-
The Magnetic Timeline – What’s The Paradigm?
-
[Walter Soyka] “For example, not all supers could lie on the same video track if they were layered over other clips.”
There are issues for layers with transparency for sure, but I so often stack supers on tracks to control their behaviors so stacking on a single track does seem like a problem. Depending on the clips composite mode I see no reason not to have a layered clip behave just like a nest.
In fact it could be collapsed down to display as a nest and you could apply filters or keyframe global behaviors but it can expand in place into its layers for individual tweaking or plugins.
-
[Michael Gissing] “so stacking on a single track does seem like a problem”
Should have read “doesn’t seem like a problem”
-
[Chris Kenny] “Let’s say you have some interview footage. The speaker mentions some subject, and you cut away to a shot of whatever he’s talking about. That cutaway is timed to… what? To an absolute time index within the sequence? No. It’s timed to the underlying shot of the interviewee.”
Interview audio is rarely left unedited under a cutaway. Often interview audio is edited first to a rather final cut before cutaways are overwritten.
-
[David Lawrence] ” I’m primarily interested in what AV foundation, i.e. an object data model means for FCP UI in broader terms. “
Hi
This is, I think, the $64,000 question.[Michael Aranyshev] “CoreData and AVFoundation are parts of the system, so they are sort of “free”.”
Apple have nailed their colours to the mast, and bet the crown jewels on their new (iOS-derived) core technologies. For better for worse… 😉
[Andrew Richards] “AVFoundation is Apple’s new framework for dealing with time-based media. …It does four basic things: read media, play media, assemble media, and export media.”
QuickTime has allowed media to be ‘assembled’ within a .mov file, in a manner very similar to Michael Gissing’s layered single track methodology – lots of tracks (video, audio, timecode, chapter points, text overlays etc). But its been a very clunky technology.
[Michael Gissing] “I see no reason why AV foundation versus quicktime should make any difference to how a GUI displays something as basic as a timeline.”
Apple has totally transformed the old QT legacy concepts with their new foundation – this is what they say about how AV Foundation is used to assemble media:
Editing
AV Foundation uses compositions to create new assets from existing pieces of media (typically, one or more video and audio tracks). You use 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.It seems to me that the section I’ve emphasised is an excellent description of a basic FCP X timeline.
This being so:-
i) There is no ‘Project’ as such to define a timeline – its description is all being recorded by the OS and CoreData.
ii) FCP X is just a GUI and a toolkit to build and modify these AV Foundation ‘mutable compositions’.[Michael Gissing] “In audio DAWs (good ones like Fairlight) you can stack clips on top of each other on a track. So your other edits are safe underneath. You always hear the top layer.”
That in itself is a complex methodology in a 2D interface, as you have to visually represent the hidden layers in some meaningful way. If you shift the axis of your ‘viewpoint’ by 90º then the tracks are all visible again – all layed out side-by-side or above and below…
FCP 1-7’s Project-based data structure made a traditional timeline an excellent GUI paradigm.
The very different essence of an AV Foundation mutable composition I think requires as different a control GUI,
as say an aeroplane does compared to a car. Joy stick compared to a steering wheel 😉As to the linearity of time. Musical notation has traditionally had to deal with the progress of time in a flexible way – how fast do the pages of a pianist’s sheet music have to be turned during a Chopin Prelude for the fast and slow movements. The old NLE timeline paradigm is very inflexible in this respect
-
Looking forward to reading more from you, David.
Come to think of it I* can’t think of any occasion I needed
to move a clip or something to a specific time in the timeline.
There is always a logical connection between events.
clips cut to music, a narrator, what happened before…
Even if I place clips on the timeline to try something out
I need them to be gapless for previewing.
If I had to mind some point in time I could place a gap.
Should I have to change the gap everything else would still line up
as before.*personally, not implying anyone else feels the same,
not expressing opinions of any Oscar winning company -
[Paul Dickin] “It seems to me that the section I’ve emphasised is an excellent description of a basic FCP X timeline.
This being so:-
i) There is no ‘Project’ as such to define a timeline – its description is all being recorded by the OS and CoreData.
ii) FCP X is just a GUI and a toolkit to build and modify these AV Foundation ‘mutable compositions’.”But that emphasized section can also describe traditional timelines. How these compositions are presented to the user via the GUI is all happening “above” the framework level, on the UI level.
