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Editing scenario
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[David Lawrence] “This in a nutshell is why I currently consider the current magnetic timeline bad design. I want to edit, not play a game of chess with my NLE. But that’s just me.”
It isn’t just you David.
After reading Jeremy’s post above yours I just keep asking myself, why? Why do they bother? His whole post just demonstrates to me that the fundamental design is just plain wrong.
I guess they must believe the trade off is worth it. But what is the worth of it? I’m yet to really read a well articulated, reasoned post as to why X is just plain better.
Ah well, each to his own.
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
[Alex Hawkins] “After reading Jeremy’s post above yours I just keep asking myself, why? Why do they bother? His whole post just demonstrates to me that the fundamental design is just plain wrong.
“I don’t know. I think Jeremy does a pretty good job of explaining what he likes and dislikes about X. And, I think he bothers because there are parts of the program that he really likes. FWIW, I generally find his arguments compelling and well reasoned, even when I don’t share his POV.
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[Chris Harlan] “I don’t know. I think Jeremy does a pretty good job of explaining what he likes and dislikes about X”
Yeah Chris I agree with that but I guess I just don’t end up “getting” it.
[Chris Harlan] “FWIW, I generally find his arguments compelling and well reasoned, even when I don’t share his POV.”
No argument from me there. I certainly didn’t intend any disrespect to him at all. I guess I just see it all as too much bother.
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
Michael Garber “I have found more bugs and strange behavior in X than I care to elaborate on here. That is the line in the sand for me.”
Then why are you using an FCPX logo for your avatar? 😉
just sayin’…
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“THAT’S our fail-safe point. Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine… But after this windmill it’s the future or bust.” -
[Alex Hawkins] “Yeah Chris I agree with that but I guess I just don’t end up “getting” it.
“Hey, I hear ya. I have a hard time relating to the entire X metaphor. A year and a half ago, if I were to make up a list of several hundred things that were problematic about NLEs, “clip collision” would never have occurred to me. I didn’t even know there was a term for when ‘some of this’ covered up ‘some of that’ when pasting or overwriting. All this time later, I still don’t get the big deal. I like lassoing better.
But, I’m convinced that there are people who really like it; that it fits their style and their thought processes and their workflow. It doesn’t fit mine, and I’m very glad I’m not alone in that. I’m really grateful that both MC 6 and Pr 6 are continuing in direction I can easily relate to, and that I don’t HAVE to go the X route. Frankly, seeing the new Pr has been quite a relief.
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[Oliver Peters] “Ironically I never edited this way until FCP. When I first started with NLEs (Avid), I’d come from years of linear. So, my Avid timelines were always only with clips on V1… It’s funny that X has put us back into a mindset that seems somewhat reminiscent of what we did 25+ years ago”
I was brought up the same way Oliver. I hadn’t thought along those lines, but there does seem to be a correlation. Back in those days, I was working on Avid Newscutter which only had 3 usable video tracks to begin with so V1 was pretty much used for everything.
[Brett Williams]“Wouldnt putting it I the primary overwrite the interview visual? Or are people saying put the interview UNDER the primary, making IT connected to the broll?”
What I was specifically saying was not to edit broll as a connected clip simply because it’s broll. Of course a cover shot would be edited as a connected clip if there was already a sound bite in the primary, but for the sections of the video (as outlined in the OP) where it was just broll over music, I would edit the broll into the primary storyline. The music in the example would be either as a connected clip, or secondary storyline (depending on the amount of music editing which was necessary. What you would be left with is a filled primary storyline with a few connected clips over long sound bites, and a secondary storyline holding the music similar to this mock up I’ve made.
In this example, the clips in the primary storyline with embedded audio are the soundbites. Mixed in there are broll clips with no audio, and also a few connected clips of broll where needed. The music was edited in a secondary storyline.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “the fact that it is directly based on the methodology, GUI and workflow of iMovie. And steve – iMovie is a consumer product.
FCPX has simplistic, modal (connected editing mode vs primary editing modes), metaphorically reduced use case scenario/my first colouring book simplifications of the underlying track structure.
FCPX is directly based on, and flows out of iMovies methodology, in events, draggable marquee selections, trackless workflow, connected clips, direct links into iphoto and itunes, horribly simplified audio handling, horribly unusable waveforms.
FCPX is a souped up iMovie. It is, by definition, and the fact that it is trying to empower consumer hobbyists to step it up a gear by employing near identical methodologies to their free consumer video product, a prosumer solution. it is trying to lead consumers into more powerful capabilities, while still offering them the simplified hand holding amateur software environment they are used to.
Its kind of painful watching apple trying to tack multicam and some kind of xml spec on this thing. I literally think they are mostly doing it for PR reasons given the nuclear scale of the blowback they received.
but that in short is why its semi-amateur software – it adheres to the logic and simplifications and reduced use case of amateur software – at best its prosumer. In that context 300 is actually fairly expensive for the target market?
“Interesting thoughts but I’ll ask you the question as well, in edit terms what CAN’T you do in FCPX that in turn makes it “semi-amateur”? and you can’t regurgitate the usual battle cries of “there’s no tracks, they called things different names, it looks like iMovie, Apple mad me sad when they dropped FCP7”
In down and dirty editing what can’t you do in FCPX that is vital for “Professional” editing that you can do in other NLE’s
Steve Connor
“Sometimes it’s fun to poke an angry bear with a stickl”
Adrenalin Television -
[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s tough to learn a new way when we have been used to it another way for so long.
The way I approach it is that it might be a better way, and perhaps the traditional way hasn’t been the most efficient, just the most ubiquitous and accepted.
Jury is still out for me, and there’s more work to be done by Apple. “
Agree old habits can be tough to shed, especially when they’ve been ingrained over many years. But that doesn’t necessarily make learning something new more difficult.
In the Apple universe, a well-designed product should be simple to to learn, even if it’s completely different than everything that came before it. Think of the iPhone, for example. Or the iPad. So simple, a toddler can pick it up.
Or a cat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdEBgZ5Y46U
For me, all the roadblocks I hit in FCPX feel like places where the designers weren’t paying attention. Either thru over-simplification, or by making narrow assumptions. Jim’s tracked timeline workaround is a wonderfully creative solution to a problem that a good design wouldn’t have created in the first place.[Jeremy Garchow] “You were involved in an earlier discussion about grouping as it pertains to Pr and Vegas. X is all about grouping, yowzas. And it’s all visually grouped and there’s several ways to group elements. Does it look like Adobe/Sony’s method? Nope. Do you have to learn to control them? Yes, absolutely.”
Grouping is a great thing. Always one of my biggest complaints about FCP Legacy was its lack of real groups and the stupid way it handled re-linking multiple clip selections.
I like how tagging with keywords work in X. It’s awesome and aI hope Adobe is taking notes. Compound clips I’m not so impressed by. It’s really just a new, fancy name for nests, except for some reason they’re much less efficient. I’m amazed that almost a year later, the bloat issue is still completely unaddressed. I would think this should be Apple’s highest engineering priority. You shouldn’t have to tiptoe around using them.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Do favorites look like persistent in and out points? Not in the familiar sense, but the very ideas are the same despite the different methodologies of use. “
I figured out why this issue seems to be so polarizing but I never got around to answering in the other thread. I’m gonna get a bit design geeky on you so please humor me:
You’re absolutely right when you talk about favorites having the same ideas and functionality as persistent in/out points.
The problem lies in the disconnect between functionality and intentionality.
There’s a huge difference in intent between specifying “favorite” (i.e. saying this is something I “like” or want to keep) and marking a cut point for just right now.
This disconnect between functionality and intentionality is why so many people are clamoring for persistent in/out marks. It’s not that you can’t achieve the same functionality, you certainly can. What people are asking for are tools that match their more specific intentionality. And it just so happens that this intentionality is one of the core actions in the editing process itself.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Jury is still out for me, and there’s more work to be done by Apple. “
Agreed. The good news is that now that they have some serious competition from both sides – Adobe from the bottom up and Autodesk from the top down – they’re gonna have to up their game. Should be good for everyone.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “the fact that it is directly based on the methodology, GUI and workflow of iMovie. And steve – iMovie is a consumer product.
FCPX has simplistic, modal (connected editing mode vs primary editing modes), metaphorically reduced use case scenario/my first colouring book simplifications of the underlying track structure.
FCPX is directly based on, and flows out of iMovies methodology, in events, draggable marquee selections, trackless workflow, connected clips, direct links into iphoto and itunes, horribly simplified audio handling, horribly unusable waveforms.
FCPX is a souped up iMovie. It is, by definition, and the fact that it is trying to empower consumer hobbyists to step it up a gear by employing near identical methodologies to their free consumer video product, a prosumer solution. it is trying to lead consumers into more powerful capabilities, while still offering them the simplified hand holding amateur software environment they are used to.
Its kind of painful watching apple trying to tack multicam and some kind of xml spec on this thing. I literally think they are mostly doing it for PR reasons given the nuclear scale of the blowback they received.
but that in short is why its semi-amateur software – it adheres to the logic and simplifications and reduced use case of amateur software – at best its prosumer. In that context 300 is actually fairly expensive for the target market?
“Interesting thoughts but I’ll ask you the question as well, in edit terms what CAN’T you do in FCPX that in turn makes it “semi-amateur”? and you can’t regurgitate the usual battle cries of “there’s no tracks, they called things different names, it looks like iMovie, Apple mad me sad when they dropped FCP7”
In down and dirty editing what can’t you do in FCPX that is vital for “Professional” editing that you can do in other NLE’s
Steve Connor
“Sometimes it’s fun to poke an angry bear with a stickl”
Adrenalin Television -
Steve, I’m sure you can do almost anything in FC10 eventually, it’s just as I said before, you need to be a contortionist to do it.
Their biggest cock up was the trackless thing. Clip collision, as described above, is something that makes sense and something I tout of when the whole thing was released, but instead they took a good idea and made it into something that isn’t usable for many many editors, or something that many many editors don’t want to use because of its limitations and the need for workarounds. The fact there are all these discussions about primary this, secondary that, connected the other when none of these issues ev existed for the…. Woah, magnetic timeline…. Makes a pretty good case for it being folly.
I bet you there could have been tracks and clip collision that made things move around like a magnetic timeline (though do magnets move like that?) so you’d have had a useful tool for the very few times you did have that clip collision issue, you’d be able to lob clips at the timeline and other clips would make way for them, which would be great, but you’d have tracks and all the advantages that come with them.
And no one will convince me that they couldn’t have done that. They just didn’t want to. They wanted to do it this way because for randy’s home movies, that’s all that was needed.
As I said before. Trackless was folly. Seriously, you give me tracks and stop calling projects, etc by silly names and I am giving it more of a consideration than I am now. Though the bugs and bloat and all that other crap people go on about is still off putting, but I would have at least been trying it.
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