FCP X: Looking Forward While Looking Back.

[Brett Sherman]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

Track based editing, media management in MY control, opening legacy projects and I/O support. Any single one of those is a deal-killer for me.

Those are mine, except for track-based editing. I think it will probably be great to eliminate the hassle. And that is a feature that I think people will learn to deal with over time and ultimately learn to like. However, they have to add audio routing controls control to be able to do it.

Opening FCP 7 projects they have to fix, period. So I'm sure it will be done. I/O support for displays is coming I believe.

Media Management is perhaps my biggest fear. Apple's condescending "you guys never knew how to do it anyways" response, does not engender confidence. I work for an organization with two editor/cameramen. We generate 6-10TBs of footage a year. We are expected to have access to everything we've ever shot. We work on different edit systems and laptops. This is not a trivial concern. I will forgo judgement on this as I haven't bought FCP X yet and can't evaluate it. But I'm not sure the control is there yet.

[Craig Seeman]

Actually you can do track based editing although it's awkwardly implemented.

A Secondary Storyline works much like a track. You need to lasso or command click connected clips and use Command G. You'll see a dark gray bar above the clips and you can then trim and transition between them etc, and it interacts with the Storyline below it just as a track would in my testing so far.

The problems are:
Secondary Storyline can't use the Precision Editor on a Secondary Storyline
You can't make creating a Secondary Storyline a default behavior.
There's no "row select" tool to convert an entire or even a part of a row to a Secondary Storyline.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Brett Sherman

except for track-based editing. I think it will probably be great to eliminate the hassle. And that is a feature that I think people will learn to deal with over time and ultimately learn to like.

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Actually you can do track based editing although it's awkwardly implemented.

A Secondary Storyline works much like a track. You need to lasso or command click connected clips and use Command G. You'll see a dark gray bar above the clips and you can then trim and transition between them etc, and it interacts with the Storyline below it just as a track would in my testing so far.

I need to be able to do traveling mattes and blend modes between layers, either as a luma or alpha matte. Doesn't sound like that is an option right now.

[Craig Seeman]

I need to be able to do traveling mattes and blend modes between layers, either as a luma or alpha matte. Doesn't sound like that is an option right now.

Blend modes work with both Connected Clips and Secondary Storylines. I haven't tried a traveling matte yet. Alpha channels are supported but I haven't tried luminance for example though.

From the manual.
_________


Apply the luma key effect
In the Timeline, move the playhead to the point in the background clip (the clip you want to superimpose the luma key clip over) where you want the key to start.

In the Event Browser, select the part of the foreground clip (the luma key clip with the black or white you want to remove) you want to key over the background, and choose Edit > Connect to Primary Storyline (or press Q).

Select the foreground clip in the Timeline and click the Effects button in the toolbar.

In the Effects Browser, select the Luma Keyer effect.

Tip: Type “keyer” in the Effects Browser’s search field to quickly find the Luma Keyer effect.

Do one of the following:

Drag the effect to the Timeline foreground clip to which you want to apply it.

Double-click the effect thumbnail to apply it to the selected clip.

The Luma Keyer effect automatically configures itself to remove black video. If the resulting key is not right or you would like to improve it, you can adjust the luma key effect.

[Shaun Roemich]

Craig: that's a pretty simplistic approach to something I use in virtually every single one of the videos I produce. Doesn't work for me.

[Craig Seeman]

I agree.

I've testes a typical foreground, background, matte workflow that's viable.

Primary Storyline - Video Clip

1st Connected Clip - Matte Clip - Blend Mode use either Stencil Luma or Silhouette Luma depending on whether you want black or white to cut the hole.

2nd Connected Clip - Video Clip - Blend Mode use Behind

The Blend Modes have some new and oddly named functions but they work fine. While Stencil and Silhouette sound odd they're just Luma Key and Inverse Luma Key. Behind is also odd and there's no description of it in the manual but it results in the top connected clip filling the hole,

It's a standard foreground, luma matte, background arrangement. I've not seen this in any tutorial or posted by anyone else in any forum. As you mention this is quite a common function so I'm surprised it's completely undocumented. I don't think anyone would know what Stencil, Silhouette, Behind would mean.

BTW the neat thing about the Connected Clip concept is you can now move around the Primary Storyline clip and the two other layer will travel with it. Of course you can make a Compound Clip (Nest) as well.