Could Adobe (or someone else) adopt magnetic timeline features in a tracked timeline?

[Charlie Austin]

[Andrew Kimery] “Charlie Austin, NLE slave driver. ;)”

phhtt… hardly, these damn things drive me. lol

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Why is this a problem? Do you mean because then, time is in constant flux?”

Yes. The frame-of-reference for time is in constant flux. Sure, you can connect a secondary to a gap at frame one of the primary, but it’s a kludge.

Imagine this scenario instead –

What if you could press a button and add a second primary? It would sit above or below the first. It would have the exact same affordances as the first primary, but all of its clips and clip relationships would stay attached to it instead. Primary #2 would be temporally independent of and unaffected by any changes in primary #1.

This would enable the benefits of absolute time while at the same time keeping the magnetic timeline’s other benefits as well.

I don’t see any downside. Do you?

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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[Walter Soyka]

[David Lawrence] “What if you could press a button and add a second primary? … I don’t see any downside. Do you?”

Opportunity cost?

Multiple primaries basically means tracks-plus, so that means a primary patching system, maybe a differnent model for driving compositing, maybe primary audio bussing, maybe a cross-primary ripple mode… a lot of development work.

That same development time could be spent instead extending the model to allow connections to connected clips, or alternate metadata-driven timeline views, or send to Motion, or a scrolling timeline.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “Multiple primaries basically means tracks-plus, so that means a primary patching system, maybe a differnent model for driving compositing, maybe primary audio bussing, maybe a cross-primary ripple mode… a lot of development work.”

I think it’s simpler than that. To me it’s just adding a container level above the primary. Nothing else really needs to change. If you want to ripple, connect the clips to the primary you want to ripple from. Only use additional primaries for things you don’t want to ripple. That’s the whole point. Compositing still goes top down just as you would expect. Maybe with some new added features. There are opportunity costs to developing anything, but I don’t think this idea is that radical.

[Walter Soyka] “That same development time could be spent instead extending the model to allow connections to connected clips, or alternate metadata-driven timeline views, or send to Motion, or a scrolling timeline.”

This would all be great too!

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Lawrence] “Yes. The frame-of-reference for time is in constant flux. Sure, you can connect a secondary to a gap at frame one of the primary, but it’s a kludge.”

While Charlie was offering that merely as an example to a person who really wanted some sort of track based behavior in FCPX, he agrees and I agree that the method proposed is certainly a kluge. But this does mirror a tacked behavior, where each track stars at zero, and ends at the end, and the track itself never moves, so in that case, it is functionally a track. So, by process of deduction, tracks are a kludge?

I kid you, David, I kid.

[David Lawrence] “What if you could press a button and add a second primary? It would sit above or below the first. It would have the exact same affordances as the first primary, but all of its clips and clip relationships would stay attached to it instead. Primary #2 would be temporally independent of and unaffected by any changes in primary #1.

This would enable the benefits of absolute time while at the same time keeping the magnetic timeline’s other benefits as well.

I don’t see any downside. Do you?
“

I do. Apart from what Walter is talking about, where everything is related to the primary in an FCPX XML, which mean there is literally no vehicle for a clip floating in space/time on it’s own without being related to the primary, I think functionally, that this would then start to become hard to manage in FCPX. This would take away from major strengths of the timeline, for those of us who like to work in FCPX, for what I see to be very little benefit.

IF a clip needs to stay at, just for example “15 seconds and 2 frames” all the time, it’s easy to keep it there, you just have to keep it there using all the methods that FCPX provides, whether that’s the tilde key, or position tool. Time is only in flux if you want it to be. If you don’t want it to be, there are functions in FPCX to allow you to keep things where they are. There are a few examples of this failing, like adding some transitions to the primary sometimes shifts clips half the length of the transition, and yes, it’s a pain, but I trust it will be fixed.

Secondary storylines become little moments in time, devoid of the primary storyline, except for a single connection point. You can manipulate time within the secondary separate from the primary, and if keeping time still is something of value, then you can do some editing in a secondary storyline, and then move it down to the primary if and when that is necessary. This is hard to explain in writing.

