[Andrew Richards]

[David Lawrence] “This assumes you’ve already selected your source and have cut it into the timeline. But what if you’re looking for what source to use?

For example, when I search for B-Roll, I always want to see what I’m cutting into AND what I’m cutting from at the same time. I can find the perfect cut point just by looking at both as I select from source. It’s incredibly efficient. There’s no way to do that now. The new layout is not an improvement.”

That is exactly what FCPX is assuming. FCPX is designed to fine tune your edit in the timeline, not to get it frame-perfect right out of the bin. You still have access to a two-up viewer, but it is only active when you are manipulating an edit in the timeline.

That cuts against the grain of how you like to work, but that is how FCPX was designed to be used. You can rightly argue that your way is akin to the old discipline necessary for an edit when the editor was physically cutting celluloid, but the flexibility of non-destructive non-linear editing permits an alternative method that Apple is clearly embracing.

We could debate “sloppy” vs “flexible” as the way to describe playing with an edit in the timeline rather than getting it just so prior to committing an edit to the timeline, but Apple has designed the whole GUI around the idea of editing in the timeline, so they biased the design decisions accordingly.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

Apple’s own product page!

Scroll down to “Powerful Media Organization”. You can even see the screen grabs of each monitor if you click on them! I still can’t make out what that two-up is doing there. I need to go hook up a second display and try and replicate it…

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

I thought the same thing at first, but note the unified playback controls underneath. It isn’t the inline precision editor either, judging by the timeline. Maybe a pre-release build that didn’t have a button on the bottom of the timeline to escape IPE mode?

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “there really should be one. getting rid of it is a mistake. It’s not something to get your head around, or find alternate methodology for. it’s a mistake.”

I respectfully disagree. And please note I didn’t use your least favorite phrase (wrapping one’s head), but you do need to approach FCPX without prejudice for its GUI design to make any sense. When I first approached it with my ten-years-of-editing-with-FCP-goggles on, I was baffled and didn’t like it at all. Only after I forced myself though a tutorial with an open mind did I start to see how things were intended to work. If you come at it with your FCP experience to guide you, you’ll be lost and it isn’t at all intuitive. It does need to be evaluated on its own merits and not from a perspective of how FCP7 works.

Objectively speaking, a dedicated Viewer is wasted screen real estate when it isn’t being used (and that is quite often). This is especially troublesome when you are designing a UI that is more laptop-friendly (and let’s face it, a HUGE majority of FCP users work primarily on a MacBook Pro). You get a two-up view when you need one, and the UI morphs to show you other things when you don’t. Why do you need a two-up view all the time? What good is having a frame frozen there from your last selection if you are doing your editing in the timeline, the way FCPX was designed to work?

A two-up view is only functionally necessary when you are comparing two abutting clips, the out frame of the first and the in frame of the second. You get exactly that with the Inline Precision Edit tool. It serves no other useful purpose, as the functionalities of Match Frame have been addressed elsewhere. The functions of all the other tabs that lived in FCP7’s Viewer window have also been moved elsewhere in FCPX.

I get that you want your FCP7 GUI model back, but that ship has sailed. Your next best thing is Premiere Pro, but you knew that already.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

Also, on the subject of GUI real estate, if you use a second monitor, you can send the Event Browser there. That seems like the ideal “pro” layout to me, at least once AJA/Blackmagic/Matrox deliver proper monitoring drivers so that you don’t have to waste the second display on that nonsensical “8-bit preview” (I think this will take Lion and it’s public AVFoundation to implement, but we’ll see).

I also think fullscreen mode in Lion with two displays will be nice (hide that glaring white menu bar that spoils the otherwise low-light friendly presentation of the GUI), and it seems that’s what they are angling toward.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

The current implementation of the Events and Projects Libraries is the most consumery aspect of FCPX, IMHO. I can’t see a busy editor not racking up a simply unmanageable clutter over a relatively short time, even with the folders.

