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Jony Ives and the next FCPX GUI
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Better warm up to it.
Colors aren’t a text based search mechanism, but color certainly carries information, and we can assign information to it, be it text, pictures, feelings, warnings, whatever.”
Hey, I’m not arguing against building in a color labeling system such as you describe.
I’d just hate to see the editors coming from Legacy systems see the color tagging and become satisfied that that might be the FIRST place they go when they want to categorize things.
If they were to tilt in that direction, it could conceivably slow them from exploring and using the actual database tags – which would presumably be a system that they’ve NEVER had any experience with.
This is NOT a big deal.
I just know how long it took me to start to develop my own purposeful tagging rules for my own work. I’d like to see others not have to go through the same learning curve, particularly the legions of editors who might come to X without the experience of “shop” work – where an administrative layer is making sure they follow the internal shop asset naming rules.
No more than that.
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] “If they were to tilt in that direction, it could conceivably slow them from exploring and using the actual database tags – which would presumably be a system that they’ve NEVER had any experience with.”
While I see where you’re coming from, I really think you’re misunderstanding everyones concerns. Color coding Roles, or grouping Roles, is strictly a way to get an *visual* snapshot of what’s going on in your sequence, to me anyway. I use the index, tagging, markers Roles… All the cool stuff in X to find and keep track of specific clips, but there needs to be a way to keep things instantly visually readable, for lack of a better word, when I look at a sequence as it’s playing along. Yes, you can highlight Roles, but as it stands now there’s a problem in that multichannel clips with multliple Roles, highlight no matter which role you select. If you expand the components you can see which channel is highlighted, but if it’s collapsed… no way to tell. It’s an unfinished feature, bug, whatever, and Apple takes it seriously. X is amazing, but it’s not done, not by a long shot. And honestly, I find that pretty exciting. 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
To be honest, because of the magnetic timeline, I often find that in FCPX I can re-work an excisting timeline much EASIER then I could in FCP7. I can just remove things, replace some stuff, most of it all stays in sync, depending on how you put your beats of course. Sometimes with music as a connected clip, this isn’t the case, but still. I had to do some changes on a timeline recently, and it was so quick to change things, check it, and export it.
The magneticism is definitely something you have to learn to work with. And there are some instances where it still works against you, and not for you (I had my time of hating secondary storylines), but a lot of it is adjustment, and it works like a dream once you get used to it.
And with lifting things from their storyline, working with connected clips, you can override some magnetics. A lot of time I think in FCPX we seem to have best of both worlds. -
I find the magnetic timeline to be much faster in this regard as well.
Changes aren’t as difficult to untangle.
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[Craig Seeman] “There’s nothing like picking up another person’s edit and not finding the post-it. Your V5 may not be what I use V5 for. Roles forces you to put the “post-it” on each clip.”
One of the lovely touches of my dear departed *edit is that you could apply a name to any track and it would appear where the track header was – amazed that other NLE’s haven’t tried this. The “post-it” becomes part of the timeline.
[Craig Seeman] “I guess as a linear editor I find the index like a much improved EDL with metadata in which I can find any clip and any Role and click on it and be there. At that point in time, on the timeline, I see everything I need that’s relevant without out a slew of empty tracks. I like the consolidated vertical space.”
When I get producer’s notes after I submit my cut I travel thru the timeline (back to front) stopping at the time codes indicated, trying to fix problems that have been pointed out to me – when I get to a spot my task is to understand what’s going on in the timeline so I can make corrections – you seem to focus on looking for things and having your index take you there, my focus is on already being somewhere and trying to figure out what’s going on.
[Craig Seeman] “To me FCPX is the “normal” timeline and tracks are aberrant.”
Unless you’ve stopped working with any other NLE you are talking about preference not normality. Normatives aren’t subjective. Yes, to the sub-class of editors who solely work in X, and have never worked with anything else, tracks are not normal; but to the much larger class of editors with experience in the entire scope of editing, tracks are the norm, even if you don’t like them.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “One of the lovely touches of my dear departed *edit is that you could apply a name to any track and it would appear where the track header was – amazed that other NLE’s haven’t tried this. The “post-it” becomes part of the timeline. “
I never used *edit, but if I’m understanding it correctly you want the option to name your tracks (eg., A1 as Dialogue, A2 as SFX, etc)? If so, both Avid and Premiere give you this functionality. Avid has had it for years, Premiere I know has had it since 5.5 (probably sooner).
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Herb Sevush] “Unless you’ve stopped working with any other NLE you are talking about preference not normality. “
Preceding NLEs, for 10 years I had no tracks. On my first NLE, the CMX6000, I had no tracks. Trackless timelines predate tracks. That’s normal to me.
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[Herb Sevush] “If everyone acted as you did the world would be a nicer place, but come a snowy day, you’d all be civilly stuck in the snow together.”
Nope.
AVIS was leaving money on the table that day.
No properly operated business can tolerate that (except as a rare exception) for long.
The correction mechanism was already built into the system.
The yelling guy will NEVER be the driver of systemic change because his effectiveness is blunted by the fact that for every guy who loses it and yells, there are a hundred (or more likely ten thousand) who have the manners NOT to yell at the counter guy because they know he can’t effect any meaningful change.
This is precisely the problem with the year one X bitching.
It was people yelling about their FEELINGS (just like the car rental guy) rather than actually yelling about the problems. The solutions to most of the problems being yelled about were already understood inside Apple (as we can see in hindsight) and were being addressed all along.
So the only purpose the yelling served was to make the yelling people feel better. But I’d argue that the biggest effect of all the initial hue and cry was merely to delay the exploration of the software by the very class of potential users who could have best benefited from exploring it more deeply at the outset.
So now we have a peculiar and kinda wide swath of longtime pros who are nearly 2 years behind the curve in learning the quirks of what increasingly looks to be ONE long range professional contender for the future of editing.
Kind of a bummer for them.
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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[Craig Seeman] “Preceding NLEs, for 10 years I had no tracks. On my first NLE, the CMX6000, I had no tracks. Trackless timelines predate tracks. That’s normal to me.”
If your trying to say you’ve edited for years without a timeline, yes that’s true, so did I. But your claiming that you’ve edited on “trackless timelines” for years, and that it was the norm for you – OK show me. Just remember that an EDL is not a timeline, under any definition. A timeline, which is a graphic representation of a film editors bench, has always had tracks up till now.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “But your claiming that you’ve edited on “trackless timelines” for years, and that it was the norm for you – OK show me”
NLEs, CMX6000, I believe the first version of Avid 1989, Media 100 I believe was only a title track. So early NLEs were also trackless. Avid added tracks IIR and then others followed (CMX went under). I believe EMC also had no tracks although I only trained but never did actual jobs with it.
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