-
Editing scenario
-
[Walter Soyka] “Are you giving up control — or are you changing how you control it? The magnetic timeline has its physics, and if you need to change them, can’t you just move the clip in question in or out of the primary as required? Wouldn’t that be more or less the same as making a complicated track-based selection?
“But what’s complicated about making a track based selection? Just lasso. If I don’t want to bring my music tracks, lock them and then lasso the rest. But, hey, that’s me. And, as to it being more or less the same–well, that’s sort of my point. I don’t understand the need to re-invent the wheel. Other than just to do it. Now maybe if I had larger, more independent segments to deal with, I’d feel differently. But generally, I don’t. Most of what I work on overlaps and interacts in ways that don’t really lend themselves to easy segmentation.
[Walter Soyka] “I would have thought, though, that clip connections, especially with SFX, were practically made for you. For example:
[Chris Harlan] “The sfx of the hand grenade pin being pulled still has to be cut and placed back where it was taken from to rest under the transition that precedes the clip you just pulled.”
Connect the pin pull to the right frame of the visual once, and you never need to think about that SFX’s placement again.
“No. But this is where it gets difficult for me to articulate, and its not a good day for it. But, let me try. If my goal were to give a specific visual a SFX, you’d be right. Pinning it to a frame would be gold. But that, really, is only a small part of my concern. In the case of a transitional SFX, like we are talking about above, I probably want something like the following to happen: A) I want the sound to match the image at the beginning of the transition. B) I want the sound to be relational to underlying music–say a swell or ramp–so that it sits just so. C) I want to crossfade to a second sfx–say a swish–partway through the transition (lets say the transition is a 20 frame Wind Blur), so that the sound itself is now becoming something else. D) this second sound is probably the one that I am most interested in timing to the beat, so the crossfade between the two sounds is going to be finessed to deal with that beat, E) coming out of the transition–which I have now retimed to 16 frames to make the earlier rhythm requirements work–I might be trying to work in sound (a last minute discovery) from the SOT track–lets say a crossfade from the swish to the rustling sound of the protagonist’s wind breaker as he swings around–but F) I have to retime the entire transition to 24 frames to make the effect work, and retime the other details. Then, G) it occurs to me that the swish might not be needed because a filtered version of the rustling windbreaker might make a better transition. But, I’m not sure yet, so I want to leave everything in place, create a sound from the windbreaker, and then crossfade it with both the first sound and the natural sound of the wind breaker. H) Nope. Back to plan A.
I believe that a tiered (tracks) relationship to absolute time is a far easier way to work this all out than a hierarchical relationships between clips. I have no doubt that I could find a way to cut the above in FCP X, and after much practice I might find it passable. I concede that if my years of work and experience had come through using X, I might find it just as easy.
But what do I gain by completely rethinking the way that I work? And that was the point of my earlier post. I see no value in it. None. Sure, if I have no experience, plopping this glop of stuck together stuff over between these glops is a lot easier, and I’m less likely to make a mess. But for me? I don’t see it. And its not because I haven’t been looking.
-
Jeremy,
I appreciate this post. I don’t think I’ve ever addressed you as a 12-year old but for the record, I just want to be clear that I consider you among the most knowledgeable experts on this forum. I know you know what you’re doing, what you’re talking about, and I like that you back up your statements with evidence. That’s a big reason why I enjoy debating with you. I apologize if my tone came across as being dismissive of your expertise. That was not my intent.
As I said earlier, I think we’re looking at the issues in this thread with very different priorities.
I understand why file management is central to your team’s workflow and why FCPX looks very compelling in that regard. Even though I don’t have the same collaborative needs, I do experience the reconnection issues and appreciate how crucial a solution would be for a team dealing with them every day.
I’ve always thought FCPX got many things right with its event database and media organization design. It’s true Premiere Pro still has work to do in this department. It’s not a deal-breaker for me, but if it is for you, I understand.
My deal-breaker in FCPX has always been the timeline and everything associated with it.
