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Apple’s bet against Tracks by Alex4D
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[Charlie Austin] “Personally, my solution to that is that I don’t use the primary story line at all. “
So then you understand how I can appreciate clip connections while also appreciating elements of traditional timelines.
[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?”
Don’t confuse empty space with the lack of information.
Graphic design offers us a few tools to convey information in 2D space — notably here, alignment — but FCPX’s self-collapsing timeline totally disregards them.
I have argued here that the self-collapsing timeline removes visual cues from the edit. Imagine working a nodal compositor that continuously and automatically reflowed — or if your physical desktop did, or if your kitchen’s spice cabinet did. Our brains are wired for spatial thinking, but FCPX fights this.
If FCPX must ignore human-centric concepts like space, it could at least leverage computer-centric concepts like sorting. How cool would it be if FCPX could sort and re-sort your timeline based on user-defined criteria?
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 -
[Franz Bieberkopf] “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 do know that, but you can’t solo individual audio clips, and add other clips to the soloed group, in 7… and that is a huge timesaver for me
[Franz Bieberkopf]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.”
Honestly I never really give connections a thought, but as I said I avoid story lines where I can, so it hasn’t been an issue for me… I do miss sync indicators and hope they re-implement them.
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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[Walter Soyka] “Don’t confuse empty space with the lack of information.
Graphic design offers us a few tools to convey information in 2D space — notably here, alignment — but FCPX’s self-collapsing timeline totally disregards them.
I have argued here that the self-collapsing timeline removes visual cues from the edit. Imagine working a nodal compositor that continuously and automatically reflowed — or if your physical desktop did, or if your kitchen’s spice cabinet did. Our brains are wired for spatial thinking, but FCPX fights this.
If FCPX must ignore human-centric concepts like space, it could at least leverage computer-centric concepts like sorting. How cool would it be if FCPX could sort and re-sort your timeline based on user-defined criteria?”
I get what you’re saying, and I agree. I guess that, being a former FCP v1, 2 and 3 beta tester, I’m more forgiving of unfinished software. 😉 Also for that reason, I think X will have the ability to do just what you’ve suggested. It already does in a rudimentary way.
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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Keep up the good work Alex4D.
“doug d Says:
24 July, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Alex:Nicely done. FYI the “tracks” metaphor goes back to actual film editing. When working on a bench, you would stack film and audio reels onto a set of “cranks” they wind them left to right through a geared “synchronizer block” on your editing bench (table). The sync block had multiple geared wheels, each one using the sprocket holes to “lock” the separate pieces of film and audio track “in sync.” You hand cranked the whole mess of picture and track, and it rolled past perfectly locked together, frame-accurate.
You could buy sync blocks that “ganged” several tracks together, and even gang blocks together for more tracks. You could run multiple film pieces, e.g. a title roll alongside a picture roll. These pieces could subsequently be run through a viewer to screen the film. You could sync multiple audio tracks, with the magnetic heads that read the tracks attached directly to the sync block, multiple heads reading different tracks, all feeding into a mixer and “squawk box.” If you wanted to move picture against track, “out-of-sync,” you would simply detach that track from it’s geared wheel, roll all other geared wheels-with-tracks ahead, or back, and then lock you maverick track down again at a different spot. Exactly like sliding clips back and forth on NLE tracks!
On an upright Moviola, the same principle applied. Multiple sound heads could read sync dialogue, music and efx tracks separately, all side by side and in sync with the picture head of the Moviola, which is where you cut picture. If you wanted to throw one of your audio tracks out of sync with the picture head, you moved a sliding collar on the shaft connecting all the heads, which exposed a free-wheeling “knuckle” joint, and you could freewheel your audio ahead or back, then re-couple the joint and everything runs together again.
On flatbed editing tables, you still had the same physical layout. Your picture track in front, running past a spinning prism to deliver picture on a viewer. Your audio running on multiple platters that could be disengaged and moved out of sync, relative to the picture and each other.
When Avid came out, then, they offered filmmakers a truly MIXED metaphor interface. The timeline window looked just like track-editing in film. But the “Source & Record” windows came from tape editing, where you would dub shots from your source deck onto a recording deck, by defining “in & out” points via timecode. And then the Bins window was actually just a variation on the Mac Finder, with files inside of nested folders.
