Tracks

[David Lawrence]

[Andy Neil] “Please. If that were called ‘editing’, then I wouldn’t have to clean up 70 percent of the sequences I get handed on a weekly basis. :-)”

LOL, sounds like you need to find better assistants! 😉

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David Lawrence
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[Jeremy Garchow]

[Chris Harlan] “So, there are sloppy editors. You think they are going to be any better with Roles? At least with tracks, you can see what is in the wrong place.”

But then you have to fix it and almost reposition everything.

With Roles, you simply select what you want and reassign it. You don’t have to move anything.

I see what you’re saying, but there’s two sides to this coin.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. FCPX does not prevent you from editing or needing to edit, the processes are just different.

[Chris Harlan]

[Jeremy Garchow] “But then you have to fix it and almost reposition everything.

With Roles, you simply select what you want and reassign it. You don’t have to move anything.

I see what you’re saying, but there’s two sides to this coin.
“

I’m not trying to argue against Roles, here. You know my qualms about visual representation, and you have suggested a variety of ways that my concerns could be ameliorated in future versions. If stuff like that happens, I might even like Roles. I’m just reminding folks that Roles isn’t de facto faster–that work still needs to be done to use it. In a traditional timeline, if you start out by putting things in the proper track as you place them on the timeline, you don’t need to worry about reassigning them later.

[Bill Davis]

[Chris Harlan] “And in FCP slug is a “thing” rather than “nothing” the program recognizes the entity and can assign filters to it, rename it, etc. Your weird argument about spitting out aggregate length is sophistry, and nothing more. Why, exactly, would someone want to do that?”

The difference, Chris, is that in Legacy it’s a ONE way street. You can talk to a slug. But a slug talks to nothing. (actually just like ALL clips in Legacy)

The whole point of the DB in X is that it’s based on 2-way communication. Not only do you talk to your clips (apply filters, etc.) but once you do, the clips reflect that information BACK to the database from which they sprung.

For example, change the order of a clip on the timeline, and the ORDER of that clips changes in the Timeline Index (for example) as well.

In many ways this is one of the most fundamental ways that X is different from Legacy.

And if you haven’t come to understand that yet, perhaps you stopped your examination of FCP-X a bit too soon?

“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

[Bill Davis]

[David Lawrence] “In FCP Legacy, there are many rules too, but at least you never had to consider an object container model when making a dissolve.”

I’ll get in trouble again, probably, but here goes…

Again and again here, we keep seeing a reflection of something I find extremely interesting.

After 10 years of development and, honestly, expansion, each FCP-Legacy editor had become well adapted to the parts of Legacy that fed their personal and particular comfort. And they ignored LOTS of other capabilities and processes that didn’t meet their requirements or simply didn’t not cross their awareness at the right time.

The reason I say this is because we keep seeing editors say “you can (or can’t) do this” and someone else proves the opposite by showing how. I know I’ve done the same. I learned Legacy starting at V1, have used it constantly since, (on hundreds of projects) and I’m constantly surprised at what I still don’t know about it.

That depth and utility was not there at the beginning. Trust me. It just wasn’t. (As I’ve mentioned before not even JKL transport was in V1.)

David, with all respect, looking at the “data model” and trying to argue either for or against FCP-X in it’s first iteration might be both fair and interesting, but I believe it can only relevant if it exposes “universal” truths. And I think those are few and far between at this stage.

Similarly, the magnetic timeline. If it proves annoying to more users than useful (or even tolerable) then it will drag down the success and adoption of the program.

I suspect it will not, because in my experience, it takes a couple of week to get used to – then it makes as much sense as any other timeline construct – and the editor moves on from “how does it work” to just doing the work.

“Considering an object container model when doing a dissolve?:” Why is that so different than “considering the underlying clip length when doing a dissolve? We ALL had to learn that the first time we tried to slap a dissolve on the end of a clip with no head or tail. The solution rapidly becomes OBVIOUS with trial, error, and experience. Just as with every iteration of every piece of software we operate.

To tie this back to the first few paragraphs, we worry too much, I assert, about missing features, keystrokes, and workflows. I totally get that these are the touchstones of our comfort as editors. Again and again we see, editors who came to want to do something at some point – only to discover that it was already there and missed — merely because they didn’t see it, didn’t initially need it, or merely conditioned themselves to do it another way, and never bothered to explore the alternatives. That’s the story of individual editing. And it always will be.

The mistake, I believe, is to become so rigid in ones thinking that we generalize through the application of ill will, something that does things in a different way – until we have some time and space to see whether those things appear different when we gather the deeper knowledge of what they might provide us anew.

Glass half full? Glass half empty? One editors “Ick” is another editors “Interesting” and both are correct, based on their thinking and style, not on the water.

I embrace the “object container model when making a dissolve” idea. It’s new to me. And I enjoy new.

FWIW.

“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

[Chris Harlan]

[Bill Davis] “And if you haven’t come to understand that yet, perhaps you stopped your examination of FCP-X a bit too soon?
“

And perhaps you’ve drunk way, way too much Kool-aid.

[Adam White]

I totally agree!

I have seen many different editors work in very different ways on FCP7. It accomodates many different ways of working, because it’s a pretty open framework.

This is essentially why I think so many editors are nervous or outright hostile to X. That freedom has been taken away.

I also have serious doubts about whether the editing paradigm found in X is a solid foundation for new editors learning their craft. I’m sure some will get very good at getting great results from it, but if X continues to be so at odds with the other NLE’s there is going to be a big divide in the editing community that I can’t see is going tp be helpful for anyone.

[Bill Davis]

[Chris Harlan] “And perhaps you’ve drunk way, way too much Kool-aid.”

So the observation that one program has single direction information flow – and that the new verson of that program has bi-directional information flow — and that might be interesting to people trying to decide between them — is, in your mind, roughly equivalent to duping men, women and children into drinking a poison laced beverage?

Interesting the way your mind works, Chris.

“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

[Chris Harlan]

[Bill Davis] “[Chris Harlan] “And perhaps you’ve drunk way, way too much Kool-aid.”

So the observation that one program has single direction information flow – and that the new verson of that program has bi-directional information flow — and that might be interesting to people trying to decide between them — is, in your mind, roughly equivalent to duping men, women and children into drinking a poison laced beverage?

Interesting the way your mind works, Chris.
“

It’s not the way my mind works, Bill; it’s the way you use sophistry, straw-man arguments and non-sequiters to spar here. It makes it difficult to communicate with you. Its frustrating, and I just decided to give up. Have fun using FCP X to “locate slugs and output their aggregate time.” I really don’t know why anyone would want to do that, but it seems important to you.