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Roles: got ’em to work.
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For me tracks at their most organized always represented visual clutter as well as UI issues.
I only want a horizontal relationships when clips actually interact (dissolves, fx, crossfades, etc).
I really don’t gain anything by seeing all of “something” next to each other unless there’s a technical reason for them to be that way. With Roles I can turn on/off related things as needed. Scrolling up/down is reduced. I’d much rather have fewer “tracks” than row after row of horizontal information when their only relationship is a “category.” I think the desire for tracks, in instances where they don’t actually interact horizontally is more of a “psychological comfort zone” than any real function. Roles allows me to see that relationship when I need to by highlighting/selecting when I want and not see them when I don’t need them. I always feel I have a UI benefit but not having large numbers of tracks. -
[Craig Seeman] “I only want a horizontal relationships when clips actually interact (dissolves, fx, crossfades, etc).”
I don’t understand what this means. The horizontal space of a timeline defines time. Everything on at timeline is always in horizontal relationship.
Again, it’s simple:
Horizontal relationships between timeline objects define the edit.
Vertical relationships between timeline objects define the composite.This is as true in FCPX as it is in any NLE.
[Craig Seeman] “I think the desire for tracks, in instances where they don’t actually interact horizontally is more of a “psychological comfort zone” than any real function. “
I’m still not following. Everything is always interacting horizontally. Tracks are an efficient, human readable way to organize. That’s one thing roles don’t give you — visual groupings that can be recognized at-a-glance (assuming you’ve kept your tracks organized).
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “I don’t understand what this means. The horizontal space of a timeline defines time. Everything on at timeline is always in horizontal relationship.”
A track is a horizontal relationship to each other. Connected Clips are not in a horizontal relationship to each other. They are only in a vertical relationship with the clips below/above them.
[David Lawrence] “Horizontal relationships between timeline objects define the edit.”
I do not need Connected Clips to be in a track. A track is only needed (for me) when they are in a relationship to each other.
A sound effect at 1 minute is not tied to the sound effect at 3 minutes in. Only when clips abut and I want to transition or roll edit are they in a direct horizontal relationship with each other.
The Roles, as they are used in FCPX, are much more to my thinking and organization then imposing a track structure.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[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?”
I agree with the stop-gap classification, and they still need to do more to get us back to the functionality we had with tracks.
Sort as I go. For years, as I edit I drop my audio into tracks based on their “roles.” It keeps my clips organized and my tracks organized. I can visually inspect my timeline and see where my music is, as well as my dialogue, my sfx, etc. I’m a visual person, and I like getting that kind of feedback.
Can I survive without it? Absolutely. Will I thrive? Perhaps not.
It’s sort of like saying to the cashier, “go ahead and just dump all the coins anywhere in your till, so you can serve customers faster, and sort it all out at the end of your shift.”
That’s what I’m doing now. Dumping all of my tracks into the timeline then I need to sift through everything to sort and tag.
I challenge anyone to find a cash-register till without separate spaces for each denomination of coin and bill. Cashiers sort quickly without thinking, and because the money is sorted, it actually makes it faster to serve people.
Editing is like that for me. It’s simple to keep things sorted as I edit, and easy to find them and modify them when I need to. Since my clips are sorted and close, I can easily lasso groups to modify them. The sorting for me happens automatically, almost without thinking.
However like Craig, I abhor adding additional tracks just because I may need the extra 2 or 3 layers for a five second clip, and I will be stumbling over those extra tracks for the rest of my edit. It’s the best excuse I have for nesting, and may be one benefit of the magnetic timeline.
Here’s my great idea. First, bring back our tracks. Next, let’s improve on this magnetic timeline thing with an in-timeline form of nesting that works like double-clicking a stacked effect in Avid. How about if the collision avoiding could happen within nested tracks. For example, if my source audio is patched to audio track 3, and there is already a clip there, it automatically creates a compound clip to avoid the collision, and gives the clip a special visual representation to indicate the internal clips, and avoids the collision by adding the extra nested tracks necessary.
What I hate about nesting is that when I edit inside a nest I lose the relationships to the clips outside the nest. I’m losing a great deal of my context. By keeping the nesting in-timeline, I believe we would have the best of both worlds. Double-clicking the nested clip would expand it, similar to Avid, letting me patch to the nested tracks and perform edits at will, all the while seeing the visual relationship of the clips inside the nest to the clips outside the nest. I make my changes, and collapse the nest, keeping vertical scrolling to a minimum.
