, but it’s one I have so I have to own up to it.
To make a long story short, I generally find the process of adding basic music to my Final Cut Pro project a chore. What I’d like to see in the next version of Final Cut Pro is some sort of integration into the music library that exists on my hard drive: loops, beds, sound effects -- everything short of software instruments! Even my iTunes library, which I guess would make it more like iMovie. If you listen to some of the rumors floating around, you’d think Apple was planning to turn Final Cut Pro into iMove Extreme thus alienating pro users and giving casual users something more advanced. While I don’t believe this is going to happen, I would like to see a little bit of love when it comes to working with music. I’d love to be able to do it from within Final Cut Pro.
I teach Digital Media to high schoolers and I make it a point to teach a lot of the buzzwords that are essential for “talking the talk” when it comes to editing. It starts first with calling FCP “nonlinear” and then by the end of the year we’re “nesting” sequences, etc.... One favorite term is “round tripping” -- taking something from one application to another and then back again. In the case of music for video, the best solution might be to round trip the file to STP or Logic then back to FCP. This is one case in which I’d rather stay home than “round trip.”
What’s your workflow? Let me know if you’ve found the perfect way to pull this off, or if I’m missing a great solution.