Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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[Walter Soyka] “On the interface point I raised earlier, Smoke presents a pretty interesting comparison — its UI is very touchable (it was built for use with a pen), it works in panes within a single window, and it’s highly contextual, but it doesn’t draw the “dumbed down” complaints that FCPX’s UI does. What’s the difference?”
Gradients.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “And yet many complain about gratuitous chrome. Also, when FCP v1 was released, most screens were 1024×768. Even the smallest MacBook Air today has 33% more screen real estate than that.”
Yes, but on the other hand FCPv1 was designed around 4:3 DV, and not 16:9 HD. The UI now has to account for 26% more width per image in the media it must display. If you double that for two viewers, you have to find 52% more horizontal space to fit the twin viewers for an HD-centric UI. You can scale the images down to postage stamps, but it isn’t an even exchange.
I know Aindreas and others bitch about the chrome, so I wanted to quantify the “gratuitous” chrome to see if FCPX is wasting that much space compared to FCP7. As far as I know, gratuitous means uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted. As UIs go, I would take that to mean pixels that serve no purpose for conveying information or accepting user input. Anything else in the chrome has a purpose and cannot be gratuitous, no?
I borrowed this FCP7 screen cap from Walter Biscardi’s blog post about UI because it is essentially the default FCP7 layout. It is from a 2560px wide display, so I grabbed an FCPX cap of my own on a similar display. Then I counted pixels with Photoshop’s histogram palette.
I’ve blotted in red all the areas on the FCP7 UI that do nothing and convey nothing. The unused space in the timeline is not wasted, just un-utilized. According to Photoshop’s histogram data, there are 126,636 gratuitous pixels or 3.6% of that screen cap.Contrast with FCPX in fullscreen mode:
There is indeed a fair amount of gratuitous chrome. According to Photoshop’s histogram data, there are 313,317 gratuitous pixels or 8.5% of that screen cap.So the numbers don’t lie! FCPX must have bloated chrome. It’s that big open bar in the middle seemingly waiting for buttons the way a stripped down economy car has blanks where the higher trim level’s buttons and doodads would live.
[Walter Soyka] “My guess is that the loss of the source monitor was driven by the design decision to try to simplify or streamline the NLE’s interface by making it more contextual: since you can only shuttle or interact with one viewer at a time, you should only show one viewer at a time. The two-up then appears in context only for editorial operations that explicitly require it.”
I agree, but isn’t that the means to the end? The end being better utilization of available screen real estate more of the time? The bottom line is that the user should have more control over how the UI adapts to particular contexts.
Best,
Andy -
[David Roth Weiss] “I think you must have missed a dose of the Kool Aid. 🙂
Next, you’ll be wanting tracked audio.”
Never! 🙂
I think roles are conceptually superior to tracks, at least for the way most users seem to use them: identifying, sorting, and routing audio. That is not to say there isn’t a lot of improvement I’d like to see, like more flexibility when dealing with audio married to video, adding effects and making adjustments to roles as busses (a la compound clips), and sync markers. I like the collision avoidance that comes with not having rigid tracks, and roles let me have my cake and eat it too in that respect.
Best,
Andy -
[Ken Pugh] “I wonder what’s the logic behind one screen? Is it so the software can work more effectively on single screen systems, like the iMac range? To make room for all the metadata? Useful as it is, I’d rather edit from pictures than metadata….”
Probably a screen real estate thing. However, with two displays there is plenty of room, and the Trim tool shows a fleeting glimpse. I think they ought to have a persistent second viewer as an option for users who have the pixels available and need to see side by side images (though I have defended the lone viewer in the past, I’ve come around on this issue). Surely there must be some sort of second viewer in the cards with the upcoming multicam feature. Dare we hope for two birds with one stone?
Best,
Andy -
[ted irving] “Thanks for the info. Did some searching and saw where old FCPX projects won’t open under the new 10.0.1 udpate. Is this true? Didn’t see any solutions. So, I guess I’m worried making the install if it works.”
When you launch, 10.0.1 warns you it will need to update projects and asks for consent to do so. Same as it was with updates to legacy FCP. After consenting to the update for your projects, they are all accessible.
Best,
Andy -
[Jim Glickert] “I was thinking about Steve Jobs today, and one thing that crossed my mind is that had he been born, say, ten years earlier or later, we probably would never have heard of him, nor have many of the toys that we enjoy.”
I invented nothing new.
I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
-Henry Ford
Best,
Andy -
I never really saw a lot of value in MobileMe, but it isn’t fair for me to project my opinion onto others. My characterization of MobileMe as a failure was with respect to how it did in the market it was aiming at (which I would argue was predominantly iLife users, not professional creatives).
Best,
Andy -
[Paul Korver] “Yeah but it writes proprietary BRU archives which are not widely accepted as a “deliverable” format (sometimes LTO-5 is a deliverable for us). Especially not by studios.”
BRU can write LTFS as an option. Open format, but I don’t know what your delivery spec is restricted to. Does it need to be tar? LTFS is a nice alternative that is supported on OS X (just avoid using the Finder to access it).
Best,
Andy -
[David Lawrence] “LOL! not yet, but eventually, right?”
Maybe in a “few” weeks?
🙂
Best,
Andy -
[Christian Schumacher] “Think here of all the photographers burned at their now-former-galleries.
Plus other creatives EOL’ed by the termination of iWeb hosting.”Yes, dropping iDisk does suck for a a lot of people. I don’t mean to trivialize the inconvenience it causes people who depended on it. That there are alternatives out there doesn’t eliminate the hassle of having a service killed.
I’m still not convinced that Apple’s reboot of their web services product is a leading indicator that the Mac’s days are numbered. At least I hope it isn’t.
Best,
Andy