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Boy will this be a debate starter…
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[Dave Gage] ” I live in Topanga and hike all the time. Let me know if you like to hike sometime and I can get my contact info to you.)”
Certainly, I’m always looking for new hiking partners. You can hit me up at adkimery at gmail dot com.
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[James Culbertson] ” That does not seem entirely logical since the only way you could select open in timeline is if you are already in a timeline ….
Maybe it is because I work with high school students, but I have never seen that scenario arise.”These are college film students. I don’t know how they get there, but I’ve seen roughly 10% of the class do it in several successive years. Someone gets started cutting inside a master clip, then changes their mind and deletes everything from the timeline. Of course, now that media is gone from the master clip container and they are completely baffled. I realize you have to make an effort to get there, but it seems to happen with surprising ease.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Just the other day I was experimenting and opened a browser clip in its own timeline. I was just experimenting with what could be done in that space. When I was through, I deleted the clip’s timeline only to discover that the clip itself was deleted from the browser. Intuitively you do not expect FC to delete all references to a piece media. For example, you can delete a clip from the primary storyline and the original media still stays in the finder and in the browser. It’s one of the first things I teach students: do your deleting in the timeline not in the browser. Now that said, you can always reimport a clip from the finder assuming you kept a copy there. Which I do.
But getting back to the OP, FC is full of backdoors and sidebars and the like. Even the fact that you often have to use three windows at the same time to do certain types of edits shows a high degree of complexity in terms of interface design.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Scott Witthaus] ” (doing some basic AE work now and the software is really great, but the interface is just awful…worse than Premiere.) “
Do you find Motion easier, more logical, or more intuitive?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Scott Witthaus] “Adobe is close, but it’s interfaces are so horrid (doing some basic AE work now and the software is really great, but the interface is just awful.”
I find AE’s interface to be sheer joy and extremely simple in practice; but I have been using it since 1995. So my sense is that this whole notion of simplicity and complexity is completely contextual. We are made to simplify even the most complex actions as a matter of basic survival and this carries into the rest of our lives.
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[Scott Witthaus] “Adobe is close, but it’s interfaces are so horrid (doing some basic AE work now and the software is really great, but the interface is just awful…worse than Premiere.)”
What it is it specifically that do you not like about the Adobe interfaces?
Personally, I think that the default layout is sub-optimal, and depending on what it is that you don’t like, maybe I can help.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Interestingly, doors were an important metaphor in the original Lightworks interface. Upon launch, you were presented with a “lobby”, and any number of user created “doors” would lead into “rooms” which you could freely configure for different tasks, e.g. logging, editing, exporting or colour correction. And while the actual doors were dropped in later versions, the “room” metaphor is still in use and is one of the reasons the Lightworks UI is so fluid and malleable.
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[Scott Witthaus] “doing some basic AE work now and the software is really great, but the interface is just awful…worse than Premiere”
I love the AE interface. I keep my left hand on the keyboard (because there are so many friggin shortcuts) and I keep my right hand on the wacom pen/tablet.
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[Walter Soyka] “the default layout is sub-optimal”
Which default layout? Haha!
Docking panels and saving them is like being the architect (in this hallway construction metaphor). That’s a bit of problem with X. They’re screaming at us in German accents: “You will live in this house!” I’m all: No thanks. I want my room over there, and the bathroom over there, and the kitchen here….
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[Richard Herd] “I love the AE interface.”
Really? Wow. Crazy small icons, timeline view feels ancient, please give me a keyboard short cut for in and out points when adding video…the list goes on. Great results, painful way to get there. C’mon Adobe, there has got to be a better way. Who cares what Avid does, make it better! 😉 IMHO, only.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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