-
FCPX and time code
-
I didn’t see any mention of the obvious clip skimming. cmd+option+s will skim clips individually if you’re mousing over them in the timeline, and show their TC in the tc window.
-
[Bill Davis] “That’s EXACTLY what a range select then favorite or otherwise tag it operation does. It creates a persistent in and out selection in the event library. “
That’s an extra and unnecessary step, when you simply want to temporarily hold selected in/out points, as you review a few takes and go back-and-forth between them. I’ve done the ranged-based favorites, too. But… The other day I was moving quickly among a few clips and really found the lack of persistent ins/out (holding the last points selected) as making this operation a lot slower (and more frustrating) than other NLEs.
I view ranged favorites as the equivalent to subclips, not persistent ins/outs. I generally don’t subclip in other NLEs, as it’s usually unnecessary there.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Uh no Bill, that’s not at all what I’m saying. It does have persistence when you make it a favorite or tag it. And that is how I’m telling my editors to work around the problem.
What I’m pointing out is that if you set an in and an out on a clip in the event library, and don’t make it a favorite, and then you navigate away to something else (the timeline for example to check something – like timecode), when you navigate back to your clip, your in and out is gone and you have to start over. In 7, you can set an in and an out in the viewer of a clip from the browser, you can do whatever to another clip and come back to your original one in the browser, open it to the viewer, and the ins and outs are still there. It’s kind of convenient for editing.
-
Others take their “Favorites” a bit more seriously. Not just an in and out they might use. One, Favorites, is used in logging, the other, persistent ins/outs, is a temporary thought about a clip, maybe even a subset of the “favorite.” It’s kind of irritating that you can’t mark a quick in/out (and not put it in your favorites, cuz you don’t know if it IS a favorite yet) then look at another possible choice, and then try to come back to it to find the marks are gone. AND, if you do use favorites, it better not overlap another, because it will get joined with the other, making the favorites technique for this particular application even more pointless.
That said, I understand why there is only one range ever at a time. in X there isn’t a viewer. We don’t edit from a viewer. The entire bin/event is the viewer. When you press Q,W,E it grabs from the range. If multiple clips had ranges, there’d be no way to know which one.
My guess is that implementation of a viewer will facilitate persistent ins/outs. I think this issue is kinda like copy/paste was on the iphone. Apple kinda wrote themselves into a corner and they’re trying to figure out the best way before they commit to a methodology. Perhaps they could have some sort of range cache, where you can press a key while hovering over a clip, and it brings up the previous range you had selected. Kind of a behind the scenes not permanent favorite type thing.
-
yeah that would be a good use of the HUD.
-
[Bret Williams] “My guess is that implementation of a viewer will facilitate persistent ins/outs.”
I think that getting PIOPs to work in FCPX is a lot more complicated than that.
PIOPs are properties of clips, but a lot of the objects that we interact with in FCPX are not actually clips; they are ranges which are not stored as objects themselves, but rather as references to objects.
What’s the difference? PIOPs to clips is one-to-one; the PIOPs are stored with the clip. PIOPs to ranges is one-to-many; where do you store the PIOP? It can’t go with the clip itself, as the clip may be referred to by many ranges, and it can’t go with the range, because the range isn’t real and may be defined by any of a number of overlapping methods.
Although I’m a PIOP fan and think that they are a worthwhile feature for an NLE to have, I think that they are collateral damage in the new FCPX data model. The best I would hope for now is that selection and deselection operations are pushed onto the undo stack so that clicking away from an un-favorited range could be undone so as to avoid destroying valuable user data.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember spending hours at the library with stacks of books doing research for a school paper.
Keep your hand up if you remember photocopying important sections from books so you could easily reference them later.
Keep your hand up if you remember how a book you were just reading would close automatically once you started reading a different book.
Wait, where did all the hands go?
Making a favorite is not the same thing as leaving I/O points set until the user explicitly removes them.
-
[Walter Soyka] “I think that getting PIOPs to work in FCPX is a lot more complicated than that.
PIOPs are properties of clips, but a lot of the objects that we interact with in FCPX are not actually clips; they are ranges which are not stored as objects themselves, but rather as references to objects. “
But why should that be the case? I don’t see temporarily holding a single PIOP on a clip as any different (code-wise) than writing a Favorite. Currently a single set of PIOPs is held when you stay with a clip and go back and forth between that clip and the project timeline. They are only lost when you go to another clip. Why not hold that in RAM or a state or cache file that’s flushed when you exit the app?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “Making a favorite is not the same thing as leaving I/O points set until the user explicitly removes them.”
No it’s not. But as Walter concisely pointed out – in a conditional/relational construct like the database in X – stuff that worked great when clips were just a dumb thing in a bucket with a few simple things to connect to – just doesn’t always function the same when the underlying organizing principals change.
Personally, I kinda think losing even a useful convenience like saving the operator two clicks (drag then favorite) to “save the state” of a selection, is a pretty small penalty for access to the huge power that having the solid beginnings of a real relational database bolted onto the editing engine in X provides.
I get that for editors who live or die on timeline operations, this is a hassle.
I just hope they can entertain the idea that the very same thing that makes this operation more difficult to code if Walters analysis is correct, simultaneously enables X to be a much better tool in some other areas.
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.
-
[Oliver Peters] “I don’t see temporarily holding a single PIOP on a clip as any different (code-wise) than writing a Favorite.”
It seems like they ARE different to me. X is built around tracking changes to metadata. A “favorite” or any other tagged range is your decision baked into the metadata. A range selection, OTOH is just a temporary narrowing of the operators focus.
The difference is that one is permanent – the other ephemeral – and I get some want the temporary thing to be “conditionally persistent” but I can accept that there might be valid reasons why something which was trivial in the flat-file world, not being as trivial in a relational world.
Then again, what I know about programming is barely more than what I know about bandicoots.
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.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up