[Charlie Austin]

[Chris Harlan] “Can I? Color-code tracks? I do that in Avid all the time. I didn’t know Pr had picked it up, too. I’ll have to look.”

You sure can. It’s awful! LOL I got a sequence from someone the other day that looked like something Mondrian had painted while on acid. The colors were not helpful, I put them all back the the defaults. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Chris Harlan] “I edited that way for years, but I’ve found over the last six or so, that I really benefit from an organized audio structure. It makes for great navigation and gives me a lot more feedback about what is going on. This lack of visual organization is what I most dislike about X.”

Seems we’re going in opposite directions. lol And while i agree that X does need the option to better visually organize stuff, the more I use X, the less I miss it.

[Chris Harlan] “One of the great new things about audio in Pr is that I can assign that whole region to a sub and treat the sub as if it were a single track.”

Mix groups/subbing/bussing would be great, I agree. Again though, if X gets Logic style Track Stacks or some sort of new invisible Compound Clip thingy, it would be really really versatile. I know they’re working on it, I have no clue as to what they’ll come up with or when it will appear…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

To expand on James’ & Jeremy’s comment…

[Herb Sevush] “how do you recognize which clip is sync dialogue,”

That one is easy… it rides with the video and can easily be seen

[Herb Sevush] “which is dialogue out of sync”
Also easy, as you can stick cheated/non sync dialog into a CC with the video and it shows up visually just like sync dialog

Unless you disconnect all your sync audio for some reason, nothing ever goes out of sync unless you intentionally move it.

[Herb Sevush] “which is sync audio efx and which is non sync audio efx, “

Same as sync dia…

[Herb Sevush] “which is music,”

Select the Role, it’s highlighted. Though as said before, auto-pinning it to the bottom would be great.

[Herb Sevush] “if you have your music in layers, which is your drums as opposed to your guitar?”

You can highlight the subroles, but it’s better to just use secondary storyline for that sort of thing. If they’re connected to the head of the timeline, they function just like tracks. Very easy to organize a timeline in a “classic” way if you want, Illustrations below… 🙂
Organized basic timeline:

Cheated dialog in a CC in the timeline:

What’s in the cheat:

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “I think this has a lot to do with your acceptance of trackless, since you didn’t use tracks as an organizing tool before, your not missing anything now”

That’s likely true, though when I was mixing I did, of course, use tracks to organize, and that carried over when I started editing. Now, maybe because most of what i do is offline, that habit has over time receded into an afterthought for prepping tracks. (Which, thanks to X2Pro, i don’t really need to do now anyway) I think if X gets something like Track Stacks in Logic it’d be the best of both worlds. You can fake it with Compound Clips, but they’re clearly not designed for (and generally suck at) that use case….

[Herb Sevush] “As I said to Jeremy, I do find these conversations about specific workflows very interesting and enlightening.”

Indeed. And civil as well. Someone will come along and ruin it soon enough… 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “That’s the point, you have to actually read the clip names – in a tracked layout I can figure out whats going on just by glancing at the layout – much faster than having to read anything.”

I see your point, though I really do feel it’s as easy, or easier to see what’s happening in an X timeline than, say, 7 or Pr. Very subjective of course. I do wish there was a way to automatically pin mx to the bottom and dia to the top or something, but I really don’t feel that it’s any more difficult to see what’s happening in the TL than with tracks.

I should probably qualify this by saying that, other than keeping cut music together at the bottom and VO/DIA near the top, (do-able in X as well with a tiny workaround) I don’t have a very organized timeline in any NLE when I’m cutting. My main concern is to fit as much as I can into as little vertical space as possible so I can see/manipulate it all without scrolling up or down or viewing tracks/clips at their tiniest possible size. I’ve always done my “mix prep” split after I’m done. I rarely, if ever, have less than 16-24 audio “tracks” in my timeline. often more. So that probably colors my preference…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “n a tracked environment, I’d have to either, add the “muted” channels to the timeline and carry those muted channels throughout the edit, or alternatively, match frame back to the other audio channels, play a massive game of track Tetris to add room for three more channels of audio PER CLIP.”

