Skimming? Is it really that great?

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “really cool to be able to use the slimmer and playhead in tandem. The playhead saves your spot, the skimmer goes hunting for something else.”

Yes. Love that. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Bill Davis]

I’ll also toss in that even if you’re working with JKL in your timeline, since the Event browser can be configured to show assets in what are essentially long filmstrips which are themselves skimmable – I find it useful when I’m in a storyline to park the playhead in a place that I want to be an edit point, reach for the mouse to skim the clips in the Event Browser – and when I land on what I want – a drag and tapping a single key will either magnetically insert, overwrite or attach in a secondary that clip to the playhead position depending on the key I hit. That’s one example where skimming in the EB might work well together with using JKL in for transport in the Storyline.

There are lots of ways to approach things in X. And no two editors that I’ve seen yet does everything the same way. But the range of tools it provides are pretty fun to use.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Patrice Freymond]

Skimming to me has the same advantages that using a Wacom tablet has over using a mouse: you can jump from one location to another without having to stay “in contact” with the surface.

With a mouse you effectivelly need to slide all the way from A to B for the pointer on your screen to get to B. With a tablet stylus you lift your hand from A and land on B or thereabouts. Much more efficient.

With JKL in a Clip you need to play throughout the clip, accelerating through the bits you are not interested in, but you can’t altogether skip them; with skimming you can.

And if you skim with a stylus you also get the added advantage that, unlike with a mouse, you don’t have to drop your pointing tool to type on the keyboard, wether it is text or a command you enter.

Patrice

[Eric Sternberger]

skimming is great, agreed. But why cant you skim in the viewer?? If you load a clip in the viewer, you still have to move the mouse to your project bin + find the clip to skim through it!!
Come on, thats bull….!!

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

When FCP X was released, it was one of the first things that I put off.

But I learned how to use it after a while, and you have to ‘get’ how to use it for your own use. I think everyone will have their own combination of skimming, JKL, clicking, … but once you approach it as another tool, it really can be VERY fast to go trough footage, search for points, work with 2 reference points (your playhead and the skimmer). It’s by design pretty clever (turned off when the playhead is running, for instance, coming in when you are paused, …)
And in very rare cases where it works against you, it’s just a shortcut away from being turned off.

To be honest, I couldn’t live without it anymore.

In fact, we are using X for the first time on a big job now at work after I dabbled in it for about 10 projects, and adviced to switch (I’m the main editor of the company)
My collegue, which is pretty new to the thing, already said after a first day ‘teaching’ I gave him: “I opened FCP 7 last night again, and it immediately felt sooo old.”

This is after years of working on 7. It’s a great program. Sure, it still has to mature, I have my wish list and I know many others too. But it’s a bit like the first iPhone: yes it was limited in a lot of ways, but it was also an utter joy to work with and the things it did, it did better then anyone else.
With FCP X it’s often the same (not always). I keep looking out for every next update how fast the developers move.

[Chi-ho Lee]

Thanks for all the replies. The current way I’m using the skimmer now, I turn it off a lot and use JKL. I just can’t skim to a frame as precisely or as quickly as I can with JKL. Maybe it’s a muscle memory thing?

But reading that using the skimmer to see a clip in the middle of a “stack” does sound useful.

I’m still using 7 for 90% of my work. Though I’m starting a small project on X now. We’ll see how it goes.

thanks!

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
http://www.chiholee.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

I find a combo of skimmer and then arrow keys and space bar is pretty much how I work.

Also, to reiterate, clip skimming, which is an actual function you can turn on or or off separate from general skimming.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Eric Sternberger] ” If you load a clip in the viewer, you still have to move the mouse to your project bin + find the clip to skim through it!! “

Yes, it works differently than FCP7 or any other NLE with a scrub bar.

It would be nice if you could scrub the viewer itself.

Have your dreams come true: https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

Jeremy

[Julian Bowman]

Personally I wish there were two different skimmers. One for the thumbs and one for the timeline. The one on the thumbs i like and use. The one on the timeline I loathe and always turn off.

By having them both work from the same S key stroke I have to keep hitting S when i switch between the two areas during my edit which is a pain. So let me turn the thumbnails skimmer on ‘S’ and the timeline skimmer off ‘CMD+S’ and leave them both like that unless I want to turn the timeline skimmer om ‘CMD+S’, and then I can turn it off again when it invariably gets in my way ‘CMD+S’ whilst the thumbnail skimmer remains as is throughout.

In addition, make clicking on a new point in the thumbnail not stop the playing of the clip. it’s annoying and one of the things CS6 dropped the ball on.