Time-lapse, FCPX praise

[Craig Seeman]

[Mitch Ives] “Apple can do better than your workaround can’t they?”

iMovie automatically marks the portions of clips as you add them to the timeline.
Imagine that. iMovie features that didn’t make it into FCPX.
OMG iMovie is so much more advanced that FCPX, that latter must really be the beginners tool.

My hunch, like so many other things in FCPX, they are NOT ports from iMovie. There are challenges with the database interrelationships. I would bet it’s coming soon.

[Mitch Ives]

[Craig Seeman] “iMovie automatically marks the portions of clips as you add them to the timeline.
Imagine that. iMovie features that didn’t make it into FCPX.
OMG iMovie is so much more advanced that FCPX, that latter must really be the beginners tool.

My hunch, like so many other things in FCPX, they are NOT ports from iMovie. There are challenges with the database interrelationships. I would bet it’s coming soon.”

I hope you’re right. I’m trying not to be negative, but every once in awhile I get this nagging Harbinger feeling that tying everything to the database (which provides great functionality) could also hold up features throughout FCPX’s development. I’d like to be wrong on this one.

BTW, the same Incite software had a Consolidate function that extracted the used portions of clips and removed all the unused portions, freeing up considerable disk space.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Craig Seeman]

[Mitch Ives] “I hope you’re right. I’m trying not to be negative, but every once in awhile I get this nagging Harbinger feeling that tying everything to the database (which provides great functionality) could also hold up features throughout FCPX’s development. I’d like to be wrong on this one.”

I do think this is the case. I think it has to do with the state of the release from the get go. Apple has to do a lot of database relationship development before certain features are implemented and their impact on the GUI as well. I think this year’s going to be a lot of good catchup though. I think the next release will be the big hurdle jump.

[Bill Davis]

Mitch,

I’m not a database pro by any stretch. ..

But this is totally consistent with the development path I’ve seen with every database I’ve ever used.

I have about 15 years into Filemaker Pro – (admittedly at a very casual user level) and this is precisely the path that took.

First release was basic plumbing in a “flat file” construct . Eventually, they added “limited” relational capabilities – largely lookup from other content pods. Then, they added more and more features over the years to the point where large swaths of users didn’t need any other tool.

Now, 15 years later, “consensus” capabilities have showed up as persistent icons baked into the interface.

Relational database processes where changing one thing effects subsets of linked “other things” is in no way trivial.

I’m happy to wait for “finished” rather than live through “fast but broken.”

But I’m NOT willing to wait to learn the software approach just so it’s “perfect.’

I’m had so much re-learning and re-understanding to do approaching X that I’m delighted that they chose to push it out the door at NAB.

This way, I’m not waiting to learn and use the tool (as I’m doing very successfully now with my paid work) until they can perfect the things that would be nice, but aren’t necessary.

I’m now 8 paid gigs into it – with three additional new ones on the books – and those jobs happen to all be larger and more complex than the early ones.

That’s the context where “show unused clips” is so trivial to me as to be inconsequential.

FCP-X is WAY more than earning it’s keep in my practice just the way it is right now.

And that’s really all the matters to me.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor