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.

ProRes Plays Back Brighter in Viewer and Darker When Paused

Have you noticed this?

Load a ProRes clip into the Viewer in Final Cut Pro and it looks a little dark. Hit play and it brightens (gamma) until you pause, then it goes a little dark again.

I'm not sure why this happens but I see it regularly with ProRes clips. Some say it's the data rate being lowered for slower drives, others say it's the type of compression the timeline is using (highlight the sequence in the Browser, hit Command + 0 (zero) then look at QuickTime Video Settings in the lower left).

There's a brief discussion of it here on the Apple boards.

For me the difference in a clip that does it seems to be the size.

A ProRes clip which is 854 x 480 does have the brightness playback issue.

A ProRes clip which is 720 x 408 does not have the brightness playback issue. (Inconsistent though; some clips have the issue while others do not)

A ProRes clip which is 720 x 480 does not have the brightness playback issue.

That's the only difference I can determine between the two clips.

Playing the clips in QuickTime Player does not show a gamma shift.

Gamma while Playing in Viewer

Gamma while Paused in Viewer

I don't know a solution to this and really, it's just an annoyance overall; but it's good to be aware of it.

Name Clips while They're Playing in the Viewer

You can begin playing a clip in the Viewer and while it continues to play you can rename the clip in the Browser which can speed up organizing a project.

I'll double-click a clip in the Browser, then tap the spacebar to play it.

Click on the clip in the Browser, type in the name I want then (for once you shouldn't use a keyboard command to return to the Browser as it will stop playback, use the mouse here. Yeah, I know…) hit Return.

Then hit Down Arrow to highlight the next clip then Return to load it into the Viewer, then Spacebar to begin playing it.

Use the mouse to click on the file's name in the Browser and begin naming…wash, rinse, repeat.

So the pattern is:

1. Double-click clip in the Browser
2. Hit Spacebar
3. Use mouse to click on file name in Browser and (re)name
4. Hit Return
5. Hit Down Arrow
6. Hit Return then goto step #2.

To stop playback after you name the last file I have the habit of hitting Command + 1 to highlight the Viewer but you can stop playback many other ways without using the mouse.

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.

The Hidden "H" 50% Key

Here's one I'll bet few people know.

Place your cursor over either the Viewer or the Canvas then hold down the H key.

You should see the Viewer or Canvas pop out at 50% size no matter what it was originally set to. Why? I dunno, it's probably some function or preference or something I've missed all these years. But it's pretty cool nonetheless and could be handy since 50% gives a clearer representation of your footage than odd numbered percentages, although 50% won't reveal interlacing as 100% does. Man I'm up late.

What's Keyframed in the Wireframe?

Here's something you may not have noticed.

I think the keyframe indicator in the Motion tab of the Viewer is pretty horrible. It's buggy, has scaling problems and is generally trickier to use than it should be so here's a tiny bit of help.

When you set some keyframes, and you have Wireframe + Image on in the Canvas (toggle it with "w") relevant parts of the wireframe will turn green to indicate that they have a keyframe and that the playhead is currently on their keyframe.

In the above image you can see that among the green there are some white indicators, namely the "1" and the upper left and lower right handles. Here's what the Basic Motion tab looks like for this shot of clouds:

You can see that Scale, Center, Upper Right and Lower Left all have keyframes. Scale is the large X-like crossing lines, Center is the center handle and the upper right and lower left handles are right where they should be. If the "1" were green, that would mean that the playhead is on a Anchor Point keyframe.

FCP's Scroll Box Bug

Here's a quickie:




When you scroll while audio is playing in the Viewer with Apple's (now EOL'd) Mighty Mouse the display in the Viewer will be clean. However, if you scroll with the Viewer's Scroll Box slider you'll usually see artifacts like those above. I'm not sure what causes the redraw issue. Maybe some combo of hardware.

Shift+N and Missing Frames

I haven't had time to really test this and see if it's an occasional bug or an actual repeatable bug but, I had a Typewriter Text Element which needed to be extended a few seconds after it completed it's action. So, opening it up in the Viewer and hitting Shift+N (for still frame) I noticed that it removed the last one or two frames of it's typing action.



So, instead of it reading Day014 it would suddenly read Day01 when I hit the key combo. I'll investigate it further but it was repeatable that day and I didn't try restarting FCP to see if that cleared it up. The project isn't over yet so I'll have more time to test it later.