“Lanes” vs. “tracks”… potato-poTAHto

[Charlie Austin]

[Mark Raudonis] “So if you call it a “lane” it’s NOT a “track”. I see what they did there!
“

At the risk of being shouted down… it’s not a track. ‘Cuz in Pr today, I can’t turn the damn things off! ? Maybe a uh… maglev rail? lol

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[John Rofrano]

[Mark Raudonis] “So if you call it a “lane” it’s NOT a “track”. I see what they did there!”

I agree with Charlie it’s not a Track but for a different reason. What it really is is a Group. If it were a Track, every audio clip would be in a separate lane but they don’t behave that way.

For example, if you have 3 “dialog” audio clips stacked on top of each other, in a track based NLE you would have 3 tracks. In FCP X you would have 1 lane called “dialog” with the 3 clips still stacked within it.

So they are not like Tracks at all. They are Horizontal Groupings by Role and can be moved as a group and manipulated as a group. Tracks don’t behave that way. More like audio buses than tracks. It’s a rather brilliant when you think about it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[Charlie Austin]

[John Rofrano] “More like audio buses than tracks. It’s a rather brilliant when you think about it.”

Yep. And think about the possibilities that opens up. The CC Role mixing seems like just a start, but who knows. Very cool though. You can have different combos Lanes or not, reorder ’em like layers in Affinity Photo or whatever, and make a vomit rainbow just like Pr and MC now! And best of all? You can turn ’em off! lol Really nice.

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Bill Davis]

This will be controversial and I’m not saying it’s true or accurate or even important, But it’s interesting thinking. Steve Martin in his session this morning said as a tossoff line “each clip is now a mini mixer”

Again, it’s just a gross observation and I don’t see it as a literal rallying cry – but it sure made me think about the deeper implications of the changes we’ve just had.

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Don Cobble]

Sure would like to see video lanes

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Don Cobble] “Sure would like to see video lanes”

But they couldn’t work the same as it would screw up compositing order.

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “But they couldn’t work the same as it would screw up compositing order.”

Yep… don’t think that’s in the cards. Secondaries work great if you need everything in a line…

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[John Rofrano]

[Charlie Austin] “Secondaries work great if you need everything in a line…”

Yea, the whole notion of a Primary storyline with Secondary storylines is a very natural way of telling a story.

Tracks are such a foreign concept to telling a story. Tracks make sense for audio because that’s how you physically worked with audio in the studio. You have a 16 track recorder and you record everything on it’s own track. You have a 16 track audio mixer and it has both tracks and summing busses. This is how we’ve always worked with audio. Now we have something similar to an audio bus in FCP X.

Video has no notion of “tracks” in real life so introducing them was a “forced” approach that always seemed unnatural to me. I guess that’s why I love FCP X. (free from tracks at last) 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[Steve Connor]

[John Rofrano] “Tracks are such a foreign concept to telling a story. Tracks make sense for audio because that’s how you physically worked with audio in the studio. You have a 16 track recorder and you record everything on it’s own track. You have a 16 track audio mixer and it has both tracks and summing busses. This is how we’ve always worked with audio. Now we have something similar to an audio bus in FCP X.

Video has no notion of “tracks” in real life so introducing them was a “forced” approach that always seemed unnatural to me. I guess that’s why I love FCP X. (free from tracks at last) ;-)”

I broadly agree, the only time I missed tracks when working in FCPX was for audio, now with this latest update to Roles I don’t think I’ll miss them at all!

[Michael Hancock]

[John Rofrano] “Video has no notion of “tracks” in real life so introducing them was a “forced” approach that always seemed unnatural to me. I guess that’s why I love FCP X. (free from tracks at last) ;-)”

There are video tracks in real life. Look at a news broadcast – anytime you have video with graphic overlay, or picture-in-picture, or split screens, or any type of video composite, you’re merging multiple tracks of video together into one output, like you do when you have 16 channels of audio output to stereo.

Audio lanes are a good step to not caring about audio tracks. But for my day to day editing, I really miss video tracks. Example:

In a tracked NLE (mostly Avid), I preferred to keep all lower thirds to one track. If I use overlay elements (film grains, light leaks, textures, etc…) those go on another track. My edit was confined to V1 and V2, with additional tracks added if necessary for split screens/video composites. Then send the final video (minus graphics) to color, bring the master color file back in and it goes directly above the main edit.

Because my graphic elements are always on higher tracks it’s a simple Insert Track, overwrite edit and my master timeline is updated with the color file, overlays, graphics, etc… all in place, with the original edit still in the timeline as a reference.

In FCPX I have to make multiple secondary storylines to group my graphics, then connect my master color file and manually shift stuff around to restack graphics/overlays, etc… I’ve found it’s more work than it is with tracks, because of the lack of a fixed vertical organization.

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Michael Hancock
Editor