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My major beef
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[Oliver Peters] “1. You need a video-only transition without expanding. Seems like a simple modifier to the existing effect command would accomplish this.”
Based on the length of this thread and the overall agreement, I think Apple should…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Scott Witthaus] “Now, I haven’t had an Avid gig in years, and I try to avoid Premiere, but isn’t this based on what tracks are active? I seem to remember that if you had any audio track selected and added the default transition for a video dissolve, you got a dissolve on the video AND that audio track (which was a pain when you had a boatload of audio tracks). It’s been a while but I seem to remember it that way.”
Yea, thats how it works by design – Wichever track’s you have patched at the moment will be get a dissolve.
Thats something i really like about media composer – if a tracks not patched its basically locked. Cant add edit’s, overwrite, etc, etc.
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[David Mathis] “If my understanding is now correct one can choose whether the transition is applied to audio, video or both.”
Yes, by which track is active. The nice part, as Neil pointed out, is that the track was essentially locked out if it was not selected. The frustrating part comes by accidentally adding a dissolve to a selected audio track that might have been out of sight of the video track…or overwrite, insert etc.
My personal preference is the X way. I feel I can “see” the transition better.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Jeez. Only in a debate about NLE design would Having interface OPTIONS cause so many people to get their panties in such a giant wad of Agrievement
You don’t like the number of gears Apple gives you – drive something else. It’s simple
You want 15 gears between 1st and Drive, fine. Get a semi and be happy. I started driving with a 3 speed stick. Then got an automatic. Now I call Uber. Apple took away some of the choices I used to think I needed to get where I needed to go – and gave me in exchange a tool with a million new possibilities. To me that is NOT dumbing a thing down – it’s giving ME the option to change my focus from things (like shifting) that computers are better suited to do – toward things like asset management that nobody BUT me knows how to leverage for my working style. The result of that decision, strange at first – now actually helps me work faster and smarter.
If X was the only tool sold for editing – then yes, Apple would be the big, nasty bully this thread implies. But it’s not and they aren’t. Period.
If AVID or Premiere or Vegas or Lightworks or Resolve or iMovie or Windows Movie Maker fit how YOU think about editing – have at it. Just turn out something interesting and you’ll be fine.
Wallowing in that space where the big bully is oppressing your ability to create as you prefer – not by suppressing YOUR choice but rather by giving you different options that you’re free NOT to choose – seems like you’re willingly living your professional life inside a large, juicy, sour grape.
My 2 cents. Feel free to disagree. Legacy STILL functions. And Premiere is where you want to go if you want to keep editing like Legacy did it in the last decade (sorry about the bank account IV needle going OUT, but oh well.) Hey, you get he incremental improvements you used to scream for! But you’d better be able to explain how Apples choices ACTUALLY limited your options – rather than just adding ones you don’t prefer. Cuz it appears you haven’t earned a seat at the table where those decisions are made. Fancy that. If you’re an A list director who any of the NLE companies actually listens to, good for you. The rest of us will just have to hope we’re part of a big enough “hive mind” to get what we want and hope the result doesn’t turn out to be death by committee.
Because bitching about having more choices? Just not the ones you expected? That makes Apple the big bad guy? Really?
You’ve been disrupted. Get used to it. Or not, I guess.
(Waiting for the smell of burning hair to waft in)
(( thanks for reading it – writing it was fun ))
Carry on.
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] ” I started driving with a 3 speed stick. Then got an automatic. Now I call Uber.”
I drive a stick, had an automatic when my son was a teenager so he could drive it, after he flew the coop went right back to a stick. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
[Bill Davis] “You don’t like the number of gears Apple gives you – drive something else. It’s simple”
I do.
[Bill Davis] ” Only in a debate about NLE design would Having interface OPTIONS cause so many people to get their panties in such a giant wad of Agrievement”
What does it say about you that you are in favor of less options?
[Bill Davis] “Because bitching about having more choices? Just not the ones you expected? That makes Apple the big bad guy? Really?”
Apple isn’t the bad guy, unquestioning lovers of Apple are the bad guy. People who refuse to hear any sort of criticism at all without losing their mind in a swirl of defensiveness are the bad guy. X gave you many more choices – great, but what’s wrong with also asking for things like UI customization? Why do the options have to stop with the ones you prefer and why are the options others are asking for worthless.
Bitching is good, the squeaky wheel and all that crap – nothing is perfect and everything can be improved.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bill Davis] “Jeez. Only in a debate about NLE design would Having interface OPTIONS cause so many people to get their panties in such a giant wad of Agrievement “
That seems like an oddly worded statement. Wouldn’t a debate about NLE design be an appropriate place to talk about things like UI options? I know there was supposed to be an exasperated insult in there somewhere but I’m just not seeing it.
