Bill Davis’ LACPUG demo on Multicam…

[Charlie Austin]

[Marcus Moore] “…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:

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…

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

From your keyboard to Apple’s ears. You should paste that post into the feedback form. 🙂 Hopefully that’s where they’re going, it seems doable given what Roles can already do. We’ll see…

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

[Marcus Moore]

I honestly think it’s not about really forgetting tracks so much as it is about forgetting the traditional IDEA of tracks.

The parallel I would draw is that there’s no Bins in FCPX, but it’s easy to categorize your footage with keywords. I think audio [and video] in the timeline can be very neatly organized by Roles- while the organizing information is there, it hasn’t been put into effect in the timeline yet.

[Charlie Austin]

[Marcus Moore] “I think audio [and video] in the timeline can be very neatly organized by Roles- while the organizing information is there, it hasn’t been put into effect in the timeline yet.”

Yep. Look at what X2Pro can do with Role info. Take a “messy” X timeline, and spit out a beautifully split, well organized protools session. It just needs to be doable in the timeline. Just a little “Group Roles” check box in the index, and the ability to drag the listed roles into a sort order.

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

I feel like we are in the bizarro debate forum were almost everyone has at least one nice thing to say!

You must have put on a good show, Bill. Nice work.

Next up, “Shane Ross Presents: Getting Organized in FCPX” brought to you by Budweiser.

[David Powell]

Ive been cutting on FCP X for the last 4 months. All 3-4 camera multi-cam. For projects like music videos the NLE sync functions work well, but for more less planned events with multiple audio sources, I find that I still need plural eyes 3. The biggest drawback is that you can’t match frame to the original clip which is really bothersome to me, but I work around it. Also you can’t cut video only because the video is hooked to the audio.

The solution should be to mix in the angle editor but the levels never match for some odd reason.

The biggest plus is being able to switch to proxy media with one click and being able to mix frame rates in a multi clip. And it seems that FCPX renders effects a lot faster than Avid MC.

But alas, I hate working without tracks and the trimming in X is extremely cumbersome compared to avid.

[Gary Huff]

[David Powell] ”
But alas, I hate working without tracks and the trimming in X is extremely cumbersome compared to avid.”

I have the same problem. I just feel that half the time X gets in the way of what I want to do.

[Bill Davis]

Andy.
Want to duck or raise a specific bit of audio inan X Storyline?
Tap R ( the range tool) then drag to define a selection (or mark an in and out if you need to be precise)
Then with the range defined – click on the audio level line and raise or lower it to taste.
Know what happens?
X automatically creates a key framed level adjustment with four control points. If the incoming or outgoing sports aren’t what you like. You can edit them at will.
It’s four times less work than having to create them by hand if the default meets your needs, while losing nothing in productivity if you want to tweak things.
The point is that how X actually works is kinda the polar opposite of your phrase “I still can’t see how editors actually prefer adding key frames by hand for every volume change and duck.”
I truly don’t mind criticism of X based on how it really works.
I am a bit wary of criticism of it based on how people who don’t use or understand it *imagine* it works based often on reading on-line criticism from others who perhaps also don’t know how it works.
Look, I’m still learning a lot of it’s capabilities after months and months abd months of using nothing else to edit with.
It’s surprisingly deep since all it is is just iMovie Pro, after all! (insert non snarky grin and wink here)
FWIW

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Charlie Austin]

[Bill Davis] “The point is that how X actually works is kinda the polar opposite of your phrase “I still can’t see how editors actually prefer adding key frames by hand for every volume change and duck.”
I truly don’t mind criticism of X based on how it really works.”

To be fair, I think he was referring to manually keyframing audio vs. riding a fader. Riding a fader and creating keyframes on the fly can be a lot faster than doing it manually, particularly when you’ve got deep multi track (layer) sound beds. Hopefully this will reappear in some form or other.

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

[Brett Sherman]

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.”

Sorry for being confusing here. I haven’t kept up with Avid’s product line since I left it. But at the time you could not do this with Avid Xpress Pro. My example was only trying to illustrate how even the most mundane, sensible idea was regarded as sacrilege by the many in the Avid user base. My feeling at the time was that Avid was listening to the wrong people. I don’t know if that has changed now or not. I know I’m not going back though.

[Bill Davis]

[Charlie Austin] “To be fair, I think he was referring to manually keyframing audio vs. riding a fader.”

OK, fair point.

But I suppose it’s also fair to recall that “audio console automation” style key framing reflecting physical surface controls didn’t start appearing in Premier or AVID until years down their development cycles. Anyone recall how many versions either of them shipped before they got the side chain control I/O worked out to reflect a physical device status back to the software implementation in real time?

I sure as heck didn’t see anything like that in Legacy in 1999-2005 to the best of my knowledge.

So it seems to me that it hasn’t been a very high priority for the initial release of ANY NLE.

I know it’s tempting to simply take a snapshot of where our current software is after a full decade of development and expect THAT to be the SQUARE ONE state of anything new. But I just don’t think that’s reasonable. At least not if you want software engineers to ADVANCE the art at the same time.

Code takes time to write, test and perfect.

Oddly, at the LA thing yesterday, someone in the crowd asked Dan Leibental (who was demo’ing an iPad app for editors) how many coders were working on it. I think his answer was a small bunch – then he specifically opined that simply adding more coders doesn’t necessarily add more speed and efficiency to a software development effort – and can actually hurt things since it can become more and more difficult for all the members of a large coding team to keep the “big picture” stuff clearly in mind.

I remember thinking it was a little like the classic question: if it takes one woman nine months to have a baby, how long should it take four women?

FWIW

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.