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The Magnetic Timeline – What’s The Paradigm?
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[Chris Kenny] “Timelines are never WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG came out of the print world: you make a page look a certain way on screen, and that’s how it looks when it prints. Nothing of the timeline appears in the finished product. The timeline is an abstract symbolic representation.”
Hi All, still on the road but wanted to quickly jump in. This statement is factually incorrect because it’s confusing literal representation with symbolic representation. A timeline does not look like the media it represents, but it has a direct, one-to-one relationship in space to every frame in time. Where the time indicator is parked in space, directly maps to the corresponding frame. Advance one frame in space on the timeline, advance one frame in time in the media. And so on. Time/experience visually mapped to space — it couldn’t be more direct. More in my next post.
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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence] “A timeline does not look like the media it represents, but it has a direct, one-to-one relationship in space to every frame in time.”
I’m not sure why you say this makes it a non-symbolic representation.
In any event, the focus of this particular subthread has been on tracks, which significantly interfere with the idea that there’s a one-to-one mapping between the timeline and the program (as seen by the viewer), because tracks allow things to be present on the timeline that are not present in the program because they’re obscured.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “I thought you were arguing that the use of tracks to arbitrarily categorize footage was on of their benefits.”
I am arguing that — but your argument was a strawman because you picked a ridiculous case for track usage and argued it as a reason not to have tracks at all.
[Chris Kenny] “This does solve some of the traditional problems associated with track-based categorization, but to me, anyway, it seems like a lot of complexity to add just so that you have snap things into rigidly defined vertical slots.”
It adds a little complexity, but the complexity is layered — you’d never see it if you chose not to use the feature. That seems like a good approach for a product that’s supposed to be usable by the entire spectrum of professionals and non-professionals.
[Chris Kenny] “And it does still have a few issues when it comes to picture. For instance, presumably you’ve got your text track group that’s over your camera footage group. Now there’s one shot in the whole program that requires camera footage to be composited on top of text. You have to create another camera footage track group on top of the text track group, to hold one clip in a two hour long sequence (or whatever).”
True — but this is a corner case that’s a problem in all layer-based compositing. I’d hate to take away the option of spatial organization because it may get cluttered for complex comps.
By the way, node compositing shows the importance of flat 2D space to the software’s operator. I think that the argument you’re making here, if applied to a node compositor, is that the software should arrange the nodes for you, because it’s only the signal flow and metadata that’s important. However, the ability to freely position nodes on the node graph is critical for comp organization as compositors work and pass work around.
[Chris Kenny] “Another nice (related) bonus of having a freeform timeline + metadata is that metadata can be attached at any time without worrying about changing the edit. Some creative editors aren’t great at organizing things. When it comes time to organize them in preparation for the online, tracks make this a very hazardous process, because when you move something to a different track to (change its categorization), you may be unknowingly changing the picture as well. You have to keep checking. Simply going through and tagging things doesn’t have this problem.”
Since editors have been using FCP’s rigid tracks to encode metadata for a decade now, I don’t think a more flexible tracked system would really pose that many problems, especially if it were used in conjunction with tagged metadata.
Tagged metadata has its challenges, too. For example, what if an editor simply forgets to tag something — or tags it incorrectly? This could happen just as easily and with just as disastrous results as moving a clip out of the right track group and into the wrong one.
I guess perhaps you like Apple’s system because it tries to protect editors from themselves. Personally, I think it’s inappropriate for professional software to babysit its users. It shouldn’t be easy to make a critical error, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either — because sometimes preventing errors also frustrates the user’s intent.
Look, Chris, I don’t disagree with you that tagged metadata is good. I do disagree with you that removing the ability an editor has to arrange their edit spatially and ignoring some fundamental design principles of graphic and UI design in the process is a good idea. Further, as I pointed out in another post, it’s not just about spatially encoding metadata — different editors use the space in their timelines in different ways for organization and scratch work.
The model you’re suggesting is very flexible in terms of its metadata usage, but actually removes an incredible amount of flexibility in terms of the way it allows and editor to work with his or her timeline. I’m trying to suggest a model the keeps the advantages of what FCPX has proposed, but without totally discarding the legitimate benefits of spatial organization in a timeline.