A note about the roles in FCPX: The roles window in the timeline index will not allow you to select multiple timeline clips. It highlights the clips, but you can’t select the highlighted clips with one click. However you can use the clips window in the TLindex, and type the role name in the search field to highlight the clips in the timeline. NOW the list of timeline clips with that role are listed, and you can select all the clips in the list, then you can click any of the highlighted clips and ALL the highlighted clips will be selected.
You can also go into the “clip appearance” window and select to see the timeline clips labelled with the role names. (Now just give us the ability to change the clip color in the timeline.)
I don’t love Roles. They are a necessary evil to make it possible to export split tracks, but for me it feels like one more thing I need to stop and do, for every freakin’ clip in the timeline. And if the clips are inside a compound clip, you need to go inside and make sure each clip is tagged with the right role.
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FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
[Craig Seeman] “For me tracks at their most organized always represented visual clutter “
To some extent then this is a matter of taste – because for me the “jumble” of the trackless model where clips pop around wherever it makes sense for FCPX to put them represents more visual clutter than the track-based model where associated clips have a designated (by me) place and they stay there unless I move them.
[Craig Seeman] ” think the desire for tracks, in instances where they don’t actually interact horizontally is more of a “psychological comfort zone” than any real function. “
I think there are other issues beyond the “psychological comfort zone”. If I hand off my project to another editor (or get one from him/her) it’s a lot easier to get to grips with it if I/they have used a specific organized track arrangement (it doesn’t even have to be mine, it just has to have a clear pattern) than if the clips are more or less randomly assigned in vertical space.
(I picked up on a feature edit the other day in MC where the previous editor was running a premixed DME in tandem with the original laid/sync tracks which were muted but still needed to be cut in sync. This would have been impossible with the FCPX paradigm I think where everything would have been jumbled vertically. The unequivocal visual feedback of the conventional timeline was what made this workflow possible.)
And the same thing goes for when I want to send my tracks off for the sound mix (via OMF). If they are organized long the traditional track model it will make immediate sense to the sound mixer what is what. At the moment, and unless Roles at some future date come to the rescue on this one, an OMF export via Automatic Duck from FCPX maintains the “random” arrangements of the source timeline.
And no, the audio exporting of Roles as currently implemented really doesn’t help with this issue because everything is “baked-in” without handles and that’s really not a satisfactory way of handing off audio for a final mix as I’m sure I don’t need to point out.
I’m not saying it’s a disaster – I do admire the thought that’s gone into this and can see there’s interesting potential but it’s not there yet by any means.
Clearly for the documentary/corporate/news end of the spectrum Roles will have answered many questions, and similarly the loss of tracks (and hence the “random” vertical arrangement of audio clips in the Timeline) shouldn’t really be an issue where you don’t have that many audio elements in play at any one time, which is clearly the case for you. I just wanted to point out that for those of us at the other end of the scale running lots and lots of concurrent tracks most of the time it’s really not working sweetly yet.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “To some extent then this is a matter of taste – because for me the “jumble” of the trackless model where clips pop around wherever it makes sense for FCPX to put them represents more visual clutter than the track-based model where associated clips have a designated (by me) place and they stay there unless I move them.”
It certainly is a matter of taste. Before FCPX I had no choice though. All the major NLEs where tied to track workflows, which I had been bothered by since around 1990. The scrolling up/down though in projects wasn’t simply a taste issue though. It was a GUI inconvenience that I’m glad is gone in at least one NLE.
I just don’t see a purpose in a track unless it has a purpose such as building things that transition to each other. The only reason one needed to have title at 1 minute and title at 3 minutes was to turn on/off as a unit, which can now be done in FCPX. To me function outweighs form. I need to “see” a relationship because I’m using it that way and don’t need to see it if I’m not. This is the way FCPX function. I like it. Others don’t. It doesn’t make it wrong though. I suspect Apple feels there’s a lot of people like me out there.
