[Bill Davis]

[Lance Bachelder] ” I don’t get how versioning replaces the need to export a specific area of the timeline.”

Before, you exported from within a sequence never leaving it.

Now just duplicate that sequence – preserving the current state of your file – and truncate the duplicate which becomes your “export” range just like you had in your old workflow.

Since storylines are nothing but pointers to the original media, it’s nearly as fast and simple as selecting a range in legacy and “exporting” but you’re creating a “version” for export while leaving the original in place.

Two slightly different paths that get you essentially the same function – but I see some benefits in the new process..

In legacy the default was to generate a standalone clip that was instantly disconnected from your work in progress. To preserve your work as it is and generate a new version you had to duplicate your whole timeline and because in Legacy you couldn’t have two timelines “open” at the same time – you were cutoff from all reference other than close and open the old version – which was a hassle.

In X, You duplicate your storyline (a process that consumes nearly no overhead since it’s all virtual pointers) – truncate the result and export that.

Via the Project library you can look at and skim through various versions to review differences very rapidly and visually.

In Legacy, once you exported something and made any changes there was no easily accessible record of what it was before you exported it. You just cut it off cold where it was. And the only way to reference the content was to launch an “autosave” or the exported clip as a separate file.

With the new process, all your versions are available for instant review all the time.

And the original edit stays preserved until you decide a new version is better whereupon you can cut and paste the best parts of the old versions into new ones.

Once again, it’s just different thinking. Not necessarily better or worse. IMO.

It bugged me for a week or so, then when I started to become accustomed to how “duplicate” works – I found it rapidly become just as natural to me as “range export” was in the old system.

YMMV.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Jim Giberti] “(and any analogy that includes the word nazi.)”

OK, now THATS funny.

[Jim Giberti] “In a real sense, American culture is fueled by bad analogies.

And that sucks.
“

But zen conversely, Jim – if the bad ones don’t exist – then the good ones can’t either.

; )

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Lance Bachelder] “Hopefully this will be fixed soon – we need to be able to set in/out and export that area.”

Lance,

I understand the desire for “range export” but I don’t think it’s coming back. (Although I hope I’m wrong on this.)

I think it’s the NLE equivalent of “versioning” replacing “save as” in the whole OSX evolution.

At the level of a single user always trying to export a single “finished” document – “save as” was what we got accustomed to. But in theory – it’s a pretty weak concept compared to the VERSIONING process built not OS-X today.

In the increasing cloud-based world where we (and potentially others) can log onto the same file from different places and at different times, you don’t want someone else to “save as” a minute before you log on – and then suddenly changes are being made to TWO discrete copies of the same file.

You want the software to understand which VERSION is being revised and keep ALL the versions active until the decision is made how (or if) to integrate such changes.

Same with an X project. If they ever do make the Project library function as a “published finals” structure – you don’t want the sound folks, or the color folks to come into and “save changes” to YOUR file – making the original one disappear! You want their input saved as “VERSIONS” of the document – with the program keeping tack of YOUR version in the exact state YOU left it in – regardless of who made subsequent changes.

That’s why I suspect we lost the “export a section” capability in X – not because they simply didn’t have time to code it.

Said another way “export a segment” is a temporary construction that cuts the export off from all relationship to the original arrangement.

Duplicate, OTOH preserves all the data structures that exist at that point and lets you make changes to the new work independently of the connected state of the original construction.

Seen that way – the X design has a lot more potential than “export” and “save as” ever did.

But it sure is a lot more difficult to get used to – and real easy to simply see as a “loss” of something that worked easily and well.

The problems as I see it is that it worked well for the world we used to edit in (discrete individual assembly and single file export cut off from the past) and not so well for the “on-line” persistently connected world we’re moving toward.

Maybe?

My 2 cents anyway.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Phil Hoppes] “The letter literally ended with “This is your lucky day, enjoy”.
“

I was at a meeting last night with a business group and one of the topics under discussion was that with the proliferation of web commerce presenting nearly unlimited choice to consumers and business to business transactions, one aspect of modern practice is that at a certain point of success – the key to customer maintenance is to become as “frictionless” a supplier as possible.

I love that term – “frictionless” – it’s a great new business mindset.

I think Apple understands this – at least in their largest and most profitable market segment – consumer sales.

Going back years, I’ve seen this same pattern again and again from Apple.

Years backI had a problem with a serial number on one of the upgrades to Final Cut Suite – and they simply sent me a new boxed product, ($1000 at the time) and when I asked if they wanted me to ship the old one back to ensure I wasn’t trying to “double dip” – there was a long silence on the line.

In hindsight I can see that dealing with the return of open box software was probably going to cost Apple real money – and gain them nothing in return – so other than perhaps noting my old serial number as “inactive” – I can’t imagine they really cared about “the return” at all.

In the modern sense, the real “value” is being registered in the system as an “official owner” since that in itself makes you eligible for the upgrade discounts in the future. That’s a “relationship driver” for the company.

And for the company – the value of the relationship with the consumer is everything.

The tangible value of any delivered product – at least in software – is marginal and usually rapidly approaching extinction.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

That depends on your definition of “quality.”

For those with the budget, the Lightpanels stuff it built great – has a robust service network, and is a top notch product.

When you pay top prices, you can expect more precision engineering. Longer lifespan. An “ecosystem” of accessories, mounts and first class design and engineering.

The light emitters in them, however, could well be exactly the same as those in a Chinese unit costing vastly less.

