Custom transitions using adjustment layers

Sometimes you just want to use a unique transition effect, however, you might not own a package of third party plug-ins with custom transitions. If you are an FCP X / Motion user, then you can create a custom transition as a Motion  template. But, maybe that’s too much trouble when you are in the thick of things. There is actually a very simple technique that After Effects artists have used for years. That’s using an adjustment layer above a cut or dissolve between two shots and applying filters within the adjustment layer.

This works in FCP X, Premiere Pro CC and Media Composer. The first two actually have adjustment layer effects, though in FCP X, it’s based on a blank title generator. In Media Composer, you can add edits into empty video tracks and apply effects to any section of a blank track, which effectively makes this process the same as using an adjustment layer. The Media Composer approach was described nicely by Shane Ross in his Vimeo tutorial, which got me thinking about this technique more broadly. Generally, it works the same in all three of these NLEs.

The examples and description are based on Premiere Pro CC, but don’t let that stop you from trying it out on your particular software of choice. To start, create a new adjustment layer and add a marker to the middle of it. This helps to center the layer over the cut between two shots. Place the adjustment layer effect over a cut between shots, making sure that the marker lines up with the edit point. If the transition is to be a one-second effect, then trim the front and back of the adjustment layer so that one-half second is before the marker and one-half second is after the marker. Depending on the effect, you may or may not also want a short dissolve between the two shots on the base video track. For example, an effect that flashes the screen full frame at the midpoint will work with a cut. A blur effect will work best in conjunction with a dissolve, otherwise you’ll see the cut inside the blur.

The beauty of this technique is that you can apply numerous filters to an adjustment layer and get a unique combination of effects that isn’t otherwise available. For example, a blur+glow+flare transition. At this point, it’s important to realize that not all effects plug-ins work the same way and you will have varying results. Boris filters tends not to work when you stack them in the same adjustment layer and start to change keyframes. In Avid’s architecture, the BCC filters have a specific pipeline and you have to define which filter is the first and which is the last effect. I didn’t find any such controls in the Premiere version. A similar thing happened with the Red Giant Universe filters. On the other hand, most of the native Premiere Pro filters operated correctly in this fashion.

The basic principle is that you want the filters to start and end at a neutral value so that the transition starts and ends without a visible effect. The midpoint of the transition (over the cut) should be at full value of whatever it is you are trying to achieve. If it’s a lens flare, then the middle of the transition should be the midpoint of the lens flare’s travel and also its brightest moment. If you are using a glow, then the intensity is at its maximum in the middle. Typically this means three keyframe points – beginning, middle and end. The values you adjust will differ with the plug-in. It could be opacity, strength, intensity or anything else. Sometimes you will adjust multiple parameters at these three points. This will be true of a lens flare that travels across the screen during the transition.

The point is that you will have to experiment a bit to get the right feel. The benefit is that once you’ve done this, the adjustment layer clip – complete with filters and keyframes – can be copied-and-pasted to other sections of the timeline for a consistent effect.

Here are some examples of custom transition effects in Premiere Pro CC, using this adjustment layer technique. (Click the image for an enlarged view.)

This is a combination of a Basic 3D horizontal spin and Ripples. The trick is to get the B-side image to not be horizontally flipped, since it’s the backside of the rotating image. To do this, I added an extra Transform filter with a middle keyframe that reverses the scale width to -100.

This transition combines a Directional Blur with a Chromatic Glow and requires a dissolve on the base video track.

This is a lens flare transition where the flare travels and changes intensity. The brightest part is the midpoint over the shot change. This could work as a cut or dissolve, since the flare’s brightness “wipes” the screen. In addition, I have the flare center traveling from the upper left to the lower right of the frame.

Here, I’ve applied the BCC Pencil Sketch filter, bringing it in and out during the length of the transition, with a dissolve on the base layer. This gives us a momentary cartoon look as part of the shot transition.

Custom UI filters like Magic Bullet Looks also work. This effect combines Looks using the “blockbuster” preset with a Glow Highlights filter. First set the appearance in Looks and then use the strength slider for your three keyframes.

This transition is based on the Dust & Scratches filter in Premiere Pro. I’m not sure why it produced this blotchy artistic look other than the large radius value. Quite possibly this is a function of its behavior in an adjustment layer. Nevertheless, it’s a cool, impressionistic style.

This transition takes advantage of the BCC Water Color filter. Like my Pencil Sketch example, the transition briefly turns into a watercolor during the length of the transition.

