[Andrew Richards]

[Michael Gissing] “We don’t need meta data however as clip names are descriptive so standard word searches with + – delineators enabling quick search and inline auditioning on the track before a simple Enter to paste. “

Well, technically, clip names are metadata.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[David Lawrence] “That’s why many of the UI decisions in FCPX are so baffling. For me, they only start making sense if you imagine that the FCPX UI was designed by the engineers. The constraints, inconsistencies and mental models in the UI feel like they’re driven by an engineering data model, not an understanding of users.”

Yeah, the thing is, I do think they were modeling the UI after a particular data model, just not one made mandatory by the structures of the underlying media-handling frameworks. As we’ve discussed at length, they anchor clips to other clips rather than to a time frame. Time is kept, but isn’t the structure for keeping track of what goes where. Time is just a meter for the music, if you’ll pardon my hijacking of the metaphor you opened this thread with.

I think the broad idea was to find a way to capture a more explicit expression of editorial intent. In an open tracked timeline, intent is all in the mind of the user. As far as the software is concerned, that lower third only happens to sit atop the right bit of talking head. That music just happens to come in at the right beat in the action above it. Tracks 1 and 2 are dialog, 3 and 4 are music, and 5 and 6 are SFX, but the NLE doesn’t know that.

In the magnetic timeline, the software is actually told what clips are married to other clips. I think this is all born out of a philosophy that the software should try to glean as much actionable metadata as it can without asking the user to make ancillary inputs strictly for the sake of metadata. They can’t eliminate all manual entry of metadata, but they can make it necessary and once metadata is ubiquitous, they can start automating things.

I also agree this all reeks of engineering, and that is probably why it appeals to me so much. From an engineer’s perspective, everything is input/output, and you can satisfy all I/O requirements with metadata. Roles are an excellent example, they get you to the same ends as audio track conventions. Users on the other hand, are concerned with technique as much as they are with I/O (if not more so). The I/O needs to be there to get the job done, but the technique is craft, and craft is sacred.

I imagine the evolution like this: they wanted to capture explicit editorial intent, so they think up clip connections. These could work on tracks, but they make collisions much more difficult to manage while maintaining track roles if you have a stack of staggered connected clips you want to move in concert. So get rid of the tracks! OK, but what about the roles we conventionally assign to tracks like DME? Explicit metadata tags! So now we can capture explicit intent, prevent collisions while moving these stacks of explicitly connected clips, capture more explicit intent in the form of roles metadata, and then use that to route output. Cut! Check the gate!

I have no ideas for how capturing all this explicit intent might be exploited for additional functionality, but that’s what it looks to me like they are aiming for.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[David Lawrence] “I’ve pointed to what I see as evidence that tracks are integral to AV Foundation. But I also agree with Craig Seeman’s observations about other parts of the AV Foundation spec. It feels like the UI is an expression of this object data model rather than the track parts of the model. That would explain many of the object behaviors as well as the constraints.”

I maintain that AVFoundation forces nothing on the UI. The UI is 100% abstracted from the OS frameworks that handle the actual bit-laying. Walter Soyka! Back me up!

[David Lawrence] “This is pure conjecture on my part but I believe that at one point, FCPX did have tracks and that there was a big internal fight for the soul of this product. The track people lost and they were the ones fired in 2010.”

Maybe he was flat out lying, but Jobs reportedly said the layoffs were from support, not engineering. Then again, that was the infamous “awesome” email, so I’m probably not changing anyone’s mind with such evidence…

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

First of all, what RAID card did you get? The features vary and it will help in making a recommendation.

If you are opting to copy your media into events on ingest, you want performance. You can get that with a RAID-0, but any drive failure will kill all your data, so you want to be backing that up. RAID-10 is only possible with at least 4 disks, so to use that you’d need to put your boot drive elsewhere (like on an SSD in your unused second optical bay, highly recommended!). If your card supports it, you should use RAID-5. It allows one disk in the set to fail without killing the data. One of the disks in the set is consumed for parity data (which is what allows the set to tolerate the loss of one disk).

So with your 1TB drives, you could have:
RAID-0 = 3TB volume, unprotected against drive loss, highest performance
RAID-5 = 2TB volume, fault tolerant of one drive loss, better performance
RAID-10 = 2TB volume, requires one more 1TB drive to create, highest performance with fault tolerance

Note if you add one more drive to the RAID-5 above, the volume will be 3TB and will have higher performance than it would with three drives. Like the RAID-10, this would require a 5th disk for boot service.

Assuming your card supports it, I’d do a RAID-5. Just know that if you ever get a message that your RAID set is degraded or has lost a disk, replace it IMMEDIATELY so the card can rebuild the RAID-5 and restore fault tolerance. Running a RAID-5 with a bad disk in the set is just as dangerous as RAID-0. Depending on what card you have, you may be able to continue working while the card rebuilds the array.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Bob Zelin] “I then get an ERROR that says
unexpected argument MS2.0; leaving defaults unchanged”

This means the command to enable the “less secure” authentication methods failed and not changes were made to the plist. I don’t have a Cache-A to test against, but try this in place of Step 5 if you aren’t concerned with having a “less secure” AFP connection to your Cache-A:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array "Cleartxt Passwrd"

That is the same command, but with only one argument. That should enable all the legacy authentication methods except “Cleartxt Passwrd”. Follow through the remaining steps and then see if you can connect to the Cache-A.

I couldn’t test this, it is just a hunch based on reading HT4700 so my apologies if it fails to solve the problem.

