[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “the bile bit is quoting austin’s passive agressive bon mot below.”

No, I really did just think it was a funny line. I apologize if it came across as an insult or something, that was not my intent. And I do agree that X’s waveforms are not as detailed and useful for some tasks. I disagree with the way worse characterization though. Actively. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Chris Harlan] “[Charlie Austin] “Leaving aside whether the waveforms contain enough information for a true audiophile… ”

C’mon, man. Don’t go there. I’ve got too much respect for you. Just because you don’t use or see something in a certain way doesn’t mean that other people don’t find value in it. You were an audio editor, right? Didn’t you ever ask yourself why waves are shaped the way they are or what they could mean? Didn’t you develop some sort of understanding of the visual representation that is broken by only showing the outgoing portion of the wave?
“

Oh, for sure… It wasn’t meant as a dig, and I was kind of including myself in there, though it probably wasn’t clear. I guess my point is that the majority of people who use NLE’s don’t really need to know about that stuff. Most don’t know about that stuff. Maybe they should, but the reality is lots of editors don’t even know how to mix, let alone analyze waveforms. That’s what post facilities are for. 🙂 I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. A very subjective opinion… 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “good sweet god almighty its not bile. “

I know, but the line occurred to me and I sometimes lack self control. C’mon, it was funny. 🙂

And yes, X “waveforms” lack some detail compared to a full waveform. But really, it is a trade off. As has been mentioned again and again, despite the lack of a “mixer”, the audio editing capabilities built into X are leaps and bounds beyond FCP 7 and most other NLE’s. And I really don’t think we’ve seen anything yet…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “there is a small lake of koolaid here methinks – those waveforms are manifestly worse, and analysing waveforms is part of the job. they are compromised imho.”

I actually prefer a nice glass of KoolAid over a cup of bile. 😉 Leaving aside whether the waveforms contain enough information for a true audiophile… All I know, is that I can do stuff like this:

Please note that the grey bar at the top of the timeline represents a frame…

Edit: Just in case… I’m aware that you can keyframe audio in subframe/sample increments in FCP & and other NLE’s. What i like is the ability to trim, select and manipulate (copy/paste etc) ranges, and move entire clips in subframe sample increments. It makes matching beats, dialog etc ridiculously easy….

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “we all know that waveform is nearly unusable – why exactly in the hell is no one really saying this?”

Because, as Steve said, it’s not unusable. In fact, editing audio in X is pretty damn awesome. Being able to manipulate stuff down to the sample level is really nice. I can cut music and frankenstein dialog bits together better than I ever could in 7.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Michael W. Towe] ” Now I want to find all instances of Bob in the timeline so I can paste the audio effects to them. Is there a way to so a search like this on the timeline?”

Yep… open the timeline index window (square button on lower left next to project library button) select “clips” view, scroll through the list or just enter “bob” in search window. You can select them from the window and they’ll be selected when you move mouse focus to the timeline…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Haven’t we already had the “This forum needs a new name” post for this month?”

Perhaps we should change the name of this thread to:

“The NLE that keeps moving clips in the timeline by itself”.

That would work for me. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Chris Harlan] “Hey, Charlie!

I don’t know where you are these days. Are you cutting most of your promo work on X now? Or are you still going back and forth? And what are you seeing around you? Most of the contemporaries I interact with are Avid/moving to Avid, 7, or moving to Premiere. You and John D., of course, sing X’s praises to the sky, and I believe you. What’s happening around you? How about a progress report?”

Hey Chris. 🙂 I’m trying to do as much as I can in X. I’m at a small shop and some sequences need to move around to different editors still on 7, so I’ll either cut that stuff in 7, or use Xto7, which has gotten pretty damn good at conversion. I don’t really know what folks at other places are doing, I’m kind of on a little island here, though I’d imagine Avid folks are probably sticking with that, and 7 folks… no idea. 🙂

I think at some point we’ll all switch to X here. It’s just a matter of finding enough time for everyone to get used to using it. That’s really the biggest hurdle. Also I’m still not completely comfortable with the ability to get stuff out to finish. The audio elements move pretty flawlessly with XtoPro, it’s the EDL stuff that makes me a little nervous. I mean, I can get good EDL’s out, in fact EDL-X is incredibly good at listing/manipulating source data, but the info regarding effects/transitions etc is still a little thin. Not a problem for a forgiving post house, of which there is maybe uh… one I can think of. 🙂

The biggest hurdle to getting people onto X, IMO, is all the crappy feelings and FUD left over from the initial release. I still hear the iMovie Pro comments all the time. It’s really too bad, because once you get past the “it’s different and I’m confused” phase the app is amazing. I’m at a point where the only time I think about how X works is when I find some new crazy feature that makes my life easier. That happens a lot, the latest being the ability to assign roles to individual tracks in source clips. I may not need to break out feature audio anymore, it can just ride with the picture now. 🙂 Fortunately, as long as I can get stuff out for finish, nobody really cares what I’m cutting on. 🙂 The next year or so should be interesting…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[David Lawrence] “[Charlie Austin] “And honestly, if FCP X was supposed to be a DAW I would miss tracks.”

Interesting. Why would you be missing tracks if it were a DAW?”

A valid point… I guess, on reflection, I wouldn’t need “tracks’ per se, but as a mixer i’d want to be able to keep similar roles together in the timeline. Again I think some sort of z-order setting would do the trick. Assign whatever roles/subroles I want, and in the role index window use a drop down menu to order them. VO would be 1, Dia 2, FX 3 etc… So not really tracks, but visual groups. Add in the ability to assign roles to faders/busses and I’d be happy.

But when I’m cutting, I my main concern is fitting everything in the least amount of timeline real estate as possible no matter where it is positioned. If I need to see specific roles it’s just one click to highlight them.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Charlie Austin]

[David Lawrence] “[Charlie Austin] “The who what? got a link to this method? Seriously, I’m interested. :-)”

Here you go:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/29301

I think Jim made a template project available if you want to try it out.”

Thanks. 🙂 I actually had seen that at some point. When I first started messing with X, I tried to create a similar structure using empty compound clips as dividers between say. MX/FX/DIA/VO etc. It worked, but at some point I realized I really didn’t need them, I just let go of tracks intellectually. More or less. Given the proper roles, it’s trivially easy to see specific clips as the playhead moves over them. I know it’s apparently just me, but I could care less if my clips are perfectly aligned with one another. I mean, it’s not like the media needs to actually pass over a head to play back right? I think being able to group roles by type would/will be nice, but I’ve grown accustomed to not thinking about where my audio goes in the timeline. It’s freeing. lol.

As to video… same deal. Whatever is on top of the pile of clips is what I want see on playback. I can “connect” clips (audio and/or video) to a specific point on the primary storyline (even if it’s just filled with gap) if I want, so I can easily drag chunks of material around without the need to select all the individual clips. Being able to assign a z-index value to video clips in addition to their roles would be nice, but again, the debate over the philosophy of the magnetic timeline totally mystifies me. In practice, once you get used to how clips move around, it’s no different than editing in FCP 7 or any other NLE I’ve used. Select portion of source clip, edit into timeline, add related audio, repeat ’til done.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~