[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “You cannot deny that you are in a different house now

I’ll give ya that… it’s a nice new house. 😉 Needs some finish work, but it’s quite comfortable. lol

[Aindreas Gallagher] … Given that multiple event calls may occur over even say a ten day commercial project, are you willing to flow them into a single event, or do you begin to produce multiple events to delineate significantly different material? Is it event worthy? or do you try to hive it into tags?

Of course I’d flow them into an Individual event, just as I’d put them all into an individual FCP 7 project. What I’m trying to understand, is why you feel that an Event needs to act any differently than an FCP 7 project. Let’s leave MC and Pr aside here, since both you and I are (I think) mostly coming from FCP 7. Take your example above. Why do you feel that you would need to have multiple event calls for this hypothetical project?

If I was cutting this in 7, I’d just make a Project, and start organizing my footage within it. Create some folders, Day 1, Day 2, etc, maybe put subfolders in each folder, A Cam, B Cam, Second Unit… whatever. As media came in I’d either import it to the project and then drop it in the proper folder, or just drag from the Finder. Then I’d create a Cuts bin, put a sequence in it, and start cutting. Not make 10 separate FCP 7 projects, 1 for each days shoot, that would be retar.. uh, dumb right?

I’d do the exact same thing in X… Create an Event, Make some folders in the Event- Day 1, Day 2, etc. In each folder I’d create collections -A Cam, B Cam, Second Unit etc As media came in I’d either import it to the project and then drop it on the proper collection, or just drag from the Finder. Exactly the same. There’s no reason to organize anything differently than FCP 7, it’s all semantics. Everything lives in one Event. OK, not everything. The sequences live in their own space.

For those I just make a new X project, create a folder in the project library with the same name as the event, put the project in it, and start cutting, organizing different versions into subfolders etc, exactly as I do in 7. The only difference is that all my cuts live in a separate folder, one separate folder… which as i’ve opined before, is a good thing

[Aindreas Gallagher] Follow me here: Events are a little too important, and they don’t do quite enough. And yet there is nothing beyond or above them.
forget that we can make disk images externally to cobble the parts of a given piece together (which is a hack)

the problem here is that there is nothing to intellectually hold those events, that will arise, together within FCPX. they are all just stars on the far right.

Again, I really think that you’re visualizing Events the wrong way. Forget disk images for now, I only brought them up earlier as an idea for archiving stuff, though they obviously are being used to manage events. And I must add that I use Event Manager, which makes things a whole lot simpler than it was even with FCP 7, where I had to hunt around in a folder full of projects to open what i want, assuming I didn’t accidentally save it to the wrong place, which never happens right? 😉 Apple should buy it and bundle it with the app or fold the functionality into X. But if you, or anyone for that matter, are messing around with X it’ll be the best $5 you ever spent. Anyway…

If Events are just stars on the far right, then FCP 7 projects are just a bunch of tabs at the top of a window. You seem to be thinking of X Events as being analogous to the bins (folders) inside an FCP 7 Project , which they are not. I can create one Event for one job, no matter how much different footage, audio, graphics etc I have for that job. Just like an FCP 7 project, it all goes into, and is organized, in the single event. And all the sequences (projects) associated with that Event go in a single project folder with the the same name as the event (fwiw, I add “cuts” to the name). So, yes, i have to open 2 things instead of 1, but really, it’s not a big deal, especially with Event Manager.

[Aindreas Gallagher] FCPX, as an editing system, simply lacks an editing project organisational transparency layer for the editor who might walk into it freelance….

…If I walk in to refine a five month old ad at a facility, and like a photo archive, there are seven or eight odd events open in FCPX from the last guy, what exactly in the hell are my instructions? are they finder instructions? What folders am I moving? …

This system as an editing system needs to be able to call and reconfigure its elements (that is to say call and negate all projects and call and negate all events) at the behest of a client specific number coded application call….

…FCPX needs to be able to completely swop out all of its events and projects instantaneously, at some kind of externally driven command.

Well, you’d be in the same boat if you walked into an FCP 7 shop with no instructions and were presented with a finder folder full of dozens of cryptically named projects, but I get what you’re saying here. My response is… you can do all that. Get Event Manager. It addresses every concern you just expressed. Seriously. Tick the boxes for the event and it’s associated project folder, press a button, done. Of course you could argue that that should be built into or bundled with X. I agree. And there are probably a lot of people who don’t need or care about that but as a pro, I need it. So I bought it.

