macbook air and fcpx- the new portable edit suite

[Aindreas Gallagher]

surely a 13″ screen can’t be considered an ideal editing environment? 15″ is about my limit.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Andreas Kiel]

What kind of shock?

The iPad is quite a good control surface, in some cases an excellent one.

But if I would do editing I would miss a keyboard, as the current way (of most tablets) is not convenient for editing as it always covers a big part of the screen and with the iPad you have to toggle between letters and numbers.
That’s definitively no fun, and what’s about the material? Where does it come from?

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Craig Seeman]

The revolution will be the same thing only different.

It’s going to happen in stages over a few years. It may be editing proxies in the cloud in some cases. It may also include a greater reliance on gestures (although that’s hard for me personally so far).

ENG is going to change. The old won’t be gone but the new way will be in places where the current method doesn’t work very well.

Thunderbolt in on the MBAir. The “CPU” becomes nothing more than a brain with software that controls devices. Certainly some brains will be more powerful than others.

I see two directions beginning to evolve. The facility with brains linking to central storage and control. Portability in which storage isn’t always brought along.

FCPX will be modular and scalable… as will the hardware.

[Chris Kenny]

The UI would require some retooling, but iPad editing could probably be made to work pretty well. Use the iPad in portrait mode, with the event browser on the top half and the timeline on the bottom. Sit on your living room couch with the thing, and have the viewer displayed on the HDTV in front of you via AirPlay.

The future is going to be interesting.

Has it occurred to anyone that the magnetic timeline’s ripple-by-default behavior is going to feel about a zillion times more natural than potential alternatives with a touch interface? By causing clips to bump each other out of the way if they try to occupy the same space, Apple has made clips behave more like physical objects, an approach that makes much more sense with direct manipulation. On an iPad version of FCP X, you’ll simply be able to grab clips and sling them around, without worrying about opening gaps or overwriting anything. Want to swap the positions of two clips? Just grab them both at once and drag.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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[Gary Huff]

So? MacBook Air is just a computer, albeit a very light, portable system. Besides, how portable is it when you have to lug around the Thunderbolt peripheral in order to have the power you need to not have to wait for days for an export?

And I think iPad editing will happen, but won’t become the norm. Are people really not aware how annoying editing a typical project would be with a touchscreen interface? As a control surface, yes. iPad + Resolve would probably be useful.

[Jeremy Garchow]

What about a 15″ iPad?

[Chris Harlan]

[Gary Huff] “Are people really not aware how annoying editing a typical project would be with a touchscreen interface? As a control surface, yes. iPad + Resolve would probably be useful.”

Agreed. I can see doing simple things with an iPad like marking in and outs or ranges when cutting something down, for instance. BUT, not only is it a small screen, but my hands would constantly be getting in the way of what I’m looking at. I have a Cinteq that is the size of an iPad; it makes a good controller, and is very good for a natural feel when drawing, but I find masking actually a little easier with a traditional tablet and screen, where my hands are not sometimes blocking my view.

[Chris Harlan]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What about a 15″ iPad?”

Why stop there? 17″ iPad would be swell.

[Chris Harlan]

[Craig Seeman] “Thunderbolt in on the MBAir. The “CPU” becomes nothing more than a brain with software that controls devices. Certainly some brains will be more powerful than others.”

Or a really smart hard disk. This is something I think I’ll probably try, though I may wait for the next generation of MB airs. Usually, I go to a facility or a Studio to transfer my source materials onto a G-RAID. I’m wondering if I transferred to a MBAir, and through the course of the day, as I sat waiting to talk to clients, at lunch, waiting in the car pool line to pick up my daughter, etc., I could make a little headway on my selects, and then, plug the MBair in via target drive to my 8 or whatever core and use it as a disk. It is SSD. TBolt DOES support target mode. I wonder if I could get enough speed. The idea of a super smart hard drive is kind of interesting.

[Bill Davis]

So why are you stuck using your hands?

FCP-X running on an iPad – with a small bluetooth keyboard in play – gives you a simple travel system that could do basic rough cuts incredibly well.

My wife is doing a rough cut of a string of interviews in FCP-X right now destined for a client window dub. That means opening each card, using I and O to mark very rough in and out points on each clip in the Event Library, hitting E to append each select to the magnetic timeline – and moving on.

It’s super efficient. Much quicker than Log&Capture, drag to a timeline and trim the head and tail of each clip.

It’s the kind of editing prep task where the magnetic timeline really shines.

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