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Roles: got ’em to work.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “How do you feel about these new features as a whole?
It did make it seem like Apple is still listening, right?”
Yes. In fact while people were told about XML and SAN I think Roles is a major shot from Apple. It really answers the question as to the viability of metadata/database as an implementation that can be a viable alternative to track management. That’s why I envisioned the above conversation. It was the “must” part of the update for there to be anything convincing about the new paradigm. It’s the “ah ha” moment that lets everyone know where they’re going with this.
That fact that it serves internal organization functions, export functions, and very critically, visual functions is major. If something is to replace track management it MUST be visual. It’s like designing a good vs a bad (or non existent) front end to a relational database. This is the first key “front end” function that gets their design UI usability message across.
I also think that know that people will begin to get where they’re headed, the feedback for feature request may be more conscious of this direction rather then the “I want tracks back” variety. The’ll be a lot more of “I want this metadata displayed that way” so I can make project editorial and management decision.
It also shows that the Timeline Index is going to be a lot more powerful than a simple time/EDL style display and manager. I’ll bet a bunch of “light bulbs” went off for people with feature requests coming in about what else they’d like to manage in the Timeline Index and how the Timeline should respond visually.
Basically you know have the door open for both data management and how it should be usefully displayed.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “FCPX is now capable of organizing without tracks”
I think we’re probably arguing about different things since I don’t find that I really disagree with you – which is kinda annoying, I mean where’s the fun in that?! 😉
I do wonder whether you aren’t overselling the sexiness of Roles, though. Essentially all they’re doing right now is making up for the limitations of a trackless paradigm – and not even quite doing that in my view. Do they actually as currenly constituted give you more organizational control than you had with tracks? I love for instance that you can solo stems from the Timeline Index, but then you could easily solo stems with the FCP7 track-based paradigm as well.
Which is not to say that they might not blossom into something truly astonishing in the future. Design-wise they are very impressive, but operationally they still feel like a stop-gap to me.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I do wonder whether you aren’t overselling the sexiness of Roles, though.”
I just like things to be useful.
I know you know this, but I think the very first thing one has to believe when working with FCPX is, there are no tracks.
You have to say that a million times, and forget about tracks. You can’t force FCPX to work like it has tracks, because it doesn’t.
Roles are how you organize (or group) your disparate clips in an FCPX Project, where the timeline organization is not predefined by a track.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Do they actually as currenly constituted give you more organizational control than you had with tracks?”
It’s not if they give more or less, it’s if they give at all. Either your tracks (or stems, or clips) are organized how you want them to be, or not. Before Roles, I could not organize the audio for export, now I can.
And yes, I do think organizationally, Roles have a lot to offer. Let’s say things change during the edit. Instead of two tracks of SFX (or whatever) I now had to add 6 more tracks to get all the layers I want. With tracks, I would have to physically add six more tracks, taking the number of tracks from 6 to 12, or from 12 to 18 (x+6) and possibly rearrange all the other tracks vertically to make way for these 6 new tracks. In FCPX, there are no tracks, so I don’t have to add that mess to the timeline. If those clips are now part of the SFX bundle, then you tag them as such and to the timeline I only add those clips where they are needed, and I don’t bloat the whole timeline for a few seconds of layered effects.
[Simon Ubsdell] “I love for instance that you can solo stems from the Timeline Index, but then you could easily solo stems with the FCP7 track-based paradigm as well.”
Sure, but sometimes that would means soloing 4 tracks instead of just soloing a group. This (in my view) is way more efficient.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Design-wise they are very impressive, but operationally they still feel like a stop-gap to me.”
So how would you do it different?
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Roles solves one of my long standing peeves with tracks. Jeremy alludes to it in when he talks about adding tracks. It was a major hassle when you had many audio tracks, forcing you to scroll up and done as you edit. That was compounded with Video was associated with audio many tracks down.
Stacking with tracks to organize sometimes made editing and screen real-estate difficult to manage. Now it’s easy to highlight key areas of interest and operation without a lot of up/down scrolling.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “You can’t force FCPX to work like it has tracks, because it doesn’t.”
Yup, I know I’m a bit slow but I got that part, I think 😉
But as I say, I think you are slightly overplaying your hand. e.g.:
[Jeremy Garchow] “Sure, but sometimes that would means soloing 4 tracks instead of just soloing a group. This (in my view) is way more efficient.”
I think “way more efficient” is a bit of an overstatement, isn’t it?
Generally I think it’s swings and roundabouts at the moment. Yes, as you say, there is a marginal advantage to assigning SFX to Roles and hence not having to worry where they go in terms of “tracks”. But that is offset by the disadvantage, as I see it, of not having them laid out visually in an organized fashion – OK, so you get the graying-out when Roles are solo-ed but it’s not as elegant as seeing things laid out in tracks to my way of thinking. (And no, that’s not a plea for Apple to reinstate tracks – it’s just an observation.)