Like the previous two BCC example, this is a similar approach using the Universe ToonIt Paint filter.

This transition combines several of the built-in Premiere Pro effects, including Transform and Radial Blur. The image scales up and back down through the midpoint, along with the blur values ramping and an added skew value change.

In this last example, I’ve used Magic Bullet Looks. The Looks style uses a Tilt-Shift preset to which I’ve added lens distortion within Looks. The three keyframe points are set by adjusting the strength slider.

©2014 Oliver Peters

Color Grading Strategies

A common mistake made by editors new to color correction is to try to nail a “look” all in a single application of a filter or color correction layer. Subjective grading is an art. Just like a photographer who dodges and burns areas of a photo in the lab or in Photoshop to “relight” a scene, so it is with the art of digital color correction. This requires several steps, so a single solution will never give you the best result. I follow this concept, regardless of the NLE or grading application I’m using at the time. Whether stacked filters in Premiere Pro, several color corrections in FCP X, rooms in Color, nodes in Resolve or layers in SpeedGrade – the process is the same. The standard grade for me is often a “stack” of four or more grading levels, layers or nodes to achieve the desired results. (Please click on any of the images for an expanded view.)

The first step for me is always to balance the image and to make that balance consistent from shot to shot. Achieving this varies with the type of media and application. For example, RED camera raw footage is compatible with most updated software, allowing you to have control over the raw decoding settings. In FCP X or Premiere Pro, you get there through separate controls to modify the raw source metadata settings. In Resolve, I would usually make this the first node. Typically I will adjust ISO, temperature and tint here and then set the gamma to REDlogFilm for easy grading downstream. In a tool like FCP X, you are changing the settings for the media file itself, so any change to the RED settings for a clip will alter those settings for all instances of that clip throughout all of your projects. In other words, you are not changing the raw settings for only the timeline clips. Depending on the application, this type of change is made in the first step of color correction or it is made before you enter color correction.

I’ll continue this discussion based on FCP X for the sake of simplicity, but just remember that the concepts apply generally to all grading tools. In FCP X, all effects are applied to clips before the color board stage. If you are using a LUT filter or some other type of grading plug-in like Nattress Curves, Hawaiki Color or AutoGrade, remember that this is applied first and then that result is effected by the color board controls, which are downstream in the signal flow. If you want to apply an effect after the color board correction, then you must add an adjustment layer title generator above your clip and apply that effect within the adjustment layer.

In the example of RED footage, I set the gamma to REDlogFilm for a flatter profile to preserve dynamic range. In FCP X color board correction 1, I’ll make the necessary adjustments to saturation and contrast to restore this to a neutral, but pleasing image. I will do this for all clips in the timeline, being careful to make the shots consistent. I am not applying a “look” at this level.

The next step, color board correction 2, is for establishing the “look”. Here’s where I add a subjective grade on top of color board correction 1. This could be new from scratch or from a preset. FCP X supplies a number of default color presets that you access from the pull-down menu. Others are available to be installed, including a free set of presets that I created for FCP X. If you have a client that likes to experiment with different looks, you might add several color board correction layers here. For instance, if I’m previewing a “cool look” versus a “warm look”, I might do one in color correction 2 and another in color correction 3. Each correction level can be toggled on and off, so it’s easy to preview the warm versus cool looks for the client.

Assuming that color board correction 2 is for the subjective look, then usually in my hierarchy, correction 3 tends to be reserved for a mask to key faces. Sometimes I’ll do this as a key mask and other times as a shape mask. FCP X is pretty good here, but if you really need finesse, then Resolve would be the tool of choice. The objective is to isolate faces – usually in a close shot of your principal talent – and bring skin tones out against the background. The mask needs to be very soft so as not to draw attention to itself. Like most tools, FCP X allows you to make changes inside and outside of the mask. If I isolate a face, then I could brighten the face slightly (inside mask), as well as slightly darken everything else (outside mask).

Depending on the shot, I might have additional correction levels above this, but all placed before the next step. For instance, if I want to darken specific bright areas, like the sun reflecting off of a car hood, I will add separate layers with key or shape masks for each of these adjustments. This goes back to the photographic dodging and burning analogy.

I like adding vignettes to subtly darken the outer edge of the frame. This goes on correction level 4 in our simplest set-up. The bottom line is that it should be the top correction level. The shape mask should be feathered to be subtle and then you would darken the outside of the mask, by lowering brightness levels and possibly a little lower on saturation. You have to adjust this by feel and one vignette style will not work for all shots. In fact, some shots don’t look right with a vignette, so you have to use this to taste on a shot by shot basis. At this stage it may be necessary to go back to color correction level 2 and adjust the settings in order to get the optimal look, after you’ve done facial correction and vignetting in the higher levels.

If I want any global changes applied after the color correction, then I need to do this using an adjustment layer. One example is a film emulation filter like LUT Utility or FilmConvert. Technically, if the effect should look like film negative, it should be a filter that’s applied before the color board. If the look should be like it’s part of a release print (positive film stock), then it should go after. For the most part, I stick to after (using an adjustment layer), because it’s easier to control, as well as remove, if the client decides against it. Remember that most film emulation LUTs are based on print stock and therefore should go on the higher layer by definition. Of course, other globals changes, like another color correction filters or grain or a combination of the two can be added. These should all be done as adjustment layers or track-based effects, for consistent application across your entire timeline.

©2014 Oliver Peters

The FCP X – RED – Resolve Dance

I recently worked on a short 10 minute teaser video for a potential longer film project. It was shot with a RED One camera, so it was a great test for the RED workflow and roundtrips using Apple Final Cut Pro 10.1.2/10.1.3 and DaVinci Resolve 11.

Starting the edit

As with any production, the first step is to properly back up and verify the data from the camera and sound cards. These files should go to redundant drives that are parked on the shelf for safe keeping. After this has been done, now you can copy the media to the editorial drives. In this case, I was using a LaCie RAID-5 array. Each day’s media was placed in a folder and divided into subfolders for RED, audio and other cameras, like a few 5D shots.

Since I was using FCP X and its RED and proxy workflows, I opted not to use REDCINE-X Pro as part of this process. In fact, the Mac Pro also didn’t have any RED Rocket accelerator card installed either, as I’ve seen conflicts with FCP X and RED transcodes when the RED Rocket card was installed. After the files were copied to the editorial drives, they were imported into an FCP X event, with media left in its original location. In the import setting, the option to transcode proxy media was enabled, which continues in the background while you start to work with the RED files directly. The camera files are 4K 16×9 .r3d files, so FCP X transcodes these to half-sized ProRes Proxy media.

Audio was recorded as double-system sound using a Sound Devices recorder. The audio files were 2-channel broadcast WAV files using slates for syncing. There was no in-camera audio and no common timecode. I was working with a couple of assistant editors, so I had them sync each clip manually. Instead of using FCP X’s synchronized clips, I had them alter each master clip using the “open in timeline” command. This lets you edit the audio directly to the video as a connected clip within the master clip. Once done, your master clip contains synced audio and video.  It functions just like a master clip with in-camera audio – almost (more on that later).

All synced clips were relabeled with a camera, scene and take designation, as well as adding this info to the camera, scene and take columns. Lastly, script notes were added to the notes column based on the script supervisor’s reports.

Transcodes

Since the post schedule wasn’t super-tight, I was able to let the transcodes finish overnight, as needed. Once this is done, you can switch FCP X to working with proxies and all the media will be there. The toggle between proxy and/or optimized-original media is seamless and FCP X takes care of properly changing all sizing information. For example, the project is 4K media in a 1080p timeline. FCP X’s spatial conform downscales the 4K media, but then when you toggle to proxy, it has to make the corresponding adjustments to media that is now half-sized. Likewise any blow-ups or reframing that you do also have to match in both modes.

The built-in proxy/optimized-original workflow provides you with offline/online editing phases right within the same system. Proxies for fast and efficient editing. Original or high-resolution transcodes for finishing. To keep the process fast and initially true to color decisions made on set, no adjustments were made to the RED files. FCP X does let you alter the camera raw color metadata from inside the application, but there’s no real reason to do this for offline editing files. That can be deferred until it’s time to do color correction. So during the edit, you see what the DoP shot as you view the RED files or the transcoded proxies.

We did hit one bad camera load. This might have been due to either a bad RED drive or possibly excessive humidity at that location. No matter what the reason, the result was a set of corrupt RED clips. We didn’t initially realize this in FCP X, and so, hit clips that caused frequent crashes. Once I narrowed it down to the load from that one location, I decided to delete these clips. For that group of shots, I used REDCINE-X Pro to transcode the files. I adjusted the color for a flatter, neutral profile (for later color correction) and transcoded full-resolution debayered 1080p ProRes 4444 files. We considered these as the new camera masters for those clips. Even there, REDCINE-X Pro crashed on a few of the clips, but I still had enough to make a scene out of it.

