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Apple engineers versus an editor’s ability to set persistent in to out points in their footage.
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[Bill Davis] Same old argument again and again and again.
“I was happy the way things were and I don’t like change.”
Verses
“I’m willing to alter my expectations in order to approach traditional processes in new ways.”
Both defensible positions. Neither “wrong.”
But those in the first group are still grappling ( if not downright struggling) with the FCP changes – while the second group has long since stopped fighting the war that’s over (7 is EOL + a year now) and moved on to elevating mastery of the new process.
The only given is that X will never satisfy them – because the real hurt was never the product itself -it was the way they came to believe Apple had betrayed them emotionally by taking away their defining tool.
I guess,”victim” can sometimes be seen as a very alluring role – but I’m personally not very attracted to it.
The world changes.
As Kurt Vonnegut famously summed it up so long ago…
“… and so it goes.”
Gee Bill that’s a really helpul post. Adds alot to the overall discussion.
[Bill Davis] “”Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor”
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
[Jules bowman] “I’ve moved on. I moved on about 30 minutes after engaging with the ugly bugger when auto save did nothing of the sort and lost everything I had done.”
Me too. After one project where every time I clicked off a clip it didn’t retain my in or out points.
I have, however not moved on from this forum, which, much to my delight, gets more interesting and intriguing every day.
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
[David Lawrence] “No, in/outs were the first thing I learned about editing. I’m talking about a different way of seeing editorially. It’s the difference between seeing/feeling the cut while selecting vs defining and assembling content chunks then fine tuning after. In my experience, there’s a different mindset at work”
Exactly. Editing is about the cut, not the range.
I know when I’m editing alot of the time I just want to select an in point on various clips (takes) of a scene and see if that works with what I’ve got on the timeline so far. I’m not concerned about the out point at this stage. I’ll worry about that later. But first, does this CUT work?
So I’ve got 20 clips in a bin, 4 angles, 5 takes each of a scene. I just want to scrub, mark in, next clip, scrub, mark in, next clip and so on and then come back and slap each clip down see if it works, moving through like that. Out points I worry about on the timeline.
Maybe that sounds messy but I can do it pretty quickly and it works for me.
Simple as that.
FWIW.
YMMV.My 2 cents.
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
I really hate to disagree with you Aindreas, because you are so often dead right about so many things, but here goes.
The real issue isn’t that FCPX doesn’t allow for persistent Ins and Outs, it’s way simpler than that.
FCPX doesn’t allow for persistent Ins OR Outs.
It’s only about 5-10% of the time that I have any interest in setting Both an In and an Out in the Browser whatever NLE I am using.
(It’s called 3-point editing for those who perhaps aren’t familiar with the concept. I like my In AND Out to be set in the timeline not in the Browser – I like the Browser to give me just an In OR an Out.)
And I am afraid that the apologists who will tell you that Favorites take care of the lack of persistent In AND Out haven’t thought about those editors who only want one of those and don’t want to have to be bothered about both.
If I have to use Favorites (when I don’t care where either my In or my Out is respectively) I will have “favorited” the entire clip either from the In point to the end of the clip or from the Out point to the start of the clip respectively.
That’s why it’s not good enough. Yes, if you always needed to set BOTH In AND Out then favoriting solves the issue (if you like that kind of thing). But for editors like me it really doesn’t work at all.
Let’s be clear about why FCPX works the way it does in terms of range selection. Range selection is unquestionably (if you know what you’re talking about) a legacy of FCPX’s iMovie origins. iMovie works with ranges ONLY and does not allow you to “set Ins and Outs”. What clearly happened (to my mind) with FCPX is that in order to graft on a veneer of “pro” functionality Apple realised that they would have to implement some way of setting Ins and Outs. But this is simply a disguise for the underlying iMovie architecture – which hasn’t changed. You aren’t really setting Ins and Outs in any traditional sense – you’re just substituting a keyboard manoeuvre for a mouse action defining a range in the iMovie sense. It’s equally obvious why the “undefined” range point will default to either the end of the clip or the start.
Aindreas is quite right to suggest that the problem is architectural – and the “faulty” architecture comes from iMovie.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
absolutely dude, and really, shift F covers a lot of instances where one might require the persistence, I mostly found it interesting in terms of the application being so radically different that it may not be in a position to offer persistent in out cut points even if Apple were of a mind to provide them.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Simon Ubsdell] “you are so often dead right about so many things,”
niiiiiiice. you do get that I’m bluffing in a convincing tone of voice 90% of the time right?
you’re right in what you say – I shouldn’t use the word range at all – as you say, and Lawrence says up there too – It’s really about the cut point. And a guy who cuts drama makes your point another way – if there are a bunch of takes, you’re going to slap ins on the lot of them in sequence and then stamp them to timeline to see how they each perform coming off the previous shot – he doesn’t particularly care about the out yet, that cycle of quickly iterating the in point across multiple cuts is completely lost in X as it will flush the in points in sequence.
