Apple’s bet against Tracks by Alex4D

[Herb Sevush]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “where A/B editing is sort of a specific conception on how to compose, the other begs the problem of composition itself.”

Yes, A/b roll editing is a specific and limited sub-set of “editing’ so it’s hard to come up with a catchy name for the parent unless we go back to one of your first posts on this forum to a statement that’s in my signature – we can call it spinal editing as in … “deciding the spine is the process of editing”

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

[Craig Seeman]

[Herb Sevush] ” The argument that I can use Avid or PPro doesn’t sit well with me however. Neither is a satisfactory alternative for me.”

That’s a key point which, it would seem to me, doesn’t come up often enough. For many people neither Avid or PPro are (yet) as good a track based editor as FCP7 was. Or maybe it has been obvious but I’m becoming a bit more aware of it as I see grumbles about both Avid and PPro workflows. My own guess is that Adobe will get there.

[Herb Sevush] “Still the argument that I can F’n well go elsewhere does not quite cut it.”

Unfortunately we’re all left with that at the moment. Even FCPX is an elsewhere that’s not all there yet. We’re all stuck with some void and a hope that the NLEs move forward.

As per this discussion about tracks, FCPX’s weakest area is missing ways of displaying information. Roles needs better ways to display information as a track alternative. Windows need to be movable with two monitor setups. I like where the “data” feature sets are going and I suspect that’s going to be the near term roadmap. They do need to address the display of the data though. It varies from rigid to MIA, depending on what you want to look at. I think it’ll get there given some of the hints . . . just as I saw the hints in 10.0.0 of what would become Roles in 10.0.1.

I do think all of us, regardless of the NLE path(s) we’ve chosen, have a good year or so for our chosen NLEs to get close to what we want.

[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] “And maybe I’m just not understanding what you’re looking for.”

I’m looking for interesting solutions that have nothing to do with my using X, which does not interest me at the present time for reasons far beyond the visual organization of audio tracks. I like roles, I think it is as likely that PPro will implement them as that Apple will implement what your describing.

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Walter Soyka] “Managing the relationship between clips does not require a self-collapsing system of lanes; … DAW-style layered tracks or track groups would be compatible with traditional tracks.

I’ll beat the dead horse again and say that I think that’s coming in some form or other.

[Walter Soyka] 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.

Personally, my solution to that is that I don’t use the primary story line at all. Just cut everything as connected clips. Adding transitions to clips requires an extra keystroke or two to make a secondary storyline, but that time is more than made up for by not having to worry about about “patching” my tracks before I cut something in. Just press the button and go. It’s very freeing… like not wearing pants. LOL..

[Walter Soyka] 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.”

As I said elsewhere, If you could group Roles, and maybe set the vertical (layer) position of a role or individual clip relative to others in the same space, why do you need fixed tracks?

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

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Herb Sevush] “… deciding the spine is the process of editing”

… sure, but flattering citations aside, I lied.

Deciding the spine is only part of editing. 😉

Franz.

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “I’m looking for interesting solutions that have nothing to do with my using X, which does not interest me at the present time for reasons far beyond the visual organization of audio tracks.”

Fair enough. 🙂

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

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Charlie Austin] “As I said elsewhere, If you could group Roles, and maybe set the vertical (layer) position of a role or individual clip relative to others in the same space, why do you need fixed tracks?”

Charlie,

I think you missed part of Walter’s point, which can be made by inverting your question: why would you want to get rid of tracks?

Franz.

[Craig Seeman]

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

In fact way back when, buried amongst my sea of early posts, I mentioned that there are times I’d want to start with a “secondary storyline” (virtual track) for some projects. There may be times, for a given project, I want a secondary storyline (filled with a GAP clip as FCPX necessitates) running the duration of the primary storyline.

Right now the workflow is Connected Clips which, when transitions are added, before a secondary storyline and only connect to other secondary storylines as one adds transitions or selects all the connected clips to make one bigger secondary storyline. It’s possible, if you know where you’re headed with a given project, that you may simply want to start by adding a full length secondary storyline (virtual track). This wouldn’t be outside the current FCPX paradigm of relationships. It’s just that there may be times where instead of connected clips tying together procedurally to end up with secondary storyline, you want to start with that.

[Charlie Austin]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “I think you missed part of Walter’s point, which can be made by inverting your question: why would you want to get rid of tracks?”

Because they slow me down. When I’m in FCP 7 now, which is what I mostly still use, or MC or Pr, it drives me batshit crazy to have to patch my tracks. If I cut in a video clip, 99.99% of the time I want it to be on top of whatever is there. In X, that’s where it goes. And as far as audio, particularly when I’ve got a shedload of tracks, I just want it to go wherever it fits when I’m cutting. Not tell it where to go, not make sure that only CH2 of my 6 Channel source is assigned to an open track for every single edit. Not to play track tetris when I want to move a group of clips from one part of the sequence to another. Having the ability to solo or mute just the clips I want, not the whole damn track which might have something else on it i want to hear or not.

I could go on and on, I get that it’s totally subjective, but tracks are really limiting to me now. YMMV 😉

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

[Franz Bieberkopf]

Charlie,

No doubt X satisfies your needs, and I won’t question that but I will point out that you have missed some functionality in FCP7 (and earlier).

You can enable and disable any clip in the timeline, individually.

I pretty much never patch tracks while I’m working in FCP (but then I work largely with sequences, not clips).

I do spend time on track management while cutting, but from what I’ve read you trade track management in 7 for connection management in X.

Franz.