Assembly editing in FCP X
Art Guglielmo has already said quite a lot about editing with Final Cut Pro X, and said it so well that writing this feels entirely redundant. But I’m going to do it anyway, because why not. I have an opinion and an Internet connection and that makes me important.
Read Art’s thing first, though, as it’s surely better than the meager pittance that follows.
Yesterday I spent some time exploring project management options in FCP X and found that there basically aren’t any. Today I’m ignoring that with furious intensity so I can find out what it’s like to do basic assembly editing.
At first I wanted to load in a bunch of Red mags I keep around for doing stuff like this, but I was unsuccessful. FCP X, of course, doesn’t know what to do with an R3D, and I don’t have REDCODE installed on this boot disk, so I couldn’t read the proxies. That’s fine, moving on.
Plan B was to go back to an old project, a five-minute short I cut a few years ago. I’ve got all the original rushes and audio, plus an H.264 of the finished product, so it should be a simple matter of overcutting, right?
Well.
The first thing I discovered is that the “rename project” feature apparently isn’t working. See, I was so fixated on setting up my project the way I wanted it — remember that “project” is FCPXese for “timeline” — that I forgot to name the damn thing. So I went back to rename it, and saw no obvious means of doing so. I hauled out the manual and did a search. It says you should be able to rename a project just by clicking on it, highlighting the name and then typing a new one. No success. So I just deleted it and started over. Probably just missed something simple, but whatever.
Next, I found that my reference H.264 has bars and a slate on it. That’s easy enough to fix. Just load up the clip in my source viewer, cue to 00:00:10:00, mark in, then insert-edit into my timeline. Double-click, “10.”, enter, I, F9. I can do that in FCP in my sleep. Which naturally means FCP X doesn’t do anything like that at all.
One option was just to give in and do it the kiddie way, dragging my clip tiresomely to my timeline then trimming it. But no, by God, the line must be drawn here. I’m going to figure this out.
There’s no source viewer, and double-clicking a clip in the bin — I don’t know what Apple calls it and I don’t care right now, I’m calling it the bin — makes my compute beep irritably at me. Spoiler alert: this happens a lot. Muscle-memory makes me double-click shots in bins, and every time I do my computer gets just that much more pissed at me. I can tell by the tone of its beeps.
Now, I can “skim” the clip with the “skimmer.” But remember, this is a five-minute clip. It is, I’m convinced, literally impossible to land the skimmer precisely ten seconds into it. So that’s out.
Next option is to move the skimmer all the way to the start of the clip and use the normal transport controls — JKL are still there, thankfully — to find my in point. But that’s a pain in the ass. I just want to cue manually to a timecode!
It was only after I searched the manual for far too long that I discovered FCP X’s secret. There’s a sort of context associated with the UI. If the timeline has focus — indicated by a background that’s a slightly lighter grey than it is the rest of the time — the timecode display, which Apple not-at-all charmingly calls the “dashboard,” shows you record timecode. If a clip in a bin has focus — indicated by, you guessed it, the bin having a slightly lighter background — the “dashboard” shows source timecode.
This, by itself, is not a problem. This is how Smoke works, basically. One viewer, which they call the player, and it can either have source focus or record focus. The difference is when the player’s in source focus, the timecode display is a bright fucking in-your-face green, and when it’s in record focus, the timecode display is an eye-searing red. You literally have to be colorblind to lose track of what has focus. Apple: Please learn from this. Please put a fancy, overdesigned visual indicator to show the difference between source and record focus on the dashboard.
And while we’re at it, Apple, the mouse sucks. The trackpad sucks. You know what doesn’t suck? Keyboard shortcuts. In Smoke, you toggle back and forth between source and record focus by hitting F7 and F8. In FCP X, you do it by clicking a clip in the bin, or by clicking the timeline. Now for the fun part: If you have ins and outs set on a clip in the bin, clicking the clip obliterates them. And clicking in the timeline moves the playhead. As you might guess, this is going to have an impact when we actually start editing. So Apple: We need a keyboard toggle for switching between source and record focus in the viewer. It’s really pretty important, kay?
