[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So while the mechanics of editing in fcpx need the most work, “

I’m not trying to be snarky here Jeremy, but stop and consider that statement in the context of this being editing software.

As you say – like a lot of people I like a lot of what is in FCPX – but the timeline is beyond problematic, and the timeline is where I do my job.

i don’t know if Apple could swallow that much intellectual humble pie, but they need to throw out that timeline.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

actually I’m mad for this now – screen shot two says he.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3421180/keyframe%20lozenge%202.jpg

and so, he said, here I have selected the previous clip (which actually wasn’t in the previous screen shot but one gets the idea) – and the keyframe strip now refers to its key framed parameters? It’s simply a notched ruler strip, directly equivalent to the timeline ruler strip itself, that exposes the keyframe parameters for the selected clip below on the timeline? the keyframes themselves will zoom in and out dependant on timeline zoom, but the blue strip itself holds steady just like the main timeline ruler.

with the little blue keyframe strip (TM) up, you would get a far better idea of the keyframing inter-relationships in sequential clips, because with it active, just clicking the clips will get instantly get you the keyframes directly above? thats how it was in 3DS MAX to my memory – it was a single object parameter dependent super thin strip timeline, but i recall it was massively handy.

there – don’t anyone say I’m never constructive. which I rarely am.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

following on from the keyframing burble there –

possibly even this sneaky little suspect? which I have crudely mocked up -all please ignore shot of a bloke’s kitchen table and lappie, it was a camera track test…

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3421180/keyframe%20lozenge.jpg

it could simply be a neat GUI slide down keyframe strip below the centre bar – this is how 3DS MAX got around the problem of a minimal keyframe timeline, I found it worked really well, although they stuck theirs on the screen base. the important thing is that something like that would restore to some degree the score sheet flexibility for keyframing. Myself I find that sometimes the easiest, and most organic way to adjust a keyframe strength is to move it further away and let the numbers fall off that way. If you need to you can re-assert a new keyframe at the original position and delete the one you sent for off to the right.

Basically keyframes outside the outpoint are important I think.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Bill Davis] “each of us are at the direct center of it.”

we don’t all get to be pope or royalty wha?

and actually – while I’m at it – key framing on a hud. this is less platform – more nit picking, but if they have in fact opened pandoras box with the Red hud, the expanded keyframing interface needs to come off the clips – I think it’s really problematic the way it pops up hanging off and tied to the clip as a four story geometrics instance.

for instance – so the keyframing has no independent timeline as it had – I cannot zoom in and out of keyframes separate from the timeline because they have no timeline of their own, – the keyframe interface and the keyframe visiblity is tied to the clips in and out point – if you zoom out on the main timeline, you are zooming out of the keyframing interface, thats maybe not too terrible really – but because the interface is set by clip in out width essentially, you also have no ability to see and adjust a keyframe that ends up outside of the clip out point – you can select forward in the inspector – but you cannot drag and reposition a keyframe back into the clip if you have trimmed back to the extent that the keyframe sits beyond the clip out point. That kind of thing comes up very often, and the only way I can see to reset that keyframe is to physically drag the clip out point to reveal it again.

there’s a whole bunch of stuff like that I find in keyframing, the fact that it is modal with a done button, that speaks to a bit of a problem with geometrics and keyframe animation in the single window non tab environment – that decision by apple has sent some things to very strange places – geometrics as per clip slaves dependent on the width of the clip and the zoom factor on the timeline is one of them

I don’t actually know where apple put a keyframe timeline adjustment panel, but a streamlined narrow box hud slave to inspector scale / rotation / selections – basically just a slim keyframe time ruler hud with keyframe notches that presents the keyframes for the property selected in the inspector or something? either way geometrics has problems in FCPX. And I use that stuff *a ton* for push pull on shots, and the keyframes very, very often end up outside the cut points.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

arf – shiver up the leg even? love that chris matthews line.

dunno – my bottles are filled with poitín. makes gasoline look like milk. 😉

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poitín

the crazy thing is Apple could probably quite happily do an awful lot of this stuff, I’m past throwing that “they don’t have the pro-apps people” line, that’s really obviously not true. they’re caning it out.

the thing that drives me mad is that Apple could very likely make the editing software of my dreams. But – how dare they – Apple aren’t making it for me.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

Colour room – The Colour board serves as optimised quick run through – if you want more, launch colour room for fullscreen single viewer colour correction – de-prioritised timeline sits below smoke style, you still get those lovely, supremely responsive power windows, now with tracking, curves, slide over before after splitscreen – say a bunch of aperture style colour correction elements, huds etc.

the coding for the colour correction and effects in FCPX is killer, fast as hell, that has to be the real hard work.

