Below some little utilities which make use of Final Cut Pro's XML features. They all are big time savers, or allow you to get access to data of your Final Cut Pro project that normally are hard to get or to change.
Was shown at LAFCPUG Supermeet at NAB 2009 Syncing the Impossible 5 P2 cameras, 6 wireless microphones, freestyle shooting, a Sound Devices 788T recording 8 tracks of audio, and less than a week from shoot to air. How would you bring this all together into Apple's Final Cut Pro? Jeremy Garchow, Creative Cow Leader, Editor and Post Production Supervisor at Maday Productions, was tasked with the opportunity to organize and edit all of the elements to make a commercial for the Chicago Blackhawks. Totaling over 6 hours of real time shot material to edit down to 60 seconds, Jeremy faced this challenge by having super-fast access to the native P2 media and auto-syncing with external audio, all with free run time code and a clap slate. MXF4mac and sequenceLiner fired it all over to Apple's Final Cut Pro, ready to edit through a workflow never seen before. The presentation recording was published on macvideo.tv
An automated play out setup LA based Crosscreek Entertainment was looking for a workflow to automate clip order/sorting and naming in a timeline for play out to tape and DVD. We go it solved using Final Cut Pro XML and Apple Events.
Cambridge Public Art Project Just another text to Final Cut Pro sequence custom application. It generates normal or split screen sequences just based upon a simple formated text file. Click the link above to learn more.
Free Stuff
TitleExchange Is a small donation/freeware which allows to juggle subtitles within several applications
X-Files Pro - coming soon A small donation/freeware which allows to manage Disk Images, Volumes, Events and Projects for Apple's Final Cut Pro X
myFiles A small freeware which allows to to view media source file info for Events and Projects of Apple's Final Cut Pro X files.
CreateDiskImage This little free tool allows to create disk images -- this can be helpful when working with Apple's FCPX (and other applications as well)
fxMover for Apple's FCPX Is a small donation/freeware which allows to move Motion Templates out of FCPX in an easy way for users.
psTitles (PhotoShop < CS 6) Is a small freeware applicaion which allows to script Adobe's PhotoShop to create high quality subtitles for probably any NLE based on an Apple Spruce STL the application is also part of the TitleExchange installation.
Alexa Tool This little free tool allows to copy Alexa cards and clean up the card's FCP XMLs (type xmeml) to make it ready for a smooth import into Apple's legacy Final Cut Pro.
If you already copied the cards to a local disk the app will re-write the links in the XML and the ProRes clips will be imported as online clips, freeing you from the hassle to reconnect them.
It also allows to double check those clips listed in the XML against those which are stored on the card and does an automatic re-write of the XML. This will remove some not used metadata which might be offending and cause an error in Final Cut Pro when trying to reconnect offline clips. Additionally it adds some metadata for FCP which are not listed in the XML on the card, like camera serial number, the angle of the camera and the 3D settings.
CopyCards This little free tool allows to copy camera cards in an easy and safe way.
sequenceLiner ( FCP < X) Is a small freeware (this will change) which allows to lay down clips to a pre-defined sequence according to their timecodes.
auxTC for Final Cut Pro 7 Is a small freeware which allows to add TC information based upon creation/modifation time of the file.
You can load any kind of XML from Final Cut Pro, but only clips or sequences will be parsed dependent upon the user's choice what to process. See what it can do for you.
rotateClips(FCP < X OSX < 10.6) rotateClips is a small helper application for people using the 35mm adapter with their camera. It allows to either "Flop" all clips in a project or rotate them in one single step - more than 2500 clips in a 64 mb XML were changed in about 10 seconds, where loading the XML into memory and writing it back to disk took most of the time. To learn more drop me an email
Free Plugins for Final Cut Pro
Basic Text Is a simple modification of the original 'Lower 3rd' text generator. It has additional controls for horizontal and vertical position of the text, as well as text aligment.
Jiggler: a simple effect which jiggles the position of the frame randomly.
