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It’s All Connected — Clip Relationships and The Magnetic Timeline Paradigm
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Nah. Temporary compounds are generally an unacceptable workaround. For me, transitions in and out of the compound get broken and then don’t go back correctly.
If you’re into workarounds, simply lifting it out of the primary is the safest bet, as it generally won’t affect your edit if you forget to put it back. Or reconnecting the clip that’s connected to something else.
But it’s nuts any which way. This is an oversight. This isn’t a different way of working. Sometimes it’s just about right and wrong. I mean you could make the argument that one particular clip connected should slide with it by default, but you could have a huge secondary or compound connected to that point. Or a music track that the rest of the edit is synced to. Problem is, there’s no warning that the rest of the edit is about to be thrown out of whack.
FCP 7 was pretty good at warning you things might be thrown out of sync, because it actually assumed everything was currently in sync. It had much more respect for your edit decisions than X. If one track were to ripple independent of other tracks, you were probably going to get an error or collision which stopped you. Unless of course one practiced the horrible concept of locking tracks. That was the fastest way to throwing a timeline out of sync, because it essentially turned off any notifications and warnings that the locked track was being pushed out of sync with the other tracks. which was often the complete opposite of what people thought it was for.
Back on compounding and nesting: even Avid of 1996-2000 (years I used it daily) was better in that you could open the nest right there witthin the track so that all all the audio was still available and the nest could be edited in relation to the full edit. FCPs methods have always been more akin to an After Effects precomp or opening an avid nest in its own timeline.
I like where FCP is going, but it’s timeline needs to add quite a few features to bring it up to form. But the power of the app overall is worth dealing with all it’s issues.
If I didn’t love it, I’d just switch over to premiere and be done with it.
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Cool Idea.
But don’t stop there.
If you’re going to enable timecode track clip connections up top, why not enable them below the timeline stack as well?
Then the editor could “pin” internal notes as titles relative to timeline positions for the legions who really want the “fixed length” timeline work modes ala Legacy.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bret Williams] “For me, transitions in and out of the compound get broken and then don’t go back correctly.”
Don’t see how this applies to the specific steps I described to solve your problem. And it’s not a workaround because the specific mechanics of the ‘magnetic’ timeline don’t allow for what you are trying to do directly. If it would it would be a track based timeline…
[Bret Williams] “FCP 7 was pretty good at warning you things might be thrown out of sync,”
Not for things that weren’t video-audio sync clips in the first place. Music wouldn’t tell you that you shifted it out from the original point it was to total time, if you know what I mean. Maybe X could have the old style out-of-sync markers for audio-video sync clips too, but frankly I don’t need them because the only time I break original audio-video sync clips apart is when I actually don’t want to have things in sync. Otherwise I just expand the display for the clip or clips and collapse after I’m done (don’t work with multitrack audio beyond 2 track so I don’t know how I would deal with these?) Again it’s a different way of working with clips when dealing with the mechanics of this timeline model. The discussion always falls short because it just tries to look at former ways to solve a specific problem, but the new timeline doesn’t allow for the same operation(s). Because of how the new timeline is build internally you have to do it differently. Sometimes this means less steps, in other cases maybe more steps. Better or worse is up to the user to decide, but I think it needs to be looked at in more detail to really make the call. At least that’s how I approach it.
[Bret Williams] “Back on compounding and nesting: even Avid of 1996-2000 (years I used it daily) was better in that you could open the nest right there witthin the track so that all all the audio was still available and the nest could be edited in relation to the full edit. FCPs methods have always been more akin to an After Effects precomp or opening an avid nest in its own timeline. “
The one point I agree, this would be handy sometimes.
Cheers
Carsten -
no – sorry, I mean, a functioning version of the timeline where parent child clip connections are suspended. Although it probably has messy ramifications, that I haven’t thought through.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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David,
To momentarily ignore the questions at hand and add further questions – your post (and the subsequent responses) got me thinking about clip relationships. I thought I’d sketch out a summary or lexicon of the kinds of relationships that we’re talking about – since there are a range of relationships, each with its own concerns.
Before discussing “grouping” as you’ve outlined, it’s worth noting that grouping connects clips both serially and in parallel – that is, there are two kinds of relationships being “locked” – serial and parallel.
