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Tonight’s the night
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[Michael Aranyshev] “FCPX doesn’t have ins and outs. It has ranges instead.In and out points allow for backtime edits. Ranges do not. That’s why they had to add a modifier key – to override the normal behavior. When did they think about backtime edits? Long after most of the app design was in place. What does it mean? The have no idea about editing.”
I have been very outspoken about my belief that FCPX loses ranges too easily vs. PIOPs — recovering a range after clicking away should at least be achievable through undo — but this issue aside, there is not a single thing that you can do with IOPs that you can’t do with a range.
I actually think that using a modifier key on an Insert or Connect editing command to align to the end point instead of the start point is a very elegant approach. It’s different than other apps, but it does make sense, and I don’t think it’s necessarily indicative of afterthought.
The name for the feature (Backstory) is painfully dumb, but what’s wrong with the implementation?
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 -
[Michael Aranyshev] “Three point editing. “
Well this is fascinating.
In what way doesn’t X “get” three point editing?
I seem to recall a Steve Martin’s MacBreak primer on doing precisely that. Along with the comment that people “think” they can’t do that in X – but in fact it’s easy.
Input any three edit points and X does the rest.
Kinda like every other software?
“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
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[John Davidson] “Unless you need to break audio apart from the video, and then there’s zero indication if sync has slips.
“But John, isn’t that a function of at what point you decided you need to “break apart” things?
It’s a choice, not a requirement that you decide to break apart clips. And when.
You can do it early, and deal with sync issues, or you can hold off, largely rough-in and even fine tune your visuals, then break apart and tweak your audio after your video is largely locked.
That’s pretty much the point of the “picture lock” tradition in movie-making isn’t it? To establish a visual core that you work your audio around, rather than just splitting and moving everything section by section?
I agree it would be nice to be able to do every-thing, every-way someone might like to do it – and have the program allow the visual to be primary or the audio to be primary in some contextual fashion – but in practical terms, it’s kind of odd to ask the program to both keep everything in sync, if you’re overtly telling the program you want to override that same sync at the same time?
X is “vertical relationship” based. Legacy was horizontal relationship based.
Both make tremendous sense, but they certainly require different thinking.
Just thinking out loud here.
“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
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Here’s an example – we had 3 channels of separate sound embedded in a single clip. We wanted to trim (but keep) just one channel and not the others – so we had to break the clip apart to do that. Then in the chaos of editing one clip lost sync with lip flap.
We’re breaking apart less and less as we get the hang of it more, but that’s a specific example of why we did that.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Michael Aranyshev] “The have no idea about editing.”
Really.
Dont’ tell Randy, the chief architect.
Since he coded KeyGrip, Premier 1.0, FCP Legacy – all before he designed X, I’d say the evidence indicates he understands editing better than either you or I do since his name has been high up on the architecture lists of at least three of the best selling video editing apps of the past generation.
He just figured out that the way it had been done back when all that was available was two source Ampex Tape Decks, one record deck and a CMX controller – wasn’t the way it really needed to be done today.
Perhaps you can’t get unstuck from those concepts – but don’t spoil it for those of us who can. Okay?
“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
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[John Davidson] “Here’s an example – we had 3 channels of separate sound embedded in a single clip.”
Interesting.
What was the thinking that caused you to have to deal with an imported clip created to this kinda odd standard?
I know there are decks that recored multiple audio tracks, but I’ve never been in a field situation where the sound recordist embedded three discrete tracks under one clip.
(Likely I’m just ignorant of this, but I’d honestly like to know the workflow that created this – since I might run into it someday.)
Thanks for your time. This is helpful to me to understand how others work.
“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
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Sure – it was either an episode of a show digitized from HDCam or a movie EPK (movie epk’s sometimes have odd track orders). We were very green with x so as time has progressed we’ve learned ways around it. I do think that we still have to break things apart sometimes for export to protools as roles. I can honestly barely remember the scenario, I just remember that it happened.
Even though we started about a month ago on X, it seems like it was a LOOOOONG month in terms of how much we’ve figured out. It was the same way with legacy FCP. I still cringe when I think about some of the hacks I did to just play back a sequence correctly in the old days.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Bill Davis] “What I don’t have respect for is those who continue to contend that it’s a poor general editing tool – but who don’t seem to understand the basics of how it functions. “
The basketball player’s guide to baseball (FCPX)
After playing basketball for 10 years he’s handed a baseball
“How the heck I’m I supposed to dribble this?”“You don’t, you use this” (handed a bat)”
“How they heck can I dunk with that? I can do it with a big ball and my hands with more accuracy”
Points to the fences.
“Sheesh, you really expect me to walk that far? That’s no way to play a sport?
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[Craig Seeman] “The basketball player’s guide to baseball (FCPX)
After playing basketball for 10 years he’s handed a baseball
“How the heck I’m I supposed to dribble this?”“You don’t, you use this” (handed a bat)”
“How they heck can I dunk with that? I can do it with a big ball and my hands with more accuracy”
Points to the fences.
“Sheesh, you really expect me to walk that far? That’s no way to play a sport?”
(grin)
“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
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i def do care.. I’m an editor, the more tools the better, and im not one of those guys hoping for it to fail..thats why i was asking, not to flame bait or whatever…not too mention i payed for it, so yea eventually id like to get my 300 bucks worth 😉 I have a full time Avid gig, but i also do a ton of freelance, which is why i got into Final Cut in the first place. In the event someone asks me to cut on FCP-X you can bet I’m not gonna turn down the job if there paying my rate. Right now i feel like i can cut something in it, IF i had too, but not in the way that i typically cut, which is inevitably what i want.
Is there documentation regarding the keyboard/asymetrical trimming? i don’t see it in the manual.. or do i gotta do some sort of class/training on it to get that deep, if so is there a particular one you recommend?
Neil Goodman: Editor of New Media Production – NBC/Universal
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