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Screenlight: Will Accounting Woes at Avid Spark Big Changes or an Acquisition?
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[Chris Harlan] “You’ve made a really bold statement that there is no reason to ever separate audio from video.”
No I didn’t. I said that audio and video can be separate, just like any other NLE. I said you can copy/paste audio anywhere you want, please tell me where I said there is no reason to ever separate audio from video.
[Chris Harlan] “How do you deal with stems that aren’t initially attached, and only match with time code?”
Create a synchronized, or sometimes multicam, sometimes compound clip.
[Chris Harlan] “Doesn’t having an unnecessary 18 layers of audio attached to every single clip bog things down a bit?”
Have you discovered how audio components work in FCPX?
[Chris Harlan] “Doesn’t having hidden video for every single clip you are using get cludgy pretty fast?”
I didn’t say it had to be for every clip. It was a very specific example for Herb’s specific need.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I didn’t say it had to be for every clip. It was a very specific example for Herb’s specific need.
“I get that now. My bad. And my apologies. I read your statement to mean that there was no reason ever to separate audio. I was wondering how we could be so far apart. Stupid me.
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[Chris Kenny] “It’s not ‘the most bizarre method of media ingest into Avid imaginable’, it’s the standard method for importing pre-existing MXF files without having to copy or transcode anything.”
Ah, since the hypothetical situation was a neophyte importing footage I jumped to a situation where the person was handed DNxHD camera masters and told to get them into Avid.
[Chris Kenny] ” And this stuff is all going to be tied up with Avid’s shared storage solutions as well, making things even more complicated. There’s probably a reason they went and did AMA instead of adding more flexibility to ‘native’ media handling in the first place.”
I agree and didn’t mean to imply that I thought it would be a simple fix. AMA was definitely a stop-gap solution and they will have to unify how Avid handles media. Just like I think they’ll have to work on interfacing with the timeline. The SmartTool looks like it will give you FCP-like functionality but it’s so kludgy in practice that I rarely use it even though I really like FCP Legend’s timeline interfacing.
[Chris Kenny] “In my view, if Avid wants to reverse its long, slow decline, they need to pull an FCP X — except with much better communication with users, no radical new timeline paradigm, no immediate discontinuation of the legacy product, and a more complete feature set in the 1.0 product. I think they really need a clean start”
I don’t think anyone would disagree with that and it sounds plausible to me. Update the backend, give the GUI a facelift but keep the look & feel intact so users don’t feel like they have to relearn the program from scratch.
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[Chris Harlan] “Since that has never been the case in any other NLE, ever, you can understand my doubt. If what you are saying is true, then I guess you don’t need sync markers, but I’m having a very hard time believing it.”
I’m not sure it’s quite the case that you’d never want to detach audio in FCP X, but there are certainly many cases where if you’re used to other NLEs you might think you should, but you probably shouldn’t. Sync markers wouldn’t exactly be a bad addition, but if you’re not trying to make FCP X work like a more traditional NLE, they’re not nearly as critical than they might initially seem.
[Chris Harlan] “How do you deal with stems that aren’t initially attached, and only match with time code?”
Make synchronized clips in the event viewer before you start editing?
[Chris Harlan] “Doesn’t having an unnecessary 18 layers of audio attached to every single clip bog things down a bit?”
If you mean performance-wise, I don’t think disabled audio tracks have any negative performance implications. If your concern is timeline clutter, remember that you can visually collapse audio into its associated video if you’re not working with it, and even when you expand it, all tracks show up as one ‘object’ unless you then explicitly expand those as well. So you never really have to see more timeline clutter than you want to, and in fact it’s easy to choose to see less than in other NLEs (no visually separate audio items). Also, note that if you disable some audio tracks for a given video clip from the ‘Channel Configuration’ panel, those disabled tracks don’t show up when you expand audio components in the timeline at all — it’s as if they had been deleted, except you can bring them back by clicking a checkbox.
Furthermore, note that you can change the sync relationship between audio and video for a given clip via ‘Open in Timeline’ — without detaching audio at all. And of course you can make J and L cuts without detaching audio.
[Chris Harlan] “Doesn’t having hidden video for every single clip you are using get cludgy pretty fast?”
Why would it? Again, remember how different FCP X’s timeline is. In a regular NLE, if you have video attached to your audio, that video exists on a video track, and you have to put it somewhere, maybe disabled on V2 or something. That would be ugly. But in FCP X, the video and the audio are collapsed into a single visible ‘item’ — a clip with both video and audio doesn’t take up any ‘space’ that an audio-only clip doesn’t.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Chris, I appreciate the time you took, but actually Jeremy and I were having a misunderstanding, or rather I misunderstood something Jeremy said, and took it to mean that there was never ANY reason to separate audio from video. It was in the light of that that most of my blathering was taking place. Since you were kind enough to take the time, though, let me respond to a few of your questions and ask a few of my own:
[Chris Kenny] “[Chris Harlan] “How do you deal with stems that aren’t initially attached, and only match with time code?”
