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The Magnetic Timeline – Time, Space and One Clock To Rule Them All
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[David Cherniack] “Say you have ten layers of video and ten layers of audio. At a single point in time you wish to create a gap, say to insert a new clip. But all the clips at that point overlap with some cuts and transitions happening to the left and some to the right of your insert point. The gap you want to create is not a vertical hole, a cut all tracks and ripple. Rather it’s going to maintain that overlapping nature. But which clips will move to the right and which won’t are editorial decisions.”
With this example, I think it becomes important to distinguish among different concepts in the FCPX “timeline” which FCPX bundles together into one big idea.
There’s the magnetic timeline, which relates clips to each other. There’s the storyline, which fundamentally relates clips to one main video track, instead of placing clips in absolute time. There’s the self-collapsing trackless timeline, which mitigates destructive clip collision.
I think the magnetic timeline is actually a really interesting idea, and I think that clip connections would work well in a traditional absolute non-collapsing tracked timeline. (I expanded on this a bit [link] in the prior Magnetic Timeline Paradigm thread.)
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 -
[Paul Dickin] “Why (not) assume that this all goes back to AV Foundation?”
Because I don’t think that makes any sense. You’re suggesting that FCPX is a pretty GUI wrapper for AV Foundation. I think that FCPX adds tons of functionality on top of the basic routines provided by the frameworks it’s built on.
AV Foundation, like CoreData, CoreImage, CoreAnimation, and CoreVideo, is a low-level framework. No one framework encapsulates everything that an FCPX project/timeline can do, and the frameworks don’t really overlap. They provide basic routines to developers, and it’s up to the developer to build the higher-level pieces.
But this whole diversion is a bit of a moot point — even if FCPX is a user-exposed AV Foundation, we can still talk about the design decisions that went into the model.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “With this example, I think it becomes important to distinguish among different concepts in the FCPX “timeline” which FCPX bundles together into one big idea.
There’s the magnetic timeline, which relates clips to each other. There’s the storyline, which fundamentally relates clips to one main video track, instead of placing clips in absolute time. There’s the self-collapsing trackless timeline, which mitigates destructive clip collision.”
But how does the distiction address the specific example and its execution in an efficient way? I do believe this may be the tipping point where the magnetic timeline becomes comparatively inefficient.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[Walter Soyka] “I think the magnetic timeline is actually a really interesting idea, and I think that clip connections would work well in a traditional absolute non-collapsing tracked timeline.”
Wouldn’t this really amount to more or less the same thing as the Group Clips” function that exists in PrPro and by other names in other NLEs? The only potential difference that I see is that the resulting object has meaning in the relational database, but that can be worked around in other NLEs.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
Wouldn’t it be SWEET to have a video editing app with a super-flexible timeline that also understands DATA naturally? Rather than just a linear stack of fixed state picture clips and unconnected layer clips that have to be re-built, relayed, and re-timed endlessly in order to do the same basic construction each month?
Whatever happened to xm/Edit’s Traffic?
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[Walter Soyka] “AV Foundation… is a low-level framework. No one framework encapsulates everything that an FCPX project/timeline can do”
QuickTime was a low level framework.
But QT couldn’t do this:
AV Foundation uses… a mutable composition to add and remove tracks, and adjust their temporal orderings. You can also set the relative volumes and ramping of audio tracks; and set the opacity, and opacity ramps, of video tracks. A composition is an assemblage of pieces of media held in memory. When you export a composition using an export session, it’s collapsed to a file.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/AVFoundationPG/Articles/00_Introduction.htmlQT elements didn’t exist only in memory – it took an application like Final Cut to take the raw QT assets and mutate them into a new entity, rendered into memory and ready to be exported.
But that description of editing from the AV Foundation document has subsumed most of what an old FCP timeline (recorded in a project) existed to do.
[Walter Soyka] “But this whole diversion is a bit of a moot point… “
Not entirely. Without understanding the context of the new entity that FCPX is, the discussion will still revolve around why aren’t there hay-net storage facilities in the new (motorised) vehicle.
Or “why can’t we import FCP 7 projects into FCPX?”
If the answer is that its the OS that now handles importing or other data exchange directly into the core Foundation engines then the scale of the problem assumes a different order of magnitude.[Walter Soyka] ” I don’t think that makes any sense”
Fine, I’m cool with that. 😉 -
This has been one of the more interesting discussions I’ve seen on the Cow. The point of this discussion (to me) seems to ultimately be whether the new FCPX paradigm is better/more efficient/more creative than FCP7. Whether we like it or not, we all have become FCP novices, and will be spending the next 6 month to a year getting up to speed on X or PP or Avid. It also means, if we switch to PP, ditching the skill sets for Motion (to AE), Compressor (to Adobe Encoder), Color (to DaVinci) etc. So, if I’m going to make that level of commitment of time, I want to make sure I’m moving to something better. The questions raised are very useful, the answers are elusive.
