center the timeline in FCP?

[Tom Wolsky]

You don’t have to go and get the playhead, you just have to click in the Timeline ruler and the playhead will leap to where you are.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Wherewolf and Tom,

Wherewolf, I fully agree with you. I finally switched over from my Accom StrataSphere non-linear editing system about 1.5 years ago to FCS1 (now FCS2 on one of my two machines), and although I like FCS a lot better, there are some things that the Strat (software circa 1995) does better.

Centering the timeline to the playhead while it plays is one of a few things I can think of right away. Also, it’s very annoying to, in a timeline, press Apple/+ and have it zoom in to nowhere near the playhead as well. The Strat (again, circa 1995) zooms in to where the playhead is and the playhead, as it moves to the right, pops to the new “page” of edits in the timeline (so that you can see what’s coming up and not have to manually scroll right).

It seems to me that this should be the standard behavior in FCP and that the current tracksheet-stay-where-you-started & zoom-in-to-nowhere should be the alternate preference!

Regarding your other question, I don’t know where you can make suggestions directly to Apple. I know at NAB, at the FCPUG meeting on Wednesday night, they set up a camera and invite anyone with suggestions to go in and tell them right to Apple. I did this at NAB 2006 (didn’t do it this year) and these were one of a few suggestions that I gave.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Matt Gerard]

Not sure what you gys are talking about, there are specific ways FCP behaves depending on what you are trying to do.

1) If NOTHING is selected in the timeline, the APPLE+/- keys will zoom in and out centered on the playhead.

2) If you have a clip (or edit) selected, the timeline will zoom in and out centered on that clip/edit.

3) When playing, if the playhead goes off the screen, when you stop playback, the timeline will snap to the playhead. I just spent 10 min messing with it, and that’s the way it works. Period.

Now, the one beef I have is that the timeline won’t scroll with the playhead. That’s the one thing that Digidesign (the masters of doing stuff the goofy way) got right in ProTools. The actually give you the choice of HOW you want it to scroll.

But, small problem. I went and got a wireless mighty mouse, and now I can scroll with the playback using the scroll wheel. Oh, and if you think the scroll is too slow, hold down the option key and scroll. ZING!!!!

Matt Gerard

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Matt,

The limitation that Wherewolf explained, and I fully support him on this, is I guess best explained by an example.

Let’s say you’re watching a timeline – any timeline. You see the playhead as you’re reviewing and it goes off the right edge of the timeline and completely disappears, until you press the universal panic button (the space bar).

What the Immix/Accom software did way back in ’95 was scroll to the next page to the right while the playhead moves. This way, you can watch an entire timeline and see what clips you have coming up. FCP does not do this.

I hope that makes sense now.

Thank you,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Bret Williams]

Hmmm… Avid added this in 1996. I turned it on once and never turned it on again. I don’t like software doing things for me.

In FCP, if you want to follow the play head, simply do so. Just grab the timeline like you usually do (with the hand tool of course) and slide it around or use the z tool to zoom in. All while playing. Avid can’t do this.

So, sure they could make it an option, but I sure wouldn’t use it.

Any by the way, the software you’re referring to was late 97 or early 98. In 95/96 SciTex still owned the TurboCube which they bought from Immix. Accom bought it later and made the stratosphere. It was a pretty neat, but a mess in so many aspects. A zillion layers, great realtime, but no media management or even layer nesting to speak of. They had a great shot at being the leader. Of course so did Media100. Wow. Boy did they blow it.

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Bret,

You’re 100% right – sounds like you were non-linear in the ’90s, too. Yes, the Strat software grew out of the Videocube/Turbocube software in ’97/’98. That’s why I said ’95 (and, actually, Videocube was out in ’94) regarding the circa because it was pretty much the same software.

Yes, it did have its share of bugs and you had to learn work-arounds for them. You even have to do that with FCP, as we all know. But it was as solid and reliable as FCP, if not more so.

Strat was better than Avid in the ’90’s. Any of us who operated both systems know that. No rendering, even with as many lighting effects and 3D DVE as you can throw onto a layer, and the Accom DVEous DVE was the best in the business. Accom should have hit the gas instead of stopping with support and they’d still be among the leaders. They didn’t look and see what Avid was doing and, a few years later, Apple.

I don’t agree, though, that letting the software automatically move the timeline for you as the playhead plays is a bad thing! I’d rather be concentrating on my edits playing back on the monitor and let the software track it, like VideoCube ’94 (I didn’t think anyone would remember it!), than have to manually drag the timeline to the left each time the playhead dissapears to the right in order just to see it.

I got into a habit of glancing down at the timeline to see what was coming up and then looking back at the final product on the monitor. What good is looking at a FCP screen with a bunch of previously played edits and a dissapeared playhead and then manually have to drag a playing timeline to the left? I think that most people would love the FCP software to do this for them if it was tought of/available and I definitely side with Wherewolf on that one.

-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Matt Gerard]

[PDPost] “This way, you can watch an entire timeline and see what clips you have coming up. FCP does not do this.”

That’s exactly what I said in the last part of my post. It bugs me that They don’t have a preference for scrolling the timeline. From the posts that are here, there are people that want FCP to do it for them, and there are those that don’t.

Digidesign gives you the option of 1) if you want to scroll or not 2) how you want it to scroll, page scroll, or continuous scroll.

Since the FCP interface has the robustness and the ability to scroll the timeline with the mouse without stopping playback (which Avid had a hard time with) you would think it would be a small matter to put in a procedure in the app to allow FCP to give you scrolling options.

Yes, it bugs me, but, I got to get a new wireless Mighty Mouse because of it!