Using .EPS files in Final Cut Pro

A client sent me a slew of images the other day and some were CMYK while others were RGB, yet most were .eps files despite me requesting that they send them as RGB .jpg or .tiff to save time (ermagerd duh deadlinez!) [This is the same client who thought we'd edit the video over the course of a normal workday...day...as in single 8 hour day even though we'd shot for over two full days weeks earlier and I still had no script so no VO]

 FCP prefers images to be RGB so I had to convert the CMYK ones in Photoshop (or Pixelmator) but since these were .eps files I had to save them as .Jpgs or .tiffs or something. For some reason some clients really really insist on .tiffs in video projects "They're uncompressed!" they'll tell me. Depending on my mood I'll correct them or just plod along mindless nodding.

Anywho, when you open a .eps file in PS you'll see something like this:

I changed it to something like this:

Since it's a .eps file you can bump up it's resolution while you're here and have something nice a big and hi-res to work with in FCP. Just save it out as a .jpg or if the client is particularly persnickety a .tiff, dump it into FCP and be on your way.

Fixing the RT Still Cache is full error message

I mentioned it briefly here but here's how to do something about it.

First off you'll see something like this in FCP 6/7 if you hover over the render indicator in the Timeline:

Actually, the solution is mentioned right there.

If you read the entire message you'll see you need to look here:

Where it reads "Thumbnail Cache" just bump up the Disk and or RAM setting a bit to cover the amount of images you're using in the current project to eliminate the warning, and help FCP a little bit with rendering all those stills.

I've left mine bumped up over the years as projects have caused the warning and left it with no ill effects. You'd think this would be dynamic after all this time but then again, OS 9 had separate application memory allotment settings in the old Get Info window.

Importing PDF files into Final Cut Pro

Today I was handed a 100+ page PDF to use in a FCP project. The problem is that FCP doesn't really like .PDF's all that much and if you drag a multi-page PDF into FCP you'll get a short clip that will essentially have each page as a frame. Not terribly useful unless that's what you'd like to see when you hit play.

Here are a few ways to get decent results without too much trouble using stuff you likely already have.

METHOD #01

(Save As... in Preview, better for high-quality requirements like text)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.
02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.
03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP.

Alternatively, if you know the page number of the page you want hit Option + Command + G to bring down the Go To Page text entry box, enter the page number and hit OK. The reason this may not be the best way is that some PDFs numbering schemes are off by a number or two, at least in the few that I've been given to use in FCP: ie.. Page 43 in the thumbnails is actually Page 42 as shown on the PDF.

04. Hit Command + Shift + S for Save As...
05. When the Save As sheet drops down select JPEG for the Format Pull-Down (you can also choose TIFF if you'd like to).
06. Set the Quality Slider to "Best"
07. For Resolution it will likely default to 150 pixels/inch. This should be okay for most situations, but you can bump it up higher if you'd like. I didn't notice too much of a difference between 150 and 300.
08. Tell it where you want to save the file and hit Save.
09. Import the file you just made into FCP.
10. Bring the .jpg or .tiff into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render.

I've have acceptable results for corporate junk using this method. It's not the best quality but good enough for company work.

METHOD #02

(Dragging out a separate .PDF page)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.

03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP. 

04. Find the page you want and then drag the thumbnail in the sidebar to the Desktop or folder where you want it to go.

This will create a new PDF of just that single page.

05. Import the file you just made into FCP.

06. Bring the .pdf into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render. 

The results won't be perfect but good enough for some projects.

METHOD #03

(Making each page a separate image file. Read the Warning about this!)

If you need each page in the PDF as a separate image file here's one quick and dirty way:

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Command + P for Print...

03. After the Print sheet drops down hit the PDF button at the bottom left.

04. Select either "Save PDF to Folder as JPEG" or Save PDF to Folder as TIFF"

WARNING!

