zooming in on audio waveform in clip viewing area

[Tom Wolsky]

Switch to filmstrip view.

All the best,

Tom

“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press
“Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”

[Bret Williams]

True. But Julian does make an interesting point I haven’t heard many make regarding the event viewer, or previously the lack of an event viewer. Switching to filmstrip view just to zoom in on one particular clip’s waveform is clumsy at best. Especially with the whole clip wrap around thing. In legacy, it was certainly easier to shuttle or scrub to the area of a clip with the whole clip visible in the audio tab, then marquee zoom to the spot you need to see clearly, then shift z back out. if you have to switch to filmstrip view, then change the zoom level of filmstrip view, then scroll potentially pages and pages to get to the part of the clip you’re looking for, then change the filmstrip zoom level, then scrub, then change the zoom level again, etc. I think you’d go mad pretty quickly. Especially if you’re dealing with 30min clips.

I think the best thing to do in this scenario is accept that FCP X is different. Stronger in many ways and workflows, and weaker in others. But you’re never going to get anywhere if you keep trying to mimick your FCP legacy workflow in every way.

In this circumstance, I’d ask myself why I need to zoom in to choose the in point. I know some love their waveforms, and X really excels with waveforms in the timeline adjusting them as you adjust levels and whatnot, but it doesn’t excel so much with them in the event or event viewer. I generally choose in and outs in a clip by audibly choosing. I’ve done it that way for 19 years of NLE editing mainly because the original products didn’t have much of a waveform to choose in/out with. And because that’s pretty much the way you had to do it with tape. However, I do use waveforms to visually pick out individual takes in VO and such, but youi still have to listen to find the in/out for me.

In X, I now make very precise adjustments to audio with the waveform in the timeline, often relying somewhat on it’s visual for levels, and I zoom in extremely to adjust the in/out of aduio at the 100th of a frame level. Yet another thing legacy can’t do.

Sum up – legacy: nice waveforms in viewer and cross fade audio
– X: auto adjusting waveforms and 100th/frame audio editing

It would be nice to have all the above, but I think I’ll take the advancements in X over the app particular idiosyncrasies of legacy.

[Julian Bowman]

see, now that is a very reasoned reply. The waveform zoom isn’t something I use a lot, and to be honest in this case, and I guess in future cases, I used the sound more than I did in the past. The advantage with zooming in on the waveform was I had a visually representation of where the beat I was after was so it made it easier.

Mostly I was asking if it wasn’t there. I get the film strip feature but I truly hate it. it gives me a headache. I can do the small amount of audio in points as it is but yep, it is something I would like to do. Let me zoom in on the scrubber.

And I do get FCPX is different. I don’t really have a problem with that per se. It all seems quite logical in its difference. It does just feel like some of the design decisions haven’t been made sensibly or thought through fully, and when this is the same company that made FCP7 with a plethora of great design decisions implemented by the end, it begs the question why so many of them were thrown out with this new version.

[Steve Connor]

It’s worth adding that it is well worth submitting feature requests to Apple when you come across issues like these, I can tell you for a fact that they are monitoring these requests and as we’ve seen, they do implement things that have been asked for.

It’s important to remember that FCPX is still very early in it’s life and it’s up to us users to help shape how it develops

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Bret Williams]

Don’t forget, Apple didn’t write FCP legacy. They bought it.

Here’s the reality of FCP X as I see it. FCP 7 had a plethora of problems. Essentially, it had numerous issues with multiple formats and frame rates. It wasn’t 64bit, and it was added on and added on to the original Macromedia code. To change it all would have required a complete rebuild at some point as Premiere did (twice?).

Since Apple wasn’t even responsible for the original code, and it wasn’t really very much like the apps they were writing themselves, they decided to do it the way they wanted. Probably made the decision when iMovie was completely changed a few years before. We all should have seen it coming when FCP 7 was nothing much of an update.

So they built on the iMovie base for compatibility. Their goal I think was to fix the inherent problems with X. And they did. I’ve made long lists of things are are much more professional in X than in 7. Not feature set, but actual concepts that end up in the finished product. Like motion blur and ease in/out in traditions and dealing with multiple frame rates correctly with interlaced pulldown.

Whether everything went according to plan on the rollout or not is a story unto itself. But I think it’s obvious they fixed the technical issues with legacy, and are now slowly trying to figure out just how to creatively reintroduce the feature set that legacy had. Kinda reminds me of how they came out with the iPhone without copy and paste functions for 2+ years. They waited until they had the right way to do it. With X there have been similar absences, but as they’ve reimplemented, they’ve also rethought things, for better or worse.

[Bret Williams]

Just occurred to me that perhaps your event window is on the same screen as the project? I have my events on my second monitor just like I had bins in legacy. It gives a much wider view at the top in list mode for stuff like VO where you might be using the waveform to search visually for the start of an audio clip.

[Stephen N.]

Bret,
How do you place events on a second monitor? What’s the key command?

[Marcus Samuel-gaskin]

How about right-click > open in timeline. Assign a short key for open in timeline: option-t. Easy.

[Marcus Samuel-gaskin]

Gah! You can’t edit the clip into a timeline.

[Bret Williams]

It’s up there in the view or window menu. You can alternatively put the viewer over there.