Apologies to my small band of weary followers for the lack of comms but life has been fucking crazy these past few months. The reason for my being incommunicado was the fact that I have been working damn hard, (actually that’s a lie I’ve been working fucking hard) on being back in business for myself again. 

I was gainfully employed for 5 years working and basically slaving away for someone else’s bottom line. Fuck that. Independence called and I jumped at the chance. And it’s been a helluva ride.

I made the decision when I left gainful employment to work almost exclusively in #FCPX which you may know I fucking adore. The series I have just finished was shot on Sony F3 with a Pix240 recording ProRes 422(HQ) cut in FCPX, graded in DaVinci Resolve, mixed in Adobe Audition and delivered as an 8 channel multitrack DNxHD MXF file to the broadcaster without so much as a glitch. We consistently delivered an episode a week for 13 weeks. It was tough but here I am considering a night off so I must have done okay. 

There were some real concerns initially. The broadcaster’s internal ingest manager was extremely reluctant about accepting programmes delivered from FCPX because of problems that were being produced in earlier versions of FCPX. THis was pre 10.1.2 so I understood.  However I was not going to change my plan to work in FCPX. I did have a bit of a mental breakdown when it came to finishing the first episode which is when I got schooled on the XML workflow from FCPX to Resolve and Audition. My first Resolve roundtrip didn’t go as well as planned and I ended up exporting a single clip due to import errors into FCPX. I fixed that issue from ep 2 and never looked back. 

The Audition workflow was interesting. I bought xtoCC and translated the FCPX XML files to FCP7 format so I could open in Audition. Again worked like a charm. I was very impressed with the workflow and now this is the only process I follow. It’s just so clever. 

I have discovered a glitch in the Resolve workflow with regard to clips that have been retimed. On occasion I have taken a sunrise or sunset shot and sped up the entire clip from its original 25 minute or so duration to just a few seconds. On export from FCPX and bringing it into Resolve there are no problems. However on the way back from Resolve into FCPX the retimed clip loses a frame and you lose sync by that one frame. Bugger. The work around is to not retime the entire clip if possible and leave a handle at the end. This has worked for every subsequent iteration and is no longer a problem. 

So in short I have had an amazing time getting to work this way and am absolutely loving it. My next task is to conquer MetaData. 

I may have just finished a season of local TV but in the morning I start a new one which goes on air in a few days so it’s a good nights sleep and then none for a few days. 

But to recap on the year so far.  I have edited 78 episodes of local television drama, 2 feature films, and 6 documentaries. I have mixed and graded 19 of those so far as well. I still have another 39 or so episodes to go this year so I had better get sleep while I can. 

Later

Peace love and vomit

Jayce