Tedious track based editing

[David Cherniack]

[Jim Giberti] “I’d just call it exceedingly confident beyond the point of reason.”

I’d call it the blather of someone whose wishful thinking has outrun his brains….a fairly common feature of these here dominions.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Chris Harlan]

[Jim Giberti] “[Herb Sevush] “The very definition of “hubris.””

Don’t be so judgmental Herb.

I’d just call it exceedingly confident beyond the point of reason.
“

ROTFL

[David Lawrence]

Thanks, Walter.

Something I find interesting is that a couple of the Magnetic Timeline’s big selling points have been available in for years:

1) Ripple – Every NLE lets you ripple, but usually it’s just a tool. I see no advantage in FCPX making it the default timeline mode.

2) Clip connections – You can think of clip connections as a special type of grouping. Premiere Pro’s groups are actually more flexible because anything can be connected to anything, anywhere on the timeline. No artificial hierarchical constraints, no artificial “relationships”.

What FCPX brings that’s new to the game is floating, trackless, connected objects and collision avoidance behaviors. I think it’s possible to design this collision avoidance into a tracked system like Pr and get a much more powerful, flexible UI. I can imagine a couple different ways it could be implemented using groups. It would be the best of both worlds.

Really, relative time and everything that results from it seems to be the primary innovation in FCPX. For better or worse, depending on your POV.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
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[David Lawrence]

[Mark Dobson] “I work in the documentary field myself and don’t find FCPX any more restricting than other NLEs I have used. Any system will allow you to first get a handle on what you have got and then provide timelines to throw ideas down onto. “

So speaking of documentaries…

I spent last weekend hanging out with a buddy and his wife who were in town screening their doc, which has been on a national tour with The United Film Festival. It was great to see their film and catch up with them.

A bit of background – my friend is an award-winning doc editor based in LA. His work regularly screens at Sundance and he’s well connected with everyone in the LA feature documentary scene. Final Cut Pro legacy has been his main NLE for years. Naturally, I was curious what he thought of FCPX and what his plans for the future were. Here’s what he told me:

He isn’t the least bit interested in FCPX. In fact, he said he doesn’t know anyone in the entire LA doc scene with any interest in it whatsoever. No surprise there. What I found interesting were his reasons why.

For him (and apparently the feature doc makers he works with), the biggest problem isn’t just the magnetic timeline, it’s Apple’s unconventional and proprietary organization and asset management model.

Simply put, he said the whole notion of keywords as an organization tool are essentially useless for the way he and his colleagues break down footage and organize a film. The point he stressed is that he and his teams already have organization systems in place that work really really well. They want flexible tools that accommodate their custom organization infrastructures. They see zero value trying to force their needs into Apple’s new organization model. They’re just not interested. They’d rather find a new vendor who’s products will work with them, rather than change the way they work for Apple.

I think this is true for enterprise as well, and is why you’ll likely see more case studies like AP’s recently announced move to Premiere Pro in the future.

I was surprised because the keyword organization features in FCPX are one of the things I actually like. My friend said he though it would be great for short pieces and as a whole, it seemed to him that FCPX was designed for shorts and one-man-band type operations, or small shops that keep everything in house. I couldn’t argue with that.

BTW, my friend was at the NAB Supermeet in 2011 and was texting me from the floor as FCPX was previewed. He was totally excited about it and after talking to him, so was I. In our minds, we filled in all the gaps in the demo — we couldn’t wait to have it. Then we got our hands on it on June 21 and the rest is history…

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

[Steve Connor]

[David Lawrence] “Simply put, he said the whole notion of keywords as an organization tool are essentially useless for the way he and his colleagues break down footage and organize a film. The point he stressed is that he and his teams already have organization systems in place that work really really well. T”

So did he relate what these systems are?

[David Lawrence] “it seemed to him that FCPX was designed for shorts and one-man-band type operations, or small shops that keep everything in house.”

