Hysteria

[Paul Dickin]

[David Cherniack] “…incremental improvements. They didn’t change how humans interact…”
Hi
The medieval monks sorted out books – binding, pages to be turned with their written word on, inset illustrations etc. Along came Gutenberg and Caxton and made no changes to the human>book paradigm.

Not a big deal?

[David Cherniack]

[Paul Dickin] “The medieval monks sorted out books – binding, pages to be turned with their written word on, inset illustrations etc. Along came Gutenberg and Caxton and made no changes to the human>book paradigm.”

You’re confusing reading a book with using a tool.

The architectural stabilization of any human-tool interface is a process that happens in the early development of any new tool. The car is a good example. The first cars did not have foot brakes, steering wheels, rubber tires. They soon became standards because they did the job better than the hand brake, steering stick, and metal rims. Can you imagine NLE’s without timelines? There were a few. Lucas’s Edit Droid introduced timelines and bins in the mid-late 80’s.

I’m not saying that the interface, once it stabilizes is static. Incremental changes are constant and when radically new technology becomes available it can profoundly re-stabilize the architecture around new ways of doing things.

Is this true of FCP-X? Possibly but it remains to be seen how much it’s designed for a future of tablet editing. On your normal keyboard and mouse interface I see what may be incremental improvements but it also remains to be seen how applicable they are to high level, as opposed to consumer, editing.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Dennis Radeke]

[Paul Dickin] “Apple has chucked that out, and is apparently about to integrate the application directly into the OS’s core underpinnings.”

I think that all of the other companies are doing much the same and I think the analogy is a bit far fetched. If you’re 64-bit, you’re tying into Grand Central Dispatch… This idea could be right in certain cases, but my point is that if the OS has features, other companies can tie into it. FCP X may get a head start on OS X Lion, but the OS business unit must make it open for any company to tie into.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
What’s with the ‘no timeline in FCP X’ notion?

What Apple seem to be doing (if you read their developer documentation for AV Frameworks) is making the timeline (seen in the program’s GUI) an AV Mutable Composition. At OS (= AV Frameworks) level.

That means FCP X is ‘only’ the GUI. Any other GUI – call it Motion or Soundtrack or Color, whatever – can have direct and maybe simultaneous access to the AV Frameworks assets that comprise your work-in-progress ‘edit.

No round-tripping (or tripping 😉 ). Just enhanced tools for enhanced productivity, once the full suite is all developed. 🙂

Add that to extensively developed and pervasive metadata databasing, again at OS system leve,l for accessibility to any GUI running…
Big deal.

[Paul Dickin]

[Dennis Radeke] “…all of the other companies are doing much the same…”
Hi
Adobe yes.
I don’t know anything about Avid.
It remains to be seen whether Adobe’s cross-platform Windows/OS X implementation running on a Mac is as elegant as Apple’s. 😉

[David Cherniack]

“when radically new technology becomes available it can profoundly re-stabilize the architecture around new ways of doing things.

Is this true of FCP-X? ”

[Paul Dickin] “What’s with the ‘no timeline in FCP X’ notion?”

Paul, where does the paragraph above produce a ‘no timeline in FCP-X” interpretation? Try reading a little more slowly. It connects the dots better.

We’ll see how the AV Frameworks implementation plays out in actuality for pro use. But it’s not what I’m talking about. There’s a big difference between a Ferrari engine and a Model T. But both are engines with steering wheels, gas pedals and brakes. Back to the original question: Will FCP -X profoundly change the GUI architecture of the NLE to be worthy of the appellation ‘paradigm shift’? We’ll see, but not from what I’ve seen so far.

David
AllinOneFilms.com