I know that you’re eager to “move beyond legacy industry approaches,” and I agree with you that it’s important to re-evaluate what we do to consider why we do it. Are tracks the best solution for the problem of timeline organization, or are they just the way we’ve always organized timelines? I don’t think tracks as we have them in FCP7 are the best solution, but I think they offer an editor a lot more flexibility than the ruthlessly self-collapsing timeline in FCPX — and I think there’s a lot to be gained from the hybrid approach I’ve suggested.
In this case, I think you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Newer is not necessarily better. Out of curiosity, do you also think the new color board interface is superior to the traditional color wheel interface?
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
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[Chris Kenny] “I’m not sure why you say this makes it a non-symbolic representation.”
Because you physically move the playhead forward in frames — a one to one relationship. You move it one notch (frame) forward, it moves forward one notch in time.
And as you do so, you can see the movement in time in the canvas in real time and which tracks are visually dominant in the image because they are directly and in real time displayed in the canvas.
It’s not like you need to go to a different hidden window. The timeline is an interactive graphing of the canvas display. The part of timeline that can be seen horizontally displays X amount of time as the playhead’s point in time is displayed in the canvas.
When you use a steering wheel in your car or a zoom rocker on your camera, is it symbolic that the movement turns the wheels or zooms the lens? On some cars and some cameras it might be technically symbolic because the process is digital and not mechanical. But it behaves mechanically just the same. I turn this – it moves that.
I suppose if we had 3D monitors the layers of tracks could appear as filmstrips each in front of the next and how translucent each one is. However, twisting these filmstrips so they face us creating stacks would still be useful so that you could visually understand/manipulate what is in each layer.
The way I see it, the canvas at any given moment is just a blow up of one moment in time on the time line – all layers expressed as one image. It seems to me a pretty obvious and brilliant way of doing business. Here is our place in time; here is our moment in time.
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[Walter Soyka] “I am arguing that — but your argument was a strawman because you picked a ridiculous case for track usage and argued it as a reason not to have tracks at all.”
This “ridiculous case” is, in fact, a real-world use case. I agree that it’s ridiculous. The fact that it’s used is a symptom of a desperate need for more metadata in modern workflows.
[Walter Soyka] “True — but this is a corner case that’s a problem in all layer-based compositing.”
You don’t regularly online other editors’ offline projects, I think? See, for online editing work, everything that’s not a corner case comes over fairly automatically… meaning that 90% of the time is spent dealing with corner cases.
[Walter Soyka] “I think that the argument you’re making here, if applied to a node compositor, is that the software should arrange the nodes for you, because it’s only the signal flow and metadata that’s important. However, the ability to freely position nodes on the node graph is critical for comp organization as compositors work and pass work around.”
There’s nothing wrong with being able to organize objects in 2D space. It’s nice if you can get it. I just think… look, how many video tracks are you going to create for organizational purposes? Six? Eight? However many you create, you have to assign them roles that encompass everything happening in a sequence that could easily have over 1000 shots in it, that need to be layered in assorted different ways. I just think the spatial approach doesn’t scale all that well.
[Walter Soyka] “Out of curiosity, do you also think the new color board interface is superior to the traditional color wheel interface?”
I like the color board, though I wouldn’t say I find it especially superior. But not having three wheels does save a lot of screen space and make it much more practical in the context of the FCP X interface.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Craig Alan] “The timeline is an interactive graphing of the canvas display. The part of timeline that can be seen horizontally displays X amount of time as the playhead’s point in time is displayed in the canvas.”
See, I would put this the other way around. You’re structuring data by manipulating symbols in the timeline. The canvas is a rendering of that structured data. It’s like writing HTML (structuring a web page) in an editor that also shows a rendered version of that HTML that’s updated as you type.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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My apologies to David for hijacking this thread. I think that our dialogue here started out as a very interesting conversation about how to represent an edit, but now that we’ve both made our main points, we’ve ventured off into minutiae and I’m not sure how much value we’re adding here anymore.
Chris, if you choose to start a new thread after this, I’d be happy to continue our conversation next week.
