Bill Davis’ LACPUG demo on Multicam…

[Steve Connor]

[Charlie Austin] “ersonally I don’t miss riding faders, but many people do. Range selection and KB volume adjustment works well for me, but the mixing aspect of X could certainly use some improvement…”

I can live without them but it would be nice to have a mixer sometimes. Let’s see what the next major update or Logic Pro X brings

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Shane Ross]

See? With no lines showing tracks…that looks like a mass of bubbles floating in space. What a MESS!! What a disorganized pile that is. Sound just scattered on the floor like a bunch of Legos. Waiting to be stepped on.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Charlie Austin]

[Steve Connor] “I can live without them but it would be nice to have a mixer sometimes. Let’s see what the next major update or Logic Pro X brings”

Yeah… I can’t remember the last program that I was so eager to see what the next update brings. 😉

What I’ve been doing for, say, a complex music bed, is getting a cut and rough mix with the loose clips, then sticking them in a compound clip to get the overall mix. This works really well, (with one caveat) and maybe that’s how a “mixer” in X would work. Use CC’s as stems and be able to mix them live. Maybe a “mix role” could get assigned? I dunno.

The caveat, however, is if you need to make changes to the cut. You can open the CC in it’s own timeline of course, but it’s impossible to edit anything relative to the picture because you can’t see it… the CC is it’s own thing once you’re in it. If they could make it so that “stepping in” to a CC still showed you where you were in the “master” timeline. i.e.you could still see the video to which the CC clip was cut, that would be huge.

I also want a pony. lol 😉

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Shane Ross] “See? With no lines showing tracks…that looks like a mass of bubbles floating in space. What a MESS!! What a disorganized pile that is. Sound just scattered on the floor like a bunch of Legos. Waiting to be stepped on.”

LOL. yeah, but with one little click I can see exactly what’s what, not just bunch of little rectangles separated by lines. 😉 Honestly, I totally get what you’re saying, but let’s play the devils advocate for a sec. If you give your 48 track “tracked” project to another editor, and for some reason aren’t able to give them a track sheet, how the hell would they know what’s what? In X, it’s all right there, click the role and you see it. Role grouping would solve the “big mess” part, and I hope it appears.

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

[Marcus Moore]

Agree completely. But I think the conversation above hints at the solution. With Roles data already assigned for each clip, the timeline should be able to sort these elements into horizontal “zones” which contain as many overlapping elements as exist in a single Role. Organized by user-set colour in a user-defined order. At the very least more like this:

https://www.hoverboy.com/Timeline.jpg

What I think would be even more amazing would be to be able to collapse and expand roles so you can concentrate on the sound elements you’re worried about, or as someone above theorized, step INTO a Role and only see those elements.

And with Roles, you’re not just restricted to DIALOGUE or SFX, you can have sub-Roles for DIA-MARY and DIA JIM, or SFX-GUNSHOTS, etc. etc… So you can create as many organizational layers as you like.

But those individual audio elements are still linked to their primary storyline elements [unlike when they’re inside a CC]

[Brett Sherman]

I remember a number of years ago before switching to FCP, being shouted down on an Avid forum for suggesting that the bins should actually be folders and thus allow folders within folders – I know radical, huh?

The problem is Avid can’t move forward because their user base will not tolerate even the slightest change no matter if it makes sense or not. I’ve put my money on FCP X. Into my second edit on it, I do find somethings about the timeline confusing, but it hasn’t been anything that has significantly slowed me down.

[Shane Ross]

Well, as Bill often says, “you have to forget editing like you used to. FCP-X is a new beast and requires new thinking.” Paraphrasing, of course. So we have to think outside tracks. Tough for me to do, as I am older and set in my ways. Although Bill is older but he seemed to grasp this and like it.

I like tracks. So I’m glad I have other offerings that allow me to have them.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Andrew Kimery]

You can place a folder inside a folder in Avid so I guess I don’t see why bins need to be folders. One of the great things about Avid is the bins and how the avid folder/bin structure is mirrored at the desktop level and can be manipulated at the desktop level. For a single user it’s probably not a difference that makes much of a difference put in a multi-user, shared storage environment Avid’s approach is awesome.

For example, as new footage comes in an assist can propagate it to all the projects that need it merely by doing a copy/paste at the Finder level. No need to open up every project. No need to disrupt the editor. It’s great. Need a sequence or some custom FX stored in a bin? You can open up any bin from any project and copy out what you need and since Avid keeps track of who has what bin open there are no worries about multiple editors opening up the same bin and accidentally saving over each others work.

IMO Avid’s project structure is fantastic and it would be a really shame if they moved away from it.

[Charlie Austin]

[Shane Ross] “Well, as Bill often says, “you have to forget editing like you used to. FCP-X is a new beast and requires new thinking.” Paraphrasing, of course. So we have to think outside tracks. Tough for me to do, as I am older and set in my ways. Although Bill is older but he seemed to grasp this and like it.

I like tracks. So I’m glad I have other offerings that allow me to have them.”

🙂 It’s not really a new way of thinking though, it’s just a new way of doing the same thing. A fairly radical departure from convention, but it achieves the same goal. I really felt the same way about tracks. I’m repeating myself here, but I was a mixer for a long time before I was an editor. And before Roles appeared, X was a huge mess in regards to audio. But Roles have fixed that. I don’t miss tracks at all. Well… maybe a little, but if they do anything like what Marcus speculates above… Tracks are deader than the floppy, maybe even in DAW’s. 😉

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

[Neil Goodman]

Just like Shane the only thing holding me back from trying to do certain projects in X isthe lack of tracks.

The magnetic timeline doesnt bother me at all. Took about an hour to grasp the behavior and obviusly having “P” on overrides it anyways. The tilde modifier was also huge for me.

Back to tracks, i too like being uber organized, i truly feel like 80 percent of editing is organization. I cant stand looking at an X timeline on a deep edit. Its just madness, roles or not. Doesnt make any sense to me.

The multicam mode in X is def next level, no argument there.

Neil Goodman: Editor of New Media Production – NBC/Universal