[Simon Ubsdell] “And the same thing goes for when I want to send my tracks off for the sound mix (via OMF). If they are organized long the traditional track model it will make immediate sense to the sound mixer what is what. At the moment, and unless Roles at some future date come to the rescue on this one, an OMF export via Automatic Duck from FCPX maintains the “random” arrangements of the source timeline. “
Unless you think FCPX is EOL, there will likely be a future update. In fact I suspect FCPX will be sending things out in an organized method with handles around the time Logic Pro X comes out or shortly thereafter. My guess is Logic Pro X will be in the App Store and it will be, in part, the replacement for SoundTrack Pro plus all the features of Logic Pro.
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m not saying it’s a disaster – I do admire the thought that’s gone into this and can see there’s interesting potential but it’s not there yet by any means.”
Certainly not, but Roles certainly gives me confidence that Apple is working out functional logistics. I’m sure we’ll be seeing advances in Event and Project management as well.
[Simon Ubsdell] “the “random” vertical arrangement of audio clips in the Timeline) shouldn’t really be an issue where you don’t have that many audio elements in play at any one time, which is clearly the case for you.”
Actually I’m thinking the opposite. It was an issue when cutting pieces that had, let’s say, 4 character dialogues, nat sound, SFX, music, etc. Way too many tracks to scroll through and complex selections to do what should have been a simple edit. To me, the sound layers are now functional and track clutter kept to a minimum. I don’t need to see visual stacks of tracks. I don’t care about “random” because, while it might look “random” each is tied to its function whether moving or trimming edits or turning on/off based on its function.
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[David Lawrence] “I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you further explain?”
Sure. You are going to have to follow me on this one as it is true, Apple is asking a lot of us in the trackless timeline. At least they are asking us to rethink how we are used to working.
First and foremost, let’s not forget, we have to forget tracks for now. This is all predicated on that fact. There are no tracks.
Let’s say you have certain “groups” of clips organzied on a track. Just for ease of this example, let’s say that SFX are on track 6. If there are SFX at 30 sec and 1.5 hours in the timeline on track 6, the track “defines” that relationship horizontally. In reality, there really is no realtionship to those clips @ 30 sec and 1.5 hours. The only realtionship they have is that they are both SFX. Roles deines this realtionship better than a track does, in my opinion. You can simply click on the “SFX” role for example, and all the SFX light up in the timeline. When exporting stems/multichannel QT, all of those same types of clips will be grouped in a channel.
[David Lawrence] “The horizontal relationships of clips in FCPX define the edit in time,”
Sure, but in FCPX the clip @ 30 seconds bears no relationship to the clip @ 1.5 hours. Why should it? They are the same classification, yes, but that’s it. The thing that has changed in FCPX is that horizontal relationships are only for the clips around it, not for the clips that are further down the timeline in the same track. This horizontal relationship of the clips is now more user defined, especially when working outside of the primary storyline. If you need two clips to be right next to each other spatially in the timeline, you create another storyline (or compound). Compounds can define both horizontal and vertical.
If divorcing yourself from tracks, Roles make a ton of sense.
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[Simon Ubsdell] ” 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.”
And the FCPX timeline can’t/won’t provide this feedback to you in Roles?
[Simon Ubsdell] “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. “
Actually, with less clutter, I think it is easier. A six track audio file can be represented in one clip. TO me, that is much easier to discern than 20 separate tracks.
[Simon Ubsdell] “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.”
Fair enough. Apple is asking a lot of us to relearn how the timeline relationships work. I think Roles are extremely useful if assuming we are moving to metadata based organization. I think they work visually as well.
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[Craig Seeman] “I only want a horizontal relationships when clips actually interact (dissolves, fx, crossfades, etc).
I really don’t gain anything by seeing all of “something” next to each other unless there’s a technical reason for them to be that way. “You said it much better than I did. This is exactly what I meant to say.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “(I picked up on a feature edit the other day in MC where the previous editor was running a premixed DME in tandem with the original laid/sync tracks which were muted but still needed to be cut in sync. This would have been impossible with the FCPX paradigm I think where everything would have been jumbled vertically. “
No it wouldn’t. Those sync tacks would move with the video. It would be one clip instead a bunch of disparate parts. If editing in the primary storyline, all you have to move is the clip in the primary and everything else that was attached would come along. I see this as more efficient and more simple, and even controlled.
Have you tried this yet?
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