It has a very simple interface with four main buttons. Export your FCP X project as an XML file ( File > Export > XML). This means that you never need to worry about matching layers of video with EDL tracks – EDL-X does it for your automatically. Then, it creates a separate EDL for each layer of video. First, it collapses your video layers into the fewest number possible as it reads the XML file. Why bother with EDLs – which only support one track of video – when my project in FCP X has more than one layer of video? What Rainer Standke, founder of XMiL, did was create a utility that converts XML files exported from FCP X into EDL files that can be used everywhere. XML is a highly-descriptive, very robust language that serves as a master format from which many other formats can be derived. One of the key decisions Apple made earlier this year was to provide XML export from Final Cut Pro X. If you haven’t heard of these guys, you are missing out on some excellent Final Cut utilities – not just for FCP X, but earlier versions of Final Cut as well. Los Angeles-based XMiL has taken a different tack from other third-party developers in that they focus on utilities that help you get complex tasks done faster. That changed last week with the release of EDL-X from XMiL Workflow Tools. Every editing system, that is, except Final Cut Pro X.
(While seriously deficient today, it was state of the art for decades.)ĮDLs are used every day in our industry to exchange edit lists, in spite of its limitations, because virtually every editing system can read and write the format. It supports one video track, one track for video keys, and up to four audio tracks.
While there were a variety of flavors of EDL, the most robust of them was the CMX-3600 format. (I will confess that back then, as a director, watching a CMX system remotely perform a frame-accurate three tape machine edit at almost real time literally took my breath away!)įrom those misty days of yore to today, EDLs were routinely used throughout the industry to share edit sequence information. In the old days, we created EDL lists that were stored on paper punch-tape that could control multiple video tape machines to perform essentially frame accurate edits.
An EDL (Edit Decision List) is a text-based system of exchanging edit information between different systems. For example, a low-res sequence which was edited in Final Cut Pro could be exported as an EDL and emailed to a post-house, which would recapture the footage at high-resolution for final color grading and distribution to the network. My first experience with EDLs came when I was editing video tape using a CMX system in the 1980’s.
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