AVFoundation is the media handling guts, but the decisions that direct the assemblage of the compositions are all input at the UI level and stored via CoreData in the Project database. I can’t see any structural dependency between the Magnetic Timeline UI concept and AVFoundation or vice versa.
[Paul Dickin] “The very different essence of an AV Foundation mutable composition I think requires as different a control GUI, as say an aeroplane does compared to a car. Joy stick compared to a steering wheel ;-)”
Don’t get caught up in the CompSci jargon. A “mutable composition” only means that the arrangement of the media being arranged might change, as in editing. The traditional timeline represents a “mutable composition” just as much as the Magnetic Timeline.
[Paul Dickin] “As to the linearity of time. Musical notation has traditionally had to deal with the progress of time in a flexible way – how fast do the pages of a pianist’s sheet music have to be turned during a Chopin Prelude for the fast and slow movements. The old NLE timeline paradigm is very inflexible in this respect”
Tempo is pace, and what is inflexible about a single scale timeline written on paper (sheet music) is flexible when you can zoom the scale on a NLE timeline. This is true for both traditional and Magnetic timelines. For your music analogy to hold, an NLE timeline might shift from 60fps to 24fps and back within the same timeline. This isn’t done on either style of timeline, both ask for a FPS time scale as a starting parameter, and rightly so.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “…that emphasized section can also describe traditional timelines.
…The traditional timeline represents a “mutable composition” just as much as the Magnetic Timeline.”
Hi
Can, yes.
In the old project terms what it represented was the Project. Hence the inflexibility inherent in the layout of the traditional NLE timeline.In the new scheme of things the GUI could be released from such inflexibilities.
In what way the interface should best be developed is what needs our attention 🙂
In my view staying the same as it has been is a retrograde option.[Andrew Richards] ” …is flexible when you can zoom the scale on a NLE timeline.”
Sure, But make the zoom-level keyframable so the timeline is always presented at a non-linear magnification. That would save manually controlling the view of the work-space every time you play that section.[Andrew Richards] “…an NLE timeline might shift from 60fps to 24fps and back within the same timeline. “
In the old days – Premiere v3/4 before Media 100 came along – in the QT .mov exported from the timeline a freeze frame could exist as one variable-length single frame, however long it was.
Which was cool and efficient 😉Playing at a constant frame rate is only mandated by the broadcasting chain, and the inflexibility of tape technology.
Doesn’t mean that a modern-looking NLE should be limited so as not to be flexible enough to deal with future distribution technologies. -
Chris –
That was very helpful in terms of explaining FCPX’s design philosophy. Of course it also makes it seem that it will never work for me.
The first thing I do once I’ve laid out a basic assembly of master shots with audio is de-link everything. I want total and absolute freedom of movement with every element I have, I want nothing connected.
While I need the ability to re-establish sync, easily accomplished in FCP7 with the sync indicators in the timeline, the idea that the software is trying to establish connections between elements is horrifying. The only connections that I want are in my perception of the elements.
For me the whole notion of B-roll and Master shot is ambiguous at best. My B-roll cutaway can extend past the underlying VO morphing into a new master shot using stolen sync I’ve cobbled together from an outtake. And once I’ve cut it this way I’m likely to want to unscramble it into a totally different pattern tomorrow. I couldn’t know I was going to do this before I did it, how could any software expect to organize that for me?
I had the same reaction to the whole notion of the software “intelligently” organizing shots into WS, 2 shots and CU’s. Who on earth would let software organize their footage. Organizing decisions are at the heart of the editing process, what third party is going to understand my specific working patterns without my input?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
… some quick responses (for clarification and expansion).
[Chris Kenny] “The new model is clip relationships.”
I suspect what you intended to express here was not fully expressed.
“Clip relationships” (making allowances for vernacular) is pretty much the very definition of what editing is (and has been since there has been something called “editing”). This is not a new model. Eisenstein liked to use drawings to talk about this; one could speculate (as he did) on its roots in writing. So this goes back quite far.
I don’t see how the “track model” is based on anything but how clips relate to one another; FCPX continues in this continuity.
If there is a new model here (as I have understood it so far … and I may well have misunderstood it) it has more to do with cataloging.
[Chris Kenny] “Let’s say you have some interview footage. … and you cut away to a shot … That cutaway is timed to… what? To an absolute time index within the sequence? No. It’s timed to the underlying shot of the interviewee.”
