Apple’s bet against Tracks by Alex4D

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] “That would be a ROLE.”

Charlie claimed that FCPX effectively has tracks – my question is a fair one if that’s his statement. I know that X has roles and I can think of some great uses for them. No reason a timeline couldn’t have tracks and roles is there?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Craig Seeman]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Please explain. And don’t you mean “vertically to organize and horizontally to edit”? Or do I completely misunderstand you?”

It’s just my incomplete explanation. Vertically for layering. Horizontal in that Track 2 for character A, Track 3 for character B, Track 4 for Titles, or whatever. At some point I’d find I’d need Track 2 through 4 to composite something, for example, and then have move other tracks up since they were used as rows of “like” content as well. Personally I’ve always found that awkward. I want to build layers and use “something else” for organizing. FCPX starts to address that. It’s got aways to go but it’s the first NLE that is at least starting to address the way I personally prefer to edit.

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “If and when they do that, then you can make your argument about X having tracks. I would still prefer consistent alignment to consistent colors, but that’s just me (and probably every UI designer who ever lived.)”

Hey, I’m not arguing. lol I totally get where you’re coming from… In a previous life I was a post audio mixer, I started cutting audio on Otari Studio Vision. I had to organize mixed up messy tracks from every editor in town. And If they were never going to update X, I’d be right there with ya. But I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface here. Again, allowing you to group roles, assuming they do, will do exactly what you want just by clicking a button or something.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “No reason a timeline couldn’t have tracks and roles is there?”

Tomato, Tomahto… 🙂 Not to beat a dead horse here, but grouping roles will do just that. I’m testing an alpha version of app right now that exports audio from X. It lets you group roles, and choose each groups vertical relationship to the others. It creates nicely organized timelines for traditional, fixed track apps.

I have no knowledge of what’s coming in the next version(s) of X, but I’ll bet ya a dollar they’ll add that functionality to the timeline.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Herb Sevush]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Maybe “compositional editing”.”

I think compositional editing works, the problem is it’s not understandable without an explanation. A/B roll means your using a “B” roll methodology, it’s not clear what copmositional editing is. How about “beyond A/B roll” editing – BAB editing for short;)

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Franz Bieberkopf]

Craig,

Thanks. I understand slightly better your meaning (though I still see that as vertical organization).

But to my mind, you’ve described the difference between tracks and layers – which in an ideal world would have distinct implementations in a timeline.

Franz.

[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] ” Not to beat a dead horse here, but grouping roles will do just that. “

What I’m asking about is the use of rolls in a tracked NLE – like Avid or PPro or FCP 8.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Walter Soyka]

Mr. Gollner is absolutely correct to point out the benefits of connected clips — we’ve been discussing this and FCPX’s A/B style of editing on this forum for a year.

It’s hard to discuss the differences between traditional NLE timelines and FCPX projects because it’s so easy to conflate so many separate aspects of the implementations: hard-tracked (manually organized) versus trackless (self-collapsing), non-magnetic (traditional) versus magnetic (connected clips), and absolute time (timeline) versus relative time (storyline).

In his article, Mr. Gollner says, “It seems to me an application that can encode the relationships between clips is more powerful than apps that leave the relationships to be recognised by whichever editor is looking at a timeline. In Final Cut Pro X, a modern technological implementation doesn’t get in the way of the craft of working with clip relationships.”

I agree. FCPX builds clip relationships into its data model. The unique toolset FCPX offers for managing and manipulating clip relationships is innovative, and a very powerful feature.

However, clip connections versus tracks is a false dichotomy.

Managing the relationship between clips does not require a self-collapsing system of lanes; that’s just one solution to the problem of clip collision during magnetic movements. DAW-style layered tracks or track groups would be compatible with traditional tracks.

Managing the relationship between clips does not require counting time relatively; that’s just a design decision. The parent/child data model, which gives magnetism/clip relationship management “for free” due to its design, could be based on an independent absolute time container instead of anchoring on whatever the first clip in the primary storyline happens to be — consider David Lawrence’s and Jim Giberti’s suggestion of multiple peer storylines.

FCPX’s magnetic timeline is a set of related but ultimately independent design decisions including tracklessness, clip connections, and temporal relativity. You could have clip connections without giving up tracks.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “What I’m asking about is the use of rolls in a tracked NLE – like Avid or PPro or FCP 8.”

And maybe I’m just not understanding what you’re looking for. Assume for a second that you can color code roles, and group them in the timeline. So all your Roles are vertically adjacent as well as visually distinct from one another. If that was possible, why would you even need traditional tracks?

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Herb Sevush] “I think compositional editing works, the problem is …”

Agreed. In a way it resists labels – where A/B editing is sort of a specific conception on how to compose, the other begs the problem of composition itself.

Franz.