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

[Charlie Austin]

[Andrew Kimery] ” Yes, products need to improve but at some point the devs have to draw a line in the sand and not try to bolt on features that won’t work well given the underlying philosophy/foundation of their software (even if the some users are asking for them)”

I think you’re absolutely correct. I’ll go out on a short limb and say that X will never have “tracks” as we’re discussing them here. I’d be surprised if some sort of Role based mix/bus/organization functions don’t appear, but X isn’t gonna become a DAW anymore than Fairlight is gonna become an NLE. It’s not in the DNA of the app.

And the whole “no tracks no temporal anchor” argument is sort of fallacious. I get it, but the timecode at the top of the project window is the temporal reference, just like any other NLE/DAW on the planet. And you don’t need “workarounds” to keep stuff locked to specific time, you just use the app the way it works.

There’s a lot of things in X that need improvement, but I don’t think complicating it needlessly with different modes or whatever is one of them.

————————————————————-

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

[Michael Gissing]

[Charlie Austin] “but X isn’t gonna become a DAW anymore than Fairlight is gonna become an NLE..”

Just for the record, Fairlight can edit video. Only one track but you can layer and dissolve or fade. It will even output the edit as an AAF or EDL amongst other formats. But it is basic editing of video to help with reversioning or being sent VFX inserts. It can probably handle more codecs than Legend too and is now 4k.

I get that X isn’t a DAW but it does need improvements for audio mixing and also making better sense of Roles outputs via xml to AAF or whatever as the destination for audio in a collaborative workflow is a track based DAW.

[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Kimery] “With X Apple has come up with a different philosophy of how NLE’s should flow and I wonder if trying to add too many track-like functions will just result in something muddled. “

I’m not suggesting that they need to add “track-like” functions per se. They just need to go further with what they’re already doing and create a more flexible, more consistent object hierarchy.

An advanced mode with multiple primaries and absolute time reference would make the program much more flexible. I’m sure it could be implemented in a way that would make everyone happy. There’s a ton of room for improvement inside the existing model.

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

[David Lawrence]

[Charlie Austin] “And the whole “no tracks no temporal anchor” argument is sort of fallacious. I get it, but the timecode at the top of the project window is the temporal reference, just like any other NLE/DAW on the planet. And you don’t need “workarounds” to keep stuff locked to specific time, you just use the app the way it works. “

You mean like filling the primary with a big long gap and then doing all your edits with connected clips? 😉

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

[Chris Harlan]

[Bill Davis] “Not there now, but it’s been on Richard Taylors master list of FCP X feature requests for quite a while – and I know the X team is aware of that.”

That’d be swell. Make a big difference for me.

[Charlie Austin]

[Michael Gissing] “Just for the record, Fairlight can edit video. Only one track but you can layer and dissolve or fade. It will even output the edit as an AAF or EDL amongst other formats.”

Exactly.., but what it is, is a DAW/Mixing Desk, and that’s what it does amazingly well. I don’t see them adding a whole lot of video editing functionality though. Being able to do basic video cuts in a DAW was something much loved about Avid AudioVision, before they bought Digidesign and killed it for what was perceived at the time to be an inferior product, ProTools. 🙂

[Michael Gissing] “I get that X isn’t a DAW but it does need improvements for audio mixing and also making better sense of Roles outputs via xml to AAF or whatever as the destination for audio in a collaborative workflow is a track based DAW.”

I agree that it needs improvements. FWIW, X2Pro works ridiculously well with Roles. In my experience, mixers love the sessions it spits out. Tracks all organized and named with the push of a button. Apple should just buy it and build it in, but Marquis makes updates faster. 😉

————————————————————-

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

[Charlie Austin]

[David Lawrence] “You mean like filling the primary with a big long gap and then doing all your edits with connected clips? ;)”

Nope. 🙂 I guess I just don’t have any problem keeping things to time, picture, music edits, whatever. It’s not an issue. When you’re doing the multi stream stuff, what is it that drives the timing? Sequence timecode? Music? One of the streams? I understand your complaint, but it seems to me to be totally do-able without any weird workarounds…

————————————————————-

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

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “It kinda reminds me of the call for PIOP in X or more open file linking in Avid (AMA). The results of the requests didn’t exactly turn out as planned because the NLEs weren’t built with features like that in mind. Yes, products need to improve but at some point the devs have to draw a line in the sand and not try to bolt on features that won’t work well given the underlying philosophy/foundation of their software (even if the some users are asking for them).”

Yes.

Exactly.

Well said Andrew.

The urge in some to try to make X “more comfortable” by bringing back what they believed would be solid improvements – yet turned out to be less than that – was very strong in the first couple of years of FCP X development.. Now that the dust has settled a lot, I see fewer and fewer requests from X editors to fundamentally change overall operations – but rather requests to refine and improve what’s already there. There are notable exceptions and some of them interesting and very well reasoned, but the “Apple got this totally wrong” crowd has pretty much been silenced among those who keep up with the development. It’s a pretty big shift, IMO.

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]

“The worst thing you can do is mess up what you got chasing after somebody that doesn’t want you anyway.”

True dat.

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.

[Jeff Markgraf]

David –

So far, your post is the only one I see addressing not “improvements” to the X approach, but the idea that the concept is fundamentally “broken” and in need of fixing. Interesting, though I don’t think I agree.

Here’s the biggest point of disagreement for me:

[David Lawrence] “In a traditional, track-based, open timeline, the temporal frame-of-reference is absolute and defined outside the media clips by the UI window.
In the magnetic timeline, the temporal frame-of-reference is relative and constantly shifting because it’s defined by the primary storyline inside the project.”

I don’t see a difference in the “absolute” time reference. The timecode (or frame count) of the sequence timeline in X is the reference. Just as in Avid or others. A clip exists at a particular linear time. The fact that a clip may be connected to another clip doesn’t change anything about its absolute position on the timeline – until you move it. Just like in Avid.

The marketing description “magnetic timeline” is just that – marketing. Personally, I think it’s silly. Unless one considers the magnetic property of repulsion. That’s what’s different.

“Magnetic” as a description for rippling is useless. Any NLE can ripple edits. “Magnetic” as a description for snapping to an adjacent clip is equally useless. Any NLE can snap. “Magnetic” as a description of clips automatically moving out of the way when rippling is useful. No other NLE does that. It’s a manual process with the others.

But a clip moving up or down to make room for another clip doesn’t affect it’s linear position in time.

Connecting a clip to another clip so that they move together isn’t magnetic. It’s just a kind of grouping, a more sophisticated and granular version of locking tracks. It minimizes the need to lasso a group to move it as a unit. It’s the magnetic repulsion of the clips in the vertical axis that makes X different.

Yes, the constantly (and sometimes unpredictable) changing of vertical position can be disconcerting. As others have discussed, some method for vertically locking a clip in place may be useful. Another useful tool would be the ability to connect a clip (especially audio) to the sequence time code, rather than to a primary clip or gap. But, again, I consider these improvements in the execution, rather than fixing something that is fundamentally broken.

[David Lawrence] “why haven’t we seen a trackless DAW yet?”

I think we sort of have. Doesn’t Fairlight allow multiple clips on the same “track,” layered on top of one another? A bit like the audition process in X?