This is the third and last of my series about Apple Final Cut Pro X and Camera Media. Check out the first part and the second part for some tips and tricks you might not know yet. A Possible Logging Workflow – Without Doubling Your Storage Needs Recently I had a back-and-forth with someone on Facebook who was handed a couple hundred gigabytes of camera-cards backed up to one or more hard drives. He wanted to use Final Cut Pro X to log and keyword the footage. If he would ingest the material into Final Cut Pro X, his storage needs would have beed doubled. Remember: when ingesting from cards, Final Cut Pro X copies the footage from the cards, and “Leave Media in Place” cannot be ticked in the import window. He was not sure if the material would ever be edited, but he wanted to get an idea of what he’d got. I put some thought to the problem and came up with a neat workflow to accomplish something like that and came up with this: Press command+I to open the import window. Select a folder containing a backed-up copy of a camera card. Select “Import all” to start the import process. (Alternatively just select the clips you want to import). Close the ingest-window (if you don’t have the option Close window after starting import ticked). Head over to the Background Tasks window by pressing command+9, look for Importing Media and click the little “x” next to it to stop the import. Rinse and repeat until you have imported all your media in that way. Because the way Final Cut Pro X works it has created aliases linking to the media on the card in its storage location. By interrupting the copy process, Final Cut Pro X still refers to the videos in their original location. Now you can organise the media inside Final Cut Pro X using all its tools. Because no media is inside Final Cut Pro X‘s storage location or Library it will be extremely small and can later be easily be backed up alongside the footage for editing at a later date. NOTE: You can’t transcode footage to Proxy or Optimised Media while its still on camera cards. If you want to do that you need to physically import the footage into Final Cut Pro X first (doubling the storage needs temporarily) , then let it transcode to Proxy and/or Optimised Media. Now close Final Cut Pro X, right- or control-click the library file and select “Show package contents”. You can now peek inside the library-bundle. You will see a folder for every Event in your FinalCutProX library. Final Cut Pro X Library bundle and contents Navigate to the one containing the media you are after and look for a Original Media folder inside it. You can delete this folder. (Thus deleting all the media FinalCutProX copied off the cards.) When you open up the library you can still work in Proxy mode, if you have transcoded Proxies before or even in normal-mode, if you have transcoded to Optimised Media. NOTE: Opening a library-bundle with the finder and playing around inside may damage it and render it unusable! Try at your own risk! Later, when you want to re-link the missing media, open the Library inside Final Cut Pro X. Connect the HDD containing the camera-card-folders to the computer and choose File > Import > Reimport from Camera/Archive. In my experience, I had to select the clips I wanted to reimport in the browser first, before selecting the function in the menu. I also had to open the “Import Media” window and open the disclosure triangle of the folder I wanted to import from first, to make sure that Final Cut Pro X “sees” the camera card structure. But that might be different depending the video format you are using and whether you originally imported from a physical card or a Camera Archive. The media will now be copied/rewrapped to the Libraries’ storage location. Not only does this solve the user’s problem with wanting a way to organise and keyword footage without permanently doubling the storage needs, but one could also take a version of the library with just Proxy files in it on their MacBookPro and later re-import and “conform” to the original camera media. Final Thoughts – Archive Copies of Original Cards? As you can see there are many ways to work with camera cards inside Final Cut Pro X. I’m sure that I did not cover everything possible in this tutorial. It might surprise you however when I tell you that I usually do not archive copies of the original camera cards. On location or at the end of the day in the hotel or at my studio I ingest all the footage into a Final Cut Pro X Library on a Thunderbolt RAID5 and back it up to two additional HDDs for safety, before I start editing. If it’s a multi-day-shoot away from home, I tend to back up the camera cards with ShotPutPro to a mobile RAID and ingest all the cards from that mobile drive to the Thunderbolt RAID5 and the pair of HDDs on return to the studio. Shot Put Pro – offloading software I like to have Final Cut Pro X manage my media inside the Library bundle as opposed to the lean library-approach some FinalCutProX editors prefer. It’s much more convenient to have everything neatly in one file, especially since Final Cut Pro X also bundles used effects inside the library since the 10.3.0 update. As I have described before there is no quality loss in having Final Cut Pro X rewrap the media from its original container format to .mov files. Even in the event that you change your editing system in the future you can still easily extract the footage from the bundle and work in other NLEs. TIP: Some people are afraid to “put all eggs in one basket” with a Managed Library file. They think that if that file gets corrupted they might loose everything. But because a macOS bundle is only