What are /r/fcpx's favorite Products & Services?

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Use Resolve if you want a powerful free editing tool on macOS. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

Or you can waste your time with a torrented version that's probably not the latest and is buggy and infected with malware.

If you're okay using a different application for your compositing, Fusion 9 now has built in point, planar, and camera tracking - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/

You can always send that shot to Fusion, export it, and bring it back into FCPX when you're done compositing.

That tutorial doesn't seem to refer to tracking.

Motion is Apple's application (in addition to Final Cut) for animation, special effects, and compositing. It's inexpensive and very good for what you're trying to do, including tracking.

Tracking essentially allows you to match the motion of one layer in a composition to another layer. For example you could have a person's face and add a pair of glasses that moves with them.

Hope this helps

Really the best way to decide is to download the 30 day trial and decide for yourself.
That should be more than enough time to decide if it's worth it to you.

Haha, true, though keep in mind, Resolve is only 'free' because it's half a product; it's subsidized and intended to be used with hardware like this and this, so it doesn't hurt them to give it away in the hopes of drawing in new customers. Not exactly free (free for us though!), just part of their advertising budget.

Back to your question though, decent trackers simply aren't cheap.

If you only need object tracking, Motion will be your best bet at $50. It also has the advantage of vastly opening up what you can do with FCPX. Being able to create your own titles, transitions, effects, etc and have them natively show up in FCPX (like making your own plugins) is a no-brainer at that price, in my view.

Things like the Coremelt's TrackX or Mocha (which a lot of standalone plugins license to use) are planar trackers which is a pretty complicated ball o' wax but also let you track things like surfaces (think doing computer screen or billboard replacements). You can kind of do some of that in Motion by point-tracking 4 corners, but I've never had truly great results from that, which made TrackX worth the money in time saved on just a single project.

I know it seems like a lot of money for a single, private user, but specialized tools are usually specialized for good reason. :P

Unfortunately, $175 just doesn't buy an editing computer.

When you're shopping, consider: * Hard Drive speed - capacity is relative, but the spindle speed of the disk should be 7200rpm or it should be an SSD. Many older MacBooks can have their hard drives replaced pretty easily. * Processor - A good rule of thumb is to make sure it's an i5 or i7. Exact GHz is relative; it can only calculate stuff as fast as it can get the video data (see above.) I have no problem with simple FCPX work on an Air with a 1.7ghz i7. * RAM - conventional wisdom is that RAM and speed are linked, but only kind of. RAM doesn't help you launch programs faster, have more storage, or process anything. In the past, more RAM meant that the processor could work on more because RAM is readable and writable much faster than a hard drive. With an SSD, you could honestly get by with 4GB of RAM, although 8 would help and be necessary for any system with a hard drive. * Graphics - some laptops have integrated graphics (okay) and some have dedicated graphics cards (like above.) Dedicated graphics cards can help, but you can get by without them (just may have longer, more necessary render times.)

Also, if mobility isn't important, consider hackintosh.

Drop your frame rate to 30, that'll cut the file size considerably. Next, get MPEG Streamclip and drop your video in there. Export as an MPEG-4 with a compression of H.264. Make sure you keep the same frame size.

The most important part of this is Limit Data Rate. Check that box and put in around 12-16,000. The lower you go there, the lower your file size will go. You will lose some quality, but it's not bad for the size differential.

10.5 should be out between now and during WWDC which starts June 22nd.

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You can get the free 90 day trial of FCPX here: https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/

Glad that info helped. It sounds like you just need to update your fcpx version on your MacBook Pro.

10.3.4 is a bit old so that explains why it can’t open the newer xml file. 10.4.6 can open up older xml but newer xml can’t be opened by a version of the app that old. The app has changed a lot since then.

If for some reason you don’t have access to the App Store you can download the fcpx trial from https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/ which is the current 10.4.6 version.

That will allow you to use the xml from your iMac!

Let me know if that works!

No prob, I am not expert either but know enough to be dangerous.

There are a few programs you could use to re-compress the file.

(1) Handbrake (free).

https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

Handbrake's user interface can be a bit daunting. First select your Source file. The tell it where you want the file saved (Destination). Find the Video and Audio tabs in the middle of the screen. You need to set up each one. I'm thinking you need around 15000 kbps for the video, use mp4 format. For the Audio 48kHz stereo at 192kbps for sound should be good.

(2) Apple compressor ($50 in App Store) It's easy to use and integrates with FCPX.

(3) Another commercial program ($50) that I use is Iskysoft Media Converter. I think they have a 30 day free trial. It's easy to use, supports a ton of audio and video formats, and lets you create custom bitrate settings.

http://www.iskysoft.com/imedia-converter-deluxe-mac.html

There's also a little $0.99 app called Mediainfo in the app store that is good for getting the bitrate and other info from media files. This would be handy here to see what your original file parameters are and using that info to plug into Handbrake. For example the video should probably be 15000 kbps for good quality 1080p, but maybe your original clip is higher.

edit: clarified you can use any 1 of those 3 programs, Handbrake recommended, and instead of 8000 kbps for the video bitrate I think 15000 would be better to preserve quality, it's what Apple compressor uses for HD 1080p

I'd suggest you use a 3½-inch 7200 rpm USB3 disk. These have a price cut at Amazon.

I have been using it for about a year, and it was very easy to use. I would recommend buying a cheap one on amazon for cheap, like the Syma X11 quadcopter which is a good beginner drone that has the same controls as the DJI Phantom.