Be aware though that when I do this there is no sheet asking where to save the files. For me, and maybe this is some kind of bizarre bug or me doing something wrong, it saved the individual pages as images files in my "-Tmp-" folder, which is inside an invisible folder (not meaning Lion's crazy invisible user folder madness).

8mm Distress Kit goes HD

Back in 2009 (remember 2009? Your iPhone wasn't quite 3 years old yet and Slovakia just adopted the Euro) I reviewed a pretty spiffy piece of kit called the 8mm Distress Kit. Back then in the before-time™ it was in SD.

But, now, in the future world of today when your iPhone 4S shoots 1080HD footage the kit's gone Hi-Def, and only for a modest increase in price. What was then in then dollars was $35, is today, in today's dollars only $59.

In the virtual box you'll get 2 files which contain 28 clips sized at 1440x1080 running at 29.97 or 25fps if you swing that way.

The crazy thing is that this comes at the perfect time for me for a documentary that I've been working on for the past 86 years (well, it feels like 86 but if you want to get down to brass tacks, it's technically closer to 85) which involves super-8 footage and I wanted something to help me obtain some visual interest with some bland-talking-head interviews I've been handed which run the gamut from HD all the way down to SD DV tapes to even some (hold on to something) Flip footage. *gasp*

I think Mediapreview.net's HD 8mm Distress Kit is not only going to help make the documentary look like it cost more but I'll be able to invoice for more since it looks like it costs more which will make it cost more so it's all honest that way.

Check it out, give it a spin; there are some samples to play around with, a nifty little tutorial and more on their site. And with film going away, but people still having an intense interest in it's qualities (look at Instagram, lomography, me taking well over 11,000 photos with my nearly 8 year old cell phone just because they look "lo-fi" and cool), and the feature film Super-8, it looks like the super-8 look as well as the clean-slate innocence of that bygone time which accompanies it won't be forgotten soon.

It's funny; my assistant has never shot or touched film, never placed a needle on a phonograph record and has only seen 8-tracks on tv. He's never used a pay-phone or adjusted rabbit-ear antennas, either.

But there is something that speaks to us visually through the ages with film; there's a strange personal investment -or perhaps connection is a better word- in it when we see something shot on film, especially older formats like 8mm, super-8 and 9.5mm (look it up). There's some manner of ephemeral hypotactic permanence with it that digital just can't obtain. Sure digital is beautiful, the future and in many many ways better than film but the tangible hic et nunc of it is difficult for our minds to grasp; you have a pocketful of little digital cards or "files" tucked away in the dark recesses of a hard drive, unlike film where you can simultaneously see and hold history and memories and movement literally right in your hands...without needing any batteries.

Maybe it's the analog simplicity of it that encourages us to capture (and indeed slow down and notice) the simple things in life, and for that matter life itself. But then again, I'm old and have an 8 year old cell phone.

Give the kit a whirl and see how it changes the flavor of your footage, not just stylistically, but perceptually. To me it gifts digital footage with an import that it otherwise doesn't have. That's the language of film at work; that's why tilt-shifted footage looks miniature and in my mind and for my money, adding effects like what's in the distress kit makes footage as large as life.

ProApps Update

Apple is forging ahead bringing the new FCPX up to closer match the features and capabilities of the old FCP. Today there's a codec update here.

Final Cut Pro X Update (and free trial)

Yep, Apple had decided to actually update FCPX (the big thing is XML import from FCP7 as well as export XML, no word yet on how FCP7 handles FCPX's XML) and a free 30 day trial.

Good news or not? I have no idea. I suspect that the divide of love vs hate will remain about the same but the numbers on each side will increase. That is, depending on how well FCPX imports FCP7's XMLs I guess.

Final Cut Pro Freaks Out

Here's a fun Final Cut Pro Viewer glitch:

Apparently it has something to do with waking a Mac from sleep while a hard drive was spun down and some planets were aligned, or something.

A relaunch of FCP fixed it.

