[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Damn straight. I would never use it for editing, but I use precomps all the time and FCPx compound clips are even easier. You can also name them in the timeline to whatever you want so you can look at a glance as to what is going on there. See this:”

I get it. But it doesn’t help if you need to have everything exposed and at your fingertips. And you lose any transitions if you break them apart.

I invite you to read and consider Mr. Federline’s recently posted comment here.

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[David Lawrence]

[Mark Bein] “A musical score needs gaps (pauses) just like fcpx.”

This is a non-issue in an open timeline. Empty space around media objects acts as silence, there’s no need for “gaps”.