[Chris Kenny] “This “ridiculous case” is, in fact, a real-world use case. I agree that it’s ridiculous. The fact that it’s used is a symptom of a desperate need for more metadata in modern workflows.”
I didn’t mean ridiculous as an insult — I figured from your tone you thought it was ridiculous, too, and I agree that is shows how important metadata is.
[Chris Kenny] “You don’t regularly online other editors’ offline projects, I think? See, for online editing work, everything that’s not a corner case comes over fairly automatically… meaning that 90% of the time is spent dealing with corner cases.”
I do a few onlines every year, and I think that properly dealing with corner cases is a significant part of the value an online editor adds. My work is mostly short-form with heavy compositing or graphics, and I gather your work is mostly feature, though, so we do probably have totally different biases.
If you do predominantly online, I can absolutely see the appeal of an auto-collapsing trackless timeline. I can also see why you’d want an offline editor to use metadata/tracks in a way that would make your online easier (and more cost-effective for the client).
I’d guess that most of the metadata usage of multi-track editing is in for broadcast or corporate deliverables that don’t see separate offline and online.
I’d also guess that most of the “scratch” usage of multi-track editing is in broadcast or corporate as well as creative offline.
[Chris Kenny] “How many video tracks are you going to create for organizational purposes? Six? Eight? However many you create, you have to assign them roles that encompass everything happening in a sequence that could easily have over 1000 shots in it, that need to be layered in assorted different ways. I just think the spatial approach doesn’t scale all that well.”
I say leave it up to each individual editor. Add (and encourage) proper metadata tools — especially for offline/online work — but don’t remove spatial organization from the timeline.
A piece with 1000 shots and dozens of footage roles all needing separate track types is also a corner case. Most features don’t require this kind of layering, and the ones that do usually have shot-based compositing anyway that will reduce the number of footage roles. I think that most pieces which are heavily-layered in the NLE will be shorter form, not having 1000 shots. In both cases, the number of tracks needn’t be totally unmanageable.
Weren’t you arguing for the median editor last week anyway?
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 -
I do follow that. But the need to render any effects ‘appear’ equally in the timeline and the canvas. And all physical connections have render times, a delay of cause to effect. You flip a switch in the dark to complete an electrical circuit. There is a delay before the light comes on. And when the light comes on, there is a delay before it reflects off the objects around you and reaches your eyes. And when it reaches your eyes, it takes time before our eyes adjust to the increase in light. And a delay before our brain takes this information and makes sense of it.
The canvas and timeline, as designed, are two parts of the same interface. We can drag a clip from the viewer or browser to either the timeline or the canvas to have them appear in both. By design, there is always this connection. And if we had FCP 8 in our hands, the rendering, at least in terms of watching the results of edits in the canvas, would be, for all practical purposes, in real time.
If we could see all changes of our edits in real time then the process would feel much more natural. It would be easier to learn. It would be easier to use. This was the hope in the next version of FC. And in a way it is here and in a big way it is not.
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David,
I thought I might suggest that you post a kind of summary of the discussion from your perspective (in terms of your original intentions) before venturing to post the next topic.
For example, though the discussion between [Walter] and [Chris] took on increasingly adversarial tone, it’s apparent to me that they agree that the tracked and “trackless” (so-called) paradigms have different strengths in terms of what they offer a user.
… also that audio paradigms (and to a certain extent compositing paradigms) seem to be more developed in this respect (or perhaps more entrenched). Editing timelines are the least developed. (Which seem all the more strange when audio paradigms can be copied completely for half the work).
Personally I haven’t been convinced that I’m seeing a “new paradigm” here but there are some interesting thoughts on approach coming out.
Franz.
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I’m reading this whole debate and I’m really having a hard time understanding why the timeline needed to be re-invented. Audio usually drives the edit with picture often more or less stacked on the audio. For the most part there are 4 possibilities of types audio: music, voice, nat sound, and sound fx. You play your timeline and LISTEN to it and decide if there is too much space, too little space, something getting cut off or something in there that shouldn’t be in there and adjust accordingly. I have zero problem doing this with existing technology. I haven’t tried “X” yet but the first day it came out and I checked out the videos I thought to myself “why bother?” I’d rather learn Nuke or something worth spending time on.
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