I really don’t feel strongly about this either way – just arguing the point out of academic interest, which I know is not the done thing around here 😉
It will certainly be interesting to see where it’s all going, particularly if Roles end up assisting with the better organization of OMF/AAF export (which does feel like an unaddressed issue to me at the moment) – but I’ve absolutely no idea how I would design it better, I’m sorry to say.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “Stacking with tracks to organize sometimes made editing and screen real-estate difficult to manage. Now it’s easy to highlight key areas of interest and operation without a lot of up/down scrolling.”
I think this is as short as it’s long. Yes, it’s a better use of screen real estate, but at the same time it’s much more of a visual dog’s dinner – and that’s despite the introduction of soloing for Roles which is pretty cute.
It’s not the most ideal situation to have a visual representation of your tracks where the dialogue and narration and effects and Foley and ambience and music are all scrambled together depending on what happens to overlap something else. I accept it comes with the territory of the magnetic timeline and it’s not the end of the world, but I don’t think Roles have helped make this that much better overall. Tracks were overall a marginally more elegant way of working at least in terms of visual organization – despite the need for scrolling.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I think “way more efficient” is a bit of an overstatement, isn’t it?”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. One man’s overstatement is another’s under statement.
I think Roles are a really good way to keep an eye on your timeline from a bird’s eye view, and yes more efficient when it comes to actually moving and grouping this media.
[Simon Ubsdell] “But that is offset by the disadvantage, as I see it, of not having them laid out visually in an organized fashion”
Just curious, but what do you need this organization for? Is it just confirmation to keep thinking “Track 6 is SFX”? Why wouldn’t it be possible to think “SFX are SFX”? Why would a sound effect that happens at 30 seconds in the timeline have a relationship with a sound effect that happens at 1.5 hours in the timeline? That is the relationship that tracks hold, which might be a tenuous relationship. In the grand scheme, they have nothing to do with each other except that they are both SFX, and that’s where Roles define the relationship.
There is no question FCPX forces everyone to rethink the approach of what is known as a timeline. FCPX is about the vertical relationships of clips that perhaps might matter more than the horizontal relationships of clips, especially when the clips are separated by time.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Essentially all they’re doing right now is making up for the limitations of a trackless paradigm – and not even quite doing that in my view. Do they actually as currenly constituted give you more organizational control than you had with tracks? I love for instance that you can solo stems from the Timeline Index, but then you could easily solo stems with the FCP7 track-based paradigm as well.”
The problem is…..in FCP7 you have the stems constantly blocking you from working freely. The magnetic timeline allows you to forget about all the tracks, which connections are where, which tracks need to be locked and so forth. There is not much gain UNTIL you output, which is the final stage of the project.
In FCPX you edit away and then have to spend time to sort out different languages/audiotracks and the roles-model might be a big help.in overall speed and elegance the roles are defintitely on a level with FCP7´s track-paradigm. I agree though they are not visually self-explaining to other editors as tracks though.
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[Jeremy Garchow] ” FCPX is about the vertical relationships of clips that perhaps might matter more than the horizontal relationships of clips, especially when the clips are separated by time.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you further explain?
The horizontal relationships of clips in FCPX define the edit in time, just as they do in any other NLE. Same with vertical relationships — video composites from the top down, audio mixes without regard for vertical order — again, same as any NLE.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Just curious, but what do you need this organization for? Is it just confirmation to keep thinking “Track 6 is SFX”? Why wouldn’t it be possible to think “SFX are SFX”?”
In terms of the stuff I cut professionally, I’m typically running between 16-24 tracks of audio, e.g. 4 mono dialogues, 2-3 stereo musics, various tracks of spot effects, Foley and ambiences (or any combination of the last three, often in multi-track (LCR or 5.1) rather than stereo format). It really helps a massive amount to be able to know exactly where it all is all the time which is where conventional tracks come in handy. It’s not always obvious from looking at a clip what it is unless you’ve put it on the right track. Inevitably fine-tuning the edit gets pretty complicated but it would be a lot more complicated it you didn’t immediately know what was what.
The fact that FCPX encourages audio clips to gravitate “upwards” depending on the available “free space” means that it’s harder to predict what any particular clip actually is at a glance. (Yes, we’ve got clip names but they’re not necessarily going to be helpful to me in the majority of cases for reasons I won’t bore you with.)
This is not to say that I couldn’t devise a working method with FCPX to give me similar visual feedback but I’m not sure that Roles really add enough to the picture at this point to entirely outweigh the disadvantage of losing that visual feedback. So at this point I stick by my assertion that Roles are really so far only making up for the limitations of the magnetic timeline rather than heralding a brave new world of editing freedom as you may perhaps be implying. At least for me – I can easily see how in less complex audio editing scenarios Roles will comfortably give you everything you need.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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