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Apple files ten patents relating to editing today
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[Bill Davis] “Cuz it continues to sound to me like the drone of people who don’t like it because they never actually explored it enough to figure out how it might actually be extremely useful.”
I just finished the Lynda and Ripple training on FCP X, after poking around for months, i figured lets see if this thing will grow on me.
I dont hate the magnetic timeline, and i see its advantages in CERTAIN situations, but for most situations it seems pointless to me. After doing all the training, i realized i like the old way, i like tracks and knowing exactly where my clips will land and being able to organize as such. I like having complete control, and i feel like the magnetic timeline assumes you dont know what your doing, and guides in you in staying in tact. The majority of us dont need that.
That said, if someone asked me to work in it, i would and now feel a bit more confident in accepting a job in it, but im sticking with MC and FCP 7 for the unforeseeable future.
Neil Goodman: Editor of New Media Production – NBC/Universal
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[Neil Goodman] “but for most situations it seems pointless to me. After doing all the training, i realized i like the old way, i like tracks and knowing exactly where my clips will land and being able to organize as such. I like having complete control,”
EXACTLY! I set up my tracks by what is on them. specific tracks for narration, for interviews, for on camera dialog and SOT, for sound effects and music. I layer a LOT of audio, because I’m required to do a lot of sound design…especially on my latest show that is a ghost story series. I know what tracks my creepy sfx, and my transition SFX are on. And in Avid I can color code them, so I can easily find them. With a magnetic timeline, I feel that I’d be going “is this it? No…is it this down here? No…Ah, there it is.”
And all the pre-labelling that needs to be done, and assigning roles. that doesn’t save time. You need to take time to assign the role, or label the clips. Less time than it takes me to target a track.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Good.
The presumption is that you should be free to use whatever tools best meets your needs, and thankfully, nobody is arguing that the way you like to work is lame or unprofessional or stupid.
All some of us who enjoy working in X are asking, is that we get similar treatment.
Not really so much to ask, is it?
“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
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I don’t know what Apple needs to prove with these patents. I understand it’s big business, but they need to stop being the insecure nerd in the room.
[Shane Ross] “And all the pre-labelling that needs to be done, and assigning roles. that doesn’t save time. You need to take time to assign the role, or label the clips. Less time than it takes me to target a track.”
I have a bone to pick with this as I find this to be relatively not true. Assigning Roles, especially preassigning Roles saves so much time down the road, and you can do this lickety split wither in the Browser or Project.
I don’t think its perfect yet, and there’s some audio work that needs to be done, but some of the group features that you can knock out in FCPX pales in comparison to FCP7. It does look and operate complete differently than a track based system. I’m not saying it’s better, or for everyone, but it certainly does a really good job at certain group based naming, organizing, and adjusting functions.
Jeremy
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p. 10: A container that schedules elements sequentially in time
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[Bill Davis] “It’s fine to argue that a patent might be too broad or might be overly restrictive – but that’s for the patent bureau and the courts to settle. Apple is just applying for the protection. What’s the problem with that?”
Fair question. The answer is in how Apple intend to leverage the patents. I am sure that publicly they will argue they are protecting themselves and their IP. Totally fair and the exercise of the intent of Patents. But recent history has shown that broad patents have been granted multiple times to different parties because the patent office can’t understand that what I’d being described is unique or even new.
So what I, as a layman, see is a trend to aggressively use patent litigation to stifle innovation rather than protect IP. My caution is based on Apple,s recent history of litigating against Samsung worldwide to force the delay of their 10inch tablet. Apple are great at adaptation but it isn’t invention or innovation. From mouse and GUI to OS and iPod/iPad, Apple have stylishly adapted but hardly invented anything.
FCPX is not an invention or original idea either so by snapping up patents that describe what other developers have done and then using them to stifle industry wide developments is what Shane and I fear is the motive, rather than the more innocent usage that you may hope they put it to.
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[Richard Herd] “p. 10: A container that schedules elements sequentially in time.”
While that is Apple’s definition of spine in that document, it would mean that beyond the primary storyline every secondary, every compound clip would be a spine – which would mean that a timeline could have multiple spines, which does not seem to match the description of FCPX currently in use.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
The timeline of some embodiments includes a primary lane (also called “spine”) as well as one or more secondary lanes (also called “anchor lanes”). The spine represents a primary sequence of media, which, in some embodiments, does not have any gaps. When a clip is deleted or removed from the timeline, the media-editing applications automatically closes the gap created in place of the clip. The clips in the anchor lanes are anchored to a particular position along the spine (or along a different anchor lane). Anchor lanes may be used for compositing (e.g., removing portions of one video and showing a different video in those portions), B-roll cuts (i.e., cutting away from the primary video to a different video whose clip is in the anchor lane), audio clips, or other composite presentation techniques
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Thou shalt not confuse thy tags in XML.
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What’s really happening? It’s going to sound silly to say, but right now if the spine (aka primary) is deleted then so is the anchor lane (aka secondary) to which the spine is attached. It appears to me that that will no longer be the case. If you delete the spine, the anchor lane will stay in place. This is a fix, imo, to compete with normal editing. In every other NLE I’ve used, there was no spine or lane.
Instead–the way we are all used to–if you delete the clip on track 1, track 2 stays in place. X does not do that. We’ve been using a work around, a simple one, you hit CMD-uparrow to make a spine into a lane, or you hit CMD-downarrow to make lane into a spine.
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I can’t believe anyone would read this far. Seems to me this is for developers coding XML and not for video editors, per se.
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I found a cool technique for color correction. I end up multi clicking every other track and select it as CMD-uparrow, then forming an entire compound out of all that. Wallah! Tracks! The benefit to this is, the color correction and audio is applied en mass to the CC, not to individual clips. That is, when open the compound clip, gap clips are auto-created and are alpha channels. It is a very fast way to work.
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[Michael Gissing] “My caution is based on Apple,s recent history of litigating against Samsung worldwide to force the delay of their 10inch tablet. Apple are great at adaptation but it isn’t invention or innovation. From mouse and GUI to OS and iPod/iPad, Apple have stylishly adapted but hardly invented anything. “
Look, I’m not a patent attorney, but as a layman, it’s hard for me to look at the exhibits posted at AppleInsider and elsewhere – and not notice that before the iPhone, NOTHING else looked like an iPhone.
Then a year later, Samsung and others had phones that looked and appeared to operate nearly EXACTLY like an iPhone.
If it was my widget, or your widget, are you telling me that if somebody ripped off your “expression” of a product that audaciously that you wouldn’t have sued if you had the resources? That’s simply not credible in my mind.
And as to the “hardly invented anything” you must be arguing that the huge and clearly valuable large portfolio of patents revealed as part of Steve Job’s estate on his death were nothing more than an the patent office making mistake after mistake after mistake?
Now there may well be an ulterior business motive in all of this. These are massive companies and they are playing at the highest level of hardball global competition.
But Apple wouldn’t be a quality company if they didn’t use all the legal tools at their disposal to enhance their business opportunities.
If there was some huge power imbalance here – for example like the currently circulating story I heard about Progressive Insurance sending lawyers to actually defend a drunk driver responsible for their young female client’s death in order, it was alleged, to shield their company from having to make a big payout – that would be one thing.
Presuming the facts are as I read them, that’s actually what improper use of the legal system is all about, IMO.
But this is Apple against Samsung. Heavyweight against heavyweight. Fair fight, in my book.
And the evidence says that Apple HAS invented lots and lots of stuff.
You can quibble with an item here or there as “unworthy” of the patent issuance, but Apple has spent heavily on R&D for a long time. They’ve been awarded lots and lots of patents based on their efforts – each reviewed by the same body that grants all American patents using precisely the same process.
So I’m sorry, but I feel the facts simply prove the “hardly invented anything” thinking is not just arguably, but provably false.
FWIW.
“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
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