Yeah, I love never (ok…rarely) having to match back to find and add another channel from a multichannel source, and that the timeline looks just the same if there are 6 channels used in a clip or just 1. And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous simplicity of outputting split tracks and or AAF’s for a mix. Yes, the latter requires an external app and a few mouse clicks. So what. Still far easier than prepping something for a mx in other NLE’s. 😉

[Jeremy Garchow] “That being said, audio editing is still somewhat of a sticking point for me in FCPX”

I’d disagree on the editing part, unless we’re talking about editing components without detaching them. And I’m sure that will get better. I actually find editing audio in X to be much better than anything other than a a real DAW. The sticking point for me is doing anything other than basic mixing. It’s not a huge deal, as i really don’t need to do it day to day, but it wold be nice to be able to. Bussing, mix groups etc would be nice. Though preferably without the complexity that entails in other NLE’s. I’m perfectly capable of using multiple virtual mixer-like tabs and windows and panels and knobs and buttons. I just don’t want to. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Gary Huff] “I rarely have to use track selections unless I am doing copy/paste operations, and it’s not something I feel like I actively think about. “

Fair enough. I, however, could literally not cut at all in a track based NLE/DAW without patching. Adding an audio/video clip from a multichannel source to a sequence with dozens of audio tracks and/or stacked video tracks without overwriting something would be impossible. And again, I never felt that I was actively thinking about it until I got used to not having to.

[Gary Huff] “When you work in FCPX, you have “tracks” as well, as you have to position clips if you use the mouse so that they don’t jump into the primary if that’s not what you want,”

I guess it’s a work style thing, but I don’t have that issue at all. Do you cut by dragging clips from the source to the timeline?

[Gary Huff] “I find I use the keyboard more often in FCPX, but it’s not to the point where I feel that the workflow is so much more revolutionary than how I handle tracks within Premiere.”

I pretty much only use the keyboard, maybe that’s the difference. And I don’t think the X workflow is wildly different than in a tracked environment. For me, it just removes the necessity of “handling” tracks at all. I like that. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “but then your left with a mess of audio lanes that supply much less visual feedback then a tracked system.”

Honestly, even though currently everything is a “mess” in the X timeline, I actually find it much easier to see what’s going on and navigate, even in timelines with dozens of clips. Of course this is subjective, but clip names are easier to read, the rectified, dynamic waveforms are easier to read at a glance, (easier than they are in Pr to me), and the timeline index is really nicely implemented. It’s kinda like learning a new language or something. Same letters, maybe slightly familiar, but they don’t make sense. Once it’s learned though, it’s just as easy as your primary language.

Could it be better? Definitely, I’m not an “X is perfect” absolutist. It’s really not a mess though, any more than Chinese or French is a “mess”.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Chris Harlan] “Well, see–and I just love a stick shift (except maybe in heavy traffic.)”

lol, as soon as I hit “post” I wondered how long that would take. To torture this analogy though, would you (well not you, but in a general sense) then say that automatic transmissions were unnecessary? Useless? Unprofessional? 😉 How about synchronized transmissions? Real Pro’s double clutch right? And those automatic chokes? Was it such a problem to pull a knob? Jeez!

Anyway, as I said a couple days ago, MC, Pr and FCPX all suck. I’m switching to iMovie. Don’t even need to set I/O points or… well… edit, actually. it’s awesome. Can we get a forum topic for that please?

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “seriously – why is that a problem?”

It’s not a problem. In fact, I never even gave it a second thought in 20+ years of cutting. Until I started using something regularly that doesn’t require me to think about it. And now, when I work in an NLE which does require me to think about it, I find it really, really annoying.

I can drive a car with a standard transmission. It’s fun sometimes. But honestly , I prefer an automatic. In a good auto, I’ve got just as much control as I do throwing a stick around, so why bother…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~