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It’s All Connected — Clip Relationships and The Magnetic Timeline Paradigm
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “the fascinating point in that video is that editing can imbue true – and transportive – meaning.”
Aindreas,
Marienbad is a great example, of course. If you were cutting that film and started with questions of story, you’d be lost as an editor. On the other hand it is highly structured (helped in no small way by script and prep). This is all the more wonderful since the film relies so much on story and storytelling techniques.
Franz.
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Seriously, you people are talking as if all the possibilities of an edit aren’t there for you when you use FCPX, if that’s your suggestion then might I humbly add you are completely wrong
Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure” -
[Steve Connor] “Seriously, you people are talking as if all the possibilities of an edit aren’t there for you when you use FCPX, if that’s your suggestion then might I humbly add you are completely wrong”
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
Steve,
Seriously, you’re going to reduce the thread to “you people”, one “suggestion” and a right/wrong sandbox fight?
[Steve Connor] “… if that’s your suggestion …”
You could read the thread to find out …
Franz.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “IT’S a timeline people. Its a scenario in which my thoughts about all of the elements are liable to change.
Its my. bloody. timeline. mine.
“Yeah. That’s where my head is at.
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[Steve Connor] “Seriously, you people are talking as if all the possibilities of an edit aren’t there for you when you use FCPX, if that’s your suggestion then might I humbly add you are completely wrong”
I will admit I am kind of lost in this conversation, but first:
[David Lawrence] “1) If a traditional timeline had intelligent groups and a clip layering/overlaping mode such that the editorial results of a clip collision scenario were similar to FCPX, would that give you the benefits of the magnetic timeline?
2) If “FCPX is “aware” of clip relationships in a way that traditional NLEs are not.”, how does that benefit the editor?
“1) It would give some benefits, but it would ruin the exalted track based organization. If track 6 is supposed to hold a certain type of item (like, text for example) and a non clip collision move bumped a few things up from 4 to 6, then your “horizontal organization” is hosed, so why have tracks in the first place? Pr has grouping, and I rather like it. The problem is, that group is not marked in any way shape or form until you click one of the clips that are part of it. You also have to ungroup the clips, make your change, then regroup the clips. If you have a lot of clips, this can be very tedious. The way FCPX attempts to deal with this is much more elegant, at least in my opinion, as it has several different way to deal with the groups, and you can make selections within the groups fairly easily.
(side note for those of you playing the home game. I recently found that if you press and hold “g” in FCPX and ‘kiss’ the edges of two clips together via click and drag, they will form a secondary storyline)
As far as Layering in the sense that Michael Gissing talked about it, I think this already exists in some form in some applications. It’s nodal based compositing, really. Having multiple layers stacked on top of each other to dissolve to/from only makes the most sense in video if you are compositing. It makes much more sense in audio where there are often many track of audio playing at the same time. This happens a lot less often in video unless you are editing in split screen all the time.
2) FCPX certainly expresses relationships differently than other NLEs. As Walter pointed out, if you study the data structure, the connection point is coded in to the FCPXML which allows those connection points to remain with an FCPXML round trip. It would also allow other applications to understand it, or use the information for translation. How does that benefit me as editor? From an editing standpoint, I can “write down” my intention by having a cluster of clips that are related to each other and won’t get “destroyed” by other clips moving in to that collection and that intention is pretty much permanently saved until I change it. In practice, managing connection points is not much different from managing tracks and layers. I find there’s a lot less meaning in X than in a tracked environment, but that’s perhaps just the way I personally work. And from a data stand point this benefits me as the relationship is actually coded in to the text which means I don’t lose it.
Now, back to me being lost.
Naturally, I like to compare X and Legend as really, that’s all I need to do. I can study the data model, which Walter S brought up in the other thread. It’s a very valid point. If you understand how X is transferring the material in a data sense, you can gain some understanding of how the program works. There’s no way to “codify” the out point, but the duration is codified. X+Y=Z, X and Z are given, solve for Y.