Editing

The first editing step is culling down the footage in FCP X. I do a first pass rejecting all bogus shots, like short clips of the floor, a bad slate, etc. Set the event browser to “hide rejected”. Next I review the footage based on script notes, looking at the “circle takes” first, plus picking a few alternates if I have a different opinion. I will mark these as Favorites. As I do this, I’ll select the whole take and not just a portion, since I want to see the whole take.

Once I start editing, I switch the event browser to “show favorites”. In the list view, I’ll sort the event by the scene column, which now gives me a quick roadmap of all possible good clips in the order of the script. During editing, I cut mainly using the primary storyline to build up the piece. This includes all overlapping audio, composites, titles and so on. Cutting proceeds until the picture is locked. Once I’m ready to move on to color correction, I export a project XML in the FCPXML format.

Resolve

I used the first release version (not beta) of DaVinci Resolve 11 Lite to do this grade. My intention was to roundtrip it back to FCP X and not to use Resolve as a finishing tool, since I had a number of keys and composites that were easier done in FCP X than Resolve. Furthermore, when I brought the project into Resolve, the picture was right, but all of the audio was bogus – wrong takes, wrong syncing, etc. I traced this down to my initial “open in timeline” syncing, which I’ll explaining in a bit. Anyway, my focus in Resolve was only grading and so audio wasn’t important for what I was doing. I simply disabled it.

Importing the FCPXML file into a fresh Resolve 11 project couldn’t have been easier. It instantly linked the RED, 5D and transcoded ProRes 4444 files and established an accurate timeline for my picture cut. All resizing was accurately translated. This means that in my FCP X timeline, when I blew up a shot to 120% (which is a blow-up of the 1080p image that was downscaled from the 4K source), Resolve knew to take the corresponding crop from the full 4K image to equal this framing of the shot without losing resolution.

The one video gotcha I hit was with the FCP X timeline layout. FCP X is one of the only NLEs that lets you place video BELOW what any other software would consider to be the V1 track – that’s the primary storyline. Some of my green screen composite shots were of a simulated newscast inserted on a TV set hanging on a wall in the primary scene. I decided to place the 5 or 6 layers that made up this composite underneath the primary storyline. All fine inside FCP X, however, in Resolve, it has to interpret the lowest video element as V1, thus shifting everything else up accordingly. As a result the, bulk of the video was on V6 or V7 and audio was equally shifted in the other direction. This results in a lot of vertical timeline scrolling, since Resolve’s smallest track height is still larger than most.

Resolve, of course, is a killer grading tool that handles RED media well. My grading approach is to balance out the RED shots in the first node. Resolve lets you adjust the camera raw metadata settings for each individual clip, if you need to. Then in node 2, I’ll do most of my primary grading. After that, I’ll add nodes for selective color adjustments, masks, vignettes and so on. Resolve’s playback settings can be adjusted to throttle back the debayer resolution on playback for closer-to-real-time performance with RED media. This is especially important, when you aren’t running the fastest drives, fastest GPU cards nor using a RED Rocket card.

To output the result, I switched over to Resolve’s Deliver tab and selected the FCP X easy set-up. Select handle length, browse for a target folder and run. Resolve is a very fast renderer, even with GPU-based RED debayering, so output wasn’t long for the 130 clips that made up this short. The resulting media was 1080p ProResHQ with an additional 3 seconds per clip on either side of the timeline cut – all with baked in color correction. The target folder also contains a new FCPXML that corresponds to the Resolve timeline with proper links to the new media files.

Roundtrip back into FCP X

Back in FCP X, I make sure I’ve turned off the import preference to transcode proxy media and that my toggle is set back to original/optimized media. Find the new FCPXML file from Resolve and import it. This will create a new event containing a new FCP X project (edited sequence), but with media linked to the Resolve render files. Audio is still an issue, for now.

There is one interesting picture glitch, which I believe is a bug in the FCPXML metadata. In the offline edit, using RED or proxy media, spatial conform is enabled and set to “fit”. That scales the 4K file to a 1080p timeline. In the sequence back from Resolve, I noticed the timeline still had yellow render bars. When I switched the spatial conform setting on a clip to “none”, the render bar over it went away, but the clip blew up much larger, as if it was trying to show a native 4K image at 1:1. Except, that this was now 1080 media and NOT 4K. Apparently this resizing metadata is incorrectly held in the FCPXML file and there doesn’t appear to be any way to correct this. The workaround is to simply let it render, which didn’t seem to hurt the image quality as far as I could tell.