Anyway, when we last left our hero, he was trying to figure out how to trim off the bars and slate from the front of his reference clip, so he can put it in his timeline. He’d just figured out that if he clicks the clip in the bin, giving it that yellow outline, the dashboard can be clicked, and then a timecode can be keyed in manually. Yes, you have to click the dashboard first. No, you shouldn’t have to. Dear Apple: please fix that.
So I click the clip, click the dashboard — I’m already sick of clicking — and key in “10.” and hit enter, then hit I to mark in. Great! Everything’s working! FCP X was even smart enough to set an implicit out at the end of my clip, which is just what I want. There’s a good boy. Who’s a good boy? You are, yes you are.
Now, I want to insert-edit this clip into my timeline. (I could also overwrite-edit it, doesn’t matter, but I’m in the habit of always inserting unless I specifically need to overwrite.) The shortcut for an insert edit is W, and as you’d expect, it inserts the clip right onto the timeline. Hooray.
Except no, not really, because when I was faffing about earlier I managed to move my record playhead from the start of the timeline to somewhere else. I need to move it back. No problem, just hit undo, and the clip I just inserted goes away. Hit the start-of-timeline shortcut, which on my laptop is function-left-arrow but which I imagine on a full keyboard would be the home key, then hit W to insert again and … yes! It did exactly what I wanted!
But just as a little experiment, I tried something different. I hit undo again, leaving my playhead at the start of an empty timeline, then went back to my bin, clicked a different clip, then clicked the clip I wanted to insert, and … yup. It obliterated my in-and-out. It’s like FCP X can only remember the in and out for a single clip at one time. It doesn’t give each clip its own in point and out point, but rather has just a single, global “source in” and “source out” that it keeps track of. Set an in and out on one clip, click another clip, click back and your in and out are simply gone. Poof. Dear Apple: Please? Come on, please? Every clip should have its own private in and out which persist, well, forever. The program should never change or forget ins and outs. I do that. I’m the editor.
Anyway, do the dance again: Click the clip, click the dashboard, “10.” and enter, I to mark in, W to insert. Not much to complain about there really, in that one little bit, except the extra and infuriating click on the dashboard.
Moving on. Now I have my reference QuickTime on my timeline, and I want to start overcutting it. Now, in any other NLE I’d say to myself, “Self,” I’d say, “V1 and A1/2 are for your reference, and V2 and A3/4 are for your overcut.” Then I’d go through my overcut and add through edits — just straight cuts in the clip — where all my shot changes are in my reference, and then start filling in those holes on V2 with my footage.
This would be particularly easy to do in Final Cut Pro. Just start playing the timeline from the start, then stop on each shot change I see. Find the right frame, control-V to add an edit there, repeat until done. Then for each shot, I’d part my playhead somewhere inside the shot, hit X to mark my record in and out on my timeline, then go find the right shot in my bin. I’d park my source playhead on the first frame, mark in, then overwrite edit onto V2. Classic three-point editing: in and out on the record timeline, in on the source timeline, overwrite, done. Easy!
Weeeelllll, it’s not that easy in FCP X. Because we have no tracks, see. There’s no such thing as V1 or V2. There’s just the “storyline,” as Apple calls it.
There’s also, incidentally, no discrete audio. That reference QuickTime I just edited into my timeline? It came in as a single thing, both picture and sound. Not picture on V1 and sound on A1/A2, but just a sort of amorphous blob of stuff.
That’s fixable, though. There’s a command under the Clip menu — right where you’d expect it, really — called “Detach audio.” Select your clip, invoke that command (shortcut control-shift-S), and poof. Now you have picture and sound as discrete things. It’s a single audio clip for two channels of sound, but whatever, I can adapt to that … I guess.
