Bill Davis
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I’ve not had a single discussion about Mr. Murch in the thousands of email exchanges about X I’ve had in the past 3 years.
Walter is an amazing man and editor and I feel very proud to have briefly met him twice and more than that – I hugely admire his patience and amazing desire to take time with and engage with EVERY single editor in line to meet him at the SuperMeets I was involved with. Great guy, Period.
But he’s not really a part of the X community discussion and absolutely NOBODY I know feels at all “spurned” about that.
We have plenty to think of that’s far more relevant to what we’re doing.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Think metadata flow.
Metadata naturally flows from Roles into Subroles.
But not so much from Subroles upstream into the Roles.
Overall, it’s why when you change the audio level of a clip – it doesn’t effect the audio level of the parent clip in the browser. The browser is basically “upstream” from the clip.
FWIW.
Assign roles and subroles EARLY – if you want those choices to flow into your subsequent work downstream.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Your points may be ENTIRELY valid. (But I can’t weigh in on them intelligently because I haven’t even been able to install 10.3 myself!) I’ve been in Cupertino the last 3 days. (basically surrounded by hundreds of top-tier X editors from all over the world trying to wrap our heads around what this stuff really means!
Having direct access to members of the X development team as well as the product managers – I will say that some things became abundantly clear.
10.3 represents new capabilities that took a LOT of deep, deep re-thinking by the design team.
One tiny example, late the night after we first saw 10.3 I was siting thinking about the concept of a “mixer.” I still default to a physical thing where each electrical pathway has to be preset at the time of manufacturer to do one job well. The fader does a thing in the chain. likewise, busses, aux’s etc, etc, etc.
Now those are ALL virtual ideas. I used to purchase a “mixer” with 16 channels – and thats where it stayed throughout it’s life.
Think about that now.
A “channel” is now just a virtual construct. There’s no functional penalty for having each audio CLIP itself have its’ own “virtual mixer” subset of it’s OWN virtual sorta mixer accessed via Roles and SubRoles? And what should that “mixer on a clip” be? What can it START with – and what can it become with further development.
And is that even the best way to think about what’s happening – or will keeping the thinking restrained to a “mixer” be the best paradigm going forward?
And maybe more importantly, if we imagine and implement a concept like that – how do we make a solid prototype of the idea, knowing that once the concept is created – you’re a huge way towards being able to refine and express the new concept in lots of ways.
It’s first try to understand what would be useful – and second, how to implement those ideas inside a system that’s already highly complex and evolving. Roles and SubRoles are not just features bolted on top of what X used to be…they have big implications about how things like importing various files from various cameras with varying numbers of tracks and codecs and formats – needs to flow into storylines that need to not just access the sound data, but also pass it through the system. Remember X isn’t a system with just ONE type of “clip” on your storylines that are all identical – we have all sorts of useful REFERENCE CONTAINERS like Sync Clips, Compound Clips, Multicam Clips, etc. Every signal from every variable source has to flow through these virtual constructs and just WORK.
I came away from the Summitt with the STRONG belief that the X team is continuing to build out systems and ideas that will profoundly effect the FUTURE of X audio and video editing. And they perhaps aren’t so much focused to “finish” it’s capabilities – but rather to make it easier and easier to continue the evolution process of it – as everything continues to move forward.
Roles today are different with important new capabilities. The flow of metadata has changed inside the program. The various container types have to handle all that seamlessly.
The big trumpet message I’m going to pass along from this point on is that if you’re an X editor – LEARN ABOUT ROLES AND SET ROLES as EARLY as you can, whenever you can.
(X still works just fine if you NEVER set a single role or use a single keyword, of course, but an editor that doesn’t understand this stuff is missing a whole lot of capabilities baked into the software.)
Just like trimming in the event browser, when you can do your metadata work early – it gets powerfully leveraged as you continue to work and usually gives you huge new time saving efficiencies downstream.
That’s the absolute CORE of efficient X editing.
And likely always will be.
My thinking this morning. I’m going to be relatively quiet for a while because I’ve got a LOT of re-writing and production to do on XinTwo now that the logjam is broken.
I’ll try to stop back by occasionally to decompress and have fun, but it’s not going to be easy with all this to juggle.
Have fun folks.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
There hasn’t been an event I’ve attended in the past 3 years where someone from the Pro Apps team hasn’t been around (if you know who to look for) – and who hasn’t been delighted to listen to any and all ideas. Plus I know for a fact that they track ALL the feedback input on the FCP X website. Obviously with a massive number of customers, they can’t possibly respond to everyone. But they are very aware of the public chatter and if you put in a suggestion or feature request it does NOT just go into a black hole.
I suspect they’ve gotten a zillion clueless requests to “bring back audio tracks” since release and it’s conceivable that the interest in that area spurred on what we now have as the newest features. Not “tracks” but a very Apple re-imagining of a way to take the idea in a new direction. My personal semi-clueless take on it anyway.Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
In Steve Martins sessions at the Summit he specifically said this has changed. Previously, all output from X was auto mixed down to either stereo or 5.1. But with 10.3 this is no longer the case. You can, for example, change a stereo component to dual mono and via the application of settings apply things like level adjustments as well as EQ metadata – and that will now be expressed as channel data on export. This is what he meant, I think, by saying each clip can be thought of as it’s own mini-mixer. If I understand this correctly, it’s a potentially HUGE game changer in X audio handling.
It slso means it’s now more crucial than ever to learn to set Roles metadata EARLY, since that’s where you can apply this type of audio components manipulation – basically using Roles as a Buss and the sub-roles within them as “channels.
This was the discussion. I haven’t had time to test anything personally. One last thing is that unless you expand your audio components beyond just the default stereo on a clip, your audio components remain limited unless you go and “open in timeline” to reveal them.
Some of you audio oriented folks go kick the tires and see if I understood all this correctly. There was massive amounts of content to absorb from this weekend.Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
This will be controversial and I’m not saying it’s true or accurate or even important, But it’s interesting thinking. Steve Martin in his session this morning said as a tossoff line “each clip is now a mini mixer”
Again, it’s just a gross observation and I don’t see it as a literal rallying cry – but it sure made me think about the deeper implications of the changes we’ve just had.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Not NDA this time – just no pictures in the auditorium. This time, the info that was sequestered last year is now largely public.
First presentation was an overview of the new FCP X and getting to meet key players on the development team.
The second session was entirely “hands on” with multiple new MacBook Pros with TouchBars so we could judge for ourselves how FCP X 10.3 works on the coming hardware. Spoiler: It’s wicked responsive.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Sorry, a big night as you can imagine. I’m getting to bed super late.
About losing audio “above the line”, I feel exactly the same as when I lost my beloved Project Library in the transition to 1.2. Once again, my small personal loss nets the editing world a much bigger gain. Oh well. I can live with that.
Obviously, my traditionally schooled thinking that tracks should whenever possible be grouped by functions (1-4 dialog, 5-8 music, etc, etc) – often left me with with video and audio clips separated by way too many tracks. Audio with video adjacent was fun while it lasted, but now, with the lanes able to slide around in groups with Roles metadata, I can ALWAYS have the audio groups I’m working on right below the baseline, so I get a good bit of what I wanted, along with lots of significant new capabilities that will be fun to explore.
BTW, we all got a chance to go “hands on” with 10.3 running on shiny new Touchbar MacBook Pros during our Apple visit! (took this photo grab from a 360VR snap after my “turn” driving X – forgive the polar distortion making things in the center of the shot look unnaturally small – I should have used my iPhone but had my little Theta S in my shirt pocket so I just used that.)
Anyway, 10.3 on the MacBook Pro with Touchbar positively FLEW. Really. It was scary responsive.
The modal “TouchBar” was a real wow. You can honestly “see” the mini-storyline with enough detail to swipe or tap anywhere – so moving around even the largest project just got insanely faster and more intuitive. No lag at all. Just tap where you want to go – and you’re there. It’s small (you can barely see the Touchbar in the photo, but it’s there, trust me. Even after it lights up it’s super flat and smooth and not “glare-y” at all – so it’s not like a night light that distracts you from the main screen – It’s got multiple modes, so you glance at it to see what mode it’s in, then watch the screen for the effect it’s having. Just like most of us no longer look at our keyboards, I think It’s going to “disappear” during editing really fast and just become very intuitive. I”m excited to learn what editing is like with it. Think of it kinda like a long, thin trackpad above that matches well with the (now much bigger) one below. I think it’s going to make a HUGE difference as editors get used to it, particularly for things like adjusting colors and sound values in real time.
BTW, those dual “deep color” monitors are BEAUTIFUL. And it shocked me that a LAPTOP’s processors could generate all those 4k ProRes frames to toss around with truly imperceptible lag anywhere on both displays.
It “feels” like a Ferrari for editing. At least as configured at the demo. No knowing if things will feel that perfect when real world systems ship – but the “touch” of the machine in the picture was a big WOW.
That’s my quick “hands on” report. Off to sleep now.
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If I needed a Color Grading App with an NLE bolted on, probably Resolve.
But I’m a video editor. So an App where the exciting new thinking is centered on actual “video editing” suits me very well.
The cost free upgrade is just icing.
YMMVCreator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
When your tracks can be batch re-arranged with a click to bring just the ones you’re currently working with to the top of your screen – you can call yours “lanes” too. Okay?
?Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
