Source Timecode Integration

Ever since FCPX was released, there was one thing that bugged me: It was no longer possible to integrate source timecode easily into your edits so the producer would be able to follow your edit decisions. Until now, my workaround was to supply an EDL (via EDL-X) with every edit I put online. as a reference.


With FCPX 10.0.6, it is finally possible to easily integrate source timecode into your edits with an approach much less cumbersome than before.

First off, I might need to explain how I work and prepare material for the edit. Instead of a pool of individual clips, I create a single "daily" intermediate (which I will call DAI from now on) for each and every day of recording. This file does not only contain all of the consecutive clips recorded that day, but also consists of multiple mono audio tracks (normally four tracks - two from the camera and two from the audio recordist's device - needless to say all in sync). The resulting DAI could, for example, be an 8-track MXF or a multitrack PRORES file.
This way of working makes it quite easy for me to reference and backup weeks of production without having to deal with a multitude of audio and video files.

Now on to the source timecode integration:

Before we start integrating the TC, it should be noted that the integration of source timecode has to happen before we actually start editing as we require an individual compound clip per DAI.

Within FCPX's event library (already containing all of my DAIs), we select one of the clips and choose to create a "new compound clip". The resulting compound clip shall have the same name as the source DAI with the affix "_TC".

creating & labeling compound clip

Let's open the freshly created compound clip in the timeline and add a timecode generator to the clip start, making sure it is the same length as the original DAI.

adding a timecode generator to the compound clip

Obviously, it should also be labeled accordingly so we have a proper reference once multiple TC DAIs are edited together.

labeling the source timecode

We repeat the same procedure for every DAI we want to use in our edits and add all of those TC-DAIs to the same keyword collection as a basis for our edits. Needless to say, we will base all of our edits on these compound clips and not the original DAIs.

Now once we start to edit, we will have a clear timecode reference for us and our producer.

edit sequence /w source & sequence timecode

The moment an edit is locked and ready to go into post or final render, all we have to do is to open all of the original TC_DAI compound clips again in the timeline and disable the timecode generators by pressing <V>.