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Jony Ives and the next FCPX GUI
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I’ve been editing a feature film on FCPX for last few months. my goals and creative process may be different then a lot of you alls. but i have a hard time understanding why the horizontal way of thinking that tracks invoque is a good thing for sound. every time i’m sitting in a sound mixing booth with a sound designer, they always over and over again talk about thinking on the vertical with sound.
for me, my fcpx process is very vertical. the stack of sfx that made the last moment impactful and powerful has nothing to do with the one i’m working on in the next moment. again this is just me, but i wouldnt want to connect them. to me they are discrete and the independent stacking at that moment in relation to primary timeline seems great.
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[Herb Sevush] “So is that track 3 or 4, when I’m looking at the screen and want to know where to adjust something.”
Select it in the timeline index and you are “teleported” there.
Some people need to see the map and travel along the road.
Others just need the coordinates and land where they have to be. -
It’s true that during the creative process FCPX’s vertical system is quite awesome. I have never been able to edit and adjust as fast, try new things, have more fun.
The hard part comes when it’s time to master/multichannel export.
It is here, if you weren’t careful with Roles during the edit, that things can slow down as it can be harder to discern where elements are since they are stacked in different layers all over.
Although, if you are remotely cognizant of Roles during the edit, even if its a cursory Role distinction, it helps in the end up.
Some limitations:
You can’t assign Roles in the import window, which would be great.
You cannot assign Roles to individual audio components in the browser, they must be assigned from a clip in a timeline of some sort. It’d be nice if that could change.
I do agree, though, that FCPX’s vertical nature is very helpful.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “possibly the trick is that you do the pair in sequence – intense vocal customer dissatisfaction can be half effective in setting the parameters for future constructive discussion?
“Not in my experience.
I’ll never forget a incident when my wife and I flew into Salt Lake City in mid-winter. At the time, we were AVIS Preferred customers and so we went to the outdoor kiosk to pick up our reserved car. The place was a madhouse. A huge snowstorm had messed up the entire system and there were literally 15 waiting customers all looking grumpy. As I made my way to the counter to check in, the counter guy was bearing the brunt of a massive verbal assault from a pissed off businessman – who demanded a supervisor on the phone RIGHT NOW. The counter guy made the call to corporate, and the businessguy started tearing the supervisor a new one as well – demanding not just a car, but the EXACT car he had reserved. Free to deal with me the counter guy gave me a strained smile and said, sorry, we’re just totally out of cars and way overbooked. I smiled back and said something like “Looks like you’re having a pretty bad day. We’re Avis Preferred but I bet everyone else here is as well, so I can see that you’re out of cars. I’ll hang for a while and just in case things change, if you have ANYTHING – clean or dirty – old or new – sub-compact or truck, doesn’t matter what class or rate – literally anything – that will be fine for my wife and I. I can see you have bigger problems than just mine. Then I smiled, gave the guy a shrug of sympathy and stepped back.
Literally one minute later, the lot guy came in the side door, slipped around behind the counter and quietly passed off soemthing to the counter guy.
Two sets of keys. Two. For fifteen upset customers.
He looked up, caught my eye. Smiled – and motioned me over. He bent across the counter, quietly said, “you’re the first guy in the last hour that hasn’t been a total dick to me. Have a great weekend.” And slid me the keys to what turned out to be an SUV with snow tires.
When I left the place, the businessguy was STILL yelling at the supervisor on the phone.
Reminded me that we’re all human beings and while yes, its possible to get better performance by demanding it, it’s also equally possible to get great service by being the kind of customer people want to satisfy.
FWIW.
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.
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Can’t innovate anymore, my ass…
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[Jeremy Garchow] “You cannot assign Roles to individual audio components in the browser, they must be assigned from a clip in a timeline of some sort. It’d be nice if that could change. “
Actually, if I’m understanding you, you definitely can assign roles to audio components in the browser, I do it all the time and it’s a huge timesaver. Right click clip, open in timeline, assign Roles. Done. Great for multichannel split source clips. 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
Kinda makes you wonder if those music guys Jacob is talking about are so comfortable since they presumably spend their days working with sheet music and scores. Which is kinda the ultimate VERTICAL arrangement of synchronized elements.
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.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I really want what we called Zones (color coded, too).”
As I mentioned in my seminar, color coding is a wonderful thing for visual reference when you’re working in the finder. But I’ve never seen a database where you can search or sort on an actual COLOR. WORDS for a colors sure. But not a color as a concept.
So it’s great for labels. But kinda a fail for tags, IMO.
Be interesting if somebody would build a system where it automagically let you use color chips (maybe pantone values under the hood?) to do real search, sort and find. But as of yet, I’ve never seen anything like that in any database I’ve worked with.
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.
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[Bill Davis] “But I’ve never seen a database where you can search or sort on an actual COLOR. WORDS for a colors sure. But not a color as a concept.
So it’s great for labels. But kinda a fail for tags, IMO.”
But that’s the point Bill, it is for labels. Not tags, not a database. a visual thing so you can be plying and say to yourself “here comes that effect section, and that explosion is too loud so let me grab it and change the level before the playhead gets there”. That kind of thing. Again, relatively easy if you have a half dozen audio clips piled up, not so easy if you have 20 or so.
It’s like your music analogy. Yes, chords are represented as a vertical stack of notes. But, without the horizontal lines that make up the staff, what the hell notes are you going to play? There needs to be a visual reference. Not rigid tracks, but some way to organize things other than “wherever it fits”.
Don’t get me wrong, I really really like “wherever it if its”, but when an audio bed gets deep, magnetism needs a little help. And to me, this isn’t really true on the picture side, though it’s be nice maybe. But connected video clips pile up nicely and generally behave as you’d expect.
YM, clearly, MV 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “Actually, if I’m understanding you, you definitely can assign roles to audio components in the browser, I do it all the time and it’s a huge timesaver. Right click clip, open in timeline, assign Roles. Done. Great for multichannel split source clips. :-)”
But that’s the problem, as I mentioned, it has to be a timeline of sorts.
If all my video clips have the same number of audio channels, I can select all of them and change the channel status, even name the stems as I want, but I cannot assign a role to each component.
If I do take the time to name each component, that information isn’t searchable in the timeline index.
So let’s say I named each channel of 64 two channel clips “lav” and “boom”.
It’s be nice to be able to add those to a Role.
I can’t do it from the Browser unless I do all 64 clips separately. If I add them to a timeline, do a TL search for boom, nothing shows. If I add them to clean timeline, and assign a Role, I now have to source the clips from that timeline as the Role doesn’t carry up to the Browser.
If I can’t have a track that I can put the boom channel in, let me at least use the awesome fcpx devices to select all boom channels, or assign a boom Role to components from the Browser so I can use the index to select the Role.
Know what I’m sayin’?
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