When you write “timed to …” I suspect you are trying to describe something else – maybe “triggered in reference to” or a similar concept. This is a very useful idea and a welcome addition to tools in timelines. In agreement with other comments, I don’t see how this requires a “trackless model”. We may well see similar tools coming in other NLEs.
[Chris Kenny] “The editor communicates them to the software in a way the software understands.”
I’m not sure what you mean here. Broadly, transparency of interface seems to be an ideal to which software designers aspire. At the same time, all software does require us to learn certain codes and models. I’m not sure what you mean by “communicating” with the software or how this has not been done before, or why or how I might want to do it differently (or better) now.
Also I’m interested in what you mean by “structured data” – specifically how FCPX is differentiated from other editors (which presumably use less structured data?). Your example of “contextual sense” seems a bit soft: tracks, for instance, make a lot of “contextual sense” to me when I see them, but perhaps I am not understanding your meaning.
[Walter Soyka] “I agree with Chris that the primary goal of the magnetic timeline is to make the implicit relationships between clips on a timeline explicit.”
I find the idea that an editing software package needs to explain better what I’ve done in the timeline a bit amusing. As I implied in my post above, there are many things that I wish were clearer and easier to access in the editing software that I’ve used. Understanding the timeline has never been an issue in any of them.
There is a deeper issue hinted at here, though – and that is the assumptions that are made about the kinds of relationships that editors and filmmakers want to have between their clips. A good editing kit will allow many meaningful choices in the kinds of relationships that are possible. How many kinds of relationships has the “magnetic timeline” enabled that weren’t on offer before? I can’t think of any, though it has made some kinds of relationships slightly easier to maintain while working. Has it made others difficult to maintain?
Certainly the designers of FCPX seem to have misunderstood the fundamental importance of mixing and the models that have been developed for it. Mixing offers real control over clip relationships – it’s a well established, flexible and powerful paradigm. It seems to have been replaced by clunky controls in FCPX.
[Chris Kenny] “Moving a clip, for instance. Connected clips come along. Or performing a slip edit; connected clips follow right along there as well.”
These examples seem to imply that this is just a re-marketing of the idea of “nested” sequences in FCP (I forget what Avid calls them). Further, and again, I’m not sure what in the examples you’ve given requires a model “without tracks”. Can you provide better examples?
[Walter Soyka] “For example, not all supers could lie on the same video track if they were layered over other clips.”
[Michael Gissing] Etc …This example seems to me a bit simplistic. When you think of supers, generally you think of them layered over your piece as a whole (a layer of supers over a layer of ongoing visuals); this assumption is borne out by the common practice of versioning for language. On the other hand, when you think of greenscreen, for example, you think of individual clips layered together. In the same way, you have vocal comping in an individual audio segment within a track, as opposed to mastering compression on a master track, as one example. There’s room for a bit of complexity in the way this is applied and the audio world is a useful reference.
Relatedly … I’m fairly hesitant in my enthusiasm for imagining what a subtitled timeline is like to work with in FCPX.
[Paul Dickin] … on AV Foundation. “It seems to me that the section I’ve emphasised is an excellent description of a basic FCP X timeline.”
Yes, indeed. It is also an excellent description of any timeline in any editing software.
Franz.
-
[Paul Dickin] “In the new scheme of things the GUI could be released from such inflexibilities. In what way the interface should best be developed is what needs our attention 🙂
In my view staying the same as it has been is a retrograde option.”Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against the Magnetic Timeline or suggesting it isn’t an effective visualization of an edit. I’m just pointing out AVFoundation isn’t the reason for the Magnetic Timeline. If Apple were so inclined, they could add “views” to the Magnetic Timeline that would morph the presentation into different patterns. For instance, I submitted a Feedback asking for one where the audio, once it can be tagged with metadata for output, is collapsed a la Compound Clips into however many discreet channels are defined for the sequence- all with one click. This would aid in QC, master mixing, and so on.
[Paul Dickin] “Playing at a constant frame rate is only mandated by the broadcasting chain, and the inflexibility of tape technology. Doesn’t mean that a modern-looking NLE should be limited so as not to be flexible enough to deal with future distribution technologies.”
I’d argue time-based media needs a set cadence, but that is another discussion. Even FCPX requires you to pick a FPS setting for any given timeline. What you’re describing is actually much more like the old QuickTime’s event-based media framework, where any set cadence is essentially a workaround. This is why the old FCP in its early versions had so many sync drift issues.
Best,
Andy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up