When FCP X was released in 2011, it famously/infamously caused quite a stir. Its magnetic timeline confused many editors, and a slew of other frustrating issues caused many to abandon the program altogether. While many of those criticisms were well deserved, there is a lot about FCP X that is either misunderstood or misrepresented. It actually has a bountiful number of professional features that improve efficiency and speed of editing, and make it a viable NLE for anything from industry feature films to Fortune 500 commercials to broadcast television.
Although many of the initial problems with FCP X that caused this exodus have long been addressed with updates (multicam and 3rd party hardware output were added soon after its release for instance), DaVinci Resolve can—for FREE—solve the number one problem that FCP X is still has—its limited file exchange format capability.
So let’s take a look at how DaVinci Resolve can be folded into your FCP X workflow so that you can turn over your picture and sound to any program you like, without having to buy any software or plug-ins (like EDL-X or X2Pro, which cost $100 and $150, respectively!).
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FCP X’s Missing Feature: Interchange Formats
If you were to point out the fact that FCP X is still limited in the area of project interchange formats, I would have to agree with you on the whole. After all, it doesn’t export standard .xml, but rather .fcpxml (a type of XML that isn’t currently compatible with most other video and audio software). It doesn’t support AAF, OMF or EDL, so you are pretty much stuck with .fcpxml as your only option out of FCP X.
Why is this a problem?
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with FCP X’s own color correction and audio editing tools (at least for basic work), the vast majority of professional workflows out there are going to require the ability to send your project to specialty programs to handle things like color and sound. (On a side note, while the aforementioned OMF and EDL are still legitimately supported file exchange formats, it is always recommended to use AAF and XML when possible. These project exchange formats carry more information than their older cousins and should always be given preference.)
The bottom line is: no matter whether you’re heading to Resolve, Baselight, Pro Tools, Adobe Audition, or any of a number of other programs, you are going to need a file exchange format that is recognized across these applications—and unfortunately, .fcpxml is not it.
Whatever shall we do?
DaVinci Resolve to the Rescue
Let’s take a look now at how Resolve can act as a “translator” of sorts between FCP X and the rest of the editing world.
Once you’ve got your .fcpxml exported from FCP X, open Resolve. When you navigate to “File” and then “Import AAF, EDL, XML…” (it means .fcpxml as well), there are several FCP X-specific options on the following prompt in addition to the standard options.
“Use color information” is a check-box that only works with FCP X, which allows you to bring over any color changes made in FCP X to DaVinci Resolve before deciding if you want to scrap them and start from scratch.
The “Mixed frame rate format” option is also FCP X-only. This is especially helpful in documentaries where you often have footage not just with different resolutions, but different frame rates as well. This way, you don’t have to render framerate changes ahead of time in FCP X. You can take care of it all in Resolve, without worrying that your sequence might go out of sync in the translation process.
Conforming
Assuming you had the “Automatically import source clips into media pool” selected upon import you should now have your FCP X project—timeline and media—up and running in Resolve. This translation from one NLE to another via a file exchange format isn’t always foolproof, however, and so now comes what is commonly known as the “conform” stage during which you will make sure that everything has translated properly in your timeline’s journey from FCP X— and manually fix anything that hasn’t.
Usually, this is done by laying a low-res QT file of your timeline (created in FCP X) on an upper layer of the timeline (in Resolve) and checking the timing of cuts and transitions and that all clips have properly reconnected. If you are reconnecting to higher-res media, you may also need to go through and make sure all your “scale” attributes are behaving properly. If you had been working in a low-res, offline sequence and are now creating a high-res, online sequence, your raster dimensions will be different and sometimes clips’ “scale” attributes do not translate properly from one application to another.
Another problem editors often come up against during the conforming process—at least in their Premiere -> Resolve workflow—is that any compound clips you created in Premiere (how some folks like to marry audio to video in that NLE) tend to cause problems when you attempt to reconnect in Resolve. Once you know this, you can simply circumvent the issue altogether by using another method to sync your dailies, but FCP X and its .fcpxml is actually able to avoid this problem altogether.
Compound Clips & Multicams
In fact, not only do compound clips and multicam clips from FCP X reconnect quite easily in Resolve via the .fcpxml, but you can also continue to make multicam choices inside Resolve and “decompose” the compound clips and “flatten” the multicam clips in Resolve by right-clicking on the clip. FCP X users were rightfully upset when the ability to flatten your multicams was removed between 7 and X, but Resolve has stepped in to solve this problem for us as well.
Compound Clips As Nests/Scenes in FCP X
The ability to decompose compound clips from FCP X inside Resolve is especially good news to those FCP X editors who use compound clips in FCP X as timelines/sequences (rather than the intended “Projects”).
This method essentially treats these compound clips as “nests”, where each one could be an individual scene or reel in the film. You can then drop them all into one single timeline (or “Project” in FCP X) when it comes time to assemble the whole movie from the individual scenes or reels. Then, when you shoot your .fcpxml over to Resolve, you will be able to look at your edit with each scene as a compound clip and easily reorder scenes if need be before decomposing them all in place for detailed color and audio work.
Where do we go from here??
With its wide file format support, Resolve gives you the ability to spit your project out to just about ANY other program.
- Send it to Adobe Premiere via the .xml or .edl functions (again, I recommend .xml as it carries more information than .edl). This could be helpful if you have After Effects as part of your workflow, as Adobe has their wonderful “dynamic link” feature. So FCP X —> DaVinci —> Premiere/After Effects —> back to DaVinci for finishing could be an option.
- Send it to another high-end finishing tool like Baselight.
- Spit out an AAF for importing into Avid or Pro Tools for audio finishing. It’s important to note that if you use “File” → “Export AAF, XML…” to create your AAF this will end up re-linking to your original media when you import it into another application. If you use the “Pro Tools” option in the “Deliver” tab however, this will create not just an AAF but new MXF files from your original media and Pro Tools will re-link to these upon AAF import— not to your original media.
- Lastly you could use Resolve as a way to migrate any old FCP7 timelines over to FCP X without the need of the widely-used “Send To X” 3rd-party app. Simply export your .xml from FCP7 per usual (I recommend neatening up your timeline in 7 first rather than in X as the track to roles functionality can become messy in the translation). Open your .xml in Resolve, re-export as a .fcpxml and then bring that into FCP X. Viola! If FCP X gives you a timeline with layers upon layers of videos, simply select everything above the primary storyline, hold down “option” and “command” and hit the down arrow key. This will consolidate everything onto one “track” and make things more manageable.
Problems Solved
So as you can see, Resolve pairs very nicely with FCP X because Resolve is particularly strong in the area where FCP X is weakest. We have successfully gotten around FCP X’s limited file exchange formats and its inability to flatten multicams. We’ve migrated our FCP 7 projects over to FCP X and we’ve gotten our FCP X projects into a more easily-accessible and robust finishing program—ready to round-trip anywhere—and all without spending any money on additional 3rd party plugins.
