So where are we in the game?

[Tony West]

I thought it was funny watching Larry. He was down right giddy with X and the programs that he demoed with it.

X looks better to more people everyday.

Since there are companies that make their living “filing holes” in other people’s software, and Apple making their own moves, pretty soon there won’t be many holes left to fill.

It’s looking real good for X

[Bill Davis]

So, I’d love for somebody to explain how this simple re-linking is supposed to work since the ENTIRE clip data structure in X has evolved so far away from the dumb container/finder construct of Legacy.

Do you really think the easy ability to relink a shorter clip in X into a storyline that might have a dozen clips magnetically inter-connected won’t screw anything else up? You OK with that? And what about all the compound clips hat might reference that new shorter clip? What do you want X to do with those?
And will you be OK if your Event Browser has all it’s Compound Clips shortened, iand then ant any OTHER projects where you used those compound clip get messed up cuz THEY now have to little content for the way you used them originally?

Or might it be better to learn how X works and use the built in clip handling tools properly so you don’t LOSE your links by being as careless and sloppy with clip storage and movement like we all were able to be in back in Legacy?

Yes, X takes learning to use well. But it’s NOT that hard to learn to us it properly. I haven’t “lost” a clip connection I didn’t plan to break in well over a year. And I’m no editing rocket scientist.

X is NEVER going to get better by trying to work more like what it replaced. Time to face that reality and move along.

Honestly, the new way is MUCH more fun, if you just don’t fight it so dammed much.

My 2 cents.

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.

[Ronny Courtens]

[Lance Bachelder] “On the other hand Premiere CC re-linking is awesome, fast and it will drill down into however many subfolders necessary until it finds the correct file.”

I don’t think everyone agrees on this: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/943725#946335

– Ronny

[Walter Soyka]

I think that the NLE market will remain fragmented for some time to come. I don’t see it consolidating again like it did with FCP7 for the foreseeable future.

I am surprised at how much staying power FCP7 has. I had to use a bit of FCP7 a couple days ago for the first time in maybe a year. I don’t miss 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

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “So, I’d love for somebody to explain how this simple re-linking is supposed to work since the ENTIRE clip data structure in X has evolved so far away from the dumb container/finder construct of Legacy. “

Maybe it would help if there were some metadata system for identifying unique frames in unique media containers. We could call them unique frame temporal addresses (UFTAs) and unique container IDs (UCIDs), and we could save them all in a database. That way, we could simply update the pointers from a specific reference frame in one container that corresponding frame in a different container. We could call that process media reference connection adjustment (MRCA).

Or maybe we could call that metadata timecode and reels, and we could call that process re-linking or conforming 🙂

Metadata is data about data. It’s a level of abstraction that allows you to do powerful things like swapping out the underlying media without altering the structure of the edit itself. What’s the part about that that you think is dumb?

[Bill Davis] “Do you really think the easy ability to relink a shorter clip in X into a storyline that might have a dozen clips magnetically inter-connected won’t screw anything else up? You OK with that? And what about all the compound clips hat might reference that new shorter clip? What do you want X to do with those? And will you be OK if your Event Browser has all it’s Compound Clips shortened, iand then ant any OTHER projects where you used those compound clip get messed up cuz THEY now have to little content for the way you used them originally?”

Any NLE has a problem if the clip you relink is too short for its original use.

The ability to relink a clip and have that relink flow through other edits might sound dangerous, or it might sound powerful.

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

[Chris Harlan]

[Ronny Courtens] “I don’t think everyone agrees on this: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/943725#946335
“

If you look a little more closely, I think you’ll find that the issue that you linked to has to do with relinking XML translations from FCP 7. My guess is that there is something in the XML that Premiere is having issues with, and that’s why it is taking so long.

[Lance Bachelder]

All I was talking about was the fact that FCPX will not look any further than the folder it is in when you search – it will not drill down into sub-folders to find a clip, you must do the drilling manually – this makes FCPX’s re-linking almost unusable compared to any other NLE.

Sony Vegas, for instance, will search and index every drive on a system and find every version of the off-line clip no mater how deep it is buried. While it is doing this search it will index the drive and find every other off-line clip and remember where they are.

FCP7 was far better than FCPX at this and I’m sure this problem is on the hit-list at Apple and will be fixed in the next update, even if Bill doesn’t want it fixed…

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Ronny Courtens]

You are correct, Chris, and I agree this may (or not) be a more complex matter.

I just wanted to state that it is easy to say general things like “workflow Y is perfect, fast and flawless” while in the real world you will have circumstances where it just isn’t.

The same goes for relinking in FCPX. If I were to share only my personal experience I would say it is perfect, extremely fast and reliable because with all the relinking and media management we have done in the past year on literally hundreds of projects we never had one single issue with it. But I don’t do that. Because we are very meticulous about our workflows and our media organization, and I know other people may not be.

FCPX doesn’t let you “force” anything, so you have to know what you are doing from the start. Changing file names for original media is not an issue, as opposed to what has been said above. But FCPX will not let you relink to media for which you have changed the timecode or the duration or the audio channels. Because if it would let you do this, this would probably screw up your edit anyway. And I think that’s a good thing.

– Ronny

[Ronny Courtens]

All generalizations and favoritisms aside I think no-one can deny that FCPX is rapidly gaining ground. When I look at another forum I frequent I can see a massive growth of active FCPX members, especially in the past few months (I just checked: about 1,000 new members in 2 months time, only on that one forum).

So is FCPX popular? Yes, undoubtably. Is it also being used successfully in feature films, in broadcast post, under highly demanding circumstances? Absolutely. Is it the perfect one-stop solution for every editing task? I guess not, nor will any other NLE ever be.

But FCPX keeps growing. And what I particularly like about this growth is that with every major update another glimpse of its underlying power is revealed. I honestly think we haven’t seen the real FCPX yet. If it would end up to be just like the rest I would be disappointed. At this time it is a very decent professional NLE that easily stands up against any major competitor for most workflows, but I think this is just the starting point. And IMO that’s the biggest difference with FCPX over other NLEs.

– Ronny

[Marcus Moore]

The most prominent place where I find this would be useful is for graphics renders.

Plenty of times the timing of a shot will either change, or I’ll just have forgotten to set an export range in AE or Motion, and end up with the standard 10 second length for the render.

As I refine the graphic, I usually remember to export a shorter range somewhere along the line. If I’ve already been using the temp, longer render file, I can’t just do a replacement with the shorter version. Which if you’ve used the graphic a bunch of times for the lower3rd can be painful.

I think a force-relinking of the media obviously comes with several caveats- but it is necessary from time to time.

And a global or at least whole-drive search for missing media is definitely needed- and probably on the way.