Only you can say how much you value a particular nameplate, or intangibles like the quality of the light over issues like longevity and resale value.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Noah’s got the basics spot on.

Also field mixers (not all, but many) tend to be purpose designed for location recording.

This means you’ll likely get something built to run on battery power. And something that has the right circuitry to do things that need to be done during field recording – like multiple returns so that you can feed the boom op, the recording device, and take a tap for the director for easy playback.

It also implies something that’s small enough that it can not only be used on a sound cart, but popped in a field bag when a cart isn’t present so that the soundie can mix/record in tighter locations.

Many field mixers have purpose built cases designed specifically to be worn on a strap or chest harness that allow port access to all the ins and outs so that you can patch into and out of them while keeping the unit safe from wind/rain/dust, etc.

Inexpensive “studio mixers” tend to be designed mostly for indoor, air conditioned room use.

With modern manufacturing, most modern mixers will all sound pretty good. Particularly to the untrained ear. At the top end, you’re paying for them to sound GREAT and have not only great audio performance, but ergonomics, control choices, and control placements developed over years of research and testing that make them easier to use in real field recording situations.

You’ll notice, for example, how the controls are usually protected from accidental switching when bumped or jostled. And how the controls can often be used even for a recordist wearing gloves in winter shooting situations. It’s all these little things that elevate something into a class beyond a “general purpose tool” and that help you succeed regularly when you have to running after a politician or are part of an EFP crew working track side at a BMX race.

Just a few additions to help you better understand the differences.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

I mentioned “painting” with light in my previous post.

Just to help the folks coming to lighting without a ton of experience visualize what I’m talking about, here’s an example from a shoot I did about 3 years back with traditional tungsten lights.

Basically, the set was just a flat wall behind the talent in a room where we could turn the lights out.

The keys were tungsten softboxes. Fresnels (probably 300s) were the back/rim lights on tall stands. The grey back wall was broken up with an Altman ellipsoidal w/ metal gobo for texture. The bright blue loops above Molly are the bottom of a corporate logo projected on the back wall with a standard business projector running a computer file. (had to “greek” the logo with no time to ask permission to use it here)

The real point is that theres absolutely no chance to build these kinds of layers and textures if all you’re carrying is 3 LED fixtures.

I happened to see this today when the client wanted to revisit this old program for changes. Looking at it I deeply wish I had already been shooting in high def back then. SD looks so … well, boring after having spent at the past couple of years working almost exclusively in HD!

But I thought it would be useful for the folks who are coming to lighting in the new era – so that you can see a little bit of why many of us are happy to trade weight and power inefficiency for the control that comes with traditional lighting instruments.

Someday we’ll have the best of both worlds in single (hopefully affordable) gear. But right now we don’t.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[T. Payton] ” If you ever tried to create an alpha transition in FCP 7 you will be in awe of the power and simplicity of FCP X and Motion.
“

Oh I am.

I’ve done three “kinetic type” projects in motion and I’ve seen first hand how deep the program is.

But for all the power, it’s still “reasonably” approachable given time and patience.

TO the OP the point is that you can’t call it the programs fault if it doesn’t do something precisely the way you want that something done – provided the program provides you the tools to customize things.

Put another way, not being able to do things is not the same as not caring enough to spend the time learning the tools provided. And having those tools does kinda blunt that criticism, IMO.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “You think Apple is intentionally pushing people onto new hardware, rather than optimizing the software for current hardware or rather than trying to limit their Q&A testing matrix?

If that’s true, why would you buy from a vendor who intentionally limits their offerings to try to compel you to buy more?”

Perhaps because actual new functional capabilities generally follow the development curve of the hardware capabilities?

At some point, designing for the way hardware “used to be” means limiting your reach.

While introducing software that might take advantage of the foreseeable development path of hardware means you’ll be more ready to leverage the hardware advances when they do ship.

More speculation for sure. But it does remind me of how flakey even DV was in the very early days of Firewire. I distinctly remember having to spec a Granite Digital chipset for my hard drive controllers to get the throughput necessary not to drop frames with a couple streams of plain old DV back in the day!) – now we’re going to be producing for retina displays that can suck up visual resolution like a sponge. Shooting C-300s and REDS that toss out pixels like grinding wheel sparks – while trying to accommodate software like X that has the plumbing to display 16 out of 64 stream multi-cam.

That is not a future where just tweaking a few settings and calling it the next “version” is going to succeed – in my opinion.

I understand those who value consistency and compatibility over progress. And there are companies who cater to that need. But the story of FCP has been one of getting ahead of a curve – then building toward mastery – and being ready when the whole market wants to change with a vetted and outstanding product that’s had the time to mature in the crucible of the marketplace.

I’m willing to have things be a bit shaky today – for the promise of much better tomorrow.

But that’s just me.

Other’s can’t take the chance and just want less spice and more meat.

And I understand that.

But please don’t ask me to accept a world where none of the cooks can take bold risks – because that means nobody will ever get the chance to benefit from any really new recipes.

That’s not the smart path to a potentially better future, IMO.

(I know I strayed into the dreaded twin paths of simile and metaphor here – sorry : )

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Paul Jay] “I think Apple this. I think Apple that….”

What part of “What if…” (linked directly to an Apple product) – are you having such difficulty understanding?

Speculation kinda equals “thinking” in my mind.

I suppose in yours, it must trigger something else.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor