Apple Pro Training Series. Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System. A Technical Guide to Real-World Post-Production

As with all workflow-related solutions, consider your sharing methods from the outset. Communicate with everyone involved on your project to determine how they will retrieve and send project information to ensure a successful approach.

Sharing in Final Cut Pro

It's a good idea to set up a clear method for exchanging sequences and projects between Final Cut Pro workstations. During the course of a project, you may exchange your project, sequences, and bins with other members of your production team, so you need to keep track of current versions and perhaps even who created them.

During the course of The Magic Hour project, there were a number of editors involved in the post-production who exchanged sequences, bins, and even filters. Since they worked as a team, it was important to determine an elegant system of exchange.

A variety of editors contributed the following techniques, which you can use to design your own method of organization:

  • Include your initials and date at the end of your project name, bins, or sequences, such as ProjectName_em_05262005 or SequenceName_em_05262005. This makes the process of identification clearer.

  • Save a project named Transfer for transferring individual sequences or bins. When transferring individual elements, also label the elements with initials and date.

  • Save a project named FiltersandEffects for saving and sharing your effects and filters.

    Tip

    You can save groups of filters on a video generator, like a color matte. Give the video generator an appropriate name, and use the copy and paste attributes option to place multiple filters on a clip. This is a very effective method because you don't need to apply the individual filters, and you don't need to remember the filter order.

  • Use Media Manager to share a project and media in the same or different resolutions. (See Lesson 3 for details.)

Note

If you are sharing projects that are using different resolutions, for example if you are sharing sequences between an OfflineRT and DVCPRO HD project, remember that you will need to reset the sequence settings.

Note

When sharing Final Cut Pro projects, bins, and sequences, unless you're working with an identical media file structure, you may need to reconnect your media.

Exchanging with Pro Video Applications

Perhaps the most flexible and time-saving task you can accomplish with Final Cut Pro is the seamless exchange of information among the Apple Pro video applications. For instance, let's say you want to remove a city skyline in the background of a clip; you can send the clip directly to Shake from Final Cut Pro. You can easily exchange information with LiveType, Cinema Tools, Compressor, Soundtrack Pro, Logic, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, and Shake.

In Final Cut Pro, the Send To command lets you exchange information with Motion, Soundtrack Pro, and Shake.

You can also use the External Editor feature in Final Cut Pro to open the media file of a clip in another application. When you assign an application to a media file type, you can open a clip's media file through Final Cut Pro and automatically launch the assigned application. So for example, if you assigned Adobe Photoshop as your still-image external editor, you could open the still clip in Photoshop using External Editor, alter the file, save, return to Final Cut Pro, and the still image would be updated automatically.

1.

Press Shift-Q to launch the System Settings dialog.

2.

Click the External Editors tab.

3.

Click Set, and then navigate to the Applications folder.

4.

Click Preview, and then click Choose.

5.

Click OK.

Note

LiveType and Motion assign their own Creator property. A clip's Creator property determines what application will open it.

Here, you'll open the PICT file directly from the Final Cut Pro sequence. Preview will launch automatically since you assigned it to open still images in the External Editors tab of the User Preferences.

1.

Open Lesson 05 Project.fcp.

2.

Ctrl-click the 2 magicians bw.pct clip from 01 External Editors Sequence.

3.

Choose Open In Editor from the contextual menu.

The PICT will launch in Preview.

4.

In Preview, choose Tools > Flip Horizontal.

5.

Press Cmd-S to save the file.

6.

Press Cmd-Tab to return to Final Cut Pro. The PICT is updated automatically in your Final Cut Pro project.

You can assign any application, and it will work in the same manner. If you are working on titles or lower thirds created in Adobe Illustrator, assign Illustrator as the still image files external editor. It might be useful to assign Adobe After Effects as your video files external editor if you are time remapping your video. There are endless possibilities, and since any application can be set as an external editor, you can easily share, open, and edit your media files while you work from within Final Cut Pro.

For more information on assigning external editors, see the section on preferences in Lesson 11. For more information on other Apple Pro video and audio applications, refer to the Apple Pro Training Series books.