Final Cut Studio is Resurrected

Macrumors.com has this to say:

"We confirmed with an Apple telesales representative at 800-MY-APPLE that Final Cut Studio, part number MB642Z/A, is again available for $999 (and $899 for educational customers). The product is only available through the 800-number and is not available in Apple Retail Stores or on the Apple Online Store."


Complete article is here.


I'm no fan of FCPX at this point so I'm glad to see Final Cut Studio return even though I think it's nuts to continue to charge $999 for it at this point given the reception FCPX has received; it should be $499 or $599 at most but then that makes FCPX at $299.99 look overpriced. (I think it is)


Final Cut Pro X has, as of this post, 1961 ratings for an average of 3 out of 5 stars. Yikes.


Buy a copy if you can and let Apple know that Final Cut Studio (if you agree, that is) still out features FCPX by a long shot.


UPDATE:


The Loop says:


"As we’ve done before with many end-of-life software products, we have a limited quantity of Final Cut Studio still available through Apple telesales to customers who need them for ongoing projects,” an Apple spokesperson told The Loop."

Converting .MOD files for Final Cut Pro and Multiclip

I've been handed a few SD cards with .MOD files that eventually need to be edited as a multiclip sequence.

Joy.

I've talked about these problematic files before here and here but never really got into the meat of the best way to transcode them for use in Final Cut Pro. Silly me thought I'd never have to deal with them again.

Here's something to keep in mind about .MOD files (from the wiki page):

"Standard definition video can be recorded in 4:3 and 16:9 formats. Some video decoders do not interpret the aspect ratio information in the media file header correctly, so 16:9 video may appear squeezed horizontally when viewed.^[4] Software that is shipped with camcorders is capable of processing the aspect ratio information correctly, aided perhaps by the metadata stored in MOI files. There are also third-party tools for modifying the wide-screen aspect ratio information in the media file header so that it satisfies decoders which would otherwise fail to interpret this information correctly in an unmodified MOD file.^[5][6][7] Some tools such as MediaInfo can correctly report the aspect ratio of widescreen MOD files, but media players may or may not display them correctly depending on the capabilities of the video decoder that they are utilizing at the time."

Sure are a lot of May, May Not & Somes in those paragraphs; there's even a perhaps!

These are some weird file types.

In order to nail down the workflow for transcoding these things (which, btw are Standard Definition in this particular case) I've been running some tests using MPEG Streamclip to transcode them and here's what I've discovered: (you'll likely need the MPEG-2 Component for Quicktime in addition to MPEG Streamclip)

A: Renaming the .MOD to .MPG or .mpeg and then transcoding with MSC (MPEG Streamclip) doesn't make any difference.

B: The top listing of the two ProRes exports in MSC is a HQ variety. (You may or may not see doubled up listings in your MSC exports listing depending on your setup/system etc…)

I transcoded a sample .MOD file (of about 24 seconds) to various formats, with various settings and then set up a 3 camera multiclip sequence and tested how well it played and if it was the correct aspect ratio.

What I found -after MANY MANY transcodes then importing those into FCP, setting up a multiclip sequence, then exporting and opening with Quicktime Player 7- was that what worked best for me for these files is to transcode them into:

DV25
16:9
De-interlaced

Then setup and edit your Multiclip project and export to Quicktime Movie…

Then open up your export in Quicktime Player 7 and hit Command + J for "Show Movie Properties" and hit the Presentation button and tick "Conform aperture to: Clean". 

See the transcodes from MSC will have this option ticked, but after you export the multiclip from Final Cut Pro this little checkbox will no longer be ticked but will still work. In my tests this checkbox has no effect on .MOD files transcoded to ProRes which would have been nice.

Now with an edited export at the correct aspect ratio you can transcode it to H.264 or whatever you need and it should retain the aspect ratio.

Why DV25? Well the original files are MPG2 in a .MOD wrapper and taking data per pixel, data rates and all that there's not a whole heck of a lot of quality loss (a couple of percentage points?) going to DV25. I suppose DVCPRO25 would work just as well.