a special folder that is displayed differently by the OS it’s no more dangerous than putting files into any other folder on your Mac. By the way: This special typ of folder is the reason why you can’t have your FCPX library reside on a AFP or  SMB share on a server or NAS — the filesystem does not support bundles. NFS shares can work under certain circumstances though. **EDIT** Final Cut Pro X libraries can live on SMB shares since FinalCutProX 10.3.4 apparently. Thanks to Claus Andersen for mentioning that! Accessing “Original Media” Files in a Corrupted (or any) FCPX Library Even if Final Cut Pro X should somehow damage the XML files inside the bundle and won’t open the Library, stating it’s “corrupted”— do not despair! You can always get to your original media by right- or control-clicking the library file and selecting “Show package contents”. Use “Show Package Contents” to open macOS bundles and peek inside. You can now peek inside the library bundle. You will see a folder for every event in your FinalCutProX library. Navigate to the one containing the media you are looking for and look for an “Original Media” folder—inside it you will find your original media files. A working backup of the corrupted library-file (without the media) can be found at the default backup location or the one you specified. Conclusion I tried to compile all the information I could find regarding working with cards in Final Cut Pro Xl in this three-part article. Some of the stuff I found was a real nugget of information that made me faster and more efficient, when working in Final Cut Pro X. I hope that you can also find a thing or two that you did not know. If you yourself have found something useful or interesting while working with Final Cut Pro X, please share it in the comments below. Also let us know wether you are interested in more tutorials like this.

This is the second part of my series about working with camera cards in Apples Final Cut Pro X. In the first part I have covered the basics, now it’s time for some more nitty-gritty. Copy? Rewrap? What Does That all Mean? I have already explained in the first part of this tutorial that Final Cut Pro X will copy media off the camera-cards into its own storage location. While this is true it does not always make an exact duplicate of the files on the card. Some file-formats like mpg4 from some Canon DSLRs are copied over as they are, but a lot of formats like Sony’s SxS or XQD cards or Canon’s XF-format are treated differently by Final Cut Pro X. Instead of copying the .mxf files those cameras write to their cards 1:1, Final Cut Pro X rewraps them to .mov files. NOTE: Final Cut Pro X can import most MXF files directly for a while now. So if you import a single .mxf file FinalCutProX will not rewrap it. If you are importing from a card it will rewrap. Rewrapping means Final Cut Pro X strips the mpg4 encoded video out of the MXF container file and puts it into a new QuickTime container. During this process, video is not re-encoded or altered, thus not degraded in quality. This is an important fact to keep in mind! Some camera formats — I have encountered this for example with video from the Fujifilm XT-2 camera — are imported (copied) into Final Cut Pro X’s current media location without rewrapping, but in the background Final Cut Pro X starts to automatically create Optimized Media. That means it’s transcoding the mp4 to ProRes, thus increasing the storage requirements significantly! I’m not sure why Final Cut Pro X is doing that for specific files, rumor has it that it has to do with spanned clips those cameras produce. If you have more info on that, please let me know and I’ll update the post accordingly. You can stop that transcoding, if your machine is capable of coping well with the original camera media, by clicking the circle-icon in the top-left of the Background Tasks window (cmd+9 to reveal) and stop the creating of optimized media there. If the optimized media has already been created you can select the Event (that has the media in it) in the browser and go to Menu/File/Delete generated Event Files tick Delete optimized Media and click OK to delete the ProRes representations of the clips inside that Event. Camera Archives Instead of importing media off camera-cards straight into a library, you also have the option to have Final Cut Pro X create a camera archive by selecting a camera card that is connected to the Mac and clicking the Create Archive… button in the lower left of the import window. Final Cut Pro X now creates a so-called bundle file, which is basically a folder that behaves like a single file but has all the files in it. Its contents are hidden from the user, but can be viewed by right- or control-clicking its icon and selecting Show Package Contents…. Most Mac OS applications consist of such a bundle and a Final Cut Pro X library file is such a bundle, too. Creating Camera Archives from cards is useful if you want to archive the card’s contents into a single easy to manage file, which is a bit-by-bit copy of the camera card. For example while doing DIT work on set. TIP: I strongly suggest making a Camera Archive from every card first, before importing media into FCPX. This opens up interesting workflow possibilities. More on that in Part 3. FinalCutProX Create Camera Archive… To import media from a Camera Archive into Final Cut Pro X, simply navigate to the archive file using the Import Media window, select it and you can choose which clips to import from it and even select ranges to import as if it was a physically attached camera card. Backing up Camera Cards – Root Directories & Full Folder