So they were mixing metaphors drawn from Film, Tape and Computer interfaces to arrive at the so-called track-based NLE.
That alone, in my view, was cause enough to re-imagine the entire NLE interface from the ground up! So FCPX has risen to the challenge, finally.”
I just hope the Adobe CS will read an fcpxml someday.
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I’m tending to agree with Craig as well. Using tracks to organize only works up to a point, and it also can be prone to error. It requires precision and much maintenance as the edit goes along. People complain about roles, but searching the index is less cumbersome than trying to make sure you always patch channel 1 of actor B to track 2, etc. and once it’s done, there wasn’t any real indication, aside from looking at the clip and reading it, as to whether it was right. If you wanted to raise the audio in all the sfx by 3db, do you just select all the clips in what is supposed to be the sfx track and add 3db or do you select them all, then zoom in and scan each selection to make sure, then make the change? Over the course of an edit, keeping it organized can be time consuming, or error prone. And as much as I try to always keep my lower 3rd on track 5, it just never ends up that way. Suddenly i have a 6 layer section that needs to transition to an interview with a lower 3rd. Now my lower 3rd is on track 8 or something or something. Yeah, I could compound (nest) but if you’re going to do that, there’s not much point in using tracks to organize. Although I do think tracks for audio makes more sense than video. A video only has ONE video track in the end. Audio on the other hand DOES have tracks in the final product. But, usually it’s not a direct relation. Tracks 1,2,5,7 might be mapped to output track 1&2 and 3,4,5 to track 3&4, etc. and if you consider that the tracks are just being used for organizing, and that manual organizing is more prone to error than roles (or index searching), then it’s easier to make the argument that audio tracks are a hindrance instead of something that gets out the way and let’s you edit.
Maybe. Perhaps. Still not sure. And the damn thing still can’t copy and paste Keyframes. I’ve been pissed about that for 12 years.
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Bottom line, it has been immensely more fun learning something completely new (FCP X) than learning something different (CS6). If I’m forced to learn something else because my app of choice was EOL’d it might as well be new. If I total my 2004 Honda I don’t want another 2004 Honda. I want a 2012 Ford. Or something different. I loved the Honda, but it’s time to move on. Premiere feels like I just switched to a 2007 Acura. A little newer, a little different, but annoying that all the buttons do the same thing but are in different places. Learning Premiere feels kinda like that. It’s nothing really new and exciting. Just a chore to switch to another similar but different thing. Ditto with Avid, except going back to Avid is like tasting something again and remembering suddenly that it made you puke the last time you ate it. Been there, done that.
So, somehow Apple knew that they had us over a barrel. They rolled the dice and I think in the end, they might pull it off.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “So they were mixing metaphors drawn from Film, Tape and Computer interfaces to arrive at the so-called track-based NLE. That alone, in my view, was cause enough to re-imagine the entire NLE interface from the ground up”
Nice explanation, been there done that. Don’t understand why using proven workflows, some of which have been around since 1910, is “cause” for anything. Wheels have been around for a few centuries, a car is mixing metaphors from chariots and trains, is that reason to come out with a vehicle with square wheels?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “Wheels have been around for a few centuries”
Lets make that millennia when describing wheels.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bret Williams] “Bottom line, it has been immensely more fun learning something completely new (FCP X) than learning something different (CS6). If I’m forced to learn something else because my app of choice was EOL’d it might as well be new.”
I’m indifferent to novelty as regards my tools, I want them to work quickly and efficiently and stay out of my way. When I want to learn something new for the sake of enjoyment I take courses on biology.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bret Williams] “going back to Avid is like tasting something again and remembering suddenly that it made you puke the last time you ate it.”
12 years on Avid and the gag reflex hasn’t gone away.
[Bret Williams] “If I’m forced to learn something else because my app of choice was EOL’d it might as well be new. If I total my 2004 Honda I don’t want another 2004 Honda. I want a 2012 Ford. Or something different. “
Yes something different!
The VeecoRT (aka FCP X)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2ZoDQC_5U
https://gas2.org/2012/07/20/veeco-rt-is-a-portuguese-powerhouse-w-video/
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