Editing my first wedding

[Mitch Phillips]

Hi all,

Apologies if I should've asked this in the FCPX forum section, but I got so much great advice from wedding shooters that I thought I'd try my luck here.

I've recently filmed my first two weddings (on consecutive days), and now it's time to edit. I'm aiming to produce a 5-10 highlight film for these couples, as it was a complimentary gig and I want films that are digestible for potential clients moving forward.

I'm using FCPX and most likely PluralEyes for syncing, and will be running off a 2.3GHZ i7 MBP with 16GB RAM. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to best pull together the framework and get all my shots ready to easily sprinkle over the top.

My rough workflow thoughts are:

- Create a new Library for each couple
- Create an event for their film
- Import footage to FCPX. At this point, WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TRANSCODING into Optimised or Proxy media?
- Sync up ceremony speeches footage in PluralEyes and bring into FCPX
- Select key elements of dialogue that will be used
- Within this event, create different projects for each part of the day i.e Bride Prep, Ceremony etc. to clean up my shots so that all clips in the timeline are easily able to be copied over to master project and added throughout timeline.

Would it be easier to actually just favourite all the sections of the clips that I like and add keywords, and then I have my In and Out points when I want to add to the timeline of the main project.

Any other advice on how to most easily pull together the initial outline of my edit, I'd be greatly appreciative.

[Daniel Latimer]

I use FCP X, so I can tell you what I've done with weddings, but finding the workflow that works best for you is key.

- Each wedding is it's own library.
- Transcoding depends on the footage. If my computer can handle it then I don't bother, otherwise I typically will make proxies for editing. It takes a while, so if I"m going to transcode I usually let it run overnight.
- First thing I do is go through the footage and add it to keyword collations (groom prep, bride prep, first look, etc.) Each clip can have more than one keyword. That way I'm organized.
- FCP X has a built in sync function. It's not as fast as plural eyes, but it's usable (especially if all of your audio/video had their time/date function set correctly. I'll sync this next. Then listen to all of the speeches/ceremony and take notes to get an idea of where I want to go with the story.
- I use favorites to go through my footage. You can filter for favorites so you will have quick access to all of your favorites. It also means you don't have to bounce between timelines as much.

[Dave Partington]

I've edited close to 60 weddings in FCPX...

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

Hi all,
I'm using FCPX and most likely PluralEyes for syncing, and will be running off a 2.3GHZ i7 MBP with 16GB RAM. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to best pull together the framework and get all my shots ready to easily sprinkle over the top.

I haven't needed to use PluralEyes since 10.0.6 because the sync & mulitcam in FCPX has been outstanding. See below.

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

My rough workflow thoughts are:
- Create a new Library for each couple
- Create an event for their film
- Import footage to FCPX. At this point, WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TRANSCODING into Optimised or Proxy media?

So far so good. Each couple get their own library and event. Import the footage to their specific event.

I've also typically imported one card's worth at a time and once that card was imported I've also selected all the clips and set the reel number to the card number and/or the camera type. That provided another easy way of sorting later on when you're looking for things and you know it was shot on a given camera / card.

Take the time to keyword everything NOW. Don't wait, do it NOW. It will save you a LOT of time later. Keywords we'd typically apply are things like "Bride Prep", "Groom Prep", "Church", "Arrivals", "Ceremony", "Photos", "Reception", "Speeches", "Cake", "First Dance" etc, and don't be shy about applying multiple keywords to the same clip, so "Arrivals" and "Church" can help differentiate from "Arrivals" and "Reception". When you're looking for stuff later this make it super fast to find them.

Whether you want to transcode now or not is up to you. I've typically only transcoded the ceremony & speeches or anything else that I was going to edit as a multicam. The rest has played back fine. If you find it's sluggish on the first wedding then by all means go ahead and do it all in advance for the second one.

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

- Sync up ceremony speeches footage in PluralEyes and bring into FCPX

PluralEyes can create all sorts of problems and really isn't needed.

The key to getting FCPX to sync things perfectly (and it can do a perfect job) is to give each clip and angle number. This is done by selecting the clip, then in the info panel (CMD+4 to open, then select the Info Tab) set the first camera (and all shots related shots from that camera) to Angle 1. Get the next angle and set that one to angle 2 and so on. If you have external audio recorders give each of them their own angle number.

Make sure all clips from the same camera angle have the same angle number or FCPX will try to put them on different video 'tracks'. When you come to sync tell it to sync using the audio and to group by angle. that way it should all fall in to place perfectly.

Only when you have all the clips you're going to sync with angles applied should you then select them all the event browser, right click and choose create multicam. Give it a couple of minutes and voila, it's done. No messing with Pluraleyes, no annoying duplicated shots etc etc.

By keywording everything ahead of time it makes it easy to just find all the clips for the ceremony, apply the angles and sync, then the speeches etc, instead of looking through hundreds of clips.

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

- Select key elements of dialogue that will be used
- Within this event, create different projects for each part of the day i.e Bride Prep, Ceremony etc. to clean up my shots so that all clips in the timeline are easily able to be copied over to master project and added throughout timeline.