Anyway, next step: I have a mixed music score that goes behind this short film. No edits or anything; I just want to drop that on. Now normally I’d put that way down at the bottom of the timeline, around A7/8 or something like that, just to keep it out of my way. Can’t do that in FCP X: no tracks. I have to put it just … like … wherever, and expect FCP X to do the right thing. The mixed score starts on the first frame of picture, so I park my record playhead at … wait.
I just realized something. The first frame on my timeline right now is 00:00:00:00. That’s completely unacceptable. It should be 01:00:00:00, as all God-fearing editors know! Lemme see if I can figure out how to change that…
Um. Yeah. Soooo … apparently there’s no way to fix that. At least no obvious way. It’s not in the project settings. Apparently the first frame on your timeline is going to be 00:00:00:00, by God, and you can take it or leave it. That’s a Dear Apple, right there, because seriously, who starts their timeline at zero? We start it at one hour, because the first picture frame is always at 01:00:00:00, and you need anywhere from a few seconds to a couple minutes before that for preroll, bars, slate, countdown, all that stuff. Plus which, it’s customary when you’re doing stringouts to use different timecode-hours for different reels: 01 for the first reel, 02 for the second … it’s an organizational tool. This is a more serious problem than non-editor-types might realize.
Okay, so anyway, fuck that for now. Where was I? Oh yeah, I wanted to lay down my score. Park the playhead at 00:00:00:00 — ugh — and then go looking for my music file. Having found it and snipped off the two-pop using the aforementioned click-the-dashboard trick, I need to edit it into my timeline. Now, the only option I have here is the “connect to primary storyline” function, shortcut Q. So I do that, and FCP X drops my score down, not at all where I want it, but at least it’s on the timeline.
Now, normally my next step would be to lock my score tracks so I don’t mess with them accidentally. Except it appears FCP X has no lock feature of any kind. Goddammit.
Next step: Snip my reference QuickTime into individual shots. Here I want to cue to the first frame, play, then stop and insert an edit on every shot change. In FCP 7, I’d hit the home key to cue, then L to play (or spacebar; sometimes I’m lazy), then wait for an edit, then stop. I’d jog backwards using the hold-K-hold-J trick, find my edit point, then hit control-V. Then hit L again and keep going. Fast and easy, no fucking clicking required. Pardon me.
To FCP X’s credit, that’s exactly what I did. Well. Almost exactly. Couple differences. In FCP 7, which tracks are affected by the add-edit command depend on how your track autoselect is set up. Here, it’s considerably more finicky than that. Apparently unless you have a a clip selected, it puts the edit in your “primary storyline,” which is what normal people would think of as V1. Which is fine … if the thing you want to edit is on V1! If it’s anywhere else, you cannot add two edits in a row using the method I just described. You have to do one, then grab the fucking mouse and click, then do then next one, and so on, and so on. You also have the option of doing it with the skimmer and the blade tool, but come on. I’m editing here, not fingerpainting.
Okay, so I’ve got my reference QuickTime diced up now. It’s time for me to start overcutting. I could do this in order from start to end, but that’s boring. Instead I’m gonna pick one shot in the middle that I like quite a bit (and more important, that I can find quickly ‘cause I remember where it is in the rushes) and do that one.
Here’s what I want to do: I want to mark my record in and out on my timeline by hitting X, then find my shot in my bin, load it into the viewer, mark my in point, then overwrite-edit it onto V2. Can I do anything like that in FCP X? Amazingly, yeah. That’s almost exactly what you do in FCP X. You mark your record in and out with X, although the result is not exactly what you’d expect. Instead of seeing in and out marks like normal, you see what Apple calls a range, which is a chunk of clip with a yellow outline. But it acts just like record in and out. Find your clip in the bin, find your first frame, mark in, then hit Q to “connect to primary storyline,” and there you go. Shot’s in. It actually works okay.
Of course, it’s still subject to the same problems we encountered before involving the ephemeral nature of per-clip in and out points. If you do the operation I just described in the order I described it, it works. If you go clicking around somewhere else, FCP will forget you ever marked an in point on that clip, and you’ll have to go find the right frame again. So that sucks, but it’s nothing we haven’t already talked about.
