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Tracks
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “It is the video paradigm (above) that has been adopted in the “Primary Storyline” model of FCPX and this was the point of my post.”
This is my understanding, as well. Also, Source/Record–which keeps getting thrown around in the world at large as an old filmmaking technique–is unquestionably a video/television technique that developed with offline/online editorial devices like Convergence, CMX, Sony and GVC.
And Bill, there were several early NLE’s that eschewed Source/Record. D/Vision and Avid, however, made compelling use of it, and it became the metaphor of choice. D/Vision–for those who have never heard of it–was highly successful NLE (and contender for the throne) that was eventually purchased by Discreet, and was improved and sold as Edit*. Edit*, of course, was brutally murdered in its sleep, and then dragged into a ditch to die.
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[Craig Seeman] “Certainly others may not want that and some may not understand it, but it’s the way my brain is wired. It’s why I find data bases far more flexible than spreadsheets. I want control over the data. I don’t want it forced into horizontal rows when that is decidedly not my intent.
I would love to see FCPX move to a more nodal relationship in which the connection may be to clips or secondary storylines rather than limited to the primary storyline. I’d like to have more control over the visual relationship when needed (and it is sometimes).”
Agree it’s a brain wiring thing that really influences how each of us feels about the trackless timeline. For example, I can’t imagine a nodal system being helpful for time-based work. The way my brain is wired, nodal relationships apply to shots, not to time, so it just doesn’t make sense.
Tracks on the other hand are a clear, efficient way to represent parallel channels of synchronized time-based media in a 2D graphic space. The way my brain is wired, it makes perfect sense.
A question for you and for Tony – I’ve asked this before but I’m curious what your thoughts are:
Do you think a trackless, ripple-only timeline would be good for creating music? Would you want to create an album or do your audio post on the magnetic timeline? Would you want DAWs to adopt this timeline model as a standard?
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Jamie Franklin] “The “way I want” to place audio and video conforms to how FCX wants.”
You see, this is a matter of perspective. You edit in exactly the way your NLE of choice forces you to. You just don’t see it that way, probably because it’s the way you learned.
[Jamie Franklin] “I want to put something here – I can’t, I want to layer this way, I can’t. I want to import this video, I can’t unless I transcode to fit the locked AR.”
Every NLE has rules and functions that can’t be adjusted or worked around. You can’t put video tracks into the audio tracks area of Avid or FCP, nor audio in the video sections. Of course, you could counter with, “why would I WANT to?” but the point remains that those NLEs FORCE you into tracks, they force you into a particular way of compositing and editing.
You talk about how you “have to create slugs and roles and compound clips if I even want to attempt to do ‘what I want’.” But if you want to export all the SFX stems for your project in FCP or Avid, you HAVE to organize them onto the same tracks. You can’t just tell your NLE to export only SFX regardless of where they are. It’s not extra steps in FCPX, it’s just a different workflow contingent upon the way the program is designed.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Chris Harlan] “D/Vision–for those who have never heard of it–was highly successful NLE (and contender for the throne) that was eventually purchased by Discreet, and was improved and sold as Edit*. Edit*, of course, was brutally murdered in its sleep, and then dragged into a ditch to die.”
And, I was right there for that one too… That was the first time big brother destroyed my well-oiled business machine. I certainly never imagined the same thing could happen at the hands of Apple. Lightening seldom strikes twice, right?
Perhaps the others who wonder why Herb and myself are not happy, should be aware that it’s because we’ve been through this before. We both survived to fight another day, only to find ourselves being dumped by another huge, deep-pocketed corporation we thought we’d invested in for the long-term.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[Andy Neil] “You see, this is a matter of perspective. You edit in exactly the way your NLE of choice forces you to. You just don’t see it that way, probably because it’s the way you learned.”
Sorry, Mate; I think you are brazenly wrong here. The actual joy of FCP is/was that it allowed you to pursue any number of editing paradigms at pretty much any given time. I’ve edited on things far weirder than FCP X–say, the Montage 3–which I enjoyed, and I’ve been able to edit using FCP as if it were a Montage–using multiple open timelines as bins, rotating edits between them; or I’ve been able to able to edit as if I were on a Media Composer or D/Vision, with stricter Source/Record; or I’ve been able to work like I’m using Speed Razor, which for its time, was an mazing editorial compositor. There has never been a more flexible, freeform editorial device than FCP. And to paraphrase–if you don’t see it that way, its probably because you haven’t learned on enough different NLEs.
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[Chris Harlan] “D/Vision–for those who have never heard of it–was highly successful NLE (and contender for the throne) that was eventually purchased by Discreet, and was improved and sold as Edit*”
D/Vision, was great, I spent a long time working on the offline version absolutely rock solid edl’s from it, better than Avid at the time.
D/Vision online showed so much promise, shame it was murdered while still so young. At least FCP had a good life before it met it’s sticky end
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Steve Connor] “D/Vision online showed so much promise, shame it was murdered while still so young. At least FCP had a good life before it met it’s sticky end”
Hey, and it is still breathing. I’ll be using heavily over the next year. But I will, also be working Media Composer into the mix to build up speed–and truthfully, this is something I should have been doing over the last several years–from the intro of MC 3.0–but I’ve been to lazy to do so.
Talking about all the old wild west NLEs, does get me a little excited about FCP X. I totally agree that it is nice to get something out there that shakes things up, and if it had come as a side product or from another company, I’d be completely jazzed about it. One of the things that FCP did to its NLE competitors is that it made them be better. Avid is much better than it was. I know there are die-hards out there that think things went down hill after MC 2.8, but–for me–it was the confinement of those earlier versions that forced me away. So, hopefully, FCP X will preform a similar function down the road. I have to admit that it is quite a bit of fun trying to figure that out.
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“I too am woefully ignorant of the traditions of film, but as I recall, film was actually the first “non linear” editing tradition wasn’t it?”
Totally true. It was non linear, but it was slow, without the instant access we all have grown so used to. And messy. There was nothing like hunting for a 2 frame clip at the bottom of a bin (that is a real physical bin, like a laundry hamper full of film) at the end of a long day.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
“A-Roll/B-Roll editing has its origins in film actually where master shots were collected on one reel (A) and cutaways and other angles were collected on a second reel (B).”
I worked in film for the first 10 years of my career and I never heard of collecting either master shots or cutaways on separate reels. Each take was hung on a pin in the film bin, paired with mag track if it was a sound take; each pin generally had a label noting organization so you knew where to look for a given shot. What purpose would there be for cutaways to be on a separate reel when the vast majority of editing tables could only handle one film reel at a time?
The A & B rolls in film referred to the way the negative was checkerboarded after the film was finalized and prior to printing. This was generally done be a specialist negative cutter. In ten years of film editing I never cut negative myself.
The first time I ever heard the expression “B – roll” used to describe a cutaway was after I started working in video. I don’t know what the derivation is.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
“Perhaps the others who wonder why Herb and myself are not happy, should be aware that it’s because we’ve been through this before. We both survived to fight another day, only to find ourselves being dumped by another huge, deep-pocketed corporation we thought we’d invested in for the long-term”
Apparently we never listened when Pete Townsend wrote “we won’t be fooled again.”
[Chris Harlan] “D/Vision–for those who have never heard of it–was highly successful NLE (and contender for the throne) that was eventually purchased by Discreet, and was improved and sold as Edit*. Edit*, of course, was brutally murdered in its sleep, and then dragged into a ditch to die.”
Lovely alliteration with those “Ds” there at the end Chris – it really captures the feeling.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
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