OK. I am going out on a limb, but I am going to say it out loud and on the World Wide Web. I love MEDIA MANGER IN FCP. I am sure that you are all hearing the sounds of people hitting the floor, but it is true: I think that the Media Manager in FCP rocks.
I am a bit sick of people bitching about the MM in FCP but I have to say that I have become a student of it and I have been using it to my advantage. I think that the biggest problem with MM has been an AVID language barrier. What I mean is this. People are used to the simplicity (or the first thing i learned about media management was the AVID way in the Avid tool), but I have to say that once you actually take the time to test and use the FCP MM you will find that you find out a few really important things.
Firstly, the biggest thing about the FCP MM is that it actually does more than the AVID tool and is much more versatile. If the MM added something along the lines of Decompose that might be an equalizer but there are many ways to accomplish this very same thing in MM and FCP, but nobody wants to take the time to learn do this. I like, for example that MM wants you to create a new project if you want to do an online of a finished sequence.
The fact is that most people shit their pants when they see the words create offline or delete media but this is because they don't take the time to understand the tools and experiment with it. There have been several great tutorials written on MM but the whole concept of media management is one that most editors do not want to touch with a ten foot poll. But this does not give people the right to crap on Apple for having a lousy tool, which isn't lousy at all!.
After many years of FCP I am starting to see the logic of MM and I want to be the first to say that it is one of the tools that is much maligned and far to misunderstood and very powerful.
Personally, after I took the time to experiment with MM and run tests, I have found it to be a great tool. Like anything you get back what you put in and there is no substitute for being anal about the media you bring into a project, about being careful about how things are logged captured and labeled.
In the "no apprentice generation" I think we see a lot of posts where MM is bitched at and slagged and I think to some degree it has been mismanagement of media and inexperience rearing its ugly head.
Look at the wonderful options you have with MM, like Recompress (which I use all the time to archive) or create offline. etc.
I know I might be looking like a dartboard to many of you right now, but it's this powerful media management that has allowed the suite to be such a good roundtripper, still nothing like this in Avid land and yet another example of how Apple is leading and Innovating in post produciton.
You are a digital media professional. You need to move a bunch of media around to clients and co-workers. You are sick of FTP and your non tech savey clients are having problems.
Do yourself a HUGE favour, open your wallet and buy MEDIA BATCH.
http://www.mediabatch.com/
This software has impressed my clients and totally streamlined my client workflow. IT doesn't matter if you are in print, design, broadcast, corporate, music production, what ever. You need to take a very close look at this software. It has made my life very simple and my clients are impressed because I have given them a secure space on my server.
Best of all, you'd be supporting one of the Cow's very own. The genius behind this software is none other than Marco Solorio.
I might have bought Logic for no reason (thank god I make music too), But i was relieved to see that they finally got the OMF imtegrated in this version of soundtrack. How many times have I wanted to export an OMF from my FCP timeline into another app (other than Protools) on my mac to do the final mix on some of my projects.
I can tell you that there was a huge sign of relief when I saw that the new version of the software was going to make it really easy to import OMF. For those of you who do not know what OMF means it was a concept which means OPEN MEDIA FRAMEWORK. It was code designed and shared by several media companies so that apps could easily talk to one and other.
For years this has been the bridge between AVID and PROTOOLS or FCP and PROTOOLS. (funny that many people would say AVID and Protools had a harder time talking to each other through OMF after they were purchased by Avid than when they were "co-operating" in the marketplace.
I am excited about the Soundtrack release. Why? OMF. that is the biggest thing I can think of. I can export and OMF and mix at the end of my process. I hope that this keeps more of the sound post in the FCP Pipeline but I can't see Protools being knocked off any time in this decade.
I would guess the new open timeline means open timeline. Perhaps what would be more important is whether the drives have the speed to keep up with the data rates and compression of the various formats.
I am curious to know what "under the hood power" Apple actually put into the software to allow it to do this. It seems a bit cagey to me. It must be putting a lot of work on the CPU processor to actually do the math on all of these formats at once.
What will the sequence settings reveal when I hit command zero and look at my sequence settings. WIll it say, "this is an open timeline, everything you put in here is 10 bit uncompressed" or will it be limited to Prorez? I'd love a little bit more light on this from anyone who has seen it in action down in Sin City.
