[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Hard to tell from a fuzzy screengrab, but take a really good look at that timeline. I see a bunch if clips, and a bunch of cuts, it’s nothing really complex in terms of composites/layers, The Federline timeline was more complex in its compositing nature. Perhaps those clips are all stacked on different tracks because he needs to export those tracks separately for whatever reason. I think Roles would allow all this separation to be consolidated and allow you to work more with less space.”

Maybe it’s not just about compositing, maybe he’s using tracks for entirely different editorial purposes. Maybe he assigns tracks to characters or has some other organizational scheme in place. That’s the beauty of the open timeline and tracks. You can use them any way you like. They’re totally flexible.

I guess I don’t understand why you would want to consolidate this. I don’t see any benefit. WM isn’t cutting on a laptop — no doubt he’s working with the biggest screens he can get his hands on with one dedicated to the timeline. If you have the screen real estate and you’re working spatially, why not take up as much space as you need? What’s the downside?

[Jeremy Garchow] “Do you think he works that way because he wants to, or because the FCP7 interface dictates he has to?”

I think he works the way he wants and the reason he likes FCP7 is because the FCP7 interface allows him to. I remember reading somewhere that the fact that FCP allows 99 audio and 99 video tracks was a big deal for him and helped win him over to FCP.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m telling you, a really good assistant, one that embraces the organizational structure of X could make a strong case. To me, it is obvious his mind his open. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.”

Seriously? I’d love to have a hit of whatever you’re smoking 😉

I’m really looking forward to hearing him talk about the magnetic timeline after he actually trys it, hands-on. I don’t get the impression he’s gotten that deep into it. I wonder how he’ll respond to how it feels and behaves. Do you think he knows it’s ripple only? I wonder what he’ll think about that. Especially given his background in sound. Or the way it rearranges clip layer order (possibly changing the edit) on its own to avoid collisions. Because clip collisions and the unbearable difficulty of managing tracks are surely at the top of his list of problems with FCP7, right?

I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation too! 😉

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Tom Wolsky] “And you’re focused on YOUR tools. You can’t get past them to reach the story.”

Actually Tom, I think Andy is talking about the tools, conventions, and language of an entire industry.

When a single company (currently the largest on Earth) tries to summarily dictate change in all those things at a massive scale, I think it’s well worth viewing those changes with a critical eye.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It was interesting to hear what Murch’s biggest gripes were after watching the video. The top two are already “fixed”, number three is announced for the next update, and then he went on to describe Roles, which he didn’t seem to like or dislike.”

It sounded like he hasn’t had time to actually work with it directly — that he was responding to the deal-breaking interchange issues that are slowing being addressed.

Naturally, I’m most curious to hear what he’ll have to say about the magnetic timeline after he actually gets his hands on it. That will be fascinating.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I did look at Murch’s timeline and as I mentioned, the first thing I saw was all the empty space. Some of those tracks are pretty sparse, and even Murch himself said he could probably get rid of about half of them.”

Keep in mind that all that empty space is actually information. When you’re using space as an organizing tool, the negative space is just as important as the where the clips are in showing patterns and flow. Even though he said he could consolidate, I find it interesting that he hadn’t.

BTW, I thought his use of skinny muted audio tracks as group separators was brilliant! I’m gonna start doing that now anytime I get over 5 or 6 tracks.

[Jeremy Garchow] “While I too am intrigued with Jim’s workflow, I think it breaks the magnetic timeline in dramatic fashion (no offense, Jim. I enjoyed your post). Visual organization is still needed for audio tracks. Compounds are a way, but I feel they aren’t “THE” way. Putting them all in a secondary is not the way, either, that’s where things get broken fast.”

Yep, it’s interesting but still another workaround. Ball’s in Apple’s court to show us a better way.

[Jeremy Garchow] “We talked about the clips being “a drawer” that we could open and adjust content in context, and then close it back up. That would be pretty ideal rather than breaking apart, adjusting, selecting, and compounding. It would also allow all the advantages of the magnetic and trackless timeline. That means that all of Murch’s sections could be combined in to about 7 “clips” or however many sections he had. He could work on what he wants, adjust it, then put it all away. “

This would be great, but I still think the biggest architectural constraint is the single primary storyline.

