-
Spatial awareness and memory recall
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “right. sure.”
I suppose this is a question trying to cast me as the guy who sits and crafts personal invective and then edits it to make sure it stings effectively.
But really, I don’t have nearly the time for that.
I sit and write. I try to be clear. I call out bunk when I read something I think is bunk.
Then I hit send and let everyone else judge it. Just as you do Andreas.
The irony is that as much as I dislike your relentless negativism, you often bring out exactly the same emotion in me. That’s a personal failing I’ll attempt to moderate.
Probably the mechanism of ignoring what you post would be my best option, but I’m still haven’t quite evolved to the point where I can let what I personally consider to be half-baked theory substitute for reasoned argument and be OK with it.
Yeah, I could be wrong. You could prove correct in that there are “types” of people who just can’t comfortably edit with X because their “spacial awareness” or “visual memory recall” are sub-standard by some obscure measurement compared to Legacy editors.
But I fundamentally and seriously doubt it.
I bet that given proper training and a willingness to learn, virtually any editor can learn not only to use X but to truly enjoy the experience.
All it takes is a little time and practice.
And thankfully for my view, with every upgrade and version increment, more and more editors are taking the time.
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.
-
[Bill Davis] “I suppose the contention is that we X folks, simply “think differently” somehow. But honestly, I think the entire difference can be explained by the fact that those on the Pro-X side have simply taken more time and effort to re-condition themselves to the functions of X.”
I’m not sure why this has to be an “us vs. them” argument.
[Bill Davis] “Rather than spending overmuch time trying to justifty why we think it’s overall, a somehow lower tier tool not as worthy of exploration.”
I think this thread is entirely about exploration. I don’t think anyone has characterized X as “lower tier”. If the goal is exploration, then it’s worth looking into ways that X can evolve.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[David Lawrence] “Remove the word “conditioned” and we’re in agreement. Cognitive science suggests we’re wired the way we’re wired.”
That’s a pretty general statement to make. You need to specify which “wires” you are referencing, and even then it really depends upon your motivations and commitment to change. When one puts Cognitive Science, Neurobiology, and Psychology (all of which I studied in college) into the context of the “meditative” radical-empirical traditions like Buddhism you will begin to see that it’s a much greater grey area than the simple reductions of cognitive science suggest. Just my proto-graduate studies in neuro-plasticity contradict the notion that we are hard-wired. There is a mix of nature’s “hard-wiring” with nurture’s conditioning (or habituating). It takes hard work to notice and change deeper “wiring,” but it is not necessarily impossible. Buddhists say that a full-time meditator can even potentially un-wire the (cognitive) notion of space, time, and sense of ego or “I-ness.” …Do I digress?
In any case, I don’t see that “we are wired the way we are wired” applies to the kinds of activities we are discussing in this thread. I may not work spatially in the way Aindreas and others have described, but there is no question I could learn to if I needed or wanted to.
-
[James Culbertson] “That’s a pretty general statement to make. You need to specify which “wires” you are referencing, and even then it really depends upon your motivations and commitment to change.”
This thread is about how the differences between verbal and spatial thinking might affect comfort with UIs that favor one way over another.
You forgot to quote the second part of my statement:
[David Lawrence] ” Chris’ post has some great references if you want to learn more.”
Here’s the link again: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/49649
Check it out. It’s interesting stuff and suggests we’re wired the way we’re wired.
[James Culbertson] “Do I digress?”
Yes. 🙂
[James Culbertson] “I may not work spatially in the way Aindreas and others have described, but there is no question I could learn to if I needed or wanted to.”
True. You can force yourself to learn anything. But given a choice, why would you if the benefits don’t outweigh the drawbacks? To me, a more interesting question is why some might lean one way or another and what that implies for good UI design.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Oliver Peters] “you have picked Lightroom over Aperture. Why?”
‘cuz it’s way better…
Feeling cheeky,
Dennis -
[Oliver Peters] “But as a reminder, here are a number of examples of what *could* be done with “legacy”:”
Interesting article. I ended up not having a lot of different layouts because I used the same layout most of the time, because the familiarity allowed me to work faster. Also the timeline across both screens never worked because as soon as you exited the program or just switched to another program to check email it would snap back to one screen. It wasn’t worth it having to continually stretch it back again. I found thumbnail views in the bin weren’t helpful because the single still often gave little indication of what was in the clip, unlike the dynamic thumbnails and filmstrip view in X.
Timeline to timeline editing was how I ended up working. But, it was fraught with problems too. You either had to match frame into the viewer and insert from there (remember to mark your ins and outs again). Or you had to copy and paste which required you to split your clip in the source timeline thus losing the visual indication of where clips began and ended and also wouldn’t allow you to control what tracks it got pasted into. Loading a sequence in the viewer window was also problematic. It worked fine if the source sequence was 5-10 minutes or so. But with long sequences it was hard to skim through the clip to find your ins and outs. It just jumped over way too many frames to be efficient.
I guess my point is that I never found legacy FCP 7 all that great for organizing and finding material regardless of the flexibility of it. For me X works better. And I’m definitely a visual person. That being said, I’d like more control of the layout in X. I’d move that effects window beside the monitor so I could stretch the timeline across the width of the display. I’d move the Parameters window to second display beside the events window and stretch it down to the bottom of the screen so I don’t have to scroll so much.
-
[Oliver Peters] “You cannot open two or more bins (collections) as floating windows and place them over each other or side-by-side and compare clips within, or drag clips from one to the other. Yes, I know collections sort of do this same function, but the first method is visual, the second isn’t.
The second difference between X and others is that you can’t re-arrange clips in any other order than alphanumeric ascending/descending sorts of some field.”
FCPX should also have the ability to customise Sequences/Projects. Timelines could then be recalled in how they were before you left them. But I’m not holding my breath, really. Seeing how things are done in X, I have my doubts. Why would they prioritise the ability to have Bins open, freely as 7? Or customise your Timeline accordingly? The Event Browser is a fixed framework in which your Events, Folders, Keywords and Clips are displayed. And that seems to be very locked-up. Remember, one cannot even close an unwanted Event. Furthermore, there is a similar approach with the Timeline framework, that in its turn is the same physical space for every Project you put in there. And that is very constrained as well. Remember, one cannot have more than half a dozen Projects at the same time within the Timeline’s history. This is pretty much what they intended in the first place, I believe so. And it is a hell of an optimised design for sure, and it works great for fast turn arounds. In other words, that’s what matters and Apple is not changing it. It is sad, I know many Editors and Directors who appreciate to have an OPTION to work with the spatial thing, but this seems outdated according to the new order (of pricing?)
-
[Brett Sherman] “Timeline to timeline editing was how I ended up working. But, it was fraught with problems too. You either had to match frame into the viewer and insert from there (remember to mark your ins and outs again). Or you had to copy and paste which required you to split your clip in the source timeline thus losing the visual indication of where clips began and ended and also wouldn’t allow you to control what tracks it got pasted into.”
I suppose it’s too late now but you don’t have to split the clip in a source timeline. Option-A selects the range of the clip between in and out. Yes, not being able to control what track it pastes into is sometimes a pain.
-
[Bill Davis] “Aindreas, Chris H, Herb, Franz, and even David H have long histories here. I respect all of their opinions, (yes, even Aindreas’s!) but I can’t help but cast their arguments in the same skewed light that the clearly cast mine. And now they form the nucleas of the group arguing that X is “suspect” by virtue of some untestable and ill defined spacial awareness failing? “
While I appreciate the shout out I have no opinion about whether X is more or less spatial since I’ve never used it. For the record I’m not particularly spatial, I like words instead of icons, but I do like customizable screen layouts. So while in this case I haven’t earned the right to be included in your grouping I do like the company you’ve grouped me with, so thank you.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
To me it’s all about getting the clip that I’m looking for up as fast as possible.
It kind of reminds me of a golf tip. Like when people say “let the club do the work” meaning you are swinging too hard.
It’s like Apple is saying, let the computer do the work.
The database system is, the computer looking for the shot instead of you looking for the shot.
If you have already seen all the footage and have an idea what you are looking for.
The computer can search faster than you.
This discussion seems like it’s kind of about will the computer do the work for the search or will you.
The bottom line for me is…….I want that shot up there the fastest way possible. I already know what I have to work with and now I want it at my finger tips immediately.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up