Now, keep in mind this is what works for me right now, with .MOD files with this setup that I'm sitting in front of at the moment. The resulting file will be high quality and at the correct aspect ratio.

Rendering High-Precision Requires A Graphics Card with More Capabilities

Have you ever seen that?

Without getting into great detail, with that Final Cut is telling you that it can't render what visual effect you want (have applied to a clip or nest) in high-precision because of one of two things (or both).

1. Your graphics card simply can't handle it. You'll need to upgrade.

2. If you're lucky you can adjust a setting and render in slightly less than "high-precision" with some caveats.

A: Highlight the sequence that has the troublesome clip & effect in it in the Browser and hit Command + 0 for Sequence Settings. Fortunately, in here, changes you make DO apply to the current sequence.

B: Click on the Video Processing tab and you'll see something like this:

See the four radio buttons on the left? Try setting your sequence settings to something other than it currently is. RGB is usually good for this problem.

But read the two paragraphs of text to the right there. Rendering with different Video Processing settings can cause colors to go all wonky.

C: Hit OK and test, test and test some more.

FCP 7 is mostly dead

AppleInsider has some interesting news here about how Apple is still considering selling FCP7 to enterprise clients.

Some of the more interesting bits:

 "The Cupertino, Calif., company did confirm at the meeting that Final Cut Studio 3 has been discontinued. Wiggins noted that Color and all the other apps have been "killed off." AppleInsider exclusively reported last month that Final Cut Express, Server and Studio had been marked "end of life" by Apple."

Which means Final Cut Studio is the dead. But as for Final Cut Pro X:

 "During the briefing, Apple promised a range of updates in coming months, with XSAN support arriving in "the next few weeks." Some of the updates will cost money, while others will be free. The addition of multicam support will reportedly be a free upgrade, though Wiggins noted that Apple's employee may have said it "accidentally."

Accidentally? Its' been mentioned before from Apple. Could it mean however that multicam may not be a free update? It can be interpreted both ways, at least to me.

Which means that Final Cut Pro X, after it's all said and done and matches FCP6/7 features will not be "only" $299. As we pay for features to bring it up to par with FCP6/7 it builds upon the initial $299 price Apple wants us to pay. Users shouldn't have to pay for each feature that is standard now. Apparently Apple is going to nickel & dime us about this.

Then there's this:

 "Attendees at the private briefing, which took place on Wednesday, reported that Apple is looking into the legal ramifications of reopening enterprise licenses of Final Cut Pro 7."

Apple realizes (and I suspect we'll hear more about this soon enough) that Final Cut Pro X is seen as a bit of a joke in the pro industry and has to do something once FCP7 can't run on OS X dot whatever in the future, or can't run on whatever new hardware is out, to prevent many many FCP7 users from jumping ship to Premiere or Avid.

A few people I know are already hedging their bets and have bought and begun to learn Avid and Premiere in preparation for that day since Final Cut Studio is their current bread and butter.

The Clip's Master Clip Is Not Present - Error

FCP has a long standing bug where when you have the playhead in the Timeline over a clip and hit SHIFT + F for Reveal Master Clip, you'll inexplicably see this:

Restarting FCP will not help.
Reconnecting the clip will not help.
Trashing prefs hasn't helped me in this case.

Bizarrely, the clip will be fully visible in your Browser and/or Bin yet FCP will simply not be able to find it. It may be able to find other clips in the Timeline that reside in the same Bin as the errant clip, though.

I have no solution but it's an irritating, frustrating bug.

See, with the Timeline in the foreground and placing the playhead over a clip and tapping The F Key will perform a Matchframe where the frame -and Master Clip- that the playhead is over will appear in the Viewer.

But, hitting SHIFT + F with the Timeline in the foreground and placing the playhead over a clip and tapping F will perform a Reveal Master Clip; only sometimes it will just stop working. I have no idea why.

A workaround this to find a Master Clip and have it load into the Viewer is, like I mentioned, just place the playhead over the clip, make sure the Timeline is in the foreground (active) and tap the F key. You won't see the clip in the Bin or Browser but you'll be able to scrub around to see what else the clip holds footage-wise.

It's an incomplete workaround however especially if you need to see the following and preceding clips around the clip you're interested in. You'll likely find yourself doing this a lot while cutting a documentary and know that the footage is listed chronologically; a Reveal Master Clip would show you where the clip rests in accordance to the order the clips were shot in.

Another quirk is that if you do hit OK to "add a master clip to the browser" it'll do just that; and it'll find it if you load that into the Timeline (or Viewer, Reveal Master Clip works if the Viewer is the active window as well) and perform a Reveal Master Clip. Frustrating.

So there is a solution if you're willing to add a master clip to the browser (at root level) for every clip that suffers from this bug. But there's no guarantee that it won't randomly happen again. In fact, if you do add a master clip to the browser, place some of  it in the Timeline, then for fun delete the newly created master clip from the Browser, FCP will toss up the Master Clip Not Present error.

Adding Arrows Super Fast in Final Cut Pro

I'm working on a video that has lots of little intricate things that are pointed out in the text. Arrows on screen definitely help in this specific case.

A super fast way to add graphical arrows in Final Cut Pro is to use the Windings 3 font. Yup, a font.

You can launch Font Book -which is in your applications folder- to see exactly what arrows are available but for basic ones use the FGHJKL keys.

Now you can manipulate them as you would any graphic. Resize, alter color, rotate, keyframe etc…

Locking (Protecting) P2 Cards Before Ingesting

We've been having a problem with one of our P2 cards here on location which may warrant it's own post in the near future but one suggestion I've been reading about (and talking to friends, thanks, you know who you are) is that it's generally good practice to Lock your P2 cards before you mount them on your Mac.

Why?

I've been told that the Mac will write files to the P2 card upon mounting in the Finder so I decided to find out. Here's what I did to test:

1. With the camera not connected to the Mac format a P2 card.
2. Shoot a test clip.
3. Turn off the camera.
4. Switch the Lock switch on the P2 card to PROTECT.
5. Turn on the camera and mount the P2 card on the Mac.
6. Fire up the Terminal and type in (with out quotes) "cd" hit space bar then drag the icon of the NO NAME P2 card to the Terminal and hit Return to Change Directory to the P2 card.

Your Terminal should read something like this: cd /Volumes/NO\ NAME

7. Type "ls -a" which lists all, including hidden files.
8. You should something like this:

.
..
CONTENTS
LASTCLIP.TXT

Ok, cool, so with the Write Protect tab ON that's what's on the card from the camera untouched by the Mac.

Let's try it with the Write Protect tab set to OFF.

Just mount the card like you normally would but leave Write Protect off. Now, with the unlocked card mounted run the Terminal steps again. After "ls -a" you'll see:

.
..
.Spotlight-V100
._.Trashes
.Trashes
.fseventsd
CONTENTS
LASTCLIP.TXT

So there you have it. The Finder WILL write to a mounted P2 card without you having to do anything. Has that caused a problem for me in the past for the thousands of cards I've loaded in in my life? No, but the possibility is there that the Panasonic camera may not like the files that are on the card after mounting.

My new rule of thumb is to lock the cards before mounting them in the Finder…just in case.

Keeping Hard Drives Spinning for Free (and fun)

I've been "in the field", literally on-location and during setups I get bored. No internet per se, and not many games on the laptop I have sitting here. I've noticed that the external hard drives here will spin down after 5mins or so of inactivity and it's annoying to have to wait for them to spin up when I decide to do something in FCP, so I tried a few things to keep them spinning.

There are things out there like Disksomnia which are FREE and work but if you don't have internet and are as bored as I am you wanna start messing around.

One simple (yet fairly inefficient) solution I found was to have Quicktime Player loop a file that's placed on the drive that's spinning down.