Exporting an EDL

The most basic interchange format you can use for sharing projects is an edit decision list (EDL). An EDL represents edits from a single sequence, and you can use it to exchange information with older editing systems that don't recognize other formats like XML. An EDL contains a description of your sequence as text, which describes each clip and its placement in your sequence, but EDLs include only basic transitions.

In order to export a successful EDL, you must avoid nested sequences, clips on tracks above video track 2, and non-SMPTE standard transitions. Video and audio filters, motion parameters and keyframes, although not applied, are listed in the EDL for your reference.

1.

Open 02 Export EDL Sequence and make sure your Timeline is the active window.

2.

Choose File > Export > EDL.

3.

Enter 02_Export_EDL_Sequence as your EDL title.

This is the name of the EDL that is embedded in the text file.

Tip

To help easily recognize your EDLs, give your EDL the same name as your sequence and include the date or version number.

Tip

You can export your Master Comment columns and Comment A/B columns to the EDL for assistance with the online. For example, these comments could include effect notes, or they could be used to communicate color correction notes.

There are a number of settings and options in the EDL dialog. Base your settings on what your recipient requires. The format you need to supply may change the options.

4.

Leave all the settings at their defaults, and click OK.

The second name in the Save As entry in the Save dialog is the filename that will appear on your Mac HD.

5.

Navigate to the Lessons folder and click Save.

6.

When prompted, save the second EDL in the same location.

Note

The second EDL is the b Reel EDL. Since an EDL is essentially read to a linear A/B roll suite, transition events from the same reel are not possible. The B reel is compiled by copying all the conflicting shots to a new tape. By default, Final Cut Pro automatically detects reel conflicts and creates a second EDL with a B at the end of the EDL name.

7.

Choose File > Open.

8.

Navigate to the Lessons folder and open the 02_Export_EDL_Sequence.edl file.

Scroll down the file and read the EDL dialog. You can read your entire cut! You can even read where reel names were changed and what they were changed to. You will see what filters were applied, where transitions occurred, the video opacity, and audio levels.

  • The Tracks field determines which tracks are used. V=video, A=audio, A2=audio 2, AA=both audio channels.

  • The Transition field represents the type of edit. C=cut, D=dissolve, W=wipe, K=key.

More Info

For more information see "Importing and Exporting EDLs" in the Final Cut Pro 5 user's manual.

Exporting an OMF

Traditionally, you would expect to export an OMF for your audio mixer. This is because an Open Media Framework (OMF) can store more information than a traditional EDL. An OMF export contains your audio clips, their placement within a sequence, and the media files themselves. There are no track limitations, you can maintain linear cross-fade information, and you can add handles if desired.

Before you export an OMF, keep in mind that if you have applied a speed effect, those clips will be permanently changed. If your sequence contains any nested sequences, the nests will become a single media file. Any levels, pan, or filters you applied will not be exported. The Final Cut Pro OMF export has a two-gigabyte limit. (Automatic Duck's new Pro Export resolves the two-gigabit limitation.)

If you see a two-gigabit error message, simply duplicate your sequence, creating a part 1 and part 2. Export each part separately; this way you can split your OMF export in half. Un-nest nested sequences and include original media clips with their speed-affected counterparts. Keep a written log of filters, levels, and pans if you want to communicate those to your audio mixer.

1.

Open 03 Export OMF Sequence.

2.

Enable track visibility for all audio tracks you want to export.

3.

Choose File > Export > Audio to OMF.

4.

In the OMF Audio Export dialog, set Rate to 48 kHz, Depth to 16-bit, Handle Length to 1 sec, and select Include Crossfade Transitions. Click OK.

Note

You can choose from the following sample rates: 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, and 96 kHz. You can also choose between a 16-bit and 24-bit rate.

Tip

Find out your audio post facility's preferred settings prior to your OMF export.

5.

Create a new folder named OMF Export, enter your sequence name as a filename, and click Save.

Tip

You can import your final mixed OMF audio using Automatic Duck's Pro Import FCP.

Exporting an XML File

XML, eXtensible Markup Language, is a unique language that allows you to create, translate, exchange, and read any single element or an entire Final Cut Pro project file in a text editor. Using XML allows you to export all your project information into a database, such as FileMaker, or translate your entire final sequence along with your filters to another nonlinear editor.

