FCPX to Pro Tools horror - please share better workflows :)

[Ru_C]

Hi all, I've just started work on mixing the sound for a (1h40m) indie film filmed in a mixture of 4k & 6k on bunch of different cameras.

I was bought in at the 11th hour to basically fix/mix the sound.

It was done in FCPX by some folks with good directorial skills & filming gear (Red Dragon + Arri Alexa mainly), but (& stop me if you've heard this before) zero experience of recording on-set sound in a good way.

Anyway, I confidently said I could transfer the sound over to PT using my trusty X2Pro AAF conversion software. It had done the job pretty well for a bunch of corporate stuff i'd done over the summer.

The workflow was supposed to be FCPX XML to AAF.

Load AAF into protools.

Fix the hideous sound with Izotope RX6 & mix project.

Collect cheque.

So....X2pro just couldn't handle the project.

It kept throwing up errors, & with a bit of googling it turned out this was due to the way Red-Raw footage spans a number of files . There is some workaround involving transcoding, & relinking afterwards, but in this case that just wasn't practical . Its a 2TB project & there just wasn't the time & computing horsepower to go down that road.

Next step was XML into Logic (then hopefully export AAF & back to PT)

This worked a bit better. At least all of the music bed & FX transferred over, but it would just hang each time on the dialogue sound.

It turns out the sound was a mix of 48k, 44.1k (the music) & 96k.

A couple of times it did make *some* kind of attempt, but the dialogue that it did bring in was actually wrong, & just nothing from the finished FCPX project.

With time running out, I just removed all EQ/FX manually from audio clips on the FCPX project, then created new sub-roles for *everything*.

I ended up with around 50 roles. FCPX then managed to bounce these out as separate stereo stems (that goodness this project wasn't need in surround), & I could import them into PT & get to work.

So, I found a workaround. The main thing that is less than ideal (apart from the time it takes), is that fade handles are obviously lost during the stem/track export process, so any nasty transitions have to be caught beforehand.

Any one have any better ideas for the next time I get something like this?

[reichman]

Years ago I was given a doc to mix from a team working in FCPX. The editors proudly told me that they had managed to shrink down the dialog tracks to *only* 122 tracks(!). I blinked. They explained it had been many more tracks initially. Totally depressing to hear this stuff is still not working smoothly coming from FCPX. I thought maybe Automatic Duck had figured out a proper workflow going to AAF. Am I wrong?

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by reichman

Years ago I was given a doc to mix from a team working in FCPX. The editors proudly told me that they had managed to shrink down the dialog tracks to *only* 122 tracks(!). I blinked. They explained it had been many more tracks initially. Totally depressing to hear this stuff is still not working smoothly coming from FCPX. I thought maybe Automatic Duck had figured out a proper workflow going to AAF. Am I wrong?

Hi, it looks like X2pro is the only game in town that I can see for FCPX to PT, unless anyone else has found an alternative?

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by Ru_C

Hi, it looks like X2pro is the only game in town that I can see for FCPX to PT, unless anyone else has found an alternative?

DaVinci Resolve

[philper]

Yeah. I had a doc this fall that came if from FCX via X2Pro and it was a grudge-match-fight-to-the-death the whole way. X2Pro seems to work ok if the FCX project is kind of simple and also kind of small. For something up beyond 80 min with a lot of fancy cutting it kind of falls apart. I tried a lot of scenarios in finally getting the successive cuts of the film open (because, of course, the "locked picture" was no such thing). What kind of worked somewhat involved AATranslator, an old 32 bit copy of ProConvert and squeaking in under the 2GB limitation of OMF in converting to that, which PT did open finally. The resulting project was a dog's breakfast of repeating files, spurious and junk clips, half of stereo pairs out of sync etc etc.. I've now instituted a new policy that basically and in the most friendly way says that projects coming from FCX edits will be done on a hourly basis only--no bids, no estimates.

Resolve was mentioned--so far I have had zero luck w/ DR v 12 in opening FCX or even problematic Avid AAFs. Resolve always throws an error saying it can't find the video timeline for the AAF.

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by philper

Yeah. I had a doc this fall that came if from FCX via X2Pro and it was a grudge-match-fight-to-the-death the whole way. X2Pro seems to work ok if the FCX project is kind of simple and also kind of small. For something up beyond 80 min with a lot of fancy cutting it kind of falls apart. I tried a lot of scenarios in finally getting the successive cuts of the film open (because, of course, the "locked picture" was no such thing). What kind of worked somewhat involved AATranslator, an old 32 bit copy of ProConvert and squeaking in under the 2GB limitation of OMF in converting to that, which PT did open finally. The resulting project was a dog's breakfast of repeating files, spurious and junk clips, half of stereo pairs out of sync etc etc.. I've now instituted a new policy that basically and in the most friendly way says that projects coming from FCX edits will be done on a hourly basis only--no bids, no estimates.

Resolve was mentioned--so far I have had zero luck w/ DR v 12 in opening FCX or even problematic Avid AAFs. Resolve always throws an error saying it can't find the video timeline for the AAF.

lol...sorry that gave me a good laugh after 7 days of file wrangling misery...i'm glad its not just me then:)...yes lesson learnt for the future re:billing. I did get paid, but I should have quoted about 50% more for all the grief that porting the sound over took.

It seems that to transfer a big (i.e film) project over, you really need full access to the master FCPX library for the first couple of days, in order to sort it out at that end first.

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

DaVinci Resolve

Could you care to elaborate ?

Ive got Davinci resolve on two of my rigs...

Are you talking XML to Resolve, then AAF out of Resolve??

I'm keeping my beady eye on Resolve updates, to see if they get their 'Fairlight' page out of beta.

At the moment it has all the makings of being a kind of internal 'Pro Tools replacement', but last i tested it (about 2 months ago) it had so many features missing as to make it useless.

I spoke to a Blackmagic rep at demo recently & he basically confirmed my findings, but seemed to think that it would evolve into something great. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it