1. In FCP drop in an audio Slug. Video Generators > Slug
2. Export it as an .aiff to the hard drive that keeps spinning down.
3. Open it in Quicktime Player and set it to loop (Command + L).
4. Hide Quicktime Player (Command + H).

It's not efficient because while it works silently in the background it will eat up a significant bit of CPU if you check it with Activity Monitor; but still, it's free and something that can be done with (arguably if you have the now optional QT7 install, installed) what you already have.

Why are my photos so dark in Final Cut Pro? or CMYK vs RGB

Be cautious of still images some clients provide to you; they may be the ones they use for printing so use CMYK rather than RGB which is what FCP likes.

If the colors are WAY off or the image is just dark and no matter of color correction, brightness or contrast monkeying will bring it up to a useable level, check the color space of the image.

FCP won't tell you.

You can quickly find out two ways:

1. Get Info on the image in the Finder. Look for "Color Space".
2. Open the image in Preview and hit Command + I for the Inspector. The first tab will show the image's "Color Model".

To fix Save As… and RGB image in your favorite image processor.

Btw, a fast way to fix a whole mess of images (other than a batch process in Photoshop) is to use ColorSync Utility. What? (yes, I know it's from 2009…)

1. In the Finder hit Shift + Command + U to open your Utilities folder
2. Hit the C key to highlight ColorSync Utility
3. Drag your image onto it's icon to open it in ColorSync Utility (or right-click on it and use Open With…)
4. At the bottom of the window you'll see a pull-down, set it to "Apply Profile"
5. Then to the right of that in the middle pull-down select "Display" > "Adobe RGB (1998)" (or whatever you need)
6. Hit "Apply"
7. Save or Save As…

You can also make an Automator script/application.

1. Launch Automator which is in your Applications folder.
2. Click on "Photos" under the Library
3. Drag "Apply ColorSync Profile to Images" to the workflow window on the right.
4. Automator will ask you if you want to make copies of images you alter in case it screws up the originals. I choose yes, but that's me.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT CHECK "Preserve original color space" (that defeats the whole purpose of this Automator App you're making)

5. Save As… an Application. Name it.
6. You'll have your very own (super simple) RGB converter application on your desktop. Drag images onto it to convert them to RGB.

As it, it'll copy images to your desktop and that can get mess if you have a lot of images. Where you see "Desktop" in the top action you can select it to any folder you want to to keep things tidy.

What I do is to make a folder called something like "Converted to RGB", then tell the App to use that folder for the converted copies of the images, then place the App itself inside this folder. Then all I have to do is drag a pile of CMYK images to the app in this folder and watch it populate with converted still images. It keeps things neat and organized.

A way to be further organized -if you need to convert images often- is to place the "Converted to RGB" folder in your Documents folder and then drag it into the Finder's window sidebar. Then, drag the app you've made into the top of a Finder window for easy access. That's just one idea, there are myriad ways to organize this.

Another option is to make it a Folder Action or a Service rather than an Application, but I'll leave that for you to explore :)

Changing the Capture Scratch Folder's Name in FCP After Ingesting

When you're in a hurry and are loading in footage into FCP you may have forgotten to save the project before ingesting footage.

If you do, the folder in your Capture Scratch Folder will be called something like "Untitled Project" and if you keep loading in footage like this -saving after the fact- you'll end up with a pile of folders called "Untitled Project 1", "Untitled Project 2", etc…

The key is to remember to name and save your project BEFORE you ingest footage.

But what can you do if you've ingested footage, then saved the project but haven't quit Final Cut Pro yet?

You can -while at this point- go into the Finder and drill down to your Capture Scratch Folder and rename the folder containing the project's footage without the problem of FCP making you reconnect footage later on when you reopen the project, nor will it suddenly loose all connections to the footage.

Final Cut seems to get confused sometimes though; sometimes if you change the name of the footage's folder after quitting and reopening the project it'll find the footage, but sometimes it won't.

What I've noticed is that if you have saved the project after you ingested footage, but haven't quit Final Cut yet, it generally won't "loose" the footage when you return to it from the Finder.

