Tedious track based editing

[Walter Soyka]

[tony west] “There are children on-line offering tips on it. X was cracked on for being too simple at first and now too complicated. It can’t really be both can it?”

Why not? Couldn’t it be that FCPX makes easy things easier (assembly)and makes hard things harder (trimming)?

How true or not that may be is outside my experience with FCPX, so I’ll leave that for others to debate, but I have had the experience with other “simple” software that achieving complex ends without specialized tools to support them is very challenging.

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

[Craig Seeman]

[tony west] “X is about as intuitive as editing can get.

There are children on-line offering tips on it.”

Yes, we need to know the context of “who.”
Those with nothing to unlearn find it intuitive.
This is also why I think Apple will make progress in the “professional” market through attrition. People coming in to the field without pre-established habits will be much more open to it.

I see, what I feel, is much discussion of the design/function theory of an NLE and, in that, I see established editors attached to notions they’ve worked with and assume are “natural” when there’s a good chance they’re not, at least not for many people or not for many people who aren’t veteran editors.

[Tony West]

[Craig Seeman] “This is also why I think Apple will make progress in the “professional” market through attrition. People coming in to the field without pre-established habits will be much more open to it.”

Yes, this is one of the reasons I decided to get on board with it. Young folks seem to really like it and they will be moving up.

[Tony West]

[Walter Soyka] “Why not? Couldn’t it be that FCPX makes easy things easier (assembly)and makes hard things harder (trimming)?”

I don’t know Walter, I have not really found many things hard about X

Different.

But not really hard. I have adjusted to “it’s” way of doing things though.

I’m not really fighting it. I don’t have time.

[Craig Seeman]

[tony west] “I have not really found many things hard about X

Different.

But not really hard. I have adjusted to “it’s” way of doing things though.

I’m not really fighting it. I don’t have time.”

I find FCPX EASIER because it fundamentally addresses a two decade peeve I’ve had with NLEs.
Some of you think the multiple purposes of a track as “flexibility.” To me that’s been a contrivance, a work around. To me, layering and organization are two different functions and should be handled different to at least allow for optimal development of feature flexibility. FCPX does this with its layering and connected clips and secondary storylines as well as roles. Of course both need more development. It’s a young app. But, to me, it’s fundamentally headed in the right direction. This is one (of several reasons) why I suspect its intuitive for those without pre existing experience.

[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “Why not? Couldn’t it be that FCPX makes easy things easier (assembly)and makes hard things harder (trimming)?”

I think this is right. For simple assembly, I agree it’s easier, but like many, I’ve found trimming, manipulating audio and more advanced editorial techniques are more difficult than with a traditional NLE.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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[Craig Seeman]

[David Lawrence] ” think this is right. For simple assembly, I agree it’s easier, but like many, I’ve found trimming, manipulating audio and more advanced editorial techniques are more difficult than with a traditional NLE.”

Again, for me, there’s a differentiation between paradigm vs features. There’s nothing within the FCPX paradigm that prevents improved trimming and audio handling. It’s a young app. In other words, it has little to do with “traditional” and a lot more to do with missing features that can certainly be implemented.

Example, keyboard timeline trimming should have a two up. Currently only the mouse brings up the two up. This can be addressed within the paradigm.

Another example, while being able to select a range within a clip to adjust levels is easy, sub frame time shifting and editing is easy, the Logic plug ins are amazing but, trying to audio edit a group of “like” clips (VO for example) is difficult without an easy way to organize or select by such groups. This too can be addressed within the paradigm whether it’s improved functionality of Roles or some other method.

I don’t think there’s anything in FCPX’s paradigm that makes these things harder beyond the fact that such features simply aren’t implemented as of yet. They certainly can be without breaking the paradigm.

[David Lawrence]

[Craig Seeman] “This is also why I think Apple will make progress in the “professional” market through attrition. People coming in to the field without pre-established habits will be much more open to it.”

You mean like the way they’ve come to dominate the word processor/page layout market with Pages?

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

[Walter Soyka]

[tony west] “I don’t know Walter, I have not really found many things hard about X. Different. But not really hard. I have adjusted to “it’s” way of doing things though. I’m not really fighting it. I don’t have time.”

Once I got the feel for the FCPX timeline, working with it all made sense and felt very fluid — but I haven’t tried an edit of sufficient complexity in FCPX to run into the scenarios that Oliver, David, Herb and others have described here in detail since Pr meets my current needs better. I’m more a neutral observer on this point.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] ” a two decade peeve I’ve had with NLEs.
Some of you think the multiple purposes of a track as “flexibility.” To me that’s been a contrivance, a work around. To me, layering and organization are two different functions and should be handled different to at least allow for optimal development of feature flexibility. FCPX does this with its layering and connected clips and secondary storylines as well as roles.”

I’ve seen you mention this topic before Craig and I’m curious as to why FCP Legend’s integration with Motion didn’t solve this problem for you? I will admit I would have liked to see a greater integration with a more common GUI and set of tools, especially for color correction and monitoring from within Motion, but whenever I needed to do any serious compositing a simple “send to motion” seemed to do the trick, but obviously not for you and I was wondering why?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf