Although Final Cut Pro X has had many updates over the last year, editors still need workarounds to get the same features as they were accustomed to in alternative editing applications, including Final Cut Pro 7.

Sadly the 10.0.5 update changed the way the Timecode generator worked in Motion and Final Cut Pro X. This generator was used to create effects that could show timecode on a clip.

This can be useful when collaborating with other people. Knowing the timecode of specific times in footage can be useful to producers, researchers, transcribers and translators.

Since version 10.0.5, any effects applied to a clip don’t get any timecode information a clip has. This means any effects created in Motion, such as the timecode generator, don’t get that information, so cannot display it.

Until an update fixes this problem, here’s a workaround.

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However much you test software before it is launched, there’s nothing like releasing version 1.0 to reveal many problems you never thought of.

Many applications have a secret ‘debug’ mode which helps software engineers get useful information about how the software is running. This helps track down bugs. In the 90s discovering these modes in popular software was a sport for many power users. These days entering these modes isn’t just a matter of holding down the shift, command and option keys and opening a specific menu. It is more likely that debug modes only work if the Mac you are running the main application is also running a developer helper app. At the least it is a matter of setting a secret preference using a Terminal command.

Even though I don’t know how to get into Final Cut Pro’s debug mode, the text associated with it is built into every copy of the application.

There is a great deal of debug text, most of it making sense only to a few hundred people. However, debug modes can also be a place for Apple to test features that haven’t been fully implemented yet…

It seems that there are many debug settings in a secret debug preference panel. Text from Final Cut Pro.app / Resources / Contents / en.lproj / PEAppDebugPreferencesModule.nib

Debugging text sample:

Highlight Missing Artwork
Enable Performance Monitoring
inspectorDarkAlternatingRowColor
Catalog Settings:
   Discard catalog on launch
   Discard catalog if older

Helium Settings:
   Log Helium Effects to Console
   Log Helium Effects to Dot File (in /var/tmp)
   Log Helium Render Statistics

CPU Cores:

Optical Flow Analyzer:
   OpenCL GPU
   OpenCL CPU
   Non-CL

Color Settings:
   Display the Region Picker

Periodic backup interval (in minutes)

Developer Settings:
   Enable Screen Size Override (next launch)
   Clear User Defaults Stored In Catalog

Display Player Debugging
   Nearest Neighbor Filtering When Scaling to Display

Draw First Field Only
   Draw Both Fields Alternately (use Cmd-> to step by fields)
   Draw Both Fields Interlaced as Single Frame
   Draw Both Fields Interlaced Alternately

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Included with Motion 5 is an effect that extrudes a clip so that it has a 3-D treatment. Alex4D Extrude makes this effect available in Final Cut Pro X.

Here are the controls:

As Extrude can only draw in the transparent parts of a clip, if the footage fills the clip, you must first apply an effect that adds areas of transparency. In the example above, I added my Alex4D Curve Scale effect that scaled down the clip to 80% of its original size around a control point, adding an area of transparency around the footage:

Alex4D Extrude takes the output of the scaled clip and simulates the effect of many copies of the clip are stacked on top of each other, with the back copy being offset by a distance and angle. You can enter numbers for Extrude Angle and Extrude Distance directly, or drag the on-screen control to set the values:

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The current version of Final Cut Pro can only rotate clips and other content in one dimension. If you imagine the Z axis as a line that points out of the screen towards the viewer, that is the axis around which objects can be rotated. Alex4D XYZ rotate adds controls for the other two axes.

You can also choose the centre point around which the clip rotates:

In this example, the origin has been moved to line up with the first title character by dragging the centre on-screen control.

Rotated around the Z axis.

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As I’m updating my HDR effect I wanted to create my own luma key effect.

Luma Include makes areas of your clips transparent based the luminance values of the footage. Although you can produce similar effects using the Luma Key effect, the parameters of Luma Include can be keyframed.

The effect defaults to showing all luminance levels: the Upper Limit is 1 and the Lower Limit is 0. Each limit also has a smoothness value.

Here are some two examples of different looks using the effect:

In this case the value of the Upper Limit parameter has been reduced, so the brighter areas of the image have been made transparent (also known as having been ‘keyed out’). Here are the controls:

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