blade tool

[Patrice Freymond]

I would suggest sending this same post to Apple. They are much more able to do something about your peeves than we, of fragile disposition, are.

Patrice

PS: you wouldn’t believe how hancuffed I felt when I first moved from Avid to FCP back in the days 😉

[Julian Bowman]

Ha, yeah, I am actually compiling a list of things, but the question was genuine, as in can it be switched off/am i missing something, as sometimes I simply am, and CC is my forum of choice so i like to whine on here too 🙂 I am going to preface my whines with *whine* though so people can simply not read those bits 🙂

And to be honest I imagine that over time a lot of these things that annoy, are half baked, don’t quite work, could be made better, are more likely than not going to be improved at some point. I guess at that point in life I’ll simply be content and will have to *whine* on another forum 🙂

[Oliver Peters]

You missed Patrice’s point. If these are genuine bugs, concerns, feature requests, you need to use the Apple feedback system on their website. These forums are great for whining and user help and are occasionally monitored by Apple. Unfortuantely complaints offered here do not make it into Apple’s official internal system of tracking reports that improve the software. So post as much here as you like, but don’t expect it to be heard by Apple unless you officially submit it.

Regarding the question, can’t you simply make the blade cut and hit the A or P keys to go back to standard or position behavior? And what about the S key to turn skimming on and off?

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Julian Bowman] “It appears that the blade tool in the timeline does a similar thing to the skimmer so when i have cut something and just move the blade away from my moment and hit play it starts at where the blade is currently hovering.

Can this be turned off? “

I think it is worth pointing out there there are a few different kinds of skimming.

There’s skimming in the Event Browser, similarly there’s skimming in the inspector for audio.

In the timeline there is timeline skimming (which is toggled with the ‘s’ key) and then there’s clip skimming (which is toggled with command-option-s). They are similar, but they work differently.

They are independent, so, you can have skimming off and clip skimming on (which might suit you well) as that way you can blade individual elements with scrubbing, then move the blade tool out of the way and the timeline skimmer won’t follow your mouse.

This might help you get used to timeline skimming. Or, as has been mentioned, simply turn off all skimming and go back to an FCP7 playhead environment.

To answer your question specifically:

Also, there a few different kinds of blading, by the blade tool, and by key command. I prefer the key commands. I have personally mapped the “blade” command to the letter ‘b’, blade all to Shift-b, I have mapped the Blade Tool to option-b. Here’s a picture:

This means I rarely touch the separate blade tool, rather just cut where I want with one keystroke or perhaps a click-drag selection and a keystroke.

Jeremy

[Charlie Austin]

[Julian Bowman] “It is rather annoying. I get that people like the skimmer but personally i loathe it in the timeline as it clashes with my way of working on the timeline, and to have it do the same thing on the blade tool (which doesn’t even seem to offer any benefit) is a tad frustrating. I definitely feel they need to offer turn on/turn off options on a fair few of their ‘cool’ features.

I do get that some people may like them but some of what they have implemented seriously impedes my editing style to the point where any speed gains X offers are completely negated with its interruptions to my way of using the timeline… and no, it isn’t about my having to bend to its will when the things that it makes me do could and should be optional (getting in before the acolytes) because what they have done isn’t some definitive uber best way of doing things, it is just different and in some cases seemingly needlessly so, although in others perhaps just a nice idea that isn’t for all and could be easily made optional…

a big one here is having two separate skimmers for the thumbnails (great, use it a lot) and the timeline (loathe it, never use it) so we can choose which we want on and which off without having to constantly hit the S key when moving between the two.

Another is the large grey area of the timeline being on/offable so that when you click on it the playhead doesn’t go to that point and you can only move the playhead from the little bit along the top with the timecode on it, like 7. This one really impacts on my during every edit. Stops my focus being on my edit as i have to wrestle with the UI.

Little things like this would probably go a long way to accommodating more editing styles,”

Well, I get what you’re saying, and they can definitely improve some functions, but once you get used to working with it, it’s actually a lot easier to move around the X UI than it was in 7. As for the blade tool… just use a keystroke or assign a mouse button to cut your clip. The blade tool sucked just as much in 7 as it does in X. I don’t understand why anyone would use it in any NLE. 😉

Skimming… yeah, it’s annoying to hit S all the time, but honestly, using the skimmer to move around the timeline without moving the playhead is a pretty useful thing. Again, ya just gotta use it for a while, or at least i did…

As far as timeline focus… just click the title bar, or on a clip to “activate” it. The fact that they changed the behavior so that clicking a clip doesn’t move the playhead is awesome. Like all things X, once you retrain your muscle memory you won’t even think about it.

On an unrelated rant-ey note… Can we stop trying to get Apple to make the UI more like FCP 7? Please? That’s what Premiere is for. lol

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

[Bret Williams]

I’ll point out that you don’t have to switch to the blade, or any tool. Just hold down b, click to cut, then release B and you’re back to the original tool. Just another option.

[Bret Williams]

Premiere still bugs me that they advertise that it doesn’t stop playing for anything. Adjust sound, color, whatever. But yet it stops for clicking. Press play, click ahead in the timeline and it instantly stops. I just can’t get past that muscle memory.

[Charlie Austin]

[Bret Williams] “Premiere still bugs me that they advertise that it doesn’t stop playing for anything. Adjust sound, color, whatever. But yet it stops for clicking. Press play, click ahead in the timeline and it instantly stops. I just can’t get past that muscle memory.”

Yeah… X used to not stop playing for anything, even when clicking the menu to show the viewer on a second monitor. Just kept playing right along. Then they added the second viewer and PIOP’s and broke something. Hopefully they’ll fix it.

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

[Bret Williams]

I actually edit while playing. I’ll just keep clicking back earlier in the timeline and I’ll be scooting around music and such. I love how the music kinda scrubs while the VO stays solid while playing. Doesn’t have much purpose to do that, but it’s cool. But just moving clips around, trimming, etc. without stopping the playback is nuts. I’ll go into the inspector and adjust color or turn on / off filters too. Just cuz I can.

[Julian Bowman]

Hey Oliver, yes you are correct I can do that but it is frustrating having to add further keystrokes, and having to think about it. there seems to be a lot of having to manually turn things that get in the way on and off. And yes I am compiling a list of feedback things I will submit. I’m with X now for better or for worse and on the whole it is fine and dandy so want to figure out annoyances and bugs etc and feedback in the hope of improvement, and that is partly why I post here because I like seeing the responses and those responses are helping shape my understanding and thus my feedback list.