I again brought up the bloat issue because the project database was given as the reason why PIOPs are somehow impossible. I’ve described how trivial the UI would be to implement within the existing model a couple times – It’s easy and takes absolutely nothing away from what you already have with IOF. It only adds. I can’t imagine why adding it would have any more impact on the project and event databases than adding any new feature.
If we’re gonna bring up the project database, I think the bloat issue is crucial because it’s obvious exactly what causes it and what is going on with the project database when it happens. I guess you can just avoid compound clips, but given how central they are to the FCPX editorial model, I’m actually pretty blown away that 1) this bloat behavior made it thru Q/A and 2) it’s not higher on everyone’s must fix list.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I made a 2 hour timeline of all kinds of things, compounded it, and split it up.
The Project went from 10MB to 200 MBs, it used to get in to the GBs. Once all the autosaves happened, it was running just fine.”
[Jeremy Garchow] “This was probably like 30 cuts.
Apologies for assuming it was one cut. Sometimes I need to remind myself to think, and then type.
Actually, this number makes a lot more sense. If you still have the project and can count the cuts, I predict you’ll see exactly twenty cuts. Each cut would be a full copy of the full data-size of the source compound.
That’s the behavior that’s been there since the beginning. On my older machine, it makes FCPX melt-down fast. On a newer machine, you have more headroom, but the same thing eventually happens.
I guess I’m just surprised to see a bug this major and so obvious and easy to reproduce go completely unaddressed by Pro Apps for close to a year. It just really makes me wonder why. I’ve been involved with the software industry in various ways for over 25-years and frankly, I’ve never seen a commercial software product mishandle data this badly. Usually bugs like this set off fire alarms and get fixed asap.
Finally, I guess the “it’s different, you don’t really understand how it works” card doesn’t strike me as a very strong debate argument. It’s funny how often that point seems to come up whenever there’s legitimate differences of opinion. I think it’s entirely possible to understand exactly what’s going on pretty quickly, and to make a well-reasoned design critique. PIOPs is just one area where in my opinion, there’s an easy solution that would make everyone happy.
Last year, there was a lot of debate over no source viewer. Now, we learn that’s coming in the next update. Why couldn’t PIOPs be the same?
We all agree that FCPX is new, different, and will change as it grows. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from successful tools and methods we’ve used for years.
As far as the bloat, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Apple would simple acknowledge the issue and say they’re working on it. I don’t think that’s asking too much of a professional software vendor.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Thought this might be of interest to some of you.
As Oliver aptly said, there’s no free lunch.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1006808
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1006471“
No free lunch, true.
But I also notice on the first link, an Adobe employee posted 24 minutes after the OP, asking for detailed steps, a screenshot, and anything else he could supply to help him reproduce bug so it could be fixed.
An Adobe employee also acknowledges the bug in the second link. It’s obviously a bug and obviously on their radar.
Apple’s comments on project bloat:
“crickets”
Just sayin’.
Nice link, btw!
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “But I also notice on the first link, an Adobe employee posted 24 minutes after the OP, asking for detailed steps, a screenshot, and anything else he could supply to help him reproduce bug so it could be fixed.
An Adobe employee also acknowledges the bug in the second link. It’s obviously a bug and obviously on their radar.
Apple’s comments on project bloat:
“crickets”
Just sayin’.
“Just because Apple don’t reply on public forums doesn’t mean they aren’t listening or taking problems seriously. I’ve been contacted directly by Apple about an issue I posted on a forum as have others.
Steve Connor
“Sometimes it’s fun to poke an angry bear with a stickl”
Adrenalin Television -
[Jeremy Garchow] ” As Oliver aptly said, there’s no free lunch.”
I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that Adobe will fix this bug in less than half the time it’s taken Apple to already not fix their bug. And Adobe’s customers will not be left in the dark about what’s going on. While their are no free lunches, Lou Malnati’s is worth the price, while Domino’s isn’t.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Steve Connor] “Just because Apple don’t reply on public forums doesn’t mean they aren’t listening or taking problems seriously. I’ve been contacted directly by Apple about an issue I posted on a forum as have others.”
alright, as what has Apple told you about fixing product bloat? It might be interesting to the other thousands of editors that are concerned, which is why communicating publicly is better than communicating privately.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “alright, as what has Apple told you about fixing product bloat? It might be interesting to the other thousands of editors that are concerned, which is why communicating publicly is better than communicating privately.”
