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It’s All Connected — Clip Relationships and The Magnetic Timeline Paradigm
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “If you’re going to put words in people’s mouths, it tends to curb discussion, rather than promote it. Straw-man rhetoric is not used to further discussion.”
This is not my intention. I am curious to see how people think that fcpx is a/b and what that even means as I don’t find it’s an a/b editor anymore than other layer/track based editors. M100 was an a/b editor until they made it more track like.
[Franz Bieberkopf] “Having not worked with it”
It all makes perfect sense now. You’ve never worked with it. Your arguments have truly been theory this whole time.
My apologies, I now know where you’re coming from.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “My mind is melting. How could you attach to a cut when there are only frames to attach to. A cut isn’t an entity, it’s simply a frame from a different clip, or from a different point in time on the same clip.”
By attaching the connecting clip to a specific time relative to the media container on the primary, not to a specific frame in the clip within the container.
Let’s Inception this, and go a level deeper. Right now, FCPX makes secondary time relative to the absolute time of the primary — a literal frame in the media within the clip container on the timeline. I’m suggesting that sometimes it’s more useful to make secondary time relative to the relative time of the primary — the absolute time of the container itself, not the absolute time of the media it contains.
I don’t know if that made the melting better or worse…
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 -
Jeremy,
We had Bill’s blessing, third post in, to talk about theory.
[Bill Davis] “You want to knock around theory ideas, have fun.”
Franz.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Oh. Infinite thinness. Yes. I remember that from Physics class.”
In all our discussions, I’ve been assuming frictionless spherical clips in a vacuum.
I can only assume this accounts for any differences between theory and practice.
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 -
[Franz Bieberkopf] “We had Bill’s blessing, third post in, to talk about theory.”
But I thought it was contingent on our discussing ice cream sundaes vs pumpkin pie.
[Bill Davis]But at the end of the day, it’s pretty hard to convince anyone who’s a big Hot Fudge Sundae fan that Pumpkin Pie with fresh whipped cream is a superior desert – no matter how many arguments you make by deconstructing the ingredients.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[David Lawrence] “That said, I recently did a project in Premiere that would have been virtually impossible in FCP. It used adjustment layers to create a palette of effects that were be mixed, matched, tweaked and previewed in real-time with no rendering. Having 64-bit performance was great, but Premiere’s adjustment layers were what really made a difference.”
I suppose it’s worth noting that Avid has had adjustment layers for years (you can add effects to filler and it works as an adjustment layer), and FCPX has a clever hack for adjustment layers via a blank title template.
Nonetheless, for this kind of layered compositing/effects within an NLE, I think Pr is the right choice (though you may make a good argument for Smoke as well).
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 -
[tony west] “No matter how good you are it’s still a 32 bit program right David. Are you overlooking that slow render?”
Point of pedantry: going 64-bit lets a program address more RAM, but it doesn’t necessarily make it faster (see Edius user testimony for testimony on a very fast 32-bit NLE).
There are a lot of optimizations and architectural differences in both FCPX and Pr beyond simply being 64-bit that account for the speed improvement over FCP Legend.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “I don’t know if that made the melting better or worse…”
Well, I just don’t see what it would do. If things got trimmed or rolled out, or even cut further what happens to it? That’s why I was confused about attaching to a “cut”. If you want to attach to a particular frame of SEQUENCE tc, then I get it. But a cut is just a malleable as a frame because it is just another frame. Meaning, when you move clips the cut point moves too.
I see what people want, and that is no connections, or at least the option to not have a connection.
[Walter Soyka] “I’m suggesting that sometimes it’s more useful to make secondary time relative to the relative time of the primary — the absolute time of the container itself, not the absolute time of the media it contains.”
Yes, like holding modifier to trim/roll a clip with a connection and not have the connecting clip move.
Now, you simply move the clip out of the primary, make the move, and move it back in. It doesn’t take long, but it can be an inconvenience.
Or if you want to move everything but a few connected clips, perhaps there’s a temporary break clip connection. That seems like it would get kind messy, but who knows. Right now if you need to leave things where they are, secondary storylines and a good connection point can handle that, or shuffling what it is the primary and what isn’t. It’s just like manipulating clips in tracks in the way that you have to actually think about what you want to do, which clips to select or deselect, which clips to put on different racks or not. I have ben saying this for a while now, I don’t think FCPX is different in that way. It operates differently yes, but it doesn’t “do anything for you” anymore so that FCP7 does or doesn’t. They just operate in different ways and you as editor still have to edit.
Audio still sucks. Detaching audio from connected clips reattaches them to the primary. That is a design flaw. A simple fix would be to allow to attach to more than the primary and all would be right with the world.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “Jeremy,
We had Bill’s blessing, third post in, to talk about theory.
[Bill Davis] “You want to knock around theory ideas, have fun.”
Franz.”
It’s not that I mind talking theory, Franz, but I need to respect that you have no experience with FCPX. Every discussion we have had makes a lot more sense now. Again, apologies.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Well, I just don’t see what it would do. If things got trimmed or rolled out, or even cut further what happens to it? That’s why I was confused about attaching to a “cut”. If you want to attach to a particular frame of tc, then I get it. But a cut is just a malleable as a frame because it is just another frame. Meaning, when you move clips the cut point moves too.”
If the point of a connected clip is to cover a cut, then it is not properly related to any specific frame of either the outgoing or incoming clips on the underlying layer. It is related to the cut itself, and if the cut moves, the cutaway should move with it.
NLEs already recognize edit points as objects that are distinct from the clips that define them. (You can select an edit point and roll it or add a transition, for example.) This may be a corner case, but I’m just trying to point out that the FCPX clip connection model doesn’t catch all relationship cases.
[Jeremy Garchow] “They just operate in different ways and you as editor still have to edit.”
See Cooper Kingston’s Edit Button:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DD6WAr4A4Y[Jeremy Garchow] “Audio still sucks. Detaching audio from connected clips reattaches them to the primary. That is a design flaw. A simple fix would be to allow to attach to more than the primary and all would be right with the world.”
Yes — I support flattening the object model a bit so that multiple tiers are possible.
Of course, this also raises the question of the merits of FCPX’s integrated AV handling.
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
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