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scrutinising FCPX and john davidson’s timelapse.
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I want to take a break from my regularly-scheduled disagreement with Jeremy to agree with his entire post about FCPX being more like itself, but most especially this:
[Jeremy Garchow] “In a nutshell, I want the timeline (or the timeline index) to work as a database just as other parts of FCPX allow for certain search and sort capabilities. I think it would be quite powerful to give a user that control.”
and this:
[Jeremy Garchow] “I, personally, do not mind the magnetism. It’s so easy to shut it off when you need to, or keep it on when it is appropriate. The tilde key was a massive and necessary added function to aid in furthering the usefulness of magnetism.”
To avoid this being an entirely me-too post, I do have a question for the heavy FCPX users here. In his Primary School blog post [link], John says:
[John Davidson] “The simplicity of our system is that it works for everything and any of us can jump into any spot and continue to work without having to figure out what the other guy did.”
With FCPX as it currently stands and without the awesome suggestions Jeremy has made, how hard is it to pick up where someone else left off when they’ve cut with the primary?
On real-world projects, is it easy or hard to read someone else’s timeline (or maybe your own timeline some weeks or months later) and understand the story and compositing structures? Are there any best practices to emulate (or worst practices to avoid) for making an FCPX edit more visually readable? What else (if anything) should FCPX offer for making reading an edit easier?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Jeremy Garchow] “What is good about tracks is that they organize visually, what is “bad” about them is that they are really clunky, especially when you have a lot of them.”
do you think that applies more to video than audio? I’m inclined to think video patch tracks as separate entities that can, one at a time, handing off to each other, call incoming video elements just to them (“I’m V15 and you will come to me! I have the tick box!”) are pretty redundant, but I’m far less sure about audio organisation.
Any audio patching action is out, because FCPX is carrying primary VA as new proper objects, and I get your role stuff – but that is object assign based, would it not be as easy to provide audio only channel snapping for discrete audio elements without going through the rigamarole of role assignment?
You know, because I have worked so, so very hard at this software that this directly impacts me. Dunno – just curious – video patching does feels redundant tho.FCP legend has been notionally making tracks instantly because we occasionally just like to drag stuff in for a decade. We’ve ignored proper patching at will for years and years.
We have indulged in FCPX behaviour in a way for ages. With the VA split it made a lot of useless audio channels at the same time.but you do somehow miss the absence of all the order when it completely goes.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Walter Soyka] “I want to take a break from my regularly-scheduled disagreement with Jeremy to agree with his entire post about FCPX being more like itself, but most especially this:
[Jeremy Garchow] “In a nutshell, I want the timeline (or the timeline index) to work as a database just as other parts of FCPX allow for certain search and sort capabilities. I think it would be quite powerful to give a user that control.”
“I honestly do not get the intellectual orgy over the timeline index walter. what is the unheralded power still to be untapped? Isn’t it just tagging search?
I always thought the problem with meta data is that it requires input fingers on the keyboard at every single stage?
Offering post hoc element organisation options ala – audio layers – surely that allows you to perform spontaneous and immediate categorisation closer to the point of hand off and has an equal power?one can over do the tagging meta data thing. particularly given that a lengthy edit might benefit from simple post edit organisation – the provision of layer ordering has always allowed that – particularly for audio post?
you simply position the audio objects at the close, assembling the remaining audio into its proper slots for post.
why exactly walter, is pinning a meta data badge onto every last single audio element that ever entered the timeline, to be part of a stupid rube goldberg auto arrange gag at the end of the edit preferential to this?
Isn’t that just planning against no ability to apply any external layer order for the final elements entering audio post?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “[Jeremy Garchow] “What is good about tracks is that they organize visually, what is “bad” about them is that they are really clunky, especially when you have a lot of them.”
do you think that applies more to video than audio?”
The opposite. I usually have many more audio tracks than video, and when I export a multitrack QT, I need the audio to follow certain channel paths. Video just gets mixed down to a mono stream, if you will.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “would it not be as easy to provide audio only channel snapping for discrete audio elements without going through the rigamarole of role assignment? “
Well, where would you put it? There is no A1/A2 so how else would you describe the audio channels and where you’d like to see them?