When I do my second shot, though, I discover another FCP X surprise. The first shot I did had no audio on it, because it was shot on location with dual-system sound and no guide track. But the second shot has a guide track on it, which I don’t want. In FCP 7, I wouldn’t have to think about that, because I would just unpatch my audio tracks while cutting, so I get only picture and no sound. In FCP X — again! — there are no tracks, so there’s no patch panel, so I can’t do that. Instead you have a global setting that determines whether you get source picture, source sound or both when making an edit. The shortcuts are option-1 for both, option-2 for picture only and option-3 for sound only, and the on-screen indicator does not seem very prominent. But it’s possible that it’s no less prominent than FCP 7’s patch panel and I’m just not used to it.
Anyway, in that fashion I went on and overcut my reference QuickTime, “connecting” each shot to the “primary storyline” as I went.
And that’s where I’ll stop for the day. Why? Well, apart from the fact that there’s a natural break between assembly editing and creative editing, the fact is I’m simply bored. FCP X isn’t a pleasurable NLE to use. It doesn’t feel good. It feels … padded. It’s got a real Fisher Price vibe to it. All the controls are a bit too big, all the corners are a bit too rounded-off. It’s like one of those playgrounds where the public-safety people have been through and wrapped everything in thick layers of brightly colored foam rubber. You’re not going to chip a tooth or skin a knee … but you aren’t going to have any fun, either.
But more than anything, it’s just a struggle. Using FCP X doesn’t feel like learning a revolutionary new way of editing, as Apple doubtless expected it would. Instead it feels like you’re fighting the tool, trying to force it to do something it just fundamentally wasn’t meant for. Sure, the program nominally does three-point editing, but between the lack of explicit source/record focus and the extra click needed to key in a timecode to cue to and the downright cavalier approach the program takes toward ins and outs … it doesn’t feel like it’s really meant to be used that way. It feels like the program would really be a lot happier with me if I just leaned back in my chair, grabbed the mouse and dragged things around.
There’s a qualitative difference — and I’m struggling to put this into words, so bear with me — between climbing a steep learning curve and fighting the tool. In the first case, you flail around and struggle for a bit and flip through the manual and get it wrong and then finally comes this moment of epiphany: “Oh, that’s how you do that.” But when you’re fighting the tool, that moment of epiphany never comes. Instead, you get a moment of resignation: “Oh. That’s how I have to do that.”
Is some of this just stubbornness on my part? Yeah, probably. But I don’t think all of it. I think if I were just being stubborn I’d be more frustrated right now, maybe even angry. I’m not. I’m just disappointed.
Anyway.
If you weren’t keeping track at home, here are the Dear Apple items I assembled in an hour’s worth of attempted editing:
The dashboard needs some kind of unambiguous indicator to distinguish between source and record focus. Color-coding of some kind would be great.
We need a keyboard toggle to go back and forth between source and record focus. Remember the last clip I clicked in the bin, okay? When I hit the toggle — I like the ` key myself, the one right between tab and escape — show me either the timeline or the clip. When we’re in record focus — that is, timeline focus — the transport controls control the record playhead, on the timeline. When we’re in source focus — clip focus — the transport controls control the source playhead for that clip.
Don’t make me click the dashboard to enter a timecode, please. Let me just type a timecode in wherever I happen to be. If we’re in source focus, cue the source playhead. If we’re in record focus, cue the record playhead.
Every clip should have its own persistent in and out point. The program shouldn’t ever forget what in and out points the editor has set. Those should be permanent until changed or reset.
We need to be able to dial in the timecode of the first frame on the timeline. Starting every timeline at 00:00:00:00 is a big problem.
Please, please make it so we can lock clips on the timeline. We really want to be able to lock whole tracks — they call it “picture lock” for a reason, y’know — but in the absence of that, at least let us lock individual clips so they can’t be modified without unlocking them first.