I suggested leaving “Cleartxt Passwrd” disabled but it might even be the auth method Cache-A is using. Did Cache-A know which authentication method their implementation of AFP is using? If this Lion host is going to be using AFP out on the Internet, I would be more wary of enabling so many of the legacy auth methods. If it is only connecting to AFP shares in the shop, then there isn’t really much to worry about.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Harlan] “No, my skepticism–and really it is skepticism, nat gussied-up fatalism–is based on the notion that internal politics related to commercial forces were so powerful that the pressure from them created over-riding design flaws in the project that it might or might not be able to recover from. “

The features at this early stage are very schitzo aren’t they? On one hand, 4K and scopes, on the other, the Ken Burns effect. They replaced Final Cut Express and are backfilling Final Cut Pro. Getting capabilities back is step one. Then they need to hone the UI. Aindreas is right- the ratio of fluff and chrome to meaningful control surface is too high. There is room for much improvement within the metaphor they’ve chosen.

[Chris Harlan] “Your tenacious optimism, which I really quite enjoy, as well as your thoughtful arguments are one of the many terrific reason to visit this forum. Calling you an unforgivable optimist, was simply a needlessly grumpy retort on my part. It is, after all, Thin-skinned Wednesday.”

Water under the bridge. I am rooting for good ideas and good design. I’m eager to see what legacy cruft Avid is able to shake off in their transition to 64 bit in MC6. They won’t abandon their UI, but they would do well to leave behind some of their architecture that prevents them from embracing a broader third party ecosystem. I’d love to see Adobe streamline their apps so that they don’t bury my Applications folder in so much clutter. How many months till NAB?

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Harlan] “That’s quite a statement. And a cheep shot”

I’ve managed to inadvertently insult you again. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you are a casual observer, I took your reference to “the skepticism” not to be self-referential. I’m not trying to belittle you.

[Chris Harlan] “Inside the code, there is a whole graveyard of ways FCP X didn’t go. Some of it may show up; a lot of it never will. It is just as likely–in fact, more likely from my perspective–that some of the development team realized, early on, the potentially serious pitfalls of the magnetic timeline and began track work-arounds long before the project debuted. That was deemed unnecessary by the powers that be, but got worked back in after the release outcry.”

The roles in 10.0 aren’t buried in the code or referenced in some obscure framework. They are metadata dropdowns in the Inspector, same as in 10.0.1. As I understand it, they drove the OMF export capability in Automatic Duck. Now they do more.

I don’t think they are flailing in the dark with their new metaphor. I think they are iterating like they always do, except now they are under a microscope. But I guess either of us could be right. We’ll never know for sure.

[Chris Harlan] “The casual observer does not need to be forgiven their skepticism–Apple is 100% responsible for that because of the fog they generated. What I’m not sure of, though, is that you should be forgiven your optimism.”

The skepticism you’re defending is skepticism that the Pro Apps team has any idea or plan at all for what they are doing. My unforgivable optimism supposes they are not incompetents and that they might be onto something.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Marvin Holdman] “I just find it lacking when I get more information from their products, and a clearer idea of where it might be headed, from you than from Apple. Yes, I think Randy DOES need to host a weekly call-in show. I realize that will probably never happen, but it would certainly be better than broad spin statements from Mr. Townhill. “

Don’t get me wrong, I was and am very frustrated with the deafening silence. I was just giving them credit for backing up their statements from the FAQ. Believe me, till they did that I was one foot out the door. I like where it looks to me they are going, but I’m very disappointed in how they handled all this. Bad form.

[Marvin Holdman] “Not bad, if it were a REAL 1.0 release, but that is part of the problem. They would like their current customers to accept their idea that everything that has been done since FCP1 be thrown out of the window (years of experience and jobs) to make way for this program. Don’t you think that might warrant more than just a FAQ, a splash page and some vague marketing statement?”

I wanted more in response to the outcry, and I only forgive them a little because they backed up their statements in the FAQ with a quality update.

I’m still smarting from the loss of FC Server, which was my bread and butter till June 21st. I wish they would just open source it, but then maybe there are licensing encumbrances that make that impossible. I hold out hope for some kind of successor to FCSvr, but who knows when or even if anything will come of the hints that collaborative editing and live-shared Projects and Events will become a reality.

[Marvin Holdman] “I appreciate you willingness to provide feedback on this. While I don’t agree with your perspective on all of this, it’s really great to have an intelligent counter-point.”

Likewise!

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “Currently, Audio levels and a lot of clip settings are not saved. You’ll have a hard time round tripping a nearly finished project.”

Ah, good point. On the other hand, in my limited experience with round tripping for final sound and picture, we got stems back from Pro Tools, ready to lay in. I just figured once you left FCP for Pro Tools or Resolve, you wouldn’t be coming back for more edits, you’d be coming back to conform output.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Simon Ubsdell] “But for my money Apple are taking easily avoidable risks by getting third parties to take care of really basic stuff like OMF that they could soooooooo easily have built into the app themselves. Why they didn’t is quite simply beyond me. Any ideas?”

Search me. I’m not convinced they won’t add it back in, especially in response to this AutoDuck puzzlement. I wonder if their (arrogant) attitude is something like “all interchange should be via XML, and all other interchange formats are obsolete.” They aren’t technically wrong that XML provides much more info than an EDL, but as a practical matter that kind of hubris, if real, isn’t doing anyone any favors.

Best,
Andy