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Audio editing in FCPX
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[Mathieu Ghekiere] ” a lot of this sometimes seems convoluted, and one of the reasons is that it uses a lot of new terminology.”
Apple has greatly increased the number of specialized tools needed to work in a timeline in order to achieve their NLE design goals and the terminology simply reflects that. X doesn’t have tracks, and to replace that single item you have primaries, secondaries, clip connections, roles, position tools … again, horses for courses, for the many who continue to use it this is a good thing, but the reason X sounds so complex is because, compared to traditional NLEs, it is.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Mathieu Ghekiere] “Like others, I missed sync-indicators in the beginning. Now I don’t anymore. “
how do you stop missing sync indicators?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Atilio Menéndez] “There is no way to IN ONE STEP overwrite “
That was not the argument, if you could do it in ONE STEP or not. Folks were saying you couldn’t do it at all.
I showed how you could.There are some things in X that might take more key strokes but there more that take less for the tasks that I use most often. I will take being able to quickly swap whole sections around myself.
[Atilio Menéndez] “If you care about the audio and video of a clip staying in sync, then it’s better to NOT detach audio or break apart clip components. “
I never have a problem with things coming out of sync in X
I don’t need sync markers to tell if something is out of sync. I could tell by looking at it. It just never happens to me anyway, maybe I just have the program down in that sense.
It’s kind of odd to me to complain about sync in X and not complain about sync in other NLEs when You really have to work hard in X to put anything out of sync.
I just don’t see people on here complaining that they keep putting things out of sync.
[Atilio Menéndez] “detach or break apart (which are virtually the same)”
They are not the same, one lays out all the channels of audio and one doesn’t. I was hoping the pictures would help show the differences.
[Atilio Menéndez] “I still think there should be a quick way to lock connected clips in place, but it’s really not a big deal if you don’t detach everything.”
It’s not a big deal for me if I break things apart anyway.
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One more thing regarding overwriting audio. Some people forget how much fun setting the Auto Select to the relevant tracks was on Legacy.
Legacy:
1. Set Auto Select to the relevant tracks
2. Set In & Out
3. Copy
4. Set Auto Select again if copying to different tracks
5. Paste
(Note that steps 1 and 4 on can involve several clicks/keystrokes!)X:
1. Drag from in to out
2. Copy
3. Paste as connected
4. Drag from in to out
5. Mute -
I’m not sure if this is true, Herb.
In that sense that if you would start from a blank slate, would all the track-based NLE’s with their terminology (sync-indicators, bins, subclips, patching, clip colissions, etc etc) not also also have their own terminology?
Once you start from a blank slate, Who rules that FCPX is there-fore the difficult one and the traditional NLE’s are the Simple ones?If you learn someone edit on X that doesn’t have previous experience in a track-based NLE, a lot of this perception goes away. They just accept it for what it is. It is people (Like me, once) that did track-based editing for Years (some of you even decades) that are having the most difficult time adjusting.
As someone who grew up with Première and based my living on editing on FCP7, I think it’s brave that Apple dared to re-think editing. And therefore it also needed new terminology to break away clearly from old perceptions.
Yes, X had and has growing pains. What do you expect if you try to break new ground? IOS also needed a lot of maturing (no 3rd party apps at first, no copy paste, …).
I think after being skeptical of X and refusing it first but learning it to at this point, switching 100 percent of my work and that of the facility where I work freelance to X, I really think the magnetic timeline and Roles are a much better alternative than tracks. And I really think it’s the way of the future.
It just Needs some maturing to do (look at Marcus’ blog post about Roles and how it could behave for audio mixing). But therefore it Needs maturing of the concepts it has now and not going back to tracks.
Even in it’s ‘young’ form, I already like X more than ‘traditional’ NLE’s. -
Because in the beginning you edit in systems you know. You detach audio because it ‘looks’ like things you are used to – having a blue clip and a green clip separate.
