[Charlie Austin]

[Michael Gissing] ” I need a tool that is much more advanced than X is with its mag timeline and roles which do not come close to dealing with the complexity of even a simple documentary on a DAW.
“

Chiming in just for the heck of it. You’re absolutely correct in your assessment of DAW vs. NLE. They’re two entirely different beasts. While it’s certainly possible to do a complex mix in an NLE, to me it’s just the wrong tool, even with a bolted on mixer a la Premiere, FCP 7 etc. And X doesn’t have one at all.

That said, There are some really nice things about working with multichannel sources in the X timeline. By expanding the components of a clip, you can work with, as your example, multichannel dialog wav files. Cut out bits, enable/disable and effect various channels. And they close right up reducing visual clutter when you don’t need to see them. Like a DAW, audio is always editable in subframe/sample increments without changing “modes”. Setting connection points is very easy, and it keeps your audio only clips in sync. Using Comps (audio only or including the picture) can lock sync between dozens of clips as tight as a drum.

And Roles can certainly organize your audio into as many “tracks” as you’d like, you just need to create/assign them. A Master Role (Bus Group?) of Dialogue could contain subroles DIA A, B, C, etc. An ADR Role could have subroles for different characters etc. Effects could contain Mono FX, Stereo FX, Hard FX, LF FX, Ambience, Room Tone, Surround FX (which you could break down further in their components) etc. A Foley Role could contain various Foley subroles, Walla, Footsteps, whatever… Just like tracks, you can have as many as you need. All searchable/selectable/mute/solo-able etc from the timeline index.

So, in a way, Roles = Bus Groups, and Sub Roles = Tracks.

What Roles can’t do now, is work like Busses do. Even though Master Roles kind of are like Bus Groups, there’s no mixer with which to utilize that function. If there was, it’d pretty much work as we’re used to I’d think. A Role(s) could be assigned to a Master, or a send etc. Or if Master Roles had sends to… something… that would be cool. FCP X just (simple! lol) needs a mixer. I’m not sure Apple wants to do that, but who knows.

Using fcpxml, Roles already come into Logic (and other DAW’s via X2Pro) as nicely named tracks. If Apple can further integrate fcpxml with Logic, maybe Master Roles would be converted to Track Stacks (which are very cool) Or maybe in the X timeline Roles could collapse like Comps but open back up like components. You could then effect/mix the Master Role, as well as effecting/manipulating the individual clips contained by the Role. You can already do this by comping a Role, but it’s a kludge, you can’t open it up in context (i.e. in the timeline containing the comp) without breaking it apart which means you lose any mixing/Effects you’ve done. Again, you sort of can, but not really.

I guess what I’m saying, in a long winded way, is that Roles could conceivably do everything that tracks/busses/sends can do. The way they’re designed would allow this now. The problem –as seen in my signature which was copied verbatim from within the bowels of the FCP X app package when I was poking around– is that:

“The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”

It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, they come up with…

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “but I always match frame, add an “Audition” keyword, then find the 5 or 6 shots, make the Audition clip, and then replace that clip in the timeline with the Audition, then clear the Clips from the Audition keyword. “

nice trick. 🙂 It would be nice to do it with one right click though, like making a compound clip. Hopefully they’ll add that when they dive into working on the timeline…

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Jeremy Garchow] “it’s so easy to flip all the takes around without having to make another sequence”

If I could select a pile of 5 or 6 alternate shots and choose “make audition” in the timeline I’d use this feature a lot more than I do. And, if “Replace and add to Audition” could work with the as-yet-unimplemented match frame replace (replace using the original clips’ duration) I would do a happy dance. 🙂

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Bill Davis] “The legacy editor is working with Two storylines and a small change in one. The X editor is working with ONE storyline with two changes inside it.”

I have to respectfully disagree here Bill. Using Snapshots in X makes “branching” off of an existing sequence really easy, but it’s the same process. Make a snapshot, continue editing, decide it doesn’t work. Go back to snapshot and continue in another direction (with snapshots). I’ll often have a dozen or more snapshots for a single cut. In 7 or Pr or MC I’d have a dozen duplicates. I do feel it’s way quicker to do this in X and I prefer the X workflow, but in the end I’m doing the same thing.

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] ” There must be a German word for this.”

Fahrvergnügen? 😉

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

[Charlie Austin]

Make sure you are selecting the secondary clip “container” (not the clip in the secondary) when you move them. If only the clip is selected, the container will stay put and the clip will move (or sometimes disappear, which I think is a bug especially with audio only secondaries…)

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Steve Connor] “I absolutely do NOT buy in to the idea that tracks in NLEs “get in the way” of storytelling or the editing process in general, it’s just a different way of working.”

With you 100%. X isn’t really a “new paradigm”. You still edit just like you always have. Source I/O, cut into sequence, repeat. It’s just different. I like the difference, some don’t.

People who mock FCP X as “dumbed down” are just as ridiculous as the people who imply editors that don’t like X are “dinosaurs”.

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Michael Gissing] “The retrofitting of Roles showed that a totally unrelated trackless system had serious limitations.”

There was no “retrofitting” Roles, like a lot of other features, just weren’t implemented when X first came out. You think thy added multi-cam as an afterthought too?

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Herb Sevush] “Other editors are troubled by such freedoms, which require worrying about things like sync, and are thrilled that they can have their hands held as they move their locked-together media around the timeline.”

Seriously?

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

[Charlie Austin]

[David Mathis] ” “interesting” posts.”

Here’s my contribution… no eggnog involved… 🙂

Why is Santa always happy?
He knows where all the naughty girls live!

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