One common thread in all of the posts is that FCPX is incomplete at present time. I started playing w/ FC at version 1.5, it wasn’t until version 3 or 4 that the software was comparable in functionality to Avid MC; so, will we be waiting for FCP12 or 13 for a somewhat mature product/work-flow?
Of course, these are questions only Apple can answer, and they are a black hole of communication. Perhaps an open letter to Apple in the NY Time and WSJ expressing our collective concerns might provoke some serious road map insights from Apple?
In the meantime, I’ve upgraded to CS5.5. I’ve upgraded to Colorista II. I can certainly work effectively with FCP7 for the next 6 months. By then, hopefully, I will have some idea of how this will all shake out. Thanks to all for your thoughtful insights. While in this limbo like state it’s comforting to read your collective constructive rhetoric.
Cheers,
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The larger question — how does FCPX/AVF/whatever represent the edit to the editor — still applies.
I’m leery about dwelling on the technical details too much, because this is all a distraction from David’s lessons on how we think about time and perceive time and relationships in the NLE. I’ll give one more go at trying to show why I think the details are irrelevant, and then the last word on the topic is yours.
[Paul Dickin] “QuickTime was a low level framework. But QT couldn’t do this:
AV Foundation uses… a mutable composition to add and remove tracks, and adjust their temporal orderings. You can also set the relative volumes and ramping of audio tracks; and set the opacity, and opacity ramps, of video tracks. A composition is an assemblage of pieces of media held in memory. When you export a composition using an export session, it’s collapsed to a file.”
QuickTime actually CAN do all that, except programmatically ramping volume and opacity.Additionally, there’s a lot that AV Foundation cannot do by itself that FCPX can, like animating position and scale, processing effects, establishing clip connections, etc.
I accept your premises that QuickTime and AV Foundation are different, and that FCP and FCPX are different — but that doesn’t imply that AV Foundation and FCPX are entirely the same!
I see nothing in AV Foundation that would prohibit building classic FCP on it. I see nothing in QuickTime that would prohibit building FCPX on it. The media reading and writing framework need not be linked with the way the edit is represented in the NLE.
If I’m wrong, and FCPX is nothing more than wrapped AV Foundation, then we can simply change all the questions we’re asking about how FCPX represents the edit in time to how AV Foundation represents media storage in time. The questions will still be valid.
[Paul Dickin] “Without understanding the context of the new entity that FCPX is, the discussion will still revolve around why aren’t there hay-net storage facilities in the new (motorised) vehicle.”
I think the faster horse/car analogy fails — I think car analogies always fail — but we’re not just asking where to keep the hay. We’re asking fundamental questions about what makes the new vehicle actually move.
And for the record, both horses and cars move by pushing off against something that moves less. You don’t have to change your model of physics to understand horses and cars, but you do have to change your model of time to understand FCP and FCPX.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “I think the magnetic timeline is actually a really interesting idea, and I think that clip connections would work well in a traditional absolute non-collapsing tracked timeline.”
[David Cherniack] “Wouldn’t this really amount to more or less the same thing as the Group Clips” function that exists in PrPro and by other names in other NLEs?”
Some editorial decisions make sense in absolute time, but I think some make more sense in relative time. For example, a sound effect may be linked to a specific visual, or a graphic may be linked to a specific sound bite.
Group clips relates two clips together as wholes; clip connections relate a specific point from one clip to a specific point in another.
For example, think of a short sound effect that anticipates and accents a specific visual hit. If you simply group the clips, then insert edit another clip during the anticipation but before the hit, you can inadvertently split the sound effect. If the clips are connected (linking the hits in audio and video), the sound effect can follow the hit and avoid being split by the insert edit.
[David Cherniack] “But how does the distiction address the specific example and its execution in an efficient way? I do believe this may be the tipping point where the magnetic timeline becomes comparatively inefficient.”
With clip connections on an absolute timeline, you wouldn’t have to manually select the correct clips before editing. The NLE could select them for you, based on the clip connections you had already defined. You’re front-loading the thinking about which clips go together in a move.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “then the last word on the topic is yours.”
I’m cool with that, and agree with your overall conclusions. 🙂
Now Lion is roaming free maybe some of the WWDC NDAs will vanish and allow discussion of relevant technical advancements out into the open.But:
[Walter Soyka] “You don’t have to change your model of physics to understand… “
[Walter Soyka] “…you do have to change your model of time to understand FCP and FCPX.”
That’s metaphysics. I’ll back out 😉
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