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Why doesn’t FCP have an Undo History List?
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[Rafael Amador] “David,
When I started with this, video editors still smell glue. and had a cuter in the desk. I don’t know if Autodesk did even exist, but UNDO wasn’t even in the imagination.”Rafael,
I think you’re about one year older than me, so I was sniffing the same glue you were…
And, if that logic you’re using applied to everything, we’d still be painting on cave walls with charcoal, and the only movies would be shadows cast on the walls by firelight.
I hope you get to see Avatar in 3D soon, I think it will remind you that we have progressed a bit since splicing blocks and glue, and that progress isn’t all bad.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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David –
This is just another case of Final Cut Pro insecurity leading to a false defensiveness. It’s amazing how normally reasonable and intelligent people can be in such total denial – it’s like dealing with a child – “honey, criticism doesn’t mean we don’t love you, we’re just trying to help you so you can be better.”
Yes, you can find ways to work without an Undo History, you can also do great work without a computer, without video, with only one eye and missing a left thumb – but why would you want to?
My first staff job in NY was for a small industrial company. They owned two upright moviolas and the senior editor, Nat Sherman (a great guy and great editor) had never worked on a flatbed. I had learned to edit on a flatbed and used to tell him all the advantages of working that way. Nat always came up with weird justifications for sticking with the old uprights. A big project came up and the director insisted on working with a Steinbeck. We had it delivered and Nat came in over the weekend to get used to it. When the project was finished Nat made the owner buy a flatbed and I had to use the uprights until we bought a second flatbed. Nat refused to ever use an upright again.
There must be a programming reason why Apple hasn’t put in an Undo History feature, it’s been asked for over and over and it’s no secret that many people want it and the rest would love it if they got it. There are many strange quirks in all editing applications, and part of being a professional editor is learning to effectively work around them, but claiming that the quirks are a positive feature is just ridiculous.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Herb Sevush] “This is just another case of Final Cut Pro insecurity leading to a false defensiveness. It’s amazing how normally reasonable and intelligent people can be in such total denial – it’s like dealing with a child – “honey, criticism doesn’t mean we don’t love you, we’re just trying to help you so you can be better.””
In my case, an Undo History would be about 100 on my list of 100 things I want to see improved with Final Cut Pro. Yes it’s something that would be nice, but there are so many other areas I would like to see improved first before something like that. It’s so easy to work without this feature.
I would really like to get back the realtime chroma key I had 5 years ago. And the mixed formats in true realtime. Oh and realtime Animation with Alpha playback I had 5 years ago. Oh and the ability to rotate a square box without all the jaggies on the edges like I could do with Media 100 12 years ago.
Give me improvements over system performance and image quality first, then we can deal with little things like “undo history.”
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
Walter –
n my case, an Undo History would be about 100 on my list of 100 things I want to see improved with Final Cut Pro. Yes it’s something that would be nice, but there are so many other areas I would like to see improved first before something like that.
I totally agree with you, and I like your list. I can think of many things (although definitely not 100 things) more important than an Undo History – which doesn’t mean that it isn’t desirable and shouldn’t be implemented if possible.
Give me improvements over system performance and image quality first, then we can deal with little things like “undo history.”
This shows how variable are the needs of editors working with Final Cut. I almost never do chroma keys and never spin boxes, my “most wanted” list is strongest in the digitizing, media managing, and editing productivity area, so the Undo History request would be higher on my list than yours.
What I objected to is the tone of many of the earlier posts that suggest that since there are ways around the problem then it’s a ridiculous request. It isn’t, it’s a programming weakness of Final Cut that they can’t do this. It’s not life threatening, not the biggest problem, not a deal breaker – but that doesn’t mean that it’s a foolish idea.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Clearly the underlying reason for wanting an undo history list is for situations where you’ve done something by mistake.
I’m working on a huge timeline, viewing it on a small computer screen, and often get a sense, for example, that perhaps while scrolling through the timeline, I may have dragged and dropped something out of place, even ever so slightly, but still critically out of place. Or like you mentioned hit the delete key unintentionally…the list of possibilities goes on. I’m not talking about second guessing creative or practical decisions.
Since nothing we are working on is actually physically in front of you, it’s very easy to miss a crucial misstep like this, only to realize much later, and thus create more unnecessary work.
For clarification, this was originally a question and not a complaint, so no offense to the software intended. I had assumed that it was a clear programming hurdle that I didn’t understand, not considering the possibility that is was the preference of some veteran editors.
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Herb,
True dat. I remember when cars didn’t have a passenger side rear mirror. Sure every could drive a car pretty safe without one. But there came a point when it was a given that every car would have that passenger mirror. But I’m sure someone here will write in that they don’t even need four wheels on their car. They’re perfectly happy and safe and actually much more efficient driving a car with only three wheels.
It’s 2010 and one of the industry standard editing software in the world can’t even tell you what you’re undoing. It’s a shame. It’s safe to guess that it has to do with some underlying coding issues. But it’s time to dig deep and fix this missing functionality. I’d much rather have an undo list than alpha transitions.
CHL
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer
http://www.chiholee.com -
David my friend,
If you want to change that cropping that the “history window” says you made 20 steps before?
Will you use the UNDO to correct it and lose the last 19 edits?
No sense.
A history list, the only thing that would helps you is to don’t need to count how many times you need to hit Comm-Z.
It would be great if you could eliminate just a precise action in the middle of the list, but not all the fallowing.
Really I don’t see any advantage. Just one more window.
rafael -
[Herb Sevush] “it’s a programming weakness of Final Cut that they can’t do this. It’s not life threatening, not the biggest problem, not a deal breaker – but that doesn’t mean that it’s a foolish idea.”
Herb and I both lived with the luxury of Discreet Edit’s undo list. To us it was not a luxury at all at the time, nothing that took the place of other necessities, just the product of smart coders who designed a smart feature-rich app without the need for all the workarounds. BTW, much of what made FC truly professional, such as the RT engine added in version 5, was written into the code by the chief Edit coder who was hired away from the Edit team.
And, for the record, Edit also tied things such as scratch disk location and video format to the preferences of individual projects rather than to the overall application preferences. Anyone care to argue that fixing that similarly in FCP would be a mistake?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “And, for the record, Edit also tied things such as scratch disk location and video format to the preferences of individual projects rather than to the overall application preferences. Anyone care to argue that fixing that similarly in FCP would be a mistake?”
Media 100 had that and a much better way of doing media management than FCP ever has. But then we’re moving on to a completely different topic.
But given my druthers, you won’t get me to move to another NLE platform at this time. At some point maybe, but certainly not right now. The pluses far outweigh the minuses with FCP.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
[walter biscardi] “you won’t get me to move to another NLE platform at this time. At some point maybe, but certainly not right now. The pluses far outweigh the minuses with FCP. “
No one is arguing that.
The only argument is whether a better undo is actually better, and since Herb and I actually had the capability for years, it would be impossible for those of you who have never had it to convince us that it’s not a significant improvement.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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