More on that in a second, but it’s important to note also that there are various levels of certainty about relationships that we’re discussing. This might be best explained by illustrations: so in case one, video sync with associated sound is a fairly “certain” or “hard” relationship that we either want to keep or at least be aware of as an edit progresses; in case two, the relationship of a close-up to a wide shot or video to music would be more contingent, more likely to change more often, and therefor we might call it “softer” (we may wish to lock that relationship to do some work, but it is just as likely to be unlocked and changed as an edit progresses).
Using these two ways of categorizing clip relationships, we can break down typical relationships in a timeline:
SYNC V&A (PRODUCTION)
– video and sound recorded together in one clip by a camera or recorder (Parallel)
SYNC V&A (POST)
– dual system recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)
– multicam recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)
– playback recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)SYNC (EDITORIAL) (“Faux Sync”)(Parallel, but could also be Serial)
– Example: adding a sound effect specific (door close, vehicle pass) that you wish to maintain in sync with picture
– Example: adding sound effects to animation that you wish to maintain in sync with pictureCOMPOSITED PICTURE (Parallel, but could also be Serial)
– Example: green screen, titles, etc.Editorial Sync and Composited Picture (the last two) might even be considered the same category – they are things you’ve put in the timeline that you wish to keep together on some fundamental level; in practice though they work quite differently in terms of their workflow implications so I’ve left them separate.
TRACKS
– Tracks represent a Serial kind of grouping – you can see, select, or affect all serial clips in one trackBUSSES
– A supergrouping of Tracks, therefore both Parallel and SerialIt’s interesting to note (as Michael Gissing has) that the idea of tracks (as serial groups) and therefor busses as supergroups, tend to be underused in NLEs. This becomes evident if you think of adding an effect to an audio track (in a DAW) and then try to imagine the same in an NLE (possible in Premiere Pro), and then try to imagine doing something similar to a video track. More on this below
ROLES
– Roles (in FCPX) represent an arbitrary, user-defined grouping (Parallel & Serial)PARENT / CHILD GROUPINGS
– someone else will have to write this one; though I’m not sure it is fundamentally different from Editorial Groups (they could probably be included there)EDITORIAL GROUPS
– Examples: Pro Tools Grouping, Premiere Pro Grouping, FCP7 Nesting (sort of), FCP X Compounds etc. (Parallel and Serial)
– in short this category encompasses any way of combining material in the timelineThe Editorial Groups – the actual subject of your post – is of course the most contingent group; it should be easy to group (to maintain integrity) and ungroup (to change). It’s also interesting because it encompasses serial decisions much more than the other groups, some of which are entirely parallel).
By way of a related digression …
One aspect to all the track conception discussions which has been very evident but not as directly discussed is the different meanings that tracks have for audio and video. Audio tracks are very much modelled on the audio mixer (though only Premiere Pro seems to have taken this analogy in a more developed direction). Video tracks seemed to have arrived as an analogous counterpart to audio tracks, also partially from the multi-deck broadcast & ganged film flatbed analogy, and partially from the Photoshop layers analogy. Video tracks have characteristics of both Photoshop layers and the organizational grid of a mixer, without quite being either. On the other hand, video tracks clearly allow for the audio analogy – you can “mix” layers of video (not quite as easily) as you do audio.
Picture editing tends to be concerned more with serial editing (shot after shot) and sound editing tends to bring issues of parallel editing (mixing) to the fore. Of course there are issues of serial editing in sound and parallel editing in picture (compositing and superimpositions for example). But because audio is often more concerned with parallel relationships, audio tracks are more apparently useful in terms of their editing function (mixing) as well as their organizing function. Video tracks seem to be less evidently useful in this way – this is usually evident from looking at timelines from novice editors – they don’t usually have a use for more than one or two tracks. More experienced editors, and particularly those involved in traditional online situations, tend to use video tracks in a more organizational way.
But returning to the questions at hand …
I think I wanted to outline that basic nomenclature because it’s clear already from the comments here that there are specific differences in the terms of what is needed for the different levels of “grouping” – production sync, for instance, is a very hard relationship that I want to be able to find easily. But it is also useful to think of it as one end of a spectrum of relationships. It’s clear to me that there is some flexible hierarchy of groupings needed – and yet they should in fact be thought of as part of a spectrum.
None of this, of course, answers your questions.
Franz.
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Outstanding post, Franz. Thank you! This is an excellent breakdown of types of relationships that occur in the course of an edit.
One of my goals in starting this topic is to get us all to think about what we specifically mean by the term “relationship”. I think this post is very helpful in giving us a shared language.
More importantly, as you’ve so clearly pointed out, relationships are wholly dependent on editorial context and the editor’s intentions. I think this is a “primary” 😉 reason why many of us have difficulty with the magnetic timeline editorial model.
Lots to think about here.
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David Lawrence
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[Michael Gissing] “I have blathered extensively about clip layering on tracks as a method to avoid accidental overwrite as this has been my world for 15 years using dSP and Fairlight DAWS. “
[Franz Bieberkopf] “I think you are specifically talking about Fairlight, but I am wondering if you can elaborate to more general terms per David’s post.”
Michael, I’d also enjoy learning more about the UI mechanics of the DAWs you’ve worked with.
I did a little research and found this white paper from 2004 on the Fairlight Dream System. It has this description of multi-layer editing:
Multi-layer Editing
When recording multiple takes at the same time-code, the system will create a stack of clips with the most recently recorded clip on the top.The Takes display at the top of the display screen shows the names of all of the clip layers that are under the cursor at the present location. The Takes Menu permits scrolling down the list to lift any clip to the top of the stack, allowing its playback.
In the same way, multiple takes can be edited together. Clips that contain useful phrases are placed on top of the stack successively, then the non-useful pieces are cut away. The remaining clips may be slipped into place and crossfaded where necessary. The “All Layers” modifier allows edits to affect all layers simultaneously.
I’m familiar with the concept of layered audio “takes” from working in Logic Pro. Logic allows you to record any number of takes for any enabled track. If there’s already something recorded at a particular time code location, specifying a new take essentially creates a new audio layer on top of the track at that point. Takes can be switched for playback by selecting from a drop down menu.The Fairlight sounds like it does this and more. I’m curious what tools it provides and how you use them to move a particular layer horizontally. For example, if you decide you want to take one of the clips in the layer stack and move it not to the top of the stack but rather, in front of the stack, what kinds of tools and UI feedback do the Fairlight (and other DAWs) provide?
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David Lawrence
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[Herb Sevush] “The EMC editor, the first PC NLE and arguably the first modern NLE, had this as a feature, at least in it’s last few years when I worked with it back in the 90’s. Whenever you did an overwrite edit the underlying clips still existed underneath the top layer. At any point you could reveal what was under any clip. This was 15 years ago and while it wasn’t elegant, there was no list of what was on top and what was underneath, it did work.”
Herb,
Same question I had for Michael. Did the EMC let you move clips horizontally?
BTW, I found this on YouTube. Nostalgia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpQ0vnOVNE_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Sandeep Sajeev] “My question would be how does this affect sound? Video is not a problem, but how do these layers function when the source clips being edited in have sound attached, and record area has sound attached as well?”
Sandeep,
I believe a good general UI solution for layering will work equally well for audio as it does for video. Even though we perceive audio and video through different senses, they are both time-based media, and are represented and manipulated and very similar ways in a 2D graphical environment. While they each have unique properties and possibilities, in general, I don’t believe they need to be treated as differently as many people think.
Glad you’re enjoying these conversations!
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David Lawrence
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[Bret Williams] “4 or 5 very different project in and I have yet to detach audio. I’m sure there would be a reason, but I can’t find it yet.”
I unlink and relink audio and video so frequently, I have a dedicated button on my mouse for just that function.
For me, sound drives everything, especially when working with interviews. When I’m making a “radio cut”, I’m pulling sound bites from all over the the place. Often I just need the sound and don’t want video, but having sync markers makes it easy to bring it back if needed. When making detail audio edits, I might need to add room tone, breaths, or even frankenclip whole new phrases or words. Being able to quickly switch between linked and unlinked audio makes this fast and easy for me.
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David Lawrence
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