In reality this isn’t true at all, but I can understand how it might be the perception of people who haven’t used the software

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Craig Slattery]

[David Lawrence] ” it seemed to him that FCPX was designed for shorts and one-man-band type operations, or small shops that keep everything in house.”

That’s simply not true, I’ve been involved with testing on the show I cut at the BBC and I’m very excited with FCPX and future of the software, particularly for a multi item program with multiple editors. And its a factual program, 8 mini Documentaries every week. I don’t understand what your film festival mate is banging on about.
I started this thread a couple of days ago because I have 2 weeks of downtime (holidaying in the south of France, thanks for asking) I have to say, there are many loud voices that seem to spent more time blogging than actual editing. Cheers

[Oliver Peters]

It’s not that you can’t cut documentaries or features on X. Rather, if you have a system in place using Legacy, then it’s easier to go to Media Composer or PPro and maintain existing utilities and workflows. Going to X means changing a lot of what you do, how you do it and what you use to do it with. The others require modification but not wholesale replacement and rethink. I’m talking about roundtrips with After Effects, ProTools, grading as well as archiving and logging tools based on XML.

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Walter Soyka]

[David Lawrence] “2) Clip connections – You can think of clip connections as a special type of grouping. Premiere Pro’s groups are actually more flexible because anything can be connected to anything, anywhere on the timeline. No artificial hierarchical constraints, no artificial “relationships”. “

I think that grouping and clip connections are two very different takes on automated selection. As I see it, the benefit to the end user of automated selections is making editorial maneuvers on the timeline simpler by making the relationships between clips explicit. Without these explicit, stored relationships, the editor must remember (or deduce from arrangement on the open timeline) how clips relate in order to make the correct selections before performing any timeline maneuver. With stored relationships driving automated selection, the burden of remembering or deducing relationships among clips is reduced.

The difference with FCPX clip connections versus grouping is that, due to the connected clip’s anchor, the selection actually changes contextually depending on the maneuver being performed, and pre-selection is not necessary at all.

I absolutely agree that FCPX’s tiered object model imposes artificial hierarchical constraints, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that relationships among timeline clips are artificial. Of course not all clips are necessarily interrelated, but there are certainly many examples of clips which relate not just to another clip, but to a specific point on that clip — like illustrative cutaways, graphics, and sound effects — meaning that a single stored selection will not be most accurate for all editorial maneuvers (depending on whether the maneuver involves a point in time before or after the connection point[s]).

[David Lawrence] “What FCPX brings that’s new to the game is floating, trackless, connected objects and collision avoidance behaviors. I think it’s possible to design this collision avoidance into a tracked system like Pr and get a much more powerful, flexible UI. I can imagine a couple different ways it could be implemented using groups. It would be the best of both worlds.”

I think it’s important to note that FCPX’s shifting lanes don’t actually avoid collisions per se — they simply allow clip collisions to result in overlaps instead of overwrites (therefore avoiding data loss). It is still up to the editor to manage the collision.

I do agree that clip collision overwrite avoidance is possible in a traditional tracked and open timeline, and that it would be a very powerful and welcome feature.

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]

[craig slattery] “I started this thread a couple of days ago because I have 2 weeks of downtime (holidaying in the south of France, thanks for asking) I have to say, there are many loud voices that seem to spent more time blogging than actual editing.”

I’d swear that the Sirius Cybernetics Corp. is testing out a new Genuine Person Personality on the forum, here. This kind of smugness seems generated to pass the Turing Test. I’m guessing that this is one of Eddie,the shipboard computer’s alternate personalities. Personally, I prefer Marvin’s.

[Craig Slattery]

[Chris Harlan] “I’d swear that the Sirius Cybernetics Corp. is testing out a new Genuine Person Personality on the forum, here. This kind of smugness seems generated to pass the Turing Test. I’m guessing that this is one of Eddie,the shipboard computer’s alternate personalities. Personally, I prefer Marvin’s.
“

I don’t even know what that means but it made me laugh out loud.