Selecting all clips after click point.

[Craig Seeman]

[Mark Morache] “I wonder if we’re holding our breath for the end of summer, which would give Apple until Thursday to get in under the deadline.

I honestly wouldn’t mind if they took a little longer and knocked our socks off, but not without saying something.
“

One would hope if Apple doesn’t get something out by Thursday they’d at least change their FAQ. Otherwise they’d have another one of their “private” talks with apparently approved leaks.

That they had such talk at IBC, this time with NDA, must mean something’s coming up. One might wonder why this was NDA and the London meeting apparently wasn’t. One might also wonder why the IBC was with or included VARs.

I do think locking the primary storyline would be useful.

I’m hoping will have much improved Techniques to talk about once the first FCPX update is out.

[David Lawrence]

Mark,

I think you totally nailed it in this post.

Bizarre timeline workarounds like the ones discussed in this thread are my biggest problem with FCPX. Why should we be jumping thru hoops to perform the simplest editorial functions? Where’s the benefit? How is this new way better than tracks? All this amazing power under the hood and a timeline UI that looks, feels, and acts like a toy. I don’t get Apple’s thinking.

[Mark Morache] “I believe Apple could come up with a track based interface and still find a way to give us a virtually magnetic timeline. I think the ability to select a group of clips and “group” them together with a keystroke could give us the same advantage of the connected clips without forcing us into the stacks of storylines.”

Agreed. Apple could keep tracks but add smarter grouping behaviors and even collision avoidance as you suggest. It would be the best of both worlds.

I get the impression that the trackless UI is driven primarily by two things – marketing and engineering. Marketing likes to make ads that tout new and revolutionary paradigms. Engineering likes to express their data models in the UI. It’s engineering’s idea of “elegance”. What seems to be missing is an understanding of how editors actually do their work. Editors don’t care about data models — they want tools that that are powerful, flexible, and intuitive. This thread is yet one more example of how much work Apple has cut out for itself.

Looking forward to the first update. Not as optimistic as @Craig Seeman, but I’d love to be surprised.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on both the good and the bad.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Craig Seeman] “If clips are initially far apart or if there’s a large number of connected clips, having to select them all is awkward.”

I’m sure there’s a reason but I am wondering what kind of editing scenario would require you to make a secondary storyline comprised of clips that are a substantial distance apart.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Craig Seeman]

[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m sure there’s a reason but I am wondering what kind of editing scenario would require you to make a secondary storyline comprised of clips that are a substantial distance apart.”

It wouldn’t be common but it can happen.

I can see someone doing a music video where they’re placing Connected Clips at random over a music bed. Eventually there may be a predominant amount of horizontal interaction between the clips. They would obviously be abutting each other at that point. It would be nice to not have to do a big lasso or shift selection and just make the whole row a Secondary Storyline. Basically since the Primary Storyline is the music you may want to have the Secondary Storyline handling the video to have all the same capabilities of the Primary Storyline. Sure there are workarounds but I think this feature would obviate the need for the workarounds.

Imagine also you make a Compound Clip in the Event Browser to create a “sub” timeline to work on a Picture in Picture section where all the clips on the Secondary Storyline are transitioning and/or there’s a potential for lots of rolling edits.

They may not be predominate edit situations but it would be nice to have a feature that makes a “row” automatically default or easily convert to a Secondary Storyline without have to do a long clips selection and Command G.

To put it succinctly, the ability to pre designate an area as Secondary Storyline or to convert an entire row of Connected Clips to a Secondary Storyline would be useful for certain types of editing situations.

BTW this might also open the concept of going the other way. That is taking an individual clip in a storyline and breaking it into a connected clip (and thereby splitting a Secondary Storyline) so it can then be moved with the primary storyline it’s connected to.

The ability to move between Connected Clip and Secondary Storyline made be a major flexibility improvement.

Another example of a Secondary Storyline area of improvement. In the Primary Storyline, Option Command UpArrow moves a clip to Connected and replaces with Gap. That doesn’t work in a Secondary Storyline.

[David Lawrence]

Seems to me the root of these problems comes from there only being one primary storyline. I find this to be a huge and problematic constraint.

What if you could create as many primaries as you like? They would behave like tracks except more flexible, i.e. could contain any type of media — audio, video, graphic, etc. and would be fixed in the window space like a typical open timeline. There would still be connected clips and secondary storylines which could be grouped and connected with any of your designated “primaries”.

I think this would solve a lot of problems.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Andy Neil]

Craig. Based on how you’re working with the secondary storyline, I believe the best workflow for you might be the following:

Edit audio into primary storyline. When ready to add broll, select all the audio tracks, right click and choose Lift from Primary storyline. That will move all the audio into connected clips below the primary storyline.

Select all the audio again and hit CMD+G to turn the audio into a secondary storyline.

Use overwrite to place your first broll clip into the primary storyline (so that the audio will be connected to it rather than a gap), and then you can edit broll as normal into the primary storyline.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Craig Seeman]

That would certainly work but essentially it’s the same “lots of steps” and potentially selection lots of clips, this time the audio clips as opposed to the video clips.

This still brings me back to the desire for a “one keystroke” solution. Basically when one needs an entire row to be a secondary storyline I would like a single keystroke solution.

David’s comment strikes to the point. Although he seems to say multiple primary storylines but, ultimately for me, it’s single keystroke creation of a secondary storyline with all the features of a primary storyline.

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Craig Seeman] “just make the whole row a Secondary Storyline”

Does the notion of a “row” actually make sense of how the underlying architecture works? Does FCPX know that Connected Clips that happen not to overlap (and hence make an additional “row”) are in any way related? Isn’t the appearance of a “row” soemthing of an illusion in that the interconnection is all vertical rather than horizontal?

I’m not saying I disagree with what you’re asking for – I just wonder whether it doesn’t go against the grain of how FCPX is built …

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Craig Seeman]

Fundamentally for me, it’s the single keystroke of Secondary Storylines that have the same features of a Primary Storyline. Do that an they may ameliorate the bulk of the complaints about “tracklessness”

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Craig Seeman] “David’s comment strikes to the point. Although he seems to say multiple primary storylines but, ultimately for me, it’s single keystroke creation of a secondary storyline with all the features of a primary storyline.”

I think David’s comment is a very interesting one – and if you can think of scenarios where you need one secondary storyline to act like a primary one, then I’m sure there will be other editors who can conceive of the need for an unlimited number of storylines that act the same way. In a sense it’s odd that this isn’t already implemented – what’s so special about two as against ten or twenty or a hundred?

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com