Marker thoughts – bugs?

[Bill Davis]

Or, looked at another way…,

There’s a single general purpose marker you can use to … mark stuff.

Then there’s a specific pair of “task” markers to use when you want to create “to do” items and make sure that they get accomplished. This is extra convenient in situations where one team member is assigned to create tasks – and there’s a possibility that either another person completes them – or needs to check to insure that those items do, in fact, get attended to – but want to leave a semi-permenant trail of what’s been done – and feels that placing and removing a normal marker it too – well – ephemeral, I guess.

And then there’s the “chapter” markers for the small fraction of people who still need to burn their content to old style spinning plastic discs or who work with content systems that are chapter enabled.

The first one will be used by maybe 80-90% of those use X who need to place a fixed in time reference on their storylines in a fashion that isn’t better solved by using the timeline index and it’s search capabilities.

The second group will enable X to be used in supervisory situations or for those who are comforted by having a checklist system in play. (I’m actually one of those, myself)

The last group are dead to me because if I NEVER have to waste another of my life’s hours creating another stupid plastic disk for content it’s faster and easier to just deliver electronically – I’ll die happier.

The whole thing is all about your perceptions.

You would perhaps like the X authors to create a dozen extra classes of markers.

I aspire to fewer.

YMMV.

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.

[Mark Morache]

For what it’s worth, you can label your standard markers with any text you wish, and they show up in the timeline index. You can filter them to reveal any marker names you want.

Seems pretty powerful.

However, if anyone asked me, I’d love to be able to assign clip colors on the timeline, based on roles, or some other criteria.

———
Don’t live your life in a secondary storyline.

Mark Morache
FCPX/FCP7/Xpri/Avid
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com

[Don Smith]

While confusing to look at your video at first, I got the idea as it played that it is not a bug.

It appears to me that the intent is to make a marker on the timeline and not on the clip but the designers have chosen to make timeline markers appear on the topmost clip instead of what we used to call the scrubber bar in FCP7. It makes sense since a marker at a certain point is, well, a marker at a certain point and is at the same point for any clips below it.

I don’t have Final Cut open but one experiment I would like to try is the new feature where you set markers and then, on the Retiming drop-down, choose the command where you set jumps at each marker. Can’t say the precise name right now (OK, full disclosure; I can’t open the new Final Cut because my home computer is too old to load it. I’m waiting for delivery of my new Mac Pro. But, I do use the new Final Cut 10.1 at work). I would be interested if the markers appear on the topmost clip but will put the jumps on a selected clip below. If it doesn’t then I’m leaning toward calling the markers buggy. If the selected clip below inherits the jump at markers command, then I lean toward calling it design.

NewsVideo.com

[Trevor Asquerthian]

[Don Smith] “the designers have chosen to make timeline markers appear on the topmost clip”

Not true.

If I repeated the video, with the selected clip NOT in a secondary group, then the markers always mark on the selected clip.

The bug is that IF the selected clip is within a secondary group, THEN the marker is on the topmost clip

If I were to move any of the marked clips then the markers move with the clips (rather than being ‘timeline’ markers) – which is a GOOD thing.

You can see from the video that the markers CHANGE colour when a subsequent marker is added. Surely you’ll accept this is a bug?

I put this in the ‘techniques’ forum because I do not wish to bash FCPx but see it grow into a professional application. By all means promote the elements of the application that are well designed (magnetic timeline, audio associated by default etc) but you do it no favours by blindly accepting the parts that need improvement.

[Don Smith]

I now see your point Trevor and I agree with your assessment.

[Nikolas Bäurle]

I have to agree with Trevor on this one. I do like the fact that in 7 the marker are independent from the clips in the timeline, this is one of the few features I think needs change, even though it doesn’t bug me too much. I mean, it really is there to mark a point in time, if I have it on a clip and even on the primary and delete something the marker is gone. In 7 the marker stays put. At least if the marker in X jumped down to the next clip when deleting something, that could help.

For the magazine stuff (4min) I was editing in X this year I always put my markers in the primary. I would place the interviews first, with black filler in between, then have the producer read the text and mark on the filler in the primary.

I wouldn’t call it a bug, since a bug is when something happens that’s not supposed to. Its very likely that they planned to have it that way, personally I haven’t found the benefit to that.

“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python

[Bill Davis]

[Nikolas Bäurle] “I have to agree with Trevor on this one. I do like the fact that in 7 the marker are independent from the clips in the timeline, this is one of the few features I think needs change, even though it doesn’t bug me too much.”

Isn’t this a function of the fact that in Legacy – the time base is always FIXED in the timeline – where in X, the time base floats?

In Legacy, the timeline progression is a fixed “thing” – in X it is not – in exactly the same way that in X there’s literally NOTHING underneath a gap clip – where in Legacy there’s a fixed black timed space.

Placing a marker in one is not the same as placing a marker in the other.

At all.

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.

[Nikolas Bäurle]

[Bill Davis] “Placing a marker in one is not the same as placing a marker in the other.

At all.”

That’s really what it boils down to. It’s one of those features that just needs getting used to. And then its not a bug anymore:-)

In 7 you can either set the marker at the top of the timeline, or mark a clip and then the marker gets set on the clip. So the only thing we loose in X is fixed time markers… The problem with the fixed markers at the top are that once the time of your edit changes they kind of become useless. If you need to cut something to a specific time then they really help, but if you don’t have exact time constraints it does become irritating when you have to keep deleting unused markers.

In X the primary storyline is the backbone of the edit, and can be used as a fixed time indicator so its simply a matter of highlighting the primary (if there are clips above it) and marking it.

Its just one of those things we learn to accept as editors when working with different software. X just isn’t 7, but since its from Apple and has the same name we still associate the one with the other. Many if not most issues with X come from people forcing it to work like 7. If we use Avid or Premiere we also have to accept that each has its way of working. And then its just a matter of personal preference.

“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Here’s my ‘markers have idiosyncrasies’ video – with annotations & extras 😉

https://reels.creativecow.net/film/fcpx-markers-have-bugs-with-annotations

[Bret Williams]

The timeline doesn’t float in X anymore than it does in legacy. The fact that X functions more often than not in ripple mode doesn’t make any difference. And in legacy you had clip markers and timeline markers. Clip markers functioned just like clip markers in X. X simply doesn’t have timeline markers yet. But there is no reason not to. If you need a marker at 5min30seconds then that’s where you need a marker. Not on a clip at the 5min 30sec point. That concept doesn’t change just because an application adopted rippling with sync locks on as it’s main method of editing.