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Premiere or FCPX, still hating FCPX’s timeline behaviour
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I am snowboarding since around 20 years… 🙂
Problem is, if you can’t even slow down a simple Scale-Transformation, respectively have Bezier-Control of the Transformation-Keyframes, I am not even going on the ski-lift…! (and this would be for me “the basic project”‘s needs)
This looks to me like those Bigfoot-Skis rather…
I am really trying to find an advantage in X, but I am not finding any…
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I just haven’t noticed this behavior as “random”. As far as I’ve noticed, the placement was consistent to the position of other connected clips in the timeline and the overall length of the clip you’re placing in the timeline.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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Love this analogy.
I’m a skier by the way.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
[Bret Williams] “I think X is arguably like that. We all became experts after 5-10 years of using a certain NLE methodology. Legacy, Premiere and Avid were just different brands of skis. X is a snowboard. You’ve got to enjoy tackling something new and ride the bunny slope a little bit. And when the little kids are in the half pipe while you’re still falling off the chair lift try not to scream “I’d kick your ass on skis!””
I don’t buy the old dog can’t learn new tricks analogy. Sure, it fits here and there but many people have made the transition from film and/or linear editing to NLE editing so obviously they have proven they can roll with the punches. Sometimes personal preference is just personal preference.
Not to ruin the analogy, but speaking as someone that’s been a fairly regular snowboarder for the 7 or 8 years, it can be very limiting compared to skiing. Woods? Easier on skis. Moguls? Few people even attempt them on a board. On/off chair lifts? Much easier on skis. Long flats/cat tracks? Much easier on skis. I’ve never skied but I board with a lot of skiers and skiing is overall a much more flexible and functional way to navigate a mountain (even if the initial learning curve might be higher). I mean, I don’t think you’ll ever see mountain rescue professionals using snowboards instead of skis. With that being said I really enjoy snowboarding and don’t plan on picking up skiing. Not because I’m afraid of starting out at the bottom again, but because I enjoy boarding and it better suits what I want to get out of a mountain.
As an aside, boarding blew up in popularity in part as a rebellious ‘anti-skiing’ youth movement where skiing was seen as being for old, rich people. In the past 10-15yrs though there has been a counter movement as boarding became mainstream and a new revolution started in skiing called freeskiing or newschool skiing (which takes many of the trick/grinding aspects of boarding and combines it with skiing). Skiing is certainly bouncing back (especially with youth) from the snowboard onslaught.
I’m not a snow junkie but I did work on a skiing doc a few years ago.
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Mark,
It’s really not about using position tool and trying to edit in a “track” way. I do a lot of music video type of fashion film stuff that has me layering 3-4 video clips sync’d to music, and I shared some initial frustration in figuring out how to not have these screw up when i first started on X.
However I found that thinking about things Vertically — what is happening vertically in that slice of time — was the shift that made it click and made it powerful.
Instead of the position tool, most of the time its about using the holding the “`” key to leave connected clips in place as you move clip in primary timeline. About using secondary storylines. And about “lifting clips from storyline” tweeking them, and then overwriting back into the slot the lifting holds for them.
jacob
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[Steve Connor] “”X is like snowboarding. It’s better than skiing. Most kids learn snowboarding instead. “
Ex -freeking-actly.
Couldn’t have said it any better. Perfect basic analogy.
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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[Jacob Brown] “However I found that thinking about things Vertically — what is happening vertically in that slice of time — was the shift that made it click and made it powerful.”
Yes.
Vertically is a great way to think of it, but X has awesome horizontal controls as well, and they work completely differently than what a track based timeline.
X is about knowing what part of the timeline you want to move, and how to achieve it.
Tracked timelines usually have you bring everything with or have you do a bunch of clicks to lock or select exactly what it is, and what isn’t moving. Parts of your timeline are locked together even if you don’t want them to be as it is the nature of tracks to simultaneously separate groups of objects that you may or may not want together.
X has all of this, too, it just works differently and most of the time, the relationships are defined in a different way than tracks (horizontal) and time (vertical). Secondary storylines are tracks, they just don’t extend from frame zero to frame end. This is a big difference. Once you learn that you are working (vertically) on sections of the video you start to understand how X works up and down, left and right. Once you understand how the timeline moves, you start to understand how powerful (and fast) it can be.
Connected clips are also something to get used to. Before the tilde key upgrade, moving things around in X took more steps, but now, the tilde key makes things much easier and more fluid.
My first real world dialog project was an absolute joy to cut in X. I was able to move so fast, and try more options than I could in any other program, especially with the help of Auditions. Essentially, it helped me to view more options in a shorter amount of time, but also store all of those options with minimal fuss, all in the timeline. It helps me be more creative. Go figure.
But, as has been said, if it’s not working for you, CS6 is your option if you don’t want the Creative Cloud.
FCP7 still works, too.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Not to ruin the analogy, but speaking as someone”
That’s the thing about analogies – they ARENT the thing itself. So they “definitionally” vary from the rules of the reality and are riddled with exceptions.
The fact that some parts of them fail miserably does not remove the punch from the parts of them that work well..
They just point out concepts.
Snowboards were a major change to the long established way to move downhill on snow.
They were dismissed as “kid stuff” at first. But become so popular that people came to appreciate what they could do better than skis in *some* tasks that a lot of people wanted to do.
And now in the winter, there are probably more snowboarding competitions in the media than traditional downhill skiing events, because they attract a fresh new audience. Not because one or the other is “better” at all aspects of getting down the hill.
And so it goes.
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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I think some of the frustration for me at times working in the timeline is how connected clips behave vertically. I think it’s basically because the Primary storyline does not also move vertically ( up or down) so acts like a wall if you will. Above the Primary (usually reserved for the video but not always) clips always jump up out of the way because the the Primary is locked and they don’t have any other direction to go.So if if you have 2 connected clips A and B, if you want to extend the end point of clip A, clip B jumps up vertically in exact opposite direction I want it to go because now I have to move it right or edit the in point of B back to see the new end point of A. If I want to take the in point of B and drag it left A jumps up out of the way when I would rather have it jump down out of the way. Ironically if I put those clips below the Primary (normally where the audio goes) they behave the way I normally would expect their behavior. I think it would be helpful if you could use a modifier key let’s say holding the up or down arrow as your extending a connected clip to have the clips move out of your way in the direction you want.
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I know we like killing analogies here, but I still disagree w/the fundamental point of the ski/board analogy which is old dogs can’t learn new tricks. Newer and different isn’t always better. If someone prefers skiing (Avid/PPro/FCP Legend) to snowboarding (FCPX) maybe it’s a simple as skiing lets them accomplish what they need to accomplish better than snowboarding. Nothing complicated. Nothing judgmental. Nothing adversarial. Just straight up pragmatism.
[Bill Davis] “And now in the winter, there are probably more snowboarding competitions in the media than traditional downhill skiing events, because they attract a fresh new audience.
Probably, but add in the relatively newer freestyle and freeskiing (which attracts the same demo that caused snowboarding to explode) and there are probably more ski events. FWIW, the X-Games has 5 ski events and 6 snowboard events (the events are the same save for whether your are competing on skis or a board) while the Olympics have 10 ski events (combined ‘traditional’ and freestyle) and 4 snowboarding events.
Freesking is the new, ‘cutting edge’ way to descend a mount, catch big air and show off in the terrain park.
Like you said, and so it goes.
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