Re-save the project and you should be go to go.

Final Cut Pro 8?

The tarp has been taken back a bit from the next version of Final Cut Pro and it seems the sides are slowly bifurcating into bated anticipation vs. gloomy reluctance at the prospects of re-learning what's now 2nd nature to many FCP users.

Lines like, "One source described the new release as encompassing everything from low level architectural changes to a complete redesign of the user interface" aren't exactly comforting for some.

Key Commands should (will) be the same (mostly, 'cept for those new ones) so if you've been keeping up your transition should go a little smoother.

Combine this with ThunderBolt connectivity, powerful laptops (and more powerful towers on the way) an interesting twist with MobileMe, the rising popularity of DSLRs and 2011 will be like untrodden snow indeed.

You may want to use some of those gift cards you got for Xmas on some new FCP books. It's interesting to think about how much a major overhaul of a popular piece of software reverberates around and boosts ancillary markets like books, webinars, training videos, etc…

Sort the Bin by Date Modified

Similar to sorting the Log and Transfer window by Date Created, you can sort a Bin in Final Cut Pro by Date Modified to show some pesky footage in the order it was shot.

Not all cameras log date created but most will transfer in chronological order via numerical order. So, in this case if you right-click on a column header in List View in a Bin you'll see Logging Columns. Select that, then go back and select Date Modified to have your footage (hopefully) listed in chronological order in your Bin.

Final Cut Pro's Batch Export

Batch Export has been a lifesaver for an ongoing documentary I've been cutting. The project will likely last a few years as things are continually documented.

One neat thing about the project is that weekly it seems I'm handed some pretty old footage that no one's seen in years if ever, however much of it is on old videotape. VHS, Hi-8, Umatic, Betamax, etc… I never know what's going to be in the boxes I'm handed.

I load in the tapes usually at night when it's quiet so I can hear any tape crinkling up or snapping (some of these tapes are OLD, folks) or tearing inside since some long-dead bug crawled into it, died and stuck the tape together on the spindle. That was fun.

I just wanted to mention Final Cut Pro's Batch Export feature which I use a lot when as I do some preliminary organization of all this footage. There are two basic ways to use it:

Batch Exporting Sequences or Portions of Sequences

If you have several sequences with some stuff edited in them but only need to export portions of the timelines you can set In and Out points in the sequences and then in the Bin that contains the sequences, highlight the sequences and right-click and select Batch Export.

Batch Export (after you go through the various settings) will batch export only what's between the In and Out points of each sequence.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure all your sequences in the Timeline are fully rendered.
2. In Batch Export's settings make sure to select "Use Item In/Out".
3. Make sure you've set Include Audio and Video and Make Movie Self-Contained according to your needs.
4. If you don't set In and Out points your entire sequence will be exported when you use Batch Export this way.

Batch Exporting Subclips

If you have more complexity when exporting things from FCP you can export subclips. It's not hard but there are a few gotchas to be aware of.

Basically, in the Timeline or Viewer set your In and Out points as usual and hit Command + U to make subclips. Name them something helpful to you.

Optional Step:

Once you have all the subclips you need to export, highlight them, then head to Modify > Remove Subclip Limits in the Menubar. This turns them into Master Clips and is a handy way to have more "handles" on subclips if the original subclip wasn't long enough or you want to tweak the In and Out points before Batch Exporting. It's not necessary for batch exporting them, however.

Select the bin containing them and right-click and select Batch Export.

Batch Export will export each subclip as a separate clip.

But what if you have a bunch of Markers set in a long video clip that you want to Batch Export? No Problem, it's in another post here.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Try and keep your subclips organized in one bin.
2. If you have your subclips in some order in your Timeline and want to retain that, drag them from there into a separate bin just to keep things organized and this allows you to highlight them all and export them separately simultaneously.
3. Select "Use Item In/Out".
4. Set Include Audio and Video and Make Movie Self-Contained according to your needs.