Making an EDL is simple in Final Cut Pro, but making an edit change list has been a bit of a mystery to me, until recently. First off, the only way it’s even mentioned in FCP is within Cinema Tools. I looked in manuals, I asked twitter, I dug through Creative Cow, and could not found out how to generate it. Then, it clicked. It had been right there whole time. As it turns out, as most procedures in FCP, it’s pretty simple to make after all. (The next paragraph goes into what an ECL is, so skip ahead if you already know.)
An Edit Change List is, as the name implies, a list of changes made between one edit and another. This comes into play when turning over a cut to optical and post audio teams, but can be help in other situations as well. My situation: We, the offline edit, had delivered our ‘locked’ cut to the VFX, post audio, and optical color correction teams. Then we discovered that some additional edits needed to take place to that cut, for whatever reason. Well, these teams had already moved a head with their work and needed a list of where our new cuts had taken place— How many frames trimmed here, added there, shots deleted, replaced, etc. An Edit Change List tells them exactly where to look. Most programs can use these lists and make the changes automatically.
Here’s how to make an Edit Change List in FCP (version 7, at least).
1. Make an XML of the original cut you are comparing against (our first locked cut).
2. In your new sequence (the one with the new changes), go to File/Export/Cinema Tools Change List.
3. It will bring up a screen asking for the original XML to compare against. Point it to your original XML file (from step one).
4. Make sure to export as a ‘style sheet’ and choose ‘plain text’. That way Pro Tools and other programs can read your ECL.
So, there you have it. Pretty simple.
