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Motion TRACKS versus FCP X Trackless
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[Bill Davis] “putting a tractor in a race with a Kawasaki Ninja.”
Your metaphor slipped…depends the track we’re racing on. If there is no track, the tractor will win!
These are puns.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “”Editing in the Browser”, which is what you are describing, is not going to allow for this.”
What Bill is describing is that all of the organization is done in the Browser, the rough selects, the take selection, the tagging and favoriting, or whatever method is used. You then add that to the timeline to further edit it for time.
I use X the same way. It’s not like you can’t back to the Event and look for other clips if the original rough edit isn’t working. The good thing is that all of those takes should be tagged and ready to go.
It’s the difference of having selects timelines and then an edit timeline, which is what it seems a lot of us do in FCP7.
Jeremy
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[Oliver Peters] “I answered that in another reply, but yes, I see the layers in Motion and in AE as tracks. “
Wow. I don’t, especially in AE. I can’t add another clip to a layer in AE without a nest. And AE’s nests don’t do a good job of showing you what’s inside either. At least secondary stoyrkines do, and with Motion the groups scan be expanded to show what’s inside as well.
[Oliver Peters] “The reason is that you can adjust their position against time and you can also change in/out points and slip the media content of each clip.”
And you can’t do this in X? This is what makes a track a track?
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[Oliver Peters] “It seems to me that one of the key missing functions is the ability to drag a Project directly into an Event. I realize you can “open in timeline” and you can start a compound clip in the Event, but these all seem like workaraounds. “
Absolutely. A relationship back to the Event would be nice. It’s a one way street at the moment.
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[Chris Harlan] “I agree with this, and I’d be willing to call a Photoshop layer a single frame track if anyone wanted to get into a donnybrook over it.”
I see them as layers, not as tracks. I can have a clip in a track at the beginning of the timeline, and a clip in the same track at the end.
How would you do this in Photoshop?
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[Simon Ubsdell] ”
Isn’t this just what you can already do when you compound clips in FCPX?A Compound is not hugely different to a Motion Group in a practical sense if not a design one.”
Exactly. I think FCPX’s interface “mirrors” Motion’s container based interface much more so than tracks.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Maybe this discussion is using the word “nodal” more as a metaphor a lot of the time rather than an actual reality, and I kind of think you are doing that there. But your point is still a good one.”
Yes, looking back at it, I was terribly unclear. There is no nodal interface in Motion, but clone layers give you one of a nodal system’s traditional strengths in a layer-based system.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Motion is pretty amazing in many ways, I think, and doesn’t deserve to be judged so adversely in comparison to After Effects when there are in fact a number of important things that it does much, much better. Pre-comps in AE are really not a good design idea whichever way you slice it, whereas Motion Groups (and things like Clone Layers) give you a distinctly superior control a lot of the time.”
Motion is a tease. There are so many brilliant ideas shown in it (like you suggested, pre-comps as collapsible groups is a perennial favorite AE feature request). Unfortunately, I still feel it falls a bit short of the mark for most standalone mograph work.
Having just built a complicated custom transition element in AE (requiring about half a dozen copies of the precomps, per instance), I am feeling particularly jealous of rigging and publishing today.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Simon Ubsdell] “That’s why I’m not sure that FCPX is necessarily a force for good in all this!”
I totally disagree. I feel like I have much more access to media in X. Much more quickly, and even the stuff I don’t like, I can sort through that easier as well as I can call up the “rejected” parts.
If I make a selects reel in FCP7 and delete it, that part is gone. I would have to go searching for it back in the browser. X allows immediate access to everything.
Then when you get in to Audition clips, you can have multiple selects sitting right there in your Project to be called up at any time.
I’m sorry, but I find X’s handing of this much more fluid than 7. I have much better access to all media at anytime in X in both Events and Projects.
Again, I don’t think Bill is aging to edit in the Event, I think he is saying to do a bit of pre assembly in the Event, and I agree. I use it the same way.
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[Jeremy Garchow] ” I think FCPX’s interface “mirrors” Motion’s container based interface much more so than tracks.”
Arguably, but don’t you think perhaps this whole discussion is getting confused between “things that could be described as similar” and “things which are in fact similar”? There is really no design or conceptual link between the two is there?
I’d also argue that the “container based inferface” was already there in Legacy.
In almost every meaningful sense, FCPX Compounds are the same thing as FCP7 nests with the major exception that you can now break them apart. It’s surely pretty obvious that the concept of Compounds was devised as a way of doing classic nesting only better (and hence more versatile).
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “Motion is a tease.”
Absolutely, and it has been for years, though Motion 5 is perhaps a promise that Apple are starting to take it a bit more seriously. I really hope so because I think the foundation is really well conceived and the potential is huge.
The worst thing that could happen now is for Apple to “bundle Motion into FCPX”, as I have noticed quite a few users are suggesting would be a great idea.
It would be a tragically bad idea – for both apps.
To make mograph/compositing converge with editing is absolutely a recipe for disaster.
To my mind, it is the repeated and highly vocal demand over the years for an uber-app to replace Final Cut Studio that has been behind Apple’s thinking with FCPX. Gone are STP and Color, and I don’t think anybody who knows what they’re talking about could say this is an improvement.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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