Make synchronized clips in the event viewer before you start editing?
“I understand that as a possibility, but the problem for me is that separate audio stems are often–in fact, more often than not–coming from a different source, late in the process. With TC, I can easily match and replace long into the edit. Even if the TC is wrong, I can work out the difference and make adjustments.
[Chris Kenny] “note that if you disable some audio tracks for a given video clip from the ‘Channel Configuration’ panel, those disabled tracks don’t show up when you expand audio components in the timeline at all “
This sounds relatively useful. In 7, MC and Pr, I just physically strip the many unwanted channels out in a time line, so this might actually be an improvement.
Question: Can I disconnect one channel, and not others? Let’s say I have a clip that has dialog on ch.1, a car backfire on ch. 2, and some OS laughter on ch. 3–How easy is it for me to slide ch. 1 three frames to the left, ch. 2 two frames to the right, and keep Dia. in sync on ch. 2? In traditional NLE’s all I do is slide each along their tracks. How do I do this easily in X?
[Chris Kenny] “Furthermore, note that you can change the sync relationship between audio and video for a given clip via ‘Open in Timeline’ — without detaching audio at all. And of course you can make J and L cuts without detaching audio.
“I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. You can change sync relationship, but do you retain any reference to the original relationship?
[Chris Kenny] “In a regular NLE, if you have video attached to your audio, that video exists on a video track, and you have to put it somewhere, maybe disabled on V2 or something. T”
No, I just delete the video, and if I ever need it back I match frame.
[Chris Kenny] “But in FCP X, the video and the audio are collapsed into a single visible ‘item’ — a clip with both video and audio doesn’t take up any ‘space’ that an audio-only clip doesn’t.
“So much of my work is with audio, that I can’t imagine having them collapsed most of the time. I use waveforms a lot to navigate.
I AM very curious about how channels operates, and whether or not I can adjust or separate individual channels. My fear with X, is that I would end up needing three separate iterations of the above clip to make the kind of adjustments I’m talking about. Would love to be wrong though.
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[Chris Harlan] “I understand that as a possibility, but the problem for me is that separate audio stems are often–in fact, more often than not–coming from a different source, late in the process. With TC, I can easily match and replace long into the edit. Even if the TC is wrong, I can work out the difference and make adjustments. “
You can add/replace attached audio on a clip in the timeline at any time via ‘Open in Timeline’, although I’m not aware of a way, at that stage, to automatically sync based on TC. That seems like it might be useful, though, and I can’t think of why it couldn’t be added.
[Chris Harlan] “Question: Can I disconnect one channel, and not others? Let’s say I have a clip that has dialog on ch.1, a car backfire on ch. 2, and some OS laughter on ch. 3–How easy is it for me to slide ch. 1 three frames to the left, ch. 2 two frames to the right, and keep Dia. in sync on ch. 2? In traditional NLE’s all I do is slide each along their tracks. How do I do this easily in X?”
Via ‘Open in Timeline’ you can change the relative sync of any attached channel group. You get a timeline with your video clip as the ‘primary storyline’ and your audio channel groups as connected clips, and you can slide them around relative to each other in the ways that implies.
[Chris Harlan] “I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. You can change sync relationship, but do you retain any reference to the original relationship?”
If you’re talking about original embedded audio, that will obviously be the same length as the embedded video. This means that if you slide it out of sync via ‘Open in Timeline’, it’s pretty easy to figure out where it originally was.
[Chris Harlan] “So much of my work is with audio, that I can’t imagine having them collapsed most of the time. I use waveforms a lot to navigate.”
Remember, though, that FCP X can show waveforms on video clips. (Although if you don’t expand things it does show a single combined waveform for all the attached audio channels, which might be an issue for your use).
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Interesting. It just doesn’t seem quite worth it to me yet. It seems harder or as hard as what I do now, but with no real gain. I can see giving it a try though, if rolls gets a bit more developed, and I get some color-coding.
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This forum is the only place where I’ve met any pro editor who doesn’t treat X with with either disdain or indifference.
This unfortunately holds true for me as well. I’m the only one I know in real life who’s using X. And when I suggested it as a good tool for a project, I got laughed at. Despite me listing the many ways in which it would make things easier on that particular project.
The bounce back is oddly very harsh.
So now I don’t do it anymore. But I must admit, I’m baffled at the venom that this program generates. It either works or it doesn’t, but people sure have an awful lot to say about just why it’s the worst NLE on the market.
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I AM very curious about how channels operates, and whether or not I can adjust or separate individual channels
Chris,
Not sure if you’ve seen this, but this video helped me understand Audio Components when they were introduced in 10.06 (I think).
https://themovieswemake.com/2012/10/fcpx-audio-component-editing-workflow/
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[Sandeep Sajeev] “And when I suggested it as a good tool for a project, I got laughed at. Despite me listing the many ways in which it would make things easier on that particular project.”
I guess you have the last laugh then. Most Editors are still judging it based on the reactions of people after the release, not on any personal experience with it.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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