Instead of tracks, I would much rather see a more robust ‘layer selection’ system in FCPX that can be driven by the keyboard, as well as more robust secondary storyline editing in which the layers could be selected and manipulated with said keyboard, as well as allowing layered secondary storylines (meaning clip stacks within a secondary). This would give us all the time control in the primary if we need, allow us another work area outside of the primary that is devoid of master time, but keep all the non collision strengths and quickness of the current FCPX timeline. It would fit in to the FCPX “lane” stack system in the fcpxml, or as Walter calls it, the ordered list, and it would not require a complete retooling of what has been already done in FCPX. Rather it would be a natural extension of the existing timeline functionality, in which you work in little related patches of space and time, and when necessary, you can work on just that little patch, or adjust the overall time in the primary.

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] ” as well as allowing layered secondary storylines (meaning clip stacks within a secondary).”

We can already do that, in spades… 🙂 It could work better, but I know the X team are aware that we’d like it to be…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9imGAJYw2bc

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

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[Jeremy Garchow]

[Charlie Austin] “We can already do that, in spades… 🙂 “

As mentioned in your original post, it needs to be easier than that.

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “As mentioned in your original post, it needs to be easier than that.”

Totally agree. What it does illustrate though, is that this functionality is totally possible. Compounds that could be expanded in the project or something like that. Logic X-ish track (clip) stacks…

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Bill Davis]

[Jeremy Garchow] “But this does mirror a tacked behavior, where each track stars at zero, and ends at the end, and the track itself never moves, so in that case, it is functionally a track. So, by process of deduction, tracks are a kludge?”

I believe this is line of argument is formally known in scientific circles as “The Transitive Property of BS.”

But as Jeremy acknowledged, used with tongue firmly implanted in one’s cheek, it’s cool.

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.

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “How do you accomplish this?”

Walter,

You do this by placing something on the Primary that’s exceeds 15 minutes in length and connect your element to it at the 15 minute mark.

It’s functional, but it’s also horrible.

Because working this way disables the magnetic nature of the Primary an essentially makes you edit the old way – where everything that enters your timeline requires targeting and will ALWAYS be stuck a fixed distance from zero, and you’re required to position everything with mindfull exactness.

X essentially automates a lot of that mindful exactness, since if you cut a clip after exactly 56 frames – you know via magnetism that the next clip you drop WILL connect at frame 57. Period. No thinking, No failure.

If you want it to drop at 1:05 instead, you just put your cursor there and drop it as a connected clips. Done.

If you watch good X editors, some of them do an interesting hybrid of magnetic and positional editing. I’ve seen guys put a block in the primary to represent the next section they’re working on. And build their edits in either a secondary or as a group of connected clips, and then when they’ve got things arranged to their taste, they’ll use the keyboard shortcut to “drop” the construction into the magnetic primary – therefore regaining the ability to slide that section around as a unit.

But basically, when you’re edited WITH magnetic behavior for a while, when you don’t have it, editing goes back to feeling uncomfortably slow. It’s not just one thing, it’s a whole bunch of tiny operations that you haven’t even had to think about – that suddenly, once again,you do.

I can’t stress enough that the magnetic editor just thinks in different ways. It’s like having written EVERYTHING in your life exclusively as prose in a very basic word processor – somebody suddenly shows you an killer outlining AND text writing program. Something like OmniOutliner – where the computer lets you move and indent and promote and subordinate headers as you like, but you can also open up any line and create a huge block of prose with all the tools you had before. The writing process is the same, but the ability to organize and revise suddenly gets immeasurably easier.

Now some writers, just will NEVER outline. And that’s cool. But even given that reality, it’s still hard to argue that learning better organizational and outlining skills – and putting that stuff up front in a program where it’s EASY to use – doesn’t make those who elect to use it more organized writers – especially when the topics you’re writing about get ever more complex.

It’s kinda like that, in my mind.

Hope that helps.

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.