-
weird shoes, FCPX, and the sheep barn.
-
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m going to annoy you all here and just mention that a lot of this is much better handled by the Motion model where it’s ridiculously easy to get to everything all of the time.”
Setting the stage for Composite-Off 2014?
You know, Simon, I just recently bought a license of Fusion (in part on your good word) and I’m having some fun in my spare time learning that. There are a few uniquely-done things there I’m enjoying.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I couldn’t agree more – everything about the Ae UI screams to me of legacy architecture that could so obviously be done differently. No-one in their right minds would build the UI that way if they were starting today. But it kind of works and does present a lot, and I do mean a lot, of really dense functionality reasonably effectively.”
If we were re-building the Ae UI from scratch, what fundamental design assumptions would we change?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “I know you’re not happy with the Ae interface, but it’s not THAT bad!”
Yeah. I need to keep modifying my auto correct on that one.
-
[Walter Soyka] “If we were re-building the Ae UI from scratch, what fundamental design assumptions would we change?”
Wow! I think if we were to go there, we would need to get paid for our input 😉
In my limited experience of it, UI design is one of the hardest things to get right, while at the same time being the easiest thing in the world to pick holes in!
It’s incredible how much time you can expend simply on the design of a single legend … so, overall, it’s a massive undertaking to think about designing a UI for something as hugely complex as Ae.
But just on the broadest level, Ae layers and precomps are really Ui-inefficient in my view …
Retires to a safe distance once more.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. To me, to notion of tabbing to a different panel to adjust the saturation because I’ve just tweaked the gamma really goes against the grain and it’s something you just don’t have to put up with in any other grading environment. Grading is surely all about the interaction between the different controls, and not a process where you first adjust one thing then go off and adjust another. At least, most colorists will tell you that – which is one of the main reasons for using a physical interface that allows you to simultaneously makes adjustments to two different parameters, rather than have to do it serially.
Grading with a mouse is bad enough, but adding to the serial nature of the process by having to tab around as the Color Board requires you to do really seems to me to be pushing things in the wrong direction.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t work, but from a UI point of view there is surely no question that it is sub-optimal.”
Yes, you’re right about that, but almost everything I do is done serially. Rarely can I make adjustments to more than one parameter, so in this sense, while the Color Board does not do me well without a Resolve like control panel, it does do me well on the keyboard that I have at every computer. So, there is that.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Sublime is quite a claim 😉 There are still a few things that I’d like to have shortcuts for that don’t seem to be there, or maybe I haven’t worked the shortcuts hard enough?”
No, you are absolutely right. But once they are there, it is so damn easy to map things in FCPX/Motion.
[Simon Ubsdell] “I think overall that Apple have, as is their wont, put a good deal of good thought into the UI design of X, but I just think there are limitations, which as far as they are concerned fall into the category of “good enough” that they currently seem a little too prone to embracing.”
Perahps, but I think “good enough” needs to be framed appropriately.
Jeremy
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “But once they are there, it is so damn easy to map things in FCPX/Motion.”
Hah! Agreed about X and it’s getting better all the time on that score, but don’t get me started on mapping in Motion – it’s almost beyond belief how primitive it is, or rather how little of what you need to be able to map you can actually map.
Very strange – but then everything about Apple’s attitude to Motion is strange in the extreme. Almost as though there’s nobody left who understands how good an offering it actually is and how vastly better it could be with a little love (and, I’m afraid, to say some better image processing know-how).
The guys who originally built it did a simply extraordinarily brilliant job on so many levels without any doubt.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Wow! I think if we were to go there, we would need to get paid for our input ;-)”
I wouldn’t be opposed, but as I see myself working with Ae for the foreseeable future, I’d also be happy just to see the app become better to use.
[Simon Ubsdell] “In my limited experience of it, UI design is one of the hardest things to get right, while at the same time being the easiest thing in the world to pick holes in! It’s incredible how much time you can expend simply on the design of a single legend … so, overall, it’s a massive undertaking to think about designing a UI for something as hugely complex as Ae.”
No doubt. I was just curious if there were a couple quick-hit items you had in mind when you said that no one in their right mind would build the UI that way today.
[Simon Ubsdell] “But just on the broadest level, Ae layers and precomps are really Ui-inefficient in my view …”
What do you mean by inefficient?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Let’s say you wanted color correction to be an intrinsic property of a layer in Ae. Which color correction effect should get hard-coded into the render pipeline?”
That’s the question Adobe has to ask themselves.
At it’s very essence, compositing is mostly about controlling shades of grey. How about a Levels filter? Or Curves? Or a 3wayCC with luminance to get us started?
-
[Walter Soyka] “What do you mean by inefficient?”
Inefficient is probably not quite the right word though I did say UI-inefficient which is not quite the same thing. I mean that the implementation of layers and precomps is such that the information that you need to see and get at it is obscured by the structure of the UI.
I’m surely not alone in finding that the basic principle of having to step into a precomp is sub-optimal from a compositing point of view. I know there are ways you can make it less inefficient, but inefficient it surely is. As I say you wouldn’t ideally design it that way.
Equally, it’s not easy enough to see that state of a layer from an overview of the interface and that makes for inefficiency given how critical that information is.
One of the major challenges of UI design is surely to identify what information needs to be topmost and most accessible to the user. I do think the incremental evolution of Ae means that these design considerations aren’t addressed as well as they might be if you were starting from scratch.
But then it really is seriously hard stuff …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “I’m not sure what version you were referring to above, but unless I misunderstand, I think it’s been fixed.”
Walter,
I just checked on an install of CC 2014.
I think what may have changed is that the “master” window is now clearly labelled (with the project file path on a Mac) – thus even if all you have in that “master” window is the audio meters (for example), it’s still clear that it’s the “master”.
A better implementation would be to have the “Project” pane always take on the “master” roll – but now that I think of it, why do we even need a “master” window?
Also, while any given floating window now comes to the fore if you select it, this is not true for the “master” window – it remains in the back, forever obscured and never to be brought into view (unless you close or move windows). Again, this can be confusing if you’ve left something in it that you want brought forward (especially if you’ve forgotten that it’s the arbitrary “master window” and acts differently than all other windows).
Franz.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up