Premiere or FCPX, still hating FCPX’s timeline behaviour

[Bret Williams]

Well, fcp 7 had the same basic crappy keyframing engine. And as an AE guy myself I know what keyframing should be. Premiere is wonderful in this aspect.

Whenever I go snowboarding it sucks when you miss a turn and have to hoof it uphill. Skis and poles are immensely better at going uphill. Thery’re also better in lift lines. But I still choose snowboarding. (Not that I’ve gotten to go since I had kids! There’s just not much snow in the ATL.)

[Tony West]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] “various clips or trims that I have decided NOT to use, but want to keep close by and visible as outtakes… because I may reconstitute them into the edit at any moment.

Once I am done pulling out these “non-selects” from a section of the edit, I will drag and select them all, hit cmd-G to make them into a single “secondary storyline” container, and drop that item at the end of my timeline,”

This is exactly how I work (accept I have remapped my keyboard to make cmd-G just G : )

I never had worked like this in the past because having all that extra stuff in the timeline with tracks would just be too cluttered.

Since the X timeline is so streamlined, which was one of the main points of it in the first place, I will have a bunch of clips sitting there muted that I will move around and try.

[Mark Snow]

Thanks everyone for their opinions, and thank you Lance. I feel less alone now. Looks really that I would have to change my editing with X and that besides me, nobody cares to ease in Scale-transformations inside their NLE… 😉

I think I will really try a project, ehm… excuse me, an event and try to accept X to fancily ‘animate’ Clips around the storyline when I pull around clips. I will do the most basic transformations with Motion and enjoy the super-fast Instant ColorCorrection.

If after two weeks I still don’t get the reason behind the flipping around of Clips vertically and horizontally, then I will move to Premiere CC, even if I also dislike a bit Adobe’s emotionless interfaces and the licensing model, as the CC seems really be better.

I will report back! Thanks for your responses! I haven’t followed the discussion here (busy learning and enjoying MC6…:) but it seems to me, that the consensus is still the same: quick&dirty: FCPX okay, Hi-End productions; probably not FCPX, but possible.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I don’t really know what you consider high end, but fcpx is used in really nice looking television, spots, promos, and sports, some of which I’m sure you have seen if you watch TV.

Fcpx does have ease transformations, sometimes is hard to do anything but an ease in/out. With the browser selected, Shift-T should point you in the right direction.

You can even ease some dissolves.

I really don’t care what NLE you use, but you can do pretty much whatever you want with fcpx if you like it. If you don’t like it, you won’t want to figure it out and that’s fine, but people are getting highly visible and professional work done on fcpx.

[Andy Neil]

[Mark Snow] “Looks really that I would have to change my editing with X and that besides me, nobody cares to ease in Scale-transformations inside their NLE… ;)”

If you want to do ease in scale transformations, use the Ken Burns effect inside the crop feature. It’s pretty much idiot proof.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Tony Corapi]

I understand what you are saying Jeremy. I do use secondary story lines as you described. I guess my point was that the basic logic of the behavior of connected clips above the Primary is backwards to me. It just seems more logical to me that as I am extending the length of a clip that the software would understand the priority that it is the top layer (track) so as far as I extended it, clips should get out of the way by lowering and the steps you have to take to fix that now (like holding the Shift key and raise that clip up over) would become unnecessary.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tony Corapi] “I understand what you are saying Jeremy. I do use secondary story lines as you described. I guess my point was that the basic logic of the behavior of connected clips above the Primary is backwards to me. It just seems more logical to me that as I am extending the length of a clip that the software would understand the priority that it is the top layer (track) so as far as I extended it, clips should get out of the way by lowering and the steps you have to take to fix that now (like holding the Shift key and raise that clip up over) would become unnecessary.
“

I hear you, there are certainly nuances to work out, like keyboard navigation of layers for both moving and selecting, but for now a secondary storyline solves the problem as it defines the relationship between all of the clips.

I really enjoy FCPX’s collision avoidance, even if it means a bit of repair afterwords. It’s not perfect, but it can only get better from here. I, like you, really wish I could select a layer, and hit option-up or shift-up or some modifier-up (page down, page up) to move layers around. We already have the overwrite to and remove from storyline command, so we know the interface is capable of it.

[Mark Snow]

Thanks Jeremy and Andy (above & below), I will definitively try your Tips!

It’s really not that I would argue that people might be able to achieve whatever they can think of with whatever tools they use, I just have to decide once again for a shop, where to go from FCP7 with (hopefully) those new Powermacs… So I was hoping to find the answer in this forum. It seems to me, those guys on X are anxious about them really being on the real deal, and the guys not on X, being anxious to miss out on all the cool action over there (as myself) while both try to convince (themselves) of their choice.

For me, FCPX should just add a slight bit of more complexity, the choice for having tracks with classic timeline-behaviour and “normal” Project management and I would be one happy FCP-X-Fanboy.

[Tony Corapi]

I completely agree with you. There is a lot to like. I have been editing on it for a year and half now (broadcast TV commercials mostly) and I hope it keeps progressing. It’s only once and awhile when the clips start jumping out of the way that it reminds me of when I use to bring home a bunch of helium balloons for my daughters birthday parties when they were little. Me trying to get through the front door with all of them. I’ve got control, but not quite.

[Charlie Austin]

[Mark Snow] “the choice for having tracks with classic timeline-behaviour “

I think that is unlikely. Not to say there won’t be some improvements to control of visual timeline organization, but traditional “tracks” aren’t coming back to X.

[Mark Snow] “and “normal” Project management “

Define “normal”. 🙂 Again, I think there will be improvement/enhancement but at it’s core, it is what it is. You can already do all your cuts in CC’s in the Event if you want. Maybe they’ll add the ability to open multiple floating event library and timeline windows if you need them…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~