Is it possible to set poster frame within FCPX browser?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Is it possible to set poster frame within FCPX browser?

Is it possible to set the FCPX browser's poster frame to the last frame of the clip?

My use case:

I will have bunches of clips on an SD card, both good and bad takes of multiple scenes. Bunches.

Every bad take is cut while holding a red card to the camera. Therefore if I had some way of viewing the final frame of the clips, I'd know without putting the clip in the timeline or even skimming that the clip was botched and should be rejected. I confirmed with Canon that our XA25 will only display the first frame of the scene. FCPX seems to like to display the middlemost frame as the poster. If this is not alterable in FCPX can anyone advise of an alternate method?

Thank you!

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Running FCPX 10.2.3

Posted on Feb 12, 2016 12:46 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,010 points

Mar 11, 2016 8:01 AM in response to Aaron Borns

Can you post a screenshot of where in FCP you're talking about? The browser can show multiple frames, and in filmstrip view you can zoom into the clip filmstrip. There is no single frame for the poster frame.

Reply

Answer 2

Aaron Borns Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 12, 2016 8:15 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Sorry Tom. I could've been more clear - I meant in the filmstrip view of the browser with the clip duration slider cranked all the way up to "All". See the pic below where I show what I'd want to see (quick and dirty photoshop magic). The red card trick would show me immediately which clips I'd want to select and batch-reject. I'm filming with a Canon XA25 and there's no way to delete/discard the last take without switching the power switch to a media management mode.

Reply

Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,010 points

Feb 13, 2016 12:20 AM in response to Aaron Borns

Not There. Maybe easier to rely on names and use list view.

Reply

Answer 4

Aaron Borns Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 13, 2016 12:34 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Unfortunately the name is just a serialized number. You don't happen to know any other program (e.g. Finder) that let's you choose which frame for the thumbnail /poster? Any Automator tricks? I'm thinking that if it's not possible within fcpx maybe there's something I can add to my work flow.

Reply

Answer 5

Feb 13, 2016 2:55 AM in response to Aaron Borns

Instead of choosing the thumbnail, you might want to make good use of the metadata capabilities of FCP X.

You may mark those clips as Rejected; or, perhaps better, you may add specific keywords to them, and use keyword collections and/or smart collections.

If you keyword those clips with, say, 'Bad', you can easily see them all (a keyword collection 'Bad' is automatically created). You can also easily see just the good clips - just use a smart collection with criterion "keyword does not include 'Bad'".

Reply