[Bill Davis] “You don’t like the number of gears Apple gives you – drive something else. It’s simple”
Weren’t you just pointing out the quote in Mitch Ives’ signature telling everyone how great and useful is to debate conflicting ideas?
[Bill Davis] ” it’s giving ME the option to change my focus from things (like shifting) that computers are better suited to do – toward things like asset management that nobody BUT me knows how to leverage for my working style. The result of that decision, strange at first – now actually helps me work faster and smarter. “
I don’t see how having the option to make a custom UI setting disallows the option of using the default settings. It’s kinda like keyboard settings no? One is free to leave them all default if one wants, but there is the option of customizing the keyboard settings should one choose to do so.
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1. Nothing wrong with classic approaches – in their place. But it still don’t want my barber doing my surgery.
2. As to options, that’s my point. If you get to pronounce that the topic is some feature they took out – I get to counter that I could lose three more features like that and it still wouldn’t overbalanced th joy of range based tagging. You can keep spinning that the X glass is always half empty – but what’s still IN the glass remains singularly refreshing! Also half a glass allows for more to come – so there’s that.
3. Unquestioning? Nope, I ask questions all the time. I just discovered the polite form, rather than leading with “this is crap and why did you break it?” Makes it easier to get to the people who can help me learn about it. That’s all.As to your last point, someone smarter than me suggested it’s a bad strategy to make perfect the enemy of the good.
Sure I want X to get better. And it has! But as you well know, I also like what IS right now. It’ll be great as it gets better. But that lingering idea that it’s somehow LESS than its competitors because Apple changed it is, to my mind, silly.
It’s like expecting that autonomous Google car we’re all expecting to show up some day to have a big old mechanical arm operating your beloved manual stick shift. It’s just NOT going to happen.
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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[Jeremy Garchow] “FCPX already has a great start, so let’s take it further.”
That should be the rallying cry of the FCPX team!
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[Bill Davis] “Sure I want X to get better. And it has! But as you well know, I also like what IS right now. It’ll be great as it gets better. But that lingering idea that it’s somehow LESS than its competitors because Apple changed it is, to my mind, silly.”
How can something get better and stay the same?
I’m glad X is perfect for you, but why are you so against that quest for other people?
People who might bang on this software harder than you might need different functionality. What’s wrong with that?
X was extremely weird when it first launched. Even though I liked it, I couldn’t use X professionally for quite a while after it was released (I think it was nearly two years). There were certain parts of X that were simply unusable, and performance was deplorable on anything but the simplest of timelines. Even Apple knew it as they did something that they haven’t done before or since, and that is explicitly state what was coming in future versions (fcpxml being one of them). It was smart of Apple as it was just enough info to keep me interested, otherwise I would have bailed. I had the luxury of waiting, and I used that time wisely to learn X’s strengths, which at that time was the built in organization.
It also wasn’t working well on a SAN back then. Most of that has changed and allowed me to use it, reliably, in a professional environment. So why is it wrong to raise more criticism on features that could be better?
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[Bill Davis] “it’s a bad strategy to make perfect the enemy of the good.”
Now that it’s morning on the Hudson, though a rather grey and cloudy morning with a bit of snow all around, I’d like to approach this whole notion of “options” a little differently.
First I will state unequivocally that I believe options are good and more options are better.
Then I’d like to suggest that we are discussing two different types of “options” – big”O” and small “o” —
The big Option concept is that with FCPX Apple has given the entire editing community a new Option in how an NLE can work – magnetic timeline, data based ranges, auditions, keywords — new concepts, new methods and they should be applauded for giving editors options to work in a new way that might be more efficient and powerful for them.
The small option concept is that many editors like to customize, or in car parlance get “options”, to make their given editing tool work more smoothly for them.
I understand that if the big “O” option of having FCPX matches your workflow and seems like a godsend, then the idea that people are going to make such a big fuss about the lack of small “o” customization in the UI seems trifling. However it is a truth that Apple has an overall design philosophy that minimizes UI options. It is not crazy to appreciate them for the big “O” success and then criticize them for the small “o” limitations.
I will add that each of the 3 major NLEs offers a distinct Option that the others lack: Avid, with the right hardware, is still the best team based system and if your working on something like a reality show it’s really hard to beat. Ppro is dynamically linked and along with AE & Audtion allows for the kind of workflow that was written up in the DEADPOOL articles. FCPX is the most database driven with all the innovative features mentioned earlier along with what looks like the most active 3rd party ecosystem and the lowest price.
Like I said earlier – options are good things, more options are better.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf
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