This doesn’t seem possible in FCP X

[Shane Ross]

[alban egger] “but really why do you need 50 SFX tracks?”

That isn’t 50 SFX tracks. 50 audio tracks total. Including dialog, music, b-roll, background audio. And good sound design requires a lot of layering.

And yes, editors are called on more and more to do sound design before it gets to audio post, because the client, or network, can’t seem to watch shows and know that the audio will be better after the mix. They need the rough cut, the picture cuts, to sound like full on mixes when they watch. Or they get distracted.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Walter Soyka]

[alban egger] “So yes, it can be done and it might look tidier than in FCP7 or other trackbased NLEs.”

Tidy means arranged neatly. Condensed means made denser or more concentrated. There may be some overlap, but the concepts are not the same.

I think the timeline is very tidy, and I don’t see why usingn more than the minimal number of vertical tracks is necessarily a bad idea. I think the goal was to see everything in context, and this timeline communicates that at a glance.

I certainly agree that it would be very convenient to be able to collapse some of these sections at will, but realistically, you can focus on a single section of tracks in FCP7 et al simply through vertical scrolling in the timeline.

Doing graphics and animation, it’s pretty common to end up with hundreds of layers or objects in a scene. That can make for some hairy-looking timelines, so I certainly understand the desire to minimize their visual footprint; however, maintaining context is also an important goal that needs to be balanced against the so-called “de-cluttering” of a timeline. Sometimes it’s better to deal with a higher track count than it is to step in and out of containers, compounds, precomps, or whatever your application calls these related constructs.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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