Perhaps the CPU processing has gotten powerful enough to do what daughtercard processing used to do, but I am sure there will be a "letdown factor" when the software is on my machine. Like unlimited RT, was a bit of a letdown (or maybe a more than oversold feature), I suspect that open timeline might be less exciting when the lights of Vegas dim as the Apple vans pull away from NAB.
It's a relief because the speculation has ended and we can focus on how we are going to use these creative tools in our everyday lives. In my case it's as a film maker and I have to say that I am thrilled. I like to think of myself as a complete film maker. My background is as an editor and everytime I see a release like this, I can't help but think about how much I wish it was all coming sooner. I mean, I'm not getting any younger and these are all of the things my mind wanted to see 20 years ago in a "killer" software package that would allow me to affect so many levels of the finished product.
I have to say that this is a great week for FCP users. It's especially a great week for FCP "power users". I am very excited about the new release of FCS2 and I have already ordered my copy. I've had a good time watching the online stuff that Apple has released with the new software and, of course it has been great to read and participate in all of the debate.
This is my favorite trend of what is happening. It is making our business more interesting. These tools are giving the film maker a chance to really affect every part of the production. To make something as they want it to be. Film is a very collegial business, but at times that can be stifling too.
Now, the painter paints, picks the canvas, the brushes and the pallette, this is a tremendous freedom that the painter enjoys. It's a form of solitude, of delving into one's art form. As these tools are placed in our hands I can't help but feel that I can dive further into, sound and colour and form. The film maker of the future will be more like a painter. But don't get me wrong a painter still has a group of friends, a painter still has the sensibility of an artist, but in the studio, the painter paints.
This is a tremendous amount of creative freedom and I think it's going to make for better film makers. Just as 24P has returned us to thinking about craft..(let's face it 24P camera's have forced film makers to stop the awful trend of shaky cam and placed the camera back on the tripod and pans at respectable speeds)...So to will this new complete tool set get people thinking about all aspects of production, sound picture, image, color. All of the elements in the film makers palette.
I am so looking forward to loading it up and creating. Isn't that the fun? Isn't that why we signed up?
I was just thinking about this a bit today and I wanted to give you all a brief explaination of the sign off you catch at the end of all my creative cow posts. It's the simple message, "Peace and Love". Why? This blog is the the place to get the answer.
Last summer most of my thinking started to move toward peace. This was not an anti war affirmation but simply a nice simple message of peace. I had gotten to a point where I had to be about something bigger. Many people give to charity or have their cause and I realized that I had given to many things over the years but I was looking more for something that I wanted to push toward for the rest of my life. Peace was the answer. I made a film called "Alphabet Peace" out of this thikning and it has been screened privately at a few venues in Toronto.
Many people use the cow for different things. I realized that my posts are one small way I could raise a bit of Peace Conciousness, just by adding the friendly little Peace reminder to the end of my posts. It helps to remind me that this online community is about sharing knowledge and it keeps me in the spirit of giving and sharing. And hey, it never hurts to spread the love.
I've just started subitting the film to some different festivals and I hope that the whole thing grows. So take a moment to think of the peace an beauty in your world today. It's right around you, amist all of the "distractions", let a bit of peace into your world and maybe soon the idea of peace will creep back into the public conciousness.
First off command "0" opens the sequence settings. Type in 00;58;40;00 as your sequence start time for the final sequence you want to output to tape.
Click OK.The next step is to layback one minute of color bars at the head of your sequence.
You then want to place a program slate after the bars for ten seconds.
then put in a two pop at 00:59:58:00
Next you want to set your program start to 01:00;00;00.Type the value 01:00;00;00 in the tap left corner of the timeline to move the position bar to that point in the time line.
Next you want to make sure snapping is on, select all of the program and drag your it to the position bar.
The next step is to open edit to tape.
Select the black and code icon at the top of the window. Beside the Mastering drop down menu.
Click it and you will see this dialog box
Click OK and enter this value when the next window appears.
Click OK and this will appear.Load your tape.
Click OK and let it record for about a minute or so.
Rewind the tape. Play it back and make sure you recorded black.
Then go to the bottom of the edit to tape window and set the IN TC value.This is the same as your sequence start time.Make sure everything is set to drop frame.
Drag your sequence over the edit to tape window and highlight the purple, edit to tape assemble edit transparent window appears.
Let go of the mouse and the FCP will do it's thing.Make sure you check your tape.
You should always set audio levels on your deck before recording as well.