C’mon man, it’s 5 bucks… I thought you were British, not a Scot. 😉

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Oliver Peters] “Since a Media Composer bin is pretty much like an FCP X Event, you can, in fact, search across bins using the Find function. PPro though is a single project file like FCP 7. However, PPro does use a filtering functions for search/finds.”

Actually, that comment got me to thinking – which is hard 😉 – But… An avid project is the master “container” that holds all your bins, sequences etc. An FCP X project is the same thing really. If you consolidate an X Project, it recreates all the Events (bins) that it contains… Maybe we’ve been looking at the X hierarchy from the wrong direction? I mean, if you do all your cuts in CC’s in an event associated with a Project, isn’t it pretty much exactly the same as an Avid project?

The analogy doesn’t hold for what i do, which requires multiple different projects be produced from the same Event but… if you’re cutting a Feature or a single show, why not do all your rough assembly (reels, scenes etc) in CC’s in the Event(s), then do a final assembly in your single Project. In that scenario, isn’t an X project almost exactly like an Avid project? When you’re done, consolidate your master project to a Disk Image for archiving. Done…. It would also make the event huge and unwieldy, just like in FCP 7 or MC! I dunno… my head hurts… 😉

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Oliver Peters] “No offense, but you are being fed a bit of a spin answer ;-)”

Possibly… 🙂 but it is an answer. lol

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “An edit project – a super structure file – a single instance effort that took place and is named specifically, down to number code, that needs to be whole and unto itself, able to be called, in its entirety, months or years after, is brass tacks as a component in that environment.

You need to be able to call, and dismiss, pretty much the entirety of an editorial effort, by calling a single name/file.

Not pick though an insane hodgepodge of de-activated event footage archives and projects.”

Why pick through a hodgepodge? I may be missing something here, but just consolidate your cryptically named project(s) with their associated cryptically named event(s), including all the media or just the clips you’ve used, stick the newly created project and event folders onto a Disk Image, give it the same cryptic single alphanumeric name, and stick it on your tape drive.

In the distant future, teleport or ride your hovercraft to the Bureau of Archives, find it, open it, and pick up where you left off. The only thing missing in X’s consolidation routine vs. classic, is the ability to add some handles to your trimmed media if you choose that option. My guess is it won’t always be missing… There’s probably a way to do it with XML too, but you’d have to have all the media accessible somewhere…

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d be very curious about your opinion on SQLite performance at scale. As others in this thread talk about larger numbers of events and projects (with unknown amounts of footage, ranges, and edits), does scalability come into play with SQLite versus other database solutions? How big does the data set have to get before SQLite struggles?”

Another FWIW post, Not sure this is an answer, but just some more info from someone who knows the guts of X pretty well…

The database is CoreData – underneath is probably SQlite but it’s not an SQlite database per sé. FCP X is built mostly on Core foundations in the Operating System, not directly rolled stuff. (Which is, of course, the right way to build on OS X).

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Oliver Peters] “How is FCP X any more of a database than Media Composer or Premiere Pro with embedded XMP data? Somehow I simply don’t see that as being true. For example, there is ZERO database functionality outside of the Events currently visible inside FCP X at any given time.”

Well, FWIW, I got this from someone who’s quite familiar with the guts of FCP X…

It’s more of a database than Premiere Pro because XMP metadata is only in the files and read into the App. PPro is a project based (binary file) application. Media Composer is fully database driven.
Each Event in FCP X is a database as is every Project. You can select multiple Events and search across all as if they were one database (try that in PPro or Media Composer)
None of the three apps has any database functions outside the limits of the project (or Events)

Again… FWIW..

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher]
basically I think events are too tank like, and fundamentally misfired as primary editing data objects containers – in essence an event is neither, and can be neither, a classical bin within a project super structure, or a classical project containing footage and sequences.

Can’t be? The Event is the project. I don’t know what you guys are doing, but I no more look to the Event itself to find my media than I try to see my media by clicking on a projects tab in FCP 7. It’s an object that contains all my media, which i have organized into bins. It just happens to show all the media in the project if I highlight it.

You’re right that it doesn’t hold sequences, which is a godsend for me as I often have at least 50 sequences in a project, in many cases double that. My project (Event) stays nice and manageable and organized, and my sequences (projects) can multiply like bacteria without cluttering up my Event. And I can keep all those sequences organized very nicely on their own. It makes perfect sense. I friggin hate hunting through every bin in my FCP projects looking for a sequence, expanding folders, opening folders in new tabs that fill up my second monitor, moving windows so I can see the newly opened bin tabs underneath it. You find that conducive to editing?