It goes again to a fundamental point about who made this application, and who they made it for. This isn’t even saying that Apple, or Phillip Hodgetts, aren’t sensitive to the needs of editors, I think they don’t understand what editing is, at least not from an editor’s perspective – they see it is a categoristion and workflow conundrum, they both see the X system of ranges and tagging as inherently superior – as a media categorisation system. In a sense, I don’t think Apple have built an editing system – its a digital assets management system, its a database, its a nodal parent child hierarchical time based media editor, its a template expression of very powerful effects and design rigging in motion, its all these things, but when I work in X I feel like I’m doing all those things I mentioned, but particularly in the event and keywords, and frankly in the timeline too, I feel like I’m manipulating objects in cool ways, but I don’t feel like I’m engaging in the process of picture and sound editing as I understand it.
see? didn’t that sound convincing?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Put another way way, the in out points form the basis of any number of actions – edits to timeline, tagging, basic mental notation – but if you click off the clip in FCPX by accident – you will be unable to perform any of those actions because the application has immediately dumped the in out points once you select another clip – in that sense, you have one chance to do anything with in out points in FCPX, they cannot independently persist – it is not so in any other editing application.”
Look.
If you want to retain your ins and outs, you hit the f key.
That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying its the ideal way that the program should work, but you can retain ins and outs, multiple ins and outs in fact, by setting a favorite.
Boom.
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[David Lawrence] “Just out of curiosity, what percentage of your time would you say is exclusively devoted to creative editing?”
Well, if I’m not on a shoot, I’d say 85-90% with the other 10% finishing.
I edit a lot. Why? Because I like FCPX and can relate its methods, I’m not a creative editor?
[David Lawrence] “If as you say, it’s obvious that Aindreas hasn’t tried it and we need to get used to working differently, why wouldn’t that also be true for Larry, since he’s arguing strongly with Apple for real in/outs?”
Guys…
You are saying that resting ins and outs isn’t possible, or doesn’t work the way you expect.
I’m saying it is possible, and works fairly well if you know what you’re doing and give it a shot.
It’s not perfect, it might not be ideal, but they are there.
I have no idea what Larry Jordan needs or wants. I have no idea how much he edits creatively. He should bang the drum. But despite what he says, persistent ins and outs do exist by setting a favorite. He doesn’t mention that so I can’t tell if he’s used or tried this method. It certainly works different when compared to other NLEs.
[David Lawrence] “Yes, in/outs contain a range, but they’re made with a different intention. There’s no need to keep them in an ever growing list. It makes the list cumbersome and meaningless. The fix is simple — just maintain the yellow selection area or add temporary brackets on objects until the editor intentionally decides to change them.”
But David? This ever growing list is cancellable by hitting u. That’s why I said we need to disassociate keywords from favorites. Favorites, in my use, are much more temporary. Keywords are more permanent, at least that’s how I use them.
Again, I’m not saying that favorites are an ideal way to store an in and out, but is a way.
You say it’s not possible, I say it is, and it involves a rather different process that, say, how fcp7 does it.
[David Lawrence] “Funny that no matter how experienced the critic — whether it’s Larry Jordan or Oliver Peters — anyone who points out an obvious missing feature is still holding it wrong. Whatever.”
Huh?
I’m not saying anyone is holding it wrong. I’m not saying favorites are the best method. I’m not saying it shouldn’t change.
But today, right now, of you want persistent (and truly persistent, not sort of persistent) ins an outs, there is a usable method employed in X. When you say it’s not possible, I call that bluff becuase it is possible.
Jeremy
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “see? didn’t that sound convincing?”
Always 100% convincing to my ears 😉
I should also have added to my previous post something that someone else brought up and is quite a big thing for me and that’s that I am always using Ins (and sometimes Outs) as temporary markers both in the Browser and the Timeline.
The non-persistence of Ins and Outs in the Timeline is perhaps a bigger issue altogether than the fact that they won’t stick in the Browser. In fact, it’s a massively annoying issue in the Tinmeline – and no amount of “favoriting” is going to sort that out.
Again, blame the iMovie architecture. That’s really what’s at the root of this and so many other issues.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “Normally when organizing one might create keyword collections, smart collections, favorites of course. There’s are times in the decision making process where I select a range in the event browser but, before making the edit, I either find myself going to the timeline or, sometimes, to another clip in the event browser to check something. At that point you’ve lost your range in the clip you initially selected in the event browser. Sure you could remember to this the F key but all to often, some of us have a tendency to check something someplace else and lose the range. The problem is in those situations, hitting the F key, puts a mental brake, an interrupt, in my thought processes.”
I guess since this is the way that FCPX works, I literally hit i,o,f when setting ins and outs in the Event.
It’s much easier to simply save it up front. I don’t worry about it, I save the favorites range and move on.
If I don’t want it later, I hit u.
I guess I have made it part of my workflow and don’t really think about it anymore.
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