When you look at WM’s timeline, do you see anything that looks like “primary” and “secondary” content?
I don’t. What I see looks like a musical score. Everything look primary in terms of time, irregardless of narrative. I’m sure you could map his timeline into FCPX after the fact, but I have a hard time imagining FCPX’s single primary is robust enough to compete with the flexibility of multiple open tracks during the editorial process.

WM’s timeline screenshot really shows how reductive Apple’s thinking is with their new timeline paradigm. I look forward to seeing how they will support his level of editorial complexity.

[Jeremy Garchow] “At any rate, I’d be curious to hear what he says after he actually uses it.”

Yes!

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “The only real thing mentioned in the article that he reacted negatively to was interchange and lack of SAN support. It did say he looked at it in June.”

There was also this:

“The lack of tracks was another killer for him. While he doesn’t really need to work with 50 tracks, he does need to leverage the ability to selectively raise or lower the levels very specifically.”

Did you look at his timeline for Hemingway & Gellhorn?

His Final Cut Pro project consisted of 22 video tracks and 50 audio tracks, combining sound elements ranging from 8 tracks of dialogue, to 24 tracks of mono and stereo sound effects with and without low frequency enhancements (LFE)!!

So messy! We can’t have that! Who could possibly understand it? And everyone knows FCP7’s audio tools are way too lousy to do any serious mixing and sound design.

I doubt WM will have any interest in FCPX unless it seriously changes. But he did have some thoughts on where to go. No surprises here:

If you didn’t use FCP, where would you go? “I’ve used Avid in the past, so I know it well. There are some very good things that Avid has, but I’m also curious about Premiere since I’m interested in technology.”

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Or detach doesn’t work with compound clips? I was messing with detach the other day, and when I broke apart, I lost all my adjustments, when detaching, all the adjustments came with the clips.”

Hmmm, yeah maybe. I’ll have to experiment. A compound clip could be anything, so what does “detach” mean in that context? And what happens when you start compounding other compound clips? Inception!

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[David Lawrence]

[Jim Giberti] “Here’s a close up of the top.”

Thanks Jim, Makes sense and from your description was what I was expecting.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Try detach, David. I’m just curious and haven’t been in front of fcpx today.”

Detach is grayed out. Break apart is the only option. Probably because the audio in this CC is already detached from the A/V source.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jim Giberti] “So, in my scenario, you use both CCs and Secondaries.”

Got it. So Secondary Storylines anchored to a gap at the head of the piece used as virtual tracks, and enclosed CCs when ready to mix. This is similar to something I remember seeing in a video here a while ago. The idea was that secondarys with long gaps could be stacked vertically and connected to a gap frame at the program head creating a set of tracks. In the video they used the position tool to move clips to further simulate track-like behavior. It’s an interesting work-around, though I’m still partial to regular tracks.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jim Giberti] “I use that technique at times too David and yes the fades stay with the CC if you Break Apart or Open in Timeline”

But only if you keep your CC in a secondary storyline. If you break apart a connected CC with transitions you get this warning:

So I’m assuming you have everything in a secondary, yes?

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[David Lawrence]

[Bill Davis] “Well, David, actually two clicks (Command T) without keyboard re-mapping – but the point is well taken since that kind of thing certainly starts to feel like a single action after the first few hundred times you use it.”

You can right-click and apply a crossfade transition between clips in a single action. If you set the default length to your most common preference, then most of the time the job can be done in one click. Also, a single click on the crossfade lets you set the crossfade to the transition start, center, or end. Very fast and handy. Good luck doing that right now in FCPX. Definitely a feature request.

[Bill Davis] “But isn’t the larger view that Jim is editing like he edited as an AUDIO editor – where audio fades via keyframe manipulation is the norm. And you’re editing like a video editor where transitions via drag and drop presets are the norm?”

I don’t think so. I started a couple long threads on audio-centric and spatial workflows a few weeks ago. If anything, I think I edit video like an audio editor.

I use whatever tools are available. If I can drop in a crossfade and it works, cool. If I want to work in layers, I’ll use volume keyframes. Whatever tool does the particular job fastest is what I pick.

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