The Honda Ad Timeline

[Andy Neil]

[Neil Goodman] “how long does it take to patch an audio track in Avid? If your smart, there mapped to a keyboard.”

[Neil Goodman] “Its a fraction of a second operation thats hard wired in my brain and that hardly leads to a ton of added time.
“

Let’s not overstate things. What do you do when the audio track you need to patch is A12, or A15, or A20 on large timelines? You can only have so many shortcuts. And if you have source clips with 4-6 audio tracks but A3 of your source needs to be on A6 in your timeline, it’s definitely more than a “fraction of a second” operation, even with auto-patching.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Charlie Austin]

[Andy Neil] “it’s definitely more than a “fraction of a second” operation, even with auto-patching.”

True. I generally have a minimum of 10 stereo pairs in my cuts, often quite a bit more. You can use targeting shortcuts with tracks to an extent (better in MC than in PR or FC old), but at some point, the clicking and dragging begins. I don’t think about that in X. Ever. I do occasionally spend time shift-dragging clips to try to keep everything viewable without scrolling too much. Really easy to do with the X timeline, as you only need to think about where it’s going, not how it will fit and what you need to move to fit it. Ya know, Track Tetris. 🙂

Yes, it makes the timeline look “messy”. Doesn’t matter. To me anyway.

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[James Ewart]

Thanks I’ll give it a proper read.

For sure the Avid community closed ranks with FCPX over here too but there is a wind of change or at least a gentle breeze that I am beginning to sense.

If only Apple had been more open about X being Beta on its release I think things could have been very different.

[James Ewart]

I just find having my audio so very very far away from its related video in geographical terms, exceedingly tedious these days.

I wouldn’t say I was especially fast with other concept. Is speed really such a huge issue? Everything needs a tidy up at the end and a once over anyway ust to make sure everything is patched correctly or role correctly assigned no?

[Robin S. kurz]

[Bill Davis] “So it might be seen as fair to imagine that we have a pretty solid base from which to compare the approaches.”

My point exactly. Yes, WE do. But I guess we’re also just not one of the blessed ones that get knowledge of everything NLE by mere osmosis. 😀

[David Cherniack] “I forgot that you are the pinnacle of objectivity about FCPx”

Wow… the painfully high level of irony when he of all people says that clear escapes him. 😀 Yeah, silly Bill. He actually uses what he talks about. How dare he or we even argue something we understand. Perfect moment for playing the tired and trollish “fanboy” card, too, yes. The classic escapist tactic, which does little more than expose one’s level of ignorance on any given topic and utter lack of any real or relevant arguments otherwise.

Makes you wonder what’s so amazingly threatening and scary about FCP X for some. Hmmm…

[Bill Davis] “Say something about the CONTENT that I wrote.”

Now now, Bill. Stay reasonable. That would require actually grasping what it is you’re talking about to begin with, no? ;D

As far as the (imho ludicrous) “at a glance” thing is concerned, I for one can remember the “good ol’ days” very well, thank you. I’d assign A1+2 to dialogue, A3+4 for music, A5+6 to effects etc. like the good little track-based editor I was. Or at least that always was the plan. Then I’d actually start editing. At which point all good intentions of course went completely out the window. Since hey, don’t dare have any dialogue, music or effects overlap, because all of a sudden you were at 7+8, 9+10, 11+12 and so on and so on and so on by inserting new tracks below the others, just to stay “organized” and be able to “identify everything at a glance”. Yeah… right.

Sometimes the overlap was just for a single, one second track and a few frames, but I still needed an entire program length track for it. Scroll. Have that happen a few times and that’s what I call “scroll city”. With FCP X A1 & A2 don’t even exist to begin with, unless I expand audio components. Space saved already. I can have as much overlap as I want, any “track” can live anywhere and I still have clear and easy differentiation in the end if and when needed. It makes any extra patching nonsense or having to think about it completely extraneous. And yes, with that you work far more fluidly i.e. much faster because you’re actually just plain EDITING without having to constantly think about each edit (CMD-Z-ing because you forgot to patch something… again). And of course after a while of playing that track-based-timeline-tango there was no way that I could know for sure what was what “just at a glance” either, not without checking individual tracks. So that “argument” is ludicrous and has nothing to do with reality. Wishful thinking.

I thought the gentleman from Aztec nailed it when he said “Final Cut Pro X is designed for artists, while other editing systems are for operators“.

So yes, that whole discussion is completely doltish, no question. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming… 🙂

– RK

[Mitch Ives]

[Thomas Carter] “The usefulness of ‘trackless editing’ reaches far beyond the visual metaphor. But quickly to address the visuals, I did this to divide the day and the night of the interactive story. With one quick lasso I could enable, or disable either side of the edit, while I worked on the other.”

I gathered that and thought it was a rather intuitive approach. Has me re-thinking some things. Great idea…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Bill Davis]

[Charlie Austin] “Not here in L.A., at least in the little trailer cutting world of which I’m a part. It’s kind of pathetic.”

This is what actually has me scared a bit. Yes, I’m an X unabashed fan. But what really worries me is that in staying so “conservative” – the US production industry might be screwing itself in the long run.

On other boards I hang in now, the excitement over X and these new editing opportunities are coming from the UK, Europe, Scandanavia, and Asia. (to the extent I can assess Asia, not being able to speak or read the language.) Apple is obviously kicking butt with hardware sales globally, so it only stands to reason that X will migrate along with that.

Yet here in the US, the “hurt” over Apple’s behavior nearly 4 years ago is inescapable. EVERY single post I read in any US thread about FCP X this past week – including the ones talking about how much it’s improved post 10.1 – has felt compelled to ALSO revisit the “botched launch meme” again, To mention some form of Apple “screwing over” all the planets editors.

But oddly, even tho FCP Legacy was every bit as widely used globally as here in the US , the vast majority of the folks I talk to overseas have long since moved past caring about what happened 4 years ago.They want to know what makes sense for their editing NOW.

Look if X doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work. No foul. But if you don’t have a clue whether or not it MIGHT work, and you simply won’t consider it because you’re “mad” at big bad Apple, then that’s on you. Just know that there’s a competitive editor somewhere in the world who’s NOT still carrying that emotional baggage, and they’re the ones I interact with daily flooding into the global X boards.

It’s part of the reason I wanted to bring Tom’s work here in the first place. The global industry is evolving fast. Whether we participate in that evolution or not is up to us.

And let me be clear here, if, as some argue, you can cut the same kind of stuff as well and as fast on Premier, or AVID or Lightworks – EXCELLENT – go forth and do so. Go break some new ground. Push some boundaries. Re-imagine some stuff using your chosen toolset. If you do, I’ll be among the first to stand up and applaud. Honestly.

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.

[James Ewart]

… be quite nice to be able to disable an entire video “track” with one keystroke no?

[James Ewart]

“…makes you wonder what’s so amazingly threatening and scary about FCP X for some. Hmmm…”

Actually I do see something very scary coming my way. In the last six months the number of people who have contacted me and been on a one or two day course and told me they have “learnt FCPX” is now running over ten. And these are people who have never actually operated non-linear editing software themselves. Some are seasoned veterans of the industry and some not so. But because they have managed to cut something to music they are telling the world they are FCPX editors.

So we are all afraid of losing our livelihoods and that’s a natural enough fear to have. AVID MC is a much less user-friendly intuitive interface and so are FCP legacy and Premiere. For sure those user preferences and scratch disk settings were major head f^@k to many including Avid editors, but they also represented a psychological barrier to entry. Which equals job protection. Having started editing with FCP I still find Avid a bit of a ball breaker. And of course if you’ve been using it for twenty years you will love it and it does the job perfectly well. In some areas still better than any other system.

But anybody can hack something together in FCPX after not too much time. That’s what is brilliant the about the software in many respects it’s “approachable”. But it is also a massive game changer I think and will continue to be. Could it also put a lot of people out of business? There indeed is the Rub.

Nobody asked Shakespeare, Salman Rushdie or John Grisham (whatever floats your boat) what word processing software or brand of pens they use and this is where we have no arrived in our world now. TV has a legacy where once upon a time just being able to operate an edit suite gave you a gig.

With FCPX within a day you are getting somewhere (I would argue there is actually more to learn down the line) but it opens the doors to everyone. Apple’s vision is just that.

I clearly remember the three projects in FCPX I abandoned and cut in Legacy. I was inclined to go with the wave of negative publicity and go to Adobe (easy decision to make). I persevered because I figured the people at Apple might be smarter than me.

A lot of people hoped FCPX would be the end of Apple in the “professional” world of media.

There could be a massive changing of the guard about to take place (I hope that euphemism isn’t too British/English as I can’t think of another).

People are afraid of losing their livelihoods. Their response should have been to get acquainted with FCPX but I do understand why they are afraid.

So am I.

http://www.jamesewart.co.uk

[James Ewart]

Post deleted Simon but assigning it a role is a good thought.