Its impossible to see Apple doing much substantial with the colour board as it stands in a single brick user interface without tabs – there’s only so much room. Although as garchow points out – the fact that red gets a floating hud for its metadata and stuff is interesting.

but bottom line – a colour room.

in the – bo knows football sense of things – Apple just have to know how to put that together pretttty well.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

As jeremy would say with piops – I know I’m crazy on this, and arguing solo – but I have a real problem with the timeline, and I’m not talking concepts here – the action of physically lifting a clip and seeing that massive heavy drop shadow appear drives me more than a little mad. you can feel it impacting timeline responsiveness every time. there is a minute pull as the heavy effect goes on.

Also I don’t think it has a good mid zoom arrangement because of how vertical the lozenges are. clip items in FCPX tend to be very tall and skinny unless you’re close in? I find it extremely hard to read the edit, when I’m further than a few minutes zoomed out with a tight cut

these are, I realise, nitpicky to some – but I’m a pretty stupid editor, and I’m quite mouse driven to boot – in theory that should make me a bit of an FCPX candidate, but I cannot key into that timeline, it just annoys the hell out of me. Not that anyone would have ever realised that.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

er, oops? I hadn’t checked the openGL preference thing in ages – I didn’t realise the thing was actually gone? ermm, anyway…

yeah, you know what you’re talking about way better than me on the raytracing thing – I vaguely knew It kicked in with extrusion, but I didn’t realise it was that much of a pain. I’ve barely touched it. Also I found that Stu Maschwitz post https://prolost.com/cs6

he saying the exact same stuff as you – CUDA, or the lack of it, has a ginormous impact on render times.

And yep – I’m thinking new IMac for me AE station too.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

rather. Personally speaking, I genuinely found your workflow post made a crazy strong case for FCPX in time critical long form factual. It turned my head – it was very easy to visualise the specific heft FCPX brings in altering the process of footage analysis and whittling – I almost rather wished I operated in an applicable scenario to get the feel for that. its just that I’m in a different lowly short form gig, and I think Apple have built a thing to do a thing, and its not my thing.

As an easy, straight forward example: mood films and short form stuff demands pretty vast quantities of minute push pull stuff, and repeated going at the keyframes to hone the fake camera work – Avid, god love it, actually has no geometrics as a native attribute, but –

FCPX, with the four story tower of a keyframing interface popping up over each and every clip is a jaw dropping non-starter.

every time I pop it up, I have a shocked moment where I realise the motion tab as was is now staggering around the timeline. and I’m supposed to deal with keyframe parameters, scrolling up and down the timeline to reveal the interface, on every single clip instance. Its… an insane adventure that.

Keyframing is not a place anymore, its a crazy pop out hobo, as a per clip, gigantic, unwieldy instance. in the bloody timeline of all places.

Its almost the worst thing in the application and it is, in truth, an absolute non starter.

Apple made a range of decisions here – but I think in a number of areas, they unwittingly cut through meat and bone to get to where they thought they should be in a unified interface.

fundamentally, the unified single brick interface without tabs, and with the actual elements being simply too large (i mean everything – the buttons, the light switches, all of it) represents a serious roadblock.

now that this thing is 5K (!) red native, with audio sync magic, power windows, throw any format, with multiple, count them, persistent in out points on every clip, with a source viewer, with immense CC performance on a well stocked iMac – it is getting incredibly hard to describe FCPX as prosumer software.

But it is very, very weird software. The crux lies in obtuse user conventions, and what apple feel a pro application should be in visual operation.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Bret Williams] “Marginal for Adobe Premiere, and just plain horrible for After Effects CS6 becuase they don’t utilize the ATI graphics card. You’re talking days to render out something in 3D in AE, vs. hours. “

Thats not reeeally true – I just spent a week in berlin doing motion graphics promo pieces for a japanese electronics firm launching lots of tvs and laptops – I was fashioning piles of floating GUI elements popping up around the kit using the 3D camera tracker (which is awesome).

An iMac i7 with a full complement of ram – is a very, very, very nice AE station.

You’re right about the openGL limitations as it relates to full raytracing renders, but as Stu Maschwitz pointed out – adobe have gone for a computationally expensive raytrace engine. Its a good fundamental flag in the ground, but, bottom line, with a good anti aliased render, you are going to be waiting a seriously long time per frame in almost any use case, cuda or no.

As to openGL in the workspace, I don’t know very many AE people that have much truck with it. Its a tricky proposition, its better than it was, but my instinct, in nearly all mo-graph situations, is to disable openGL previews.

again with premiere – Cuda will get you optimised performance with certain sets of plugins, and more importantly, with certain dissolves, but – and this is an important but – cuda has not got much to say about the performance of the timeline itself from an editing standpoint. your processor (hello i7 hyperthreading) and hefty doses of ram is going to kick out that multiformat timeline.

Bottom line – I hefted that iMac to and from berlin in a steel roady case, and I fell deeply in love with it. And more importantly, if you look at the back of the new iMac coming in december there is a massive engraved “Nvidia 2GB” logo on it. Its impossible not to think that adobe are going to prep and certify the nvidia card on that machine for CS6.

That new imac is it basically – it will run FCPX like a monster, and it should be fit for pretty full on mercury duty as well.

me wantee. me havee – having prevaricated for just long enough.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics