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The Magnetic Timeline – Time, Space and One Clock To Rule Them All
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[David Lawrence] “When the software automatically resolves a conflict, it’s making default assumptions about my editorial intent.”
It doesn’t resolve them, it pacifies them. It simply gets things out of the way of the current move without conflict, and keeping the majority of your timeline the way you intend, instead of having to drag most of the timeline around and hope you selected all the right clips. You still have to edit the edit point, because after all it is editing.
[David Lawrence] ” I stand by my previous analogy.”
I’ve only used Garage Band to make ring tones from existing tunes, so I can’t relate! 🙂
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“But why, then, did Apple even make FCPx it at all? Why not just keep developing iMovie?”
Marketing to their target, youtubers who think Imovie is for their younger brother. I have a friend with a 12 year old daughter who thinks Imovie is too un-cool to edit with. She’s the bottom end of the target, with corporate in-house post as the upper end.
“Just because it doesn’t export an OMF doesn’t mean it’s not built for “pros””
I agree here. It’s the conceptual design of the UI, with it’s emphasis on protecting the editor from making mistakes, that makes it a bad fit for high end post. Many of these I/O features will be added, mostly by third parties. If we had to wait for Apple to add them we would probably never see them. They can’t be bothered.
“I wish they could have gotten rid of fractional frame rates since we are throwing out legacies.”
It’s surprising they didn’t, considering their level of concern for broadcast editors. Well at least they were able to get rid of timecode readers on the timeline; timecode is so yesterday.
“If Avid would have partnered with 3rd parties 4 or 5 years ago, perhaps they wouldn’t have needed this boost to get them off of death row.”
The fact that after all these years I’m going to finally end up cutting on an Avid is what leaves me most depressed. If I wanted to cut with them, or Adobe for that matter, I would have switched years ago. Now I have no choice.
“I think having the project and events separated at the Finder level is awesome. This will allow further collaboration that was never possible with FCP Classic due to everything being locked in an FCP project. You have to open the project to get a timeline out of it, now I can drag an event (the organization) or FCPx timeline (the editing) to another computer without having to open FCPx. Pretty convenient.”
There are many features I’m sure I would be excited about if I thought this product was aimed at me. But it isn’t. Hopefully I’ll get excited by someone who’s actually interested in the broadcast arena. Maybe Lightworks, who knows?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[David Lawrence] “I think there’s more going on than just muscle memory habits. A good UI makes the expression of user intent natural and intuitive. My current experience with X is that it often confounds my natural rather than learned expectations in terms of both spatial and object behavior. If a UI is intuitive, changing to it should be easy because it makes intuitive sense. IMHO, the fact that so many experienced editors are having difficulty is a clue that something is off. I’ll get into this more in my next post.”
I forget who had it in their post or signature, but the quote jumped out at me; “The only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After that it’s all learned.”
I’ll argue your intuition is strongly informed by your decades of experience. Intuitiveness in software is all about familiar analogs, since all software UIs are metaphor. If FCPX is unintuitive to an experienced editor, but intuitive to the uninitiated, that just means FCPX was successfully designed to make sense to the uninitiated. I totally understand how this is a turn-off to experienced editors, but intuitiveness isn’t an absolute, it’s relative to the user’s experience.
From another of your posts in this thread which dovetails:
[David Lawrence] “This is a very important point. FCPX’s default behaviors amount to editorial decisions. When the software automatically resolves a conflict, it’s making default assumptions about my editorial intent. Short of reading my mind, I don’t see how it can ever get this right more often than not.”
I could argue that FCP7’s default overwrite behavior also amounts to editorial decisions. We’d both be right- both apps have a default behavior the editor needs to be aware of. Both default behaviors can result in some sort of adjustment being necessary to resolve what the editor intended to do in an edit. The only difference I can see is that one default behavior has been around a lot longer, and a lot of editors are used to it and expect it. To play devil’s advocate for FCPX’s default behavior, isn’t a non-destructive default favorable to a destructive one? (by “destructive” I mean to the existing structure of the timeline, not to anything else)
[David Lawrence] “Clip collisions, etc. are just not a problem for me. No doubt because I’ve internalized TTT and moving things around. But even when I do encounter a collision, conflict or media limit, I consider that an editorial problem. The software can only guess at my intention and it’s as likely to guess wrong as it is to get it right. There comes a point where it’s more efficient to just let me handle it.”
If it is only as likely to guess wrong as it is to get it right, with either default behavior you have to handle something about half the time. In FCPX that might more often be removing more content around an edit. In FCP7 it might more often be adding it back. Again, the only difference is that you are accustomed to the latter and not the former. Naturally, you’ll be more comfortable with the familiar. Wait till you install Lion and try to scroll with a trackpad!
None of this is to suggest you or Herb or anyone else is wrong to prefer the way FCP7 behaves to the way FCPX behaves, but I don’t think there is any fundamental problem with FCPX’s UI in this regard.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “I could argue that FCP7’s default overwrite behavior also amounts to editorial decisions”
In FCP7 you decide between insert or overwrite the moment you make the edit. It doesn’t default to either.
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