Audio

Now to an explanation of the audio issue. FCP X master clips are NOT like any other master clips in other NLEs, including FCP 7. X’s master clips are simply containers for audio and video essence and, in that way, are not unlike compound clips. Therefore, you can edit, add and/or alter – even destructively – any material inside a master clip when you use the “open in timeline” function. You have to be careful. That appears to be the root of the XML translation issue and the audio. Of course, it all works fine WITHIN the closed FCP X environment!

Here’s the workaround. Start in FCP X. In the offline edited sequence (locked rough cut) and the sequence from Resolve, detach all audio. Delete audio from the Resolve sequence. Copy and paste the audio from the rough cut to the Resolve sequence. If you’ve done this correctly it will all be properly synced. Next, you have to get around the container issue in order to access the correct WAV files. This is done simply by highlighting the connected audio clip(s) and using the “break apart clip items” command. That’s the same command used to break apart compound clips into their component source clips. Now you’ll have the original WAV file audio and not the master clip from the camera.

At this stage I still encountered export issues. If your audio mixing engineer wants an OMF for an older Pro Tools unit, then you have to go through FCP 7 (via an Xto7 translation) to create the OMF file. I’ve done this tons of time before, but for whatever reason on this project, the result was not useable. An alternative approach is to use Resolve to convert the FCPXML into XML, which can then be imported into FCP 7. This worked for an accurate translation, except that the Resolve export altered all stereo and multi-channel audio tracks into a single mono track. Therefore, a Resolve translation was also a fail. At this point in time, I have to say that a proper OMF export from FCP X-edited material is no longer an option or at least unreliable at best.

This leaves you with two options. If your mixing engineer uses Apple Logic Pro X, then that appears to correctly import and convert the native FCPXML file. If your mixer uses Pro Tools (a more likely scenario) then newer versions will read AAF files. That’s the approach I took. To create an AAF, you have to export an FCPXML from the project file. Then using the X2Pro Audio Convert application, generate an AAF file with embedded and trimmed audio content. This goes to the mixer who in turn can ingest the file into Pro Tools.

Once the mix has been completed, the exported AIF or WAV file of the mix is imported into FCP X. Strip off all audio from the final version of the FCP X project and connect the clip of the final mix to the beginning of the timeline. Now you are done and ready to export deliverables.

For more on RED and FCP X workflows, check out this series of posts by Sam Mestman at MovieMaker.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3

©2014 Oliver Peters

The State of FCP X Plug-ins

The launch of Apple’s Final Cut Pro X spawned a large ecosystem of plug-ins and utilities. This was due, in part, to the easy method of creating Motion templates, along with the need to augment interoperability with other applications, i.e. fill in the gaps in FCP X’s capabilities. Lately you have to wonder about the general status of the FCP X plug-in market. GenArts decided to discontinue its Sapphire Edge product and BorisFX only recently launched its BCC 9 version for FCP X*. GenArts may have simply stopped the Edge product because the business model wasn’t working. On the other hand, new offerings, such as Red Giant Universe, build up the available tools.

NLEs suffered a “race to the bottom” with pricing, which left us with numerous low cost and even free options. Historically, plug-in packages have been tiered to the price of the host application. If you paid tens of thousands or more for a product like Flame, then paying a couple of grand for a set of third-party filters wasn’t unreasonable. The same filters for After Effects cost less, because the host was less. Naturally the market drives this, too, since there are far more After Effects users buying plug-ins, than there are Flame users. Unfortunately, that NLE “race to the bottom” leaves plug-in developers in an uncomfortable position, because many users are loathe to pay more for a set of plug-ins than for the host application itself. These shouldn’t be related, but they are.

It’s also not an exclusive FCP X problem, per se. Autodesk’s introduction of Smoke on the Mac didn’t attract Sparks plug-in developers to adapt their Flame/Smoke plug-ins to the Mac platform. That’s because these new users simply weren’t going to pay the kind of prices that Flame users had and still do for Sparks filters. Since Autodesk had no “takers”, they ended up adding more of the filter building blocks into Smoke itself and in the Smoke 2015 product have dropped the Sparks API altogether.