I think there needs to be a way to hide items in the Projects and Events Libraries, but I disagree on the blank slate. A blank slate suggests a 1:1 relationship of Projects to Events, and that just flies in the face of the whole point of separating the two. You want something just like we had in FCP7 with a Project encapsulating your the contents of your Browser, but that just isn’t the new model. However, if there were a way to selectively hide things in each Library, you could get pretty much the same effect by hiding everything but the one Project and one Event you are working on at a time.

I just got done submitting a feedback asking for exactly that kind of hiding capability.

As to the missing Viewer, it really isn’t totally gone if you are using the Inline Precision Editor. Yes, I know a lot of veteran editors bristle at the idea of editing in the timeline, but that is how FCPX was designed to be used, and you get your two-up displays when you use the IPE. They way they executed timeline editing in FCPX is very fast because you can tune your edits without having to manage the space in the timeline, yes, thanks to -DUN DUN DUN- the Magnetic Timeline.

Taken in total, all the new-fangled stuff makes sense. If you try to apply your habits from FCP7 to any one feature at a time, it’ll enrage you (at least it did for me when I first tried it out). If you let go and use it the way it wants to be used, it is as fluid as the marketing claims.

And before anyone says anything like “but I shouldn’t have to change the way I work to suit this new app!!!“, remember you had to do it for any other application you ever used, you just got so used to it that you didn’t think about it as working within the app’s natural limits and it just became The Way It Is Done™.

I’m really curious how they will implement Multi-cam, but I doubt it will result in the return of a dedicated Viewer pane. You will probably get something that slide out like you get in the IPE, but you won’t have a dedicated two window setup.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

I’ve already submitted several Enhancement Requests. And yes, they do read these! You won’t get a personal note from Steve Bayes for each one you submit, but they do read and take seriously the Feedbacks.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Kenny] “FCP X and Resolve both process everything in a 32-bit float color space. Like Resolve, FCP X even stays in that space between stacked corrections. So, for instance, you can blow a clip out to full white with the exposure control in one correction, and then bring it back down in a different correction — the engine’s color space is so large that nothing ever clips in its internal numerical representation.”

An obvious hallmark of a prosumer toy… 😉

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Kenny] “Apple has almost certainly not chosen to exclude those users from their long-term (or even relatively short-term) plans for FCP X. They simply didn’t wait on those features for the initial release. People are up in arms because they don’t like the signal that supposedly sends, but I suspect Apple shares my opinion that a year from now, nobody will much care about what signals Apple was believed to be sending with the initial release, if the product meets their needs at that time.”

To wit: John Gruber back when the iPad was brand new and being widely panned for its missing features and supposedly directionless marketing.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Walter Soyka] “Fast-forward to 2011: Apple Computer, Inc. has become Apple, Inc., and the main drivers of their growth are things like iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Apple’s strategy toward professionals has become less consistent over time — like you say, there are still high-end computers and pro features in FCPX — and it’s very reasonable to suggest that the professional market is now of negligible strategic importance to Apple.

Clearly, you believe Apple is still very pro-focused, and I understand your arguments for saying so — but do you believe it’s unreasonable for anyone to suggest that Apple cares less about pros today than they did 10 years ago?”

Apple seems to be trying to straddle the prosumer and pro segments with FCPX. Merging FCExpress and FCPro, so to speak. And they finished the FCE features first, since it hits a wider market. If they really do have a deep API, they can still deliver a product that can be very compelling to even the highest-end pros without having to develop for every niche use case themselves. They’ve found that delivering a platform to a hungry market and giving third parties a way to address far more facets of that market than Apple would want to itself is highly successful (see iOS).

This doesn’t forgive yanking FCS2009 off the market, but then again, would there be nearly as much of a feature vacuum for third parties to race to fill if Apple was still distributing FCS2009? Maybe that’s far fetched, and we still need to see that API. So much is still up in the air.

Best,
Andy