[Chris Kenny]

[Marvin Holdman] “That sir, is incorrect.”

No, it’s not. Immediately after the release people were casting doubt on whether Apple would ever support pro workflow features like XML exporting. We now know that Apple has been working on this features. And the magnetic timeline seems like less and less of a ‘non-pro’ feature the more one understands it.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Steven Gonzales] “Insane sounds a little extreme”

“Insane” sounds about right for making sweeping long-term predictions of success or failure in specific markets a week after release. People have completely lost all sense of perspective here.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Michael Aranyshev] “Wrong. If there is a transition by default it changes the lengths of the clip. And it is always changing the length of the program.”

You can disable that transition behavior. And arguably it’s the behavior you’re advocating that changes the length of the clip, because it results in image data from the clip being visible starting before the in point and continuing after your out point. In contrast, the default FCP X behavior, to which you are objecting, entirely respects your in points and out points.

This is sort of what I’m talking about. You’re identifying this new default behavior as taking away your control, but an equally compelling case could be made for the reverse. You’re just used to one behavior and not the other.

As far as ripple deleting, etc. impacting the length of your overall program, FCP 7 has lots of edit actions that do that, starting with ‘Insert’. It’s not as if FCP X doesn’t have a non-rippeled delete mode. It’s just shift-delete rather than delete, the reverse of FCP 7.

[Michael Aranyshev] “Having to use workarounds is distracting.”

They’re not ‘workarounds’. FCP 7 has a specific set of default behaviors that you’re used to. FCP X has a different default set of behaviors. There is nothing inherently wrong with FCP X’s set of default behaviors. In fact, in most cases I can make a compelling argument that, objectively, FCP X’s behavior more sense.

[Michael Aranyshev] “It didn’t came out last week. It is one of the timeline modes in every second NLE, shipping or discontinued.”

Please point to some examples.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Tom Wolsky] “Have to disagree. It’s clear from their behavior that they have abandoned the pro market. On June 21st they killed all their pro video products.”

People keep stating this as a fact, but the justification for it grows thinner by the day.

Well, we’ll see who’s right, eventually.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Steven Gonzales] “FCP has definitely lost the higher education market to Avid if feature film editing and post production are the curriculum.”

I feel like a broken record here, but this is basically an insane thing to say a little over a week after FCP X’s release.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “We have brains, we’ve all noodled around a fair bit at this stage and had a think – so that phrase is off the menu, its no longer about some hypothetical thing you somehow get and the other person doesn’t – its about the individual reaction of the editor to where apple has chosen to take the timeline.”

People simply keep saying things that are incoherent with respect to the way the magnetic timeline works. It’s like, to borrow Craig Seeman’s analogy, asking what kind of hay the car eats. You can safely assume anyone asking that question hasn’t quite wrapped their head around cars yet.

What we’re seeing is almost exclusively “This doesn’t work like a standard multitrack editor, so it’s taking away my control”. What we’re not seeing is detailed critiques of the clip-relationship model vs. the multitrack model, with concrete examples of how the former is supposedly worse for fundamental editing operations. If those start showing up, I’ll stop pointing out that people don’t seem to understand the magnetic timeline.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Michael Aranyshev] “It ripples. Clips ripple. Transitions ripple too. The design priority was to prevent a user from accidentally creating flash frames and short gaps.”

This doesn’t really answer my question. OK, things ripple. How does this mean it’s not respecting timing? It’s not changing the lengths of your clips. And most actions can be performed without rippling.

[Michael Aranyshev] “My apologies again we are just trading words here. I didn’t have an opportunity to see what you do in the non-magnetic timeline to make a comparison. Chances might be you simply “don’t get” the non-magnetic timeline.”

It’s far more plausible that something that came out last week isn’t being understood properly than that something that has been around for almost 20 years isn’t being understood properly.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Tom Wolsky] “I think you underestimate the significance of the bitterness and loathing this has engendered in many users.”

I think I’ve seen a lot of Internet freak-outs related to Apple announcements over the years, and have a pretty good idea of what the long-term implications tend to be. In fact, people’s long-term projections of the impact of this announcement may be even more overstated than usual, because a lot of the bitterness is a consequence of people believing Apple is deliberately abandoning the pro market, and it is my opinion that Apple is not actually doing this and future events will make that obvious.

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[Chris Kenny]

[J Hussar] “I need access to my media, wherever it comes from. So as many sources as possible – for the time being that includes tapes. I need access to all media to be easier for me. That helps me creatively. FCPX limits my sources. I don’t like limits.”

Not being able to capture tape directly into the application hardly means you can’t edit media that originated on tape.

[J Hussar] “Second, I like to work sequences separate from the main body of the work, effectively I like multiple sequences all in one project, some are just thoughts, sometime I like to make a bizarre experiment sequence and then pull pieces from that into main sequence. One sequence at a time isn’t enough for me. It limits my ability to experiment and not get stuck with an experiment gone wrong. I don’t want to think about saving a million separate projects. I want to keep my variations at my fingertips in one project.”

You can have all of your versions at your fingertips in FCP X. Just create a bunch of projects and stash them in a folder in the project library. You can open more than one at a time and flip through them easily. about the only thing you can’t do is show two sequences at once.

Apple really should have just called the new ‘projects’ ‘sequences’ instead. It would have saved a lot of confusion.

[J Hussar] “If FCPX would stop worrying about trying to be style over substance I would embrace it. Limiting my ability to be the creative controller is my main issue. I don’t consider making me fit the ‘program’ a good answer. I control the program, not the other way around.”

I’m not trying to be in any way insulting or patronizing here, but I really don’t think you’ve quite wrapped your head around the magnetic timeline yet. You’re just not describing the kind of thing that it is. This post might help a bit.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Andrew Stone] “It matters not. Apple in continuing its stance on the discontinuation of FCS 3 has shown to the industry, its approach as a vendor to the film industry is incompatible with the industry’s requirements.

Too much time has now passed on this decision. The industry will move on and Apple will not be a proper player any more.
“

Again, it seems ludicrously unlikely to me that in a year or two, any non-trivial number of people will still be evaluating FCP X in terms of how Apple handled its introduction, rather than its then-current suitability for their uses. Maybe you could argue that people should do this (though my counterpoint would be that once this transition is done, there probably won’t be nearly this much drama for the rest of the decade), but the phenomenon of temporal discounting means they mostly won’t.

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