Aside from the issue of cost and what fuels development, for the user, plug-ins can be a tricky issue. Often plug-ins can be the biggest cause of application instability and poor playback performance. All too often, application crashes can be boiled down to a misbehaving filter. Most of the time, third-party effects do not provide as smooth of a performance as native filters. This is especially true of FCP X where built-in filters are far less of a drag on the system, then the others. Most likely due to the “secret sauce” Apple applies to its built-in effects and transitions.

In the case of Final Cut Pro X, there actually is no plug-in structure. It uses Motion’s FxPlug3 architecture as Motion templates. This means that a video filter, transition, generator or title has to be developed for Motion and that, in turn, is published as a Motion template, which appears inside FCP X as an effect. Even if you didn’t buy Motion, FCP X is running its effects engine “under the hood” and that’s why third-party filters work. While this makes it easy for users to create their own plug-ins, using the building blocks provided natively in Motion, it also adds a burden for more advanced developers. BorisFX, for example, must go the extra mile to make its FCP X filters and transitions look and feel the same as they do in After Effects, FCP 7 and other hosts.

On top of having a tool that simplifies the creation of cheap and free filters, FCP X also includes a nice set of native filters and transitions. This set is far more wide-ranging than what’s currently bundled with Adobe Premiere Pro CC or Avid Media Composer. Of course, not all are great – the keyer, for instance, is mediocre at best – and there are missing items – no DVE, masking or tracking. That’s why there is still room for third-party developers to create tools that meet the needs of the more demanding customers. But, for the vast majority of FCP X users, there’s little or no need to purchase a comprehensive package of 200 effects, when a lot of these looks can be achieved within the FCP X or Motion toolkit already.

The market does seem good for many specific filters that fill certain needs. I would imagine (although I don’t know actual numbers), that users are more likely to buy a tool like CoreMelt’s SliceX or Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks, because they address a specific deficiency. Likewise, I think users are more likely to buy a tool that works across several platforms. For instance, FxFactory Pro (and many of the FxFactory partner plug-ins) work for FCP X, FCP 7, Premiere Pro and After Effects on the same machine, without having to buy a different version for each host.

Another development need is for tools that augment interoperability and workflows. People tend to lump these into the plug-in discussion, although they really aren’t plug-ins. Tools like Xto7, 7toX, EDL-X, Shot Notes X and others are there to fill in the gaps of FCP X-centric workflows. If you have the need to send your sound from FCP X to a Pro Tools mixer, there’s no way to do it in X, using any method that’s commonly accepted within the industry. (I’m sorry, but exporting “baked in” roles is a workaround, not a solution.) The answer is X2Pro Audio Convert, which will generate an AAF with embedded audio from the FCPXML export of your timeline.

The trend I do see in the FCP X world is the creation of more and more Motion templates that are, in fact, design templates and not plug-ins. This is probably what Apple really had in mind in the first place. Companies like MotionVFX, Ripple Training, SugarFX and others are creating design templates, which are mini-Motion projects right inside your FCP X timeline. It’s a lot like buying a template After Effects project and then using that via Dynamic Link inside Premiere. Such templates are cheap and fun and save you a lot of building time, but they do suffer from the “flavor of the month” syndrome. A design might be good for one single production, but then you’ll never use it again. However, these templates are cheap enough that you can charge them off to the client without concern.

In kicking this idea around with friends that are developers, some felt there was a place for an Apple-curated market of plug-ins for FCP X – like the App Store, but simply for plug-ins, filters and utilities. That’s a little of how FxFactory works, but not all developers are represented there, of course. I do see the need for a product that acts like a template manager. This would let you enable or disable plug-ins and design templates as needed. If you’ve purchased a ton of third-party items, these quickly clutter up the FCP X palettes. Currently you have to remove items manually, by dragging the effects, titles and generators out of your Movies > Motion Templates folders. If you have FxFactory filters, then you can use the FxFactory application to manage those.

Overall, I see the FCP X ecosystem as healthy and growing, although with a shift of users away from comprehensive effect packages – largely due to cost. Tools and effects that users do purchase seem to be more task-specific and, in those cases, money is less of a factor. If you are a film editor, you have different needs than a corporate producer and so are more likely to buy some custom tools that you cannot otherwise live without. These tend to be made by small, responsive developers that don’t need to survive on the revenue that the large bundled effects packages used to bring. It’s too early to predict whether or not that’s a good thing for the market.

* Note: I originally composed this post a few weeks ago prior to the release of BCC9 and published this post with the error that BCC9 wasn’t out yet. In fact it is, hence the correction above.

©2014 Oliver Peters