As an FYI – Apple monitors the forums and also their official feedback site. When things are clearly bug-related, they do at times directly contact the poster for system profiles and other data that will help them troubleshoot the problem. This is typically a one-way street, as in you likely won’t get a direct response telling you what was fixed or what will change. There have been exceptions, though. For example, I’ve had direct feedback from Motion developers when the issue was caused by third-party plug-in conflicts. More than likely the fix quietly ends up in the next scheduled update. On rare occasions, when an update really broke something, Apple has had a fix out in as little as one week.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “More than likely the fix quietly ends up in the next scheduled update. On rare occasions, when an update really broke something, Apple has had a fix out in as little as one week.”
Which makes the lack of a fix for the project bloat problem sound a bit more ominous.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “alright, as what has Apple told you about fixing product bloat? It might be interesting to the other thousands of editors that are concerned, which is why communicating publicly is better than communicating privately.
“Firstly Apple don’t communicate publicly about issues, they haven’t for years, certainly as long as I’ve been using FCP, I have no idea if they have contacted anyone privately about the bloat issue, but if they have ,chances are that they would have asked them to not make their discussions public.
Looking around the forums, project bloat doesn’t appear to be an actual issue for most Editors in real world use. Sure it’s a problem and it needs to be fixed but there’s much more moaning about tracks and audio than project bloat so if you are Apple what are you going to concentrate your resources on?
Good on Adobe for being so public about issues with their software, it’s a great marketing tool and it’s obviously helping them to win over users from FCP.
Steve Connor
“Sometimes it’s fun to poke an angry bear with a stickl”
Adrenalin Television -
[David Lawrence] “I appreciate this post. I don’t think I’ve ever addressed you as a 12-year old but for the record, I just want to be clear that I consider you among the most knowledgeable experts on this forum. I know you know what you’re doing, what you’re talking about, and I like that you back up your statements with evidence. That’s a big reason why I enjoy debating with you. I apologize if my tone came across as being dismissive of your expertise. That was not my intent.
As I said earlier, I think we’re looking at the issues in this thread with very different priorities.
I understand why file management is central to your team’s workflow and why FCPX looks very compelling in that regard. Even though I don’t have the same collaborative needs, I do experience the reconnection issues and appreciate how crucial a solution would be for a team dealing with them every day.
I’ve always thought FCPX got many things right with its event database and media organization design. It’s true Premiere Pro still has work to do in this department. It’s not a deal-breaker for me, but if it is for you, I understand.”
Thanks, David. I appreciate the comments. I do enjoy these conversations as well. I think in the end, it will help make everything better, no matter what platform/NLE we end up choosing, as we have all said from the inception of this forum.
At this point, the Pr database is kind of a deal breaker. The great thing is that I know Adobe hears this, and I am sure they will do their best to fix what’s currently not optimal. It’s not only in reconnection, but it’s also in project/timeline/bin sharing. While FCP7 isn’t perfect in this regard, having the ability to have multiple projects open, and copy/paste between them was pretty essential to our workflow. With Pr you can import new project to your current project, but there’s a lot of duplicity, and things tend to disappear if you delete them from the project mistakenly. So if you import a timeline via a project, it makes new master clips. If you delete those master clips from your project, the clips simply disappear from the timeline (they don’t even go offline as everything in the timeline is directly represented by something in a Pr project). So if something mistakenly gets deleted, you will go to open a timeline and it will be empty.
Of course, if Pr is your choice, then you learn to live with this, and perhaps it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you and your particular needs. For us, project sizes will swell, organization gets more confusing, and there’s a lot more manual work that needs to be done just to keep track of the current work. As someone who receives offline projects and needs to finish them, this can make for some confusing moments when it comes time to finish as the rule will become, don’t delete anything, but that means you will have multiple project level (not Finder level) copies of all the same media in your project when complete.