Structure Copying camera cards to hard drives at the end of a shoot is common practice, but a lot can go wrong when this is not done properly. Readers and disks are connected with USB or Thunderbolt cables, which can come loose or have a bad connection that can potentially corrupt files while they are copied. I therefore strongly suggest you use dedicated offloading-software like Hedge for Mac or Shot Put Pro. Not only do these utilities verify that all the data that has been copied is valid, but they also allow you to copy to multiple locations simultaneously to make two or more backups much faster than the finder can do it. Both programs generate reports that act as proof that the data was copied successfully. TIP: If you don’t want to spend your cash on dedicated offloading-software, there is another option: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve (even the free version) has a feature on the Media page called Clone Tool  (Resolve 15 manual page 233) that can clone camera cards using either CRC 32 or MD5 checksum verification. If you do not want to use a dedicated offload utility make sure to at least create a folder for every card you back up, name it appropriately and copy the card’s entire content into that folder lock, stock, and barrel and never to the root of the hard drive. TIP: This is best done by option-dragging the card’s symbol on the desktop in the finder to where you want the card’s content to be saved. You should see a little green “+” next to the symbol you are dragging. Most cards are named “untitled” and the resulting folder on the desktop will be named “untitled” as well. You can safely rename that folder to anything you want. Root folder of a Sony XQD Card from an FS7 Copying the complete card structure is very important because some NLEs can’t import footage properly from a folder that does not have all the metadata and folder structure in place. By copying everything off the card, it’s also less likely that you forget to copy a file or two. TIP: That being said, if you get handed incomplete cards or “naked” camera clips somebody slapdashed onto a HDD , do not panic! Final Cut Pro X can import naked .mxf and .mp4 files from most sources. If ever you come across something Final Cut Pro X really can’t deal with, you can always resort to converters like the free FFMPEG or other third-party software. Another benefit of having an exact duplicate of the camera card is the fact that it is possible to create Camera Archives with Final Cut Pro X from such a folder later. To do that, open the Import Media window in Final Cut Pro X, navigate to the folder that contains the root content of the card. Select the folder that represents the camera-card in the bottom pane of the Import Media window . If the create archive… button at the bottom-left does not become active, you might have to click the disclosure-triangle next to the folder in the bottom-pane, forcing Final Cut Pro X to “look” into the folder and “realise” it’s a camera-card. That should make the button active and allow you to create a Camera Archive. Disk Image Files Creating a .dmg file using Disk Utility FCPX can create camera archives from camera cards that have been attached via card readers, but sometimes I get handed a drive with simple video-files backed up into a normal folder. For example files from an ATOMOS or BLACKMAGIC recorder. In this case it’s not possible to create a Camera Archive. But there is still a way to backup such “Camera Cards” neatly into one file, using the macOS Disk Utility. You can find that little tool under Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. Launch it, pick File/New Image/Image from Folder… from the menu and enter a filename for your Disk Image. Below you have to navigate and select the folder that contains the root-content of your camera card backup. For Encryption select none and for Image Format set read-only. Click Save to start the process. After finishing you will find a .dmg file at the location you chose. You can double-click this file to mount a virtual disk—which looks like a physically attached disk in the finder and to all other applications. You can import from a mounted Disk Image just like from any other device. TIP: If that Disk Image is not an exact image of a camera card, you can import stuff into Final Cut Pro X and tick leave files in place, thus referencing files from that Disk Image. Just make sure the image is mounted next time you launch Final Cut Pro X, or its contents will be offline! Unwanted LUTs on Previews on LOG Footage in Final Cut Pro X When importing LOG footage into Final Cut Pro X the NLE might automatically add a LOG to REC709 LUT on a per-clip-basis. So if you are sure as hell that you have shot LOG, but the clips look nice and contrasty as if you’d shot in REC709, it’s worth checking the inspector to find out whether Final Cut Pro X is the culprit who’s done that. To deactivate this LUT, head over to the “i” info tab in the inspector, make sure you are viewing the Settings view of the inspector and set Camera LUT to None. Final Cut Pro X Inspector showing “Settings” an Camera LUT Alternatively, you could, of course, select any LUT that comes with Final Cut Pro X. To apply your own custom LUTs (.cube), import them via the Add Custom Camera LUT… command.+ in the dropdown menu. Two down, one to go — that was it for Part 2! As always I’m grateful for feedback in the comments below. Also make sure to leave a comment, if you have any suggestions or ideas for other tutorials for Final Cut Pro X. Check back soon for the third and last part of this tutorial. Until next time —happy editing!

Almost every editing project starts with importing media into Final Cut Pro X. In this 3-part series I’ll show you how to do that like a boss and share some tips and tricks. Final Cut Pro X current version 10.4.4. While Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) looks rather plain at first glance, a lot of its functionality is not immediately obvious. Also Final Cut Pro X does not hit you in the face with preferences screens immediately. This is all part of Apple’s strategy to keep editing accessible for not-too-technically biased people. Under the surface however, Final Cut Pro X is a mighty powerful NLE which so far has received 28 free updates since its release, most of which were aimed squarely at pro workflows and features. Introduction One of the universal laws of media management is that one should always backup the original camera cards before doing anything else with the media. I agree that you should always have at least three copies of your media — one of which is the copy you’re working with in your NLE and two that sit on a shelf, not connected to a computer and preferably in two different physical locations. Beyond that there are many questions: Is it really always necessary to have copies of your original cards? What are the best strategies to work with card based media inside Final Cut Pro X? You will have to decide for yourself how to work with media, but I’ll try and give you some options and ideas using FCPX. Importing Media from Camera Cards into Final Cut Pro X Please note: With Camera Cards I mean cards like XQD, SxS or SD cards (or disk images thereof) that have been written by a camera and have the full file structure intact. Final Cut Pro X does not consider SSDs that have been recorded in — for example Atomos recorders — as a camera card. These volumes simply mount as an external volume with video clips on it. Some of the following tips might not work with footage imported from such media. Let’s start with the basics: Cards, when inserted in a card reader, mount to the desktop of the Mac like any other external storage device. When Final Cut Pro X is running, it immediately shows the Import Media window and lets you choose the clips you want to import into you current library. Use the shortcut Command+I to open the window manually. Final Cut Pro X’s import dialog screen You may have noticed that Final Cut Pro X does not allow Leave files in place to be ticked. The feature is greyed-out in the interface. FCPX will copy everything you import from a camera card to the current library’s storage location, whether that’s inside its library bundle or in a media storage folder you have defined in the library’s settings. Not allowing you to reference (link) media into your FCPX library directly from a camera card is a safeguard that makes perfect sense. Otherwise you could inadvertently use media that’s still on you card, edit something, close FCPX, eject the card, format it inside your camera and loose you media before you notice that anything has gone offline in your edit. TIP: If you are importing from a camera card, you can select ranges of clips and only those ranges will be imported into Final Cut Pro X. You can even command-drag more than one range per clip. That can be extremely useful if you have very long clips and only need to import certain sections from them. This only works with camera cards (or images thereof) — NOT with clips to be imported from regular external volumes with no camera specific file structure! The ingest will start immediately after you click import. You can start editing whilst Final Cut Pro X is copying the media in the background. Behind the scenes Final Cut Pro X creates aliases (softlinks) to the media files at the current storage location and gradually replaces those with the files in the library storage location when its done copying them. Interrupted Imports Because you can already work with media that is currently being copied in the background it’s vitally important to make sure Final Cut Pro X has finished importing media. Do that by checking the Background Tasks window command+9 or Window > Background Tasks. If (for whatever reason) the import process is interrupted, some of the files might not have been copied over to the storage location. If you fire up Final Cut Pro X while the camera card is still connected to the computer, everything will look fine and you can edit. TIP: You can identify clips that haven’t been copied to the Libraries storage location yet, by a little camera-symbol in the bottom left of the clip’s thumbnail in the library window. But as soon as you disconnect the camera card all clips that have not yet been copied off it will go offline! To fix this, you can use File > Import > Reimport from Camera/Archive. This feature allows you to re-start the import one or more clips from an attached camera card. Connect the card to the computer, select the offline clips in the browser and evoke the command. Sometimes Final Cut Pro X will show this error message, when you try to re-import from a camera-card or archive: Final Cut Pro X “camera missing” error message. To solve this problem you might have to open the Import Media window (command+I), navigate to the camera card, select it in the left pane of the window—so it’s contents appear in the lower pane—and close the Import Media window. Now File > Import > Reimport from Camera/Archive should work. That was it for the first part of this series. Check back soon for the next part of this ongoing series, where we will go a little deeper into the rabbit-hole. Until then —happy editing!