I think that Role assignment is really easy, do it right away, even if it is somewhat inaccurate.
I have tried to get in to this before, but layering in audio can be “less important” than it is in video. Meaning if I play 2 stereo exposions on top of each other (a1/2 and a3/4) and then switch them (a3/a4 moves to a1/a2 and a1/a2 moves to a3/a4) it will sound exactly the same. The same could not be said for stacked video. Many layers of audio are always available, many layers of video are not always available unless you make them available through opacity, scale/position, transfer modes, alpha channels/transparency, etc.
If you know that 68 elements that you just imported in to FCPX are NatSound, mark them that way. Or dialogue, or SFX, or ShittyMusic, or ShittierMusic.
That 4.5 seconds it took to create new Roles just saved you a lot of time later. Even if the “ShittierMusic” Role doesn’t stick around to the final output, it will be much easier to change and find as you have already separated it somewhat from the giant group of “Music”.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “FCP legend has been notionally making tracks instantly because we occasionally just like to drag stuff in for a decade. We’ve ignored proper patching at will for years and years. “
I can’t ignore patching. Maybe at the beginning of an edit where it’s just two tracks, but towards the end, I have to constantly juggle tracks. For instance, if you get a 6 channel sound effect hand have to add that in to your 8 channel timeline that’s already full, there’s some acrobatics that need to happen, and that channel config will stick with me all through the entire edit. With FCPX, I simply assign a role and channel map, then add it to the timeline. I can adjust the 6 channels if I need to, or simply treat as one clip at will. As I said, I love it, but it still takes some planning.
Or, you get a stereo mix back form audio post and you then have to mute the 28 audio tracks you had in building the rough mix, collapse all of those, and add the new stereo mix.
With FCPX, this process is so much easier. Assign a “Final Mix” Role to the stem, add it to the timeline, shove it on the top layer which won’t destroy anything, and mute/minimize all other Roles. Done.
Put it this way.
Open your timeline index and click the “Roles” tab. Pretend you had 12 Roles there. Now imagine dragging those Roles in a stacking order you’d like FCPX to take. The timeline would then adjust the audio portions of the timeline to mimic the visual stacking order you just created.
It would be pretty cool.
I realize it could also get tricky.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “With FCPX, this process is so much easier. Assign a “Final Mix” Role to the stem, add it to the timeline, shove it on the top layer which won’t destroy anything, and mute/minimize all other Roles. Done.
Put it this way.
Open your timeline index and click the “Roles” tab. Pretend you had 12 Roles there. Now imagine dragging those Roles in a stacking order you’d like FCPX to take. The timeline would then adjust the audio portions of the timeline to mimic the visual stacking order you just created.
“Totally agree. The main things, audio-wise, I’m missing in X is (are?) Sorting by Role, perhaps color coding Roles, and fade handles and a more robust implementation of expanded audio. Setting Roles is way easier than patching, as you can do it on the sources in the event and then forget about it. The fact that one can now set roles on individual channels in a multichannel master clip is a huge improvement.
If you could assign a Role to a sort of sub master to “mix” it as a group (without sticking it in a CC) that would be great. I don’t want tracks back at all As Jeremy says, let X be more like X. FWIW, I cut with *lots* of “tracks” upwards of 16-24 always. And as said above, the “new” audio editing features are awesome, all those “tracks” just disappear when not needed. Though, like anything X, it takes a bit to wrap your head around how it works. 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Aindreas Gallagher] “[Jeremy Garchow] “What is good about tracks is that they organize visually, what is “bad” about them is that they are really clunky, especially when you have a lot of them.”
do you think that applies more to video than audio?”
The opposite…
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I meant that the other way around than it was taken – thats why I was at the audio end of things – also going on about no need for video patching. I was relating to audio patching/metadata.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “I honestly do not get the intellectual orgy over the timeline index walter. what is the unheralded power still to be untapped? Isn’t it just tagging search?”
The timeline index is an alternate view of the edit, and maybe it doesn’t have to be the only one. The timeline as it stands is built to show story structure, not role structure. The timeline index shows editorial events, but not story structure.