If you delete the extra media, it simply deletes out of your timeline with zero record of what was there or where it went. You have to be extremely careful and diligent. You do get a warning before you delete, see screen grab here:
Of course, you can always Project Manage to a new Project with all “used” media if that’s what needs to happen. There are workarounds, but they are workarounds.
And this is where preference of NLE comes in. Not one of these are perfect. You have to learn how and where they fall down so you can help pick them back up, or avoid that gap in the first place.
[David Lawrence] “My deal-breaker in FCPX has always been the timeline and everything associated with it.
I again brought up the bloat issue because the project database was given as the reason why PIOPs are somehow impossible. I’ve described how trivial the UI would be to implement within the existing model a couple times – It’s easy and takes absolutely nothing away from what you already have with IOF. It only adds. I can’t imagine why adding it would have any more impact on the project and event databases than adding any new feature.”
I’m not sure if adding piops is “trivial”. Hopefully, I will get sometime later today but I have a few instances where it’s not very trivial, and can prove why it won’t be necessarily easy. I tried to explain it in an earlier post, but the pictures will make more sense.
[David Lawrence] “If we’re gonna bring up the project database, I think the bloat issue is crucial because it’s obvious exactly what causes it and what is going on with the project database when it happens. I guess you can just avoid compound clips, but given how central they are to the FCPX editorial model, I’m actually pretty blown away that 1) this bloat behavior made it thru Q/A and 2) it’s not higher on everyone’s must fix list.”
Well, there’s a bunch of speculative reasons. Maybe it did make it through QA. If you make shorter, smaller compounds with just a few items, they perform OK. Sure, there’s a little bloat and slow down, but on the whole they operate OK, and 10.0.4 (in my experience anyway) handles them better. There’s always a trade off in releasing something that you know isn’t quite right. I am sure Apple has heard the feedback. I don’t know what level it’s their “must-fix” list. Maybe they are fixing it, I don’t think we have that information.
[David Lawrence] “Apologies for assuming it was one cut. Sometimes I need to remind myself to think, and then type.”
I need to heed that advice as well, and tidy up my sometimes stream of consciousness ramblings in to a written format instead of “spoken” format. 🙂
[David Lawrence] “Actually, this number makes a lot more sense. If you still have the project and can count the cuts, I predict you’ll see exactly twenty cuts. Each cut would be a full copy of the full data-size of the source compound.”
I still haven’t done the Apples to Apples. I plan to, though, as I would be curious if it exactly doubles.
[David Lawrence] “I guess I’m just surprised to see a bug this major and so obvious and easy to reproduce go completely unaddressed by Pro Apps for close to a year. It just really makes me wonder why. I’ve been involved with the software industry in various ways for over 25-years and frankly, I’ve never seen a commercial software product mishandle data this badly. Usually bugs like this set off fire alarms and get fixed asap.
Finally, I guess the “it’s different, you don’t really understand how it works” card doesn’t strike me as a very strong debate argument. It’s funny how often that point seems to come up whenever there’s legitimate differences of opinion. I think it’s entirely possible to understand exactly what’s going on pretty quickly, and to make a well-reasoned design critique. PIOPs is just one area where in my opinion, there’s an easy solution that would make everyone happy.
Last year, there was a lot of debate over no source viewer. Now, we learn that’s coming in the next update. Why couldn’t PIOPs be the same?
We all agree that FCPX is new, different, and will change as it grows. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from successful tools and methods we’ve used for years.
As far as the bloat, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Apple would simple acknowledge the issue and say they’re working on it. I don’t think that’s asking too much of a professional software vendor.”
But if you look hard enough, David, you will find weird bugs and inconsistencies in any software. It just so happens that FCPX is under the microscope at the moment, it is very new, and is not as mature as other offerings. When looking at it’s release state, and the state that it’s in now, they have done some remarkable programming in a very short time. I believe they will fix issues, but other’s might not. That’s OK. It’s a choice and preference at this point.
I hope to post images later, and thanks for the response.
Jeremy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up