After a while you realize that in 99 percent of the cases you don’t need to detach audio unless you want to purposely BREAK sync.
After a while I realized most of the times I was unnecessarily detaching audio.It would be nice if there would be option to put audio immediately back with it’s associated clip, like in the contextual menu. Of course.
But do I miss it? No.Will there be a couple of cases where it takes X a couple of more keystrokes to get to what you want? Probably. But the opposite is also true, and in my experience, much more so. Where you need much more keystrokes in traditional NLE’s (Charlie’s post is an example of this, above, working with 6 tracks, patching, for making J&L cuts, etc. …) than you need in X.
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[tony west] “if you just cut some room tone in it may sound cut in,”
I had the same thought. I make a secondary and put ALL the room tone there, every instance it needs it, and then i make that secondary a compound and apply Audio FX to the compound–like bussing.
In a track system, I put all the room tone on its own channel and then add effects to the channel.
Note: I also cringe every time I hear a change in microphones.
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[Mathieu Ghekiere] “In that sense that if you would start from a blank slate, would all the track-based NLE’s with their terminology (sync-indicators, bins, subclips, patching, clip colissions, etc etc) not also also have their own terminology?”
I agree that non-linear editing is a complex task and all software will reflect that with arcane terminology suited to describing this complexity. However this thread was narrowly focused on audio editing. My own sub-thread contributions are narrowly focused on audio insert editing. My point to you is that the magnetic timeline specifically has more complex terminology than traditional timelines because it has a more complex tool set than traditional NLEs in order to meet it’s unique design goals. I don’t doubt that you find this to your advantage in your style of editing, I don’t doubt that many here will agree with you, I’m not arguing better or worse, I’m just stating what is to me an obvious fact.
The other point I was trying to make earlier with Jeremy is that the designers of X did not have audio insert editing in mind when they designed X. The fact that there are so many ways to achieve the same results is an argument for the richness of the X tool set, but when it takes a number of steps to achieve something so basic, then you are obviously “working around” the designer’s intents.
A comparative in PPro – multicam in PPro does not allow you to do audio only edits from any camera angle and channel you wish. There are many options to do many things, but none match the criteria I just layed out. However I can make it happen by using other methods, some of which go outside the multicam mode. This is a work-around. It works because PPro has a rich tool set, but it wasn’t designed to work this way.
Sometimes the work-arounds provide benefits far beyond the traditional way of doing things, sometimes they are compromises, but it’s fairly obvious when you’re working around the designer’s intentions and when you are not.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[tony west] “That was not the argument, if you could do it in ONE STEP or not.”
That IS the argument! The argument is about the effectiveness with which you can edit audio in X. Nobody ever claimed that you couldn’t replace a piece of audio with another. The argument is about how direct that process is, whether it involves work-arounds, etc.
[tony west] “detach or break apart… one lays out all the channels of audio and one doesn’t”
That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that with both the audio can then be moved independently from the video and thus be bumped out of sync, unlike expanding audio components.
[tony west] “I don’t need sync markers to tell if something is out of sync. I could tell by looking at it.”
Aw, man, you must be kidding, right? The whole idea of a sync marker is that it allows you to tell what’s not in sync WITHOUT having to play back the footage! And to help you put it back in sync. Now, if you say that “sync markers are not necessary in X” that’s something else. Then I would agree, in legacy they were necessary, not in X. Still, there are situations when I would like to have them.
[tony west] “It’s not a big deal for me if I break things apart anyway.”
Unless you have to collaborate with someone who is not as careful as you are.
When I read such comments or “That’s how I’ve made my audio editing in FCP X much easier, I’ve stopped using music and EFX” all I know is that I sure hope nobody at Apple is reading this.
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[Atilio Menéndez] “When I read such comments or “That’s how I’ve made my audio editing in FCP X much easier, I’ve stopped using music and EFX””
that was said as a joke, it was not meant to be taken literally.
i hope.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
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