It would be cool to show an alternate, non-self-collapsing view of the timeline, grouped by roles. This could facilitate some good missing traditional track functionality (seeing all supers visually grouped, or all shots from a specific camera, etc.).
[Aindreas Gallagher] “why exactly walter, is pinning a meta data badge onto every last single audio element that ever entered the timeline at the outset preferential to this?”
I’m not sure that it is. I’m not making an argument for the best way to apply metadata. I’m arguing that once we’ve got it, we should be able to do more with it.
Setting FCPX aside and speaking generally, metadata is a great tool we can use for manipulating the underlying data.
NLEs are more than just tools for editing; they’re the hubs for post-production. Looking to the future, I’d love to be able to build workflow automation tools, and ready access to metadata would be a key part of that.
In animation and effects, we have dynamics simulations, expressions-driven animation, procedural keying; why not procedural assemblies or even rough cuts (see Philip Hodgetts’s work), procedural supers and versioning, or other metadata-assisted post work?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “The timeline index is an alternate view of the edit, “
no, its not. They are not equivalent and alternate. one is the edit, the other is a list of edit components, tags and markers.
[Walter Soyka] “The timeline index shows editorial events, but not story structure”
how is it showing “editorial events”? unless you are actually just talking about markers? if so, maybe better to say markers, it does show markers.
[Walter Soyka] “NLEs are more than just tools for editing; they’re the hubs for post-production. Looking to the future, I’d love to be able to build workflow automation tools, and ready access to metadata would be a key part of that. In animation and effects, we have dynamics simulations, expressions-driven animation, procedural keying; why not procedural assemblies or even rough cuts (see Philip Hodgetts’s work), procedural supers and versioning, or other metadata-assisted post work?”
sure – some of hodgetts products in terms of script analysis and categorisation stuff is mint.
for myself however I still see it largely as low brow editing when I’m doing it. I use expressions for dynamic bounce behaviour in AE, and many moons ago I enjoyed the fluid dynamics in MAX for some promo spots – but I fail to understand even the most basic causal linkages from those system work cases to picture and video editing. Software reliably proves itself incredibly stupid at divining intent, unless there are mass humans guiding its course: see google maps.
It sounds – and don’t take this wrong – kind of like intellectual pie in the sky for the sake of saying it?
“expressions-driven animation procedural edit assemblies” sounds a little like the thing someone would say in a Y-combinator seed fund round?
with a hopeful *expression* on their face?*boom.. boom* 😉
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “but I fail to understand even the most basic causal linkages from those system work cases to picture and video editing.”
I don’t know Aindreas, it seems like that kind of functionality could be very useful in an NLE. I would love to be able to change the font color or scale of 50 or 60 lower thirds titles with a few simple lines of text.
Then again, I’m a heavy user of Cinema 4D and AE, so I do find myself missing the power and flexibility of expressions when I’m editing. That said, I also recognize that scripting, even light or node based scripting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea… but I still think it would be cool.Shawn
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “no, its not. They are not equivalent and alternate. one is the edit, the other is a list of edit components, tags and markers.”
Ok, I can agree with that. The timeline index and the timeline itself are clearly not equivalent. It’s not like one can functionally replace the other. But that’s kind of my point, that an edit is a set of data about editorial decisions, and that different views of that same underlying data would be helpful — like taking a table and showing it as a bar chart or a pie chart.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “how is it showing “editorial events”? unless you are actually just talking about markers? if so, maybe better to say markers, it does show markers.”
I was using “event” in the old dinosaur sense of EDL events. The clip view of the timeline index is a bit like an EDL (again, consider my table/bar chart analogy).
[Aindreas Gallagher] “but I fail to understand even the most basic causal linkages from those system work cases to picture and video editing… It sounds – and don’t take this wrong – kind of like intellectual pie in the sky for the sake of saying it?”
Totally. It is intellectual pie in the sky. That’s why I tried to preface that comment by stepping away from FCPX and talking about the future. These are not things that I expect to see in FCPX or any other current-generation NLE, but formalizing metadata entry in the NLE may be the first step toward it.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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