Since you can view an XML file in a text editor, you can also learn to read, construct, and edit a Final Cut Pro project directly in a text editor. The most basic example of how you can leverage XML is the ability to change multiple clips at once. For example, if your project contains hundreds of titles and graphics that have been positioned for a 4:3 aspect ratio, but you need to deliver a 16:9 project, you could export the sequence using XML and modify all the position parameters of each clip simultaneously. This is a very basic example of how you can leverage a Final Cut Pro XML interchange. To learn more, read Chapter 12 of the Final Cut Pro user's manual.

Here, you'll export a sequence as an XML file, modify the font of the lower thirds, and import the XML file back to Final Cut Pro.

1.

Select 04 Export XML Sequence.

2.

Choose File > Export > XML.

The Export XML dialog appears.

3.

Choose Apple XML Interchange Format, Version 2 from the Format pop-up menu.

Tip

Choose an older version of the Final Cut Pro XML Interchange Format to make a current project backward compatible. This means that a Final Cut Pro 5 project file could be read with an older version of Final Cut Pro.

4.

Select Include Master Clips Outside Selection if you want to include the master clips in the XML export that are associated with the selection.

5.

Click OK.

6.

Navigate to the Lessons folder, and name your file 04_Export_XML_Sequence_Arial.xml.

The XML file stores the attributes of each sequence, the name and location of the all clips, and all other information such as timecode, frame rate, and media source location.

Here's how to take a look at the XML file in TextEdit:

1.

In the Finder, navigate to the XML file you exported.

2.

Ctrl-click the XML file and from the contextual menu choose Open With > Other.

3.

Choose TextEdit from the Applications folder.

4.

Look at the text file to see what XML Interchange Format language text looks like.

The file is similar in appearance to an HTML document, except XML language has more descriptions. This file contains the text values of your entire sequence. You're going to change the font of every lower third.

5.

Press Cmd-F to launch the Find dialog.

6.

Type Arial Black in the Find field, type Arial in the Replace With field, and then click Replace All. Eight instances of Arial Black are replaced with Arial.

7.

Press Cmd-S to save the XML text document.

8.

From the Finder, navigate to the XML file and double-click it to launch it.

By default, your XML file will launch a Final Cut Pro Import XML dialog.

9.

Choose Lesson 05 Project from the Destination pop-up menu.

Note

You can include the XML sequence in your currently open project, or you can create a new project. Simply choose your option from the Destination pop-up menu.

10.

Choose OfflineRT NTSC (Photo JPEG) as your Sequence Setting and click OK.

Note

If an error warning dialog appears, you can choose to view the log to check for errors by clicking Yes. You can then locate the error and delete it from your sequence or the XML file.

11.

Select Reconnect To Media Files, Include Markers, and Include Audio/Video Effects before clicking OK.

12.

Double-click your imported sequence to load it in the Timeline.

13.

Press Shift-M or Option-M to navigate to the Timeline markers and view your font changes.

Click between the original sequence and your modified sequence to see the changes.

Changing a font is just one example of the Apple XML Interchange Format capabilities. To learn more, see the "Importing and Exporting Final Cut Pro XML" chapter in the Final Cut Pro user's manual.

XML Developers

Automatic Duck (www.automaticduck.com) uses XML to translate project and sequence information between Final Cut Pro and other professional applications. Automatic Duck allows you to exchange project and sequence information between Final Cut Pro, Motion, Avid, Pro Tools, Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Discreet Combustion. They also offer a free XML Exporter plug-in for Final Cut Pro designed to make exporting XML faster and easier.

Using an Automatic Duck plug-in, you can start a project on one platform and finish on another. During post-production at a broadcast facility, I frequently sent OMFs to the audio department; they mixed the audio and sent it back for me to include in my final output and archive. Automatic Duck's Pro Import FCP allowed me to import the OMF composition directly into Final Cut Pro. This plug-in also allowed me to share projects with Avid editing systems.

Final Cut Pro Timeline

Audio from the Final Cut Pro Timeline exported to a Pro Tools session; all the levels are retained, as is the pan information.

Other companies, such as Spherico (www.spherico.com) and Digital Heaven (www.digital-heaven.co.uk), also make some elegant XML solutions for Final Cut Pro.

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