Would it be easier to actually just favourite all the sections of the clips that I like and add keywords, and then I have my In and Out points when I want to add to the timeline of the main project.

Some people find it easier to make selections and bring them directly in to the edit while others prefer to create a stringout (all the shots from an event end to end) and pick from there. There is no right or wrong, just how you like doing it.

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

Any other advice on how to most easily pull together the initial outline of my edit, I'd be greatly appreciative.

Edit the ceremony and speeches first as a multicam, place markers at any point you think you may want to use as part of the highlights story. That reminds you of what happened during the day that you may have forgotten and allows you to pick the edited angle you wanted right from the timeline.

Not sure how much multicam work you've done in FCPX, but the video side of things is trivial. There are a few tricks to getting the audio to be easier to work with, otherwise you end up working across lots of cuts when you really don't need to.

Also, if the cameras have varying white balance, it's often easier to balance them in the multicam angle viewer first rather than trying to go from clip to clip later.


[Daniel beat me to it - guess you can type faster than me!]

[Robert Benda]

Not sure how different Final Cut is, since I'm using Sony, but....

I shoot 3 camera. I have 4 video timelines, one each for each camera angle, then my top layer is what I want to show. I do this because I make a full length video, then go back and make a highlight. Layering my way, I now have all my best shots across the top of the timeline, and can easily find what I want, especially video-only shots.

[Mitch Phillips]

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for the helpful advice. Will definitely organise my footage into keywords to make sorting/finding easy.

So on the transcoding topic, two questions are:

1. From what you're saying, smaller and shorter clips should be fine to be brought in as H264 without transcoding, but longer clips or multi-cam content such as Ceremony and Speeches should be transcoded?

2. If I don't optimise to ProRes, is it still beneficial to create Proxy Media for speed purposes? Or, is this pointless given if speed was the issue, I'd be transcoding anyway?

3. Not a transcoding question, but I have a 1TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive that I'd like to use for editing. If I set up the library on this drive and all original media exists on this drive, I should in theory be able to take this drive from one machine to another and open up my event to continue editing right? Just that I'll potentially be editing on several different machines.

Sorry for all the questions, just wanting to get myself set up as best as possible to be efficient.

Thanks again!

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

1. From what you're saying, smaller and shorter clips should be fine to be brought in as H264 without transcoding, but longer clips or multi-cam content such as Ceremony and Speeches should be transcoded?

I transcode the ceremony and speeches to proxy only, then render from the original H264. No need to produce full ProRes transcodes. Use proxy for multicam editing because it makes the bandwidth requirement trivial. You can edit multicam from H264 with a good machine, but honestly it doens't take that long to make proxy files and it means it all runs smoothly for multicam. Once you're done editing multcam (and now you're only playing back a single stream) then just flip back to normal (Optimised) playback mode.

3. Not a transcoding question, but I have a 1TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive that I'd like to use for editing. If I set up the library on this drive and all original media exists on this drive, I should in theory be able to take this drive from one machine to another and open up my event to continue editing right? Just that I'll potentially be editing on several different machines.

As long as all your project files and media files are on that drive you're good to go.

Don't forget go keep up to date backups ;) I use GoodSync but there are other apps that work too.

[Mitch Phillips]

Thanks Dave. Of the two weddings I shot, I've transcoded the first one in full using Compressor.

Whilst somewhat time consuming, the bonus of this is that I trimmed clips to get rid of shaky or unusable footage, so that once imported into FCPX, I'll need to do little to no setting of In/Out points.

Now to start piecing the puzzle together :)

[Daniel Latimer]

FCP X has great tools to transcode to proxies and makes it easy to revert back to the original footage. It will save you time to utilize those for the next wedding. You can also start editing while it's creating proxies

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Mitch Phillips

Thanks Dave. Of the two weddings I shot, I've transcoded the first one in full using Compressor.

Whilst somewhat time consuming, the bonus of this is that I trimmed clips to get rid of shaky or unusable footage, so that once imported into FCPX, I'll need to do little to no setting of In/Out points.

Now to start piecing the puzzle together :)

This is trivial to do in FCPX and I guarantee it's also quicker!

First, set FCPX to hide rejected clips.

NExt, at the start of your clip set an in and out (quicker to drag) then hit the backspace, that creates a rejected area that you'll no longer see without you having to transcode. Do the same for the end of the clip.

If you have wobbles in the middle then set your in/out around them (if you want) and again hit backspace. Your clip will now appear as two clips, one before the wobble and one after.

[Mitch Phillips]

Absolutely Dave, that's a great point. Will do this when I import media for Wedding #2. Thanks!

Feedback so far - I'm already learning how important the detail 'set the scene' type shots are. I'm finding I'm quite thin on footage of the details of where the ceremony took place. Luckily I live reasonably close to the ceremony sites, so can do a follow-up 'detail shot' once I've laid out the rest of the film.