Sony enters the game of high-speed CFast 2.0 cards. These new Sony CFast 2.0 cards claim a roaring write speed of 510 MB/s and a read speed of up to 530 MB/s. Photograph credit: Mathew Schwartz | unsplash.com Even though Sony’s own lineup of pro cameras uses the XQD or SxS format, the company seems eager to reach for the crown of high-speed recording media, with its first lineup of CFast 2.0 cards already pushing the boundries in terms of speed. All three models of this G Series sport the VPG130 (Video Performance Guarantee) label, which indicates a guaranteed sustained write speed of at least 130 MB/s. The high read speeds of up to 530MB/s will be beneficial for your offloading process on set, as long as you have a sufficiently fast card reader of course. Three New Sony CFast 2.0 Cards In order to please everybody’s needs (and wallets), Sony offers three different models: a 32GB version, a 64GB one and a 128GB heavy-weight champion. The high read speed and especially the incredible high write speed of these G Series CFast 2.0 cards make them a perfect match for demanding workflows, including UHD/4K and Raw capturing. Interestingly enough, you won’t find any Sony-branded pro cameras in which these cards would fit. Its line-up of pro cameras mostly require XQD or SxS cards – rivalling recording media formats to the readily available CFast 2.0. Could it be we’re witnessing the last breaths of a raging format war? Prices are dropping for both XQD and CFast 2.0 cards (not so much for SxS cards), but in terms of market saturation the CFast 2.0 standard wins the race by a nose I would say. Specs, Pricing and Availability All three of the Sony CFast 2.0 cards share the same build quality and ruggedness. They can operate in temperatures ranging from -5°C all the way up to +70°C (23°F – 158°F), and if they fail there’s a chance of saving some of the data with the bundled file rescue software. The Sony CFast 2.0 cards will be available in early 2018. Pricing will be $119.99 for the 32GB model, $199.99 for 64GB and $349.99 for the biggest 128GB card. Who knows? These G-Series CFast 2.0 cards may mean Sony is looking towards a future without XQD and SxS… or maybe it just wants a bigger piece of the cake. link: Sony.com Would it be good if there was just one unified standard, or is more competiton good for the market? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Lexar has recently introduced the fastest XQD card in the world. With a whopping 440MB/s read speed, and a lower cost card with read speeds up to 210MB/s. XQD is the card we use in cameras like Sony FS7 or the new Sony FS5. Since Sony introduced the new XQD format alongside SanDisk and Nikon, they have been unrivalled with their product. However, with the addition of Lexar’s range of XQD, the expensive Sony XQD cards were outperformed not only in price, but also in read and write speeds. But shortly after Lexar brought out their 1333x cards, which were better in speed than their Sony counterparts, Sony introduced their latest G-series card range, which gave users up to 400MB/s read speed and 128GB data capacity (LINK).   Now Lexar has up’d the game once again, and has introduced two new cards, which are atleast $100 less expensive than Sony’s XQD cards. The Lexar 2933x  is the fastest XQD card in the world. It seems to be a back and forth battle between the two, but here are the quick specs of the new Lexar cards: Lexar 1400x 64GB with 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write speed for $137 (LINK) Lexar 2933x 64GB with 440MB/s read and 400MB/s write speed for $235 (LINK) Lexar 2933x 128GB with 440MB/s read and 400MB/s write speed for $440 (LINK) And to put that into perspective with Sony’s G series XQD cards: Sony G series 128GB with 400MB/s read and 350MB/s write speed for $549 (LINK) The new Lexar 2933x cards will work well with Lexar’s other new announcements: Professional Workflow XR2 (XQD 2.0 USB 3.0 reader) (LINK) Professional Workflow HR2 (Thunderbolt™ 2/USB 3.0 reader and storage drive hub) (LINK) Professional Workflow HR1 (USB 3.0 reader and storage drive hub) (LINK)     So what do you think? Will you add the new Lexar cards to your kit? Is it worth while getting the extra speed? Let us know in the comments below.

Sony announced that it will introduce two new camcorders similar to their small-chip PMW-100 (EX1R/EX3 successor), but with 4K recording. The two versions will be called PXW-Z100 (pro version) and FDR-AX1 (consumer version) … seriously, who comes up with these names?