[Aindreas Gallagher] but in editing, the primary object is not the specific card banks coming in, or the container they might reside in – the primary object is the client or personally assigned editing goal – that is the entire game – new every time – You name the project with what it is designed to be, and begin assembling the myriad bits of material associated with the overall editorial.

Yes, as an editor, I do this in FCP X. I could give a shit about the card banks or the container. Are you saying the FCP 7 project isn’t a container? If your point is that the sequences aren’t living in the event then uh… I don’t see how this makes a difference in the creative process. And if you must, you can do all your edits in Compound Clips in the event. Why you’d want to is beyond me, but you can.

[Aindreas Gallagher] ..because the ingest event is the application ceiling, Apple have effectively lopped the head off the editing organisational structure – it is dispersed into undifferentiated events and projects – hence we all get to deactivate events – on a per session basis, in order to try to re-assert basic per project priority.

Huh? So you’re telling me that in FCP 7 you never open and close projects? Again… The Event is the project, it’s not undifferentiated, it has a name just like it does in FCP 7. Instead of making a folder in my FCP 7 project called “cuts” and then putting all the sequences in subfolders by name I just put my projects into folders with the same name as the Event in the project library. It’s effectively the same.

[Aindreas Gallagher] To be more plain: everywhere anyone walks into – You have assigned editing objects – but those objects are editorial, narrative, or commercial goals – those are the over riding concern – not the video data containers they might contain. The fact that FCPX cannot configure itself to represent a single goal, as opposed to an archive of events and dispersed editing sequences, means that – and this should come as no surprise to anyone, not alone is FCPX going nowhere, its almost impossible to see how it could ever have gone anywhere.

I really have no idea what you’re trying to say here. “cannot configure itself to represent a single goal”? “Dispersed editing sequences”? Every one of my X Events is organized exactly the same as my FCP & projects. Seriously, exactly the same structure, bin (collection) names, everything. My projects (sequences) are organized exactly the same as well, with an added bonus that they have their own library in which i can organize them. I really don’t get all the hand wringing here… There’s a bunch of shit in X that bugs me, but the organizational structure is not one of them. It’s way better than “classic”.

[Aindreas Gallagher] We’re talking an incredibly fundamental flaw in approach no?”

No. 🙂

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Oliver Peters]
Sort of. They are only analogous to bins (in the application’s use of the term within the UI) if we are restricting that to bins that contain only subclips. Master clips only exist at the Event level.

Well, based on how I organize things, I respectfully disagree. If I get a folder (named Feature) with 6 reels of a feature from a client, and drag that folder onto the event, it creates a Collection (bin… named Feature) which contains all my master clips. The same thing happens if I drag that folder into FCP 7. Now it’s true, since a collection is basically just a user defined sorted view of the event, if I delete the Collection, my master clips still exist in the event but that’s not a bad thing. if i want to delete the actual clips i have to explicitly choose to move them to the trash. From the collection or the event. My point is that Collections are, organizationally, the same as bins. I can put master clips in them, make them show sub clips, whatever. Same thing. What can you not do with a keyword collection that you can do with a bin?

[Oliver Peters] But veering back on-topic, the idea that FCP X Events = FCP 7 Projects = MC Bins supports the original notion that I started with. Namely… How is the database structure of X really all that different than what’s come before it? I contend it’s not. Merely that the databasing method is different in the programming sense, but hardly different in any practical way that the user cares about.

I can’t answer that because I’m not a database programmer. All I can tell you is that it is light years easier to sort, find, arrange, categorize, tag, etc. media than in any other NLE I’ve used. If it is in fact the same as everything else, than everyone else needs to step up their game. 🙂

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Bret Williams] “I still don’t get it. An event is akin to an FCP project.”

I think that’s where the disconnect is happening. It seems Oliver may be equating X Events with bins. Which is not the right analogy, and I can see how trying to use X Events as bins would be an enormous clusterfu… well you know… I mean, imagine using MC or FCP 7 projects as bins. Yikes!

Events=Projects
Collections=Bins

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Carsten Orlt] “If I for one second imagine

I would have to go back to describing footage by written description to be able to find content within one clip (rather than just skimming over it),

make sub clips which are not trim-able beyond their boundaries in the project timeline (every keyword or favourite section cut into the project timeline extends to the full length of the underlying media at all times),

use sub clips to mark favourite sections which I have to multiply into several bins because a sub clip section contains several talents (and than need to describe every single one separately to make sense of it later) only to find that I set the out point for the sub clip to early and than have to do it all again,

go through the timeline manually to identify all clips shot at a different frame rate (compared to just clicking on the fps keyword I created),

and I could go on and on..
..I would jump of the bridge :-))
“

Nominated for post of the day. lol

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