We are also talking about a really really young program. FCP Legend has many iterations and many years of maturity on X, as well as real world battle testing and feedback, and of course, the ever important developer access.
There are some things that are less than ideal, surely. Some problems are literally one keyboard shortcut away from being fixed, like the slip a primary clip without moving the secondary clip conundrum. Others are more challenging, like the Zones (linked) idea that we came up with a long time ago, or more track like visual (sorry, ‘spatial’) organization if that’s what people need. Better “in the timeline” audio editing is needed, and perhaps some new conventions that aren’t currently available in the program are needed, such as the ability to connect a clip to a secondary storyline, or a way to deal with compounds that doesn’t involve opening a separate window. Surely, there’s work to be done.
But as convention, there are so many things that are above and beyond what any NLE is doing at the moment, right now, today. For me, one of those is organization. Organization is where many other NLEs simply fall down, and I personally feel that FCPX’s organization is pretty damn good. I don’t have much of a problem with it. There are some mechanics that need to be worked out (like list view ranges and such) but the basics there. But, that’s me. It fits me. If it doesn’t fit you, there are many other programs that are more accessible than ever before that follow the tried and true Avid method of bins and sequences as containers.
The timeline does present clip relationships differently. I find myself not struggling with “controlling time” as some people seem to be. I have no idea if time is relative or absolute in any one program (I think it was even called “external” in FCP7 at some point which I simply don’t understand). I can mess up clips related to time pretty well in any application, and X is no different, but at the same time, I can control it, and X offers most of the tools to do so, so that debate is irrelevant to me personally.
Most of the time while editing, my clips relate to each other in their immediate vicinity. X does this fairly well. Secondary storylines need only to have one connection to the primary and you can edit those clip independently of the primary if you’d like. If you don’t want things connected, edit in the Primary, It is really that simple.
And perhaps the most under developed but potentially useful conventions in FCPX is Roles and the Timeline Index. I could see a lot more being done with these. The earlier examples of The Excel spreadsheet fit in here. If the Index could be used to select a group of clips easily, and Roles can be used to organize clips visually or otherwise, there could be many many very practical and helpful uses of those two conventions. But, FCPX is relatively young and we have to wait and see.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “If you don’t want things connected, edit in the Primary, It is really that simple. “
doesn’t that mean you are reduced to a V1 application? Isn’t that insane?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “doesn’t that mean you are reduced to a V1 application? Isn’t that insane?”
I’ll be honest, I’m tired. It might be that I am on a completely different schedule these days, it might be because I am having trouble trying to explain that FCPX can do most things, and explain it in a way that makes sense.
There are many things to not like in X that perhaps don’t fit everyone’s thought process, and there are also many things to like. And when it pertains to audio, there are some things it simply doesn’t do very well at all.
There are certain things that an editor needs to learn, just like a track based system, in order for the timeline to become an extension of your thoughts. If X simply doesn’t line up for someones needs, that is completely fine, and I get that.
I don’t see FCPX as a v1 (as in one video track) application. When I said if you don’t want things connected and put them in the primary, it assumed that you don’t want to edit with the connected clips moving around attached to a gap clip. I find the secondaries work very similarly to a primary and allow for most of the elements in that secondary to be ‘disconnected’ from other editing operations. You can use them to their advantage in this way. This means that before and after the connection point, anything that is in the primary, or other connected clips can be moved without penalty. Yes, the connections take some getting used to, but so what? When I transferred from M100 to FCP, capturing from tape for online was very very different, so what? Premiere’s patching takes getting used to as does its track based audio mixing and waveforms, and Adobe’s version of “auto-select”. If you like it, you’ll use it no matter what the convention.
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Also, I forgot my manners, thank you David Lawrence for putting the original post together.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Also, I forgot my manners, thank you David Lawrence for putting the original post together.”
Jeremy, you’re welcome. I’m really enjoying everyone’s posts.
And speaking of manners, Steve, apologies for the my flippant response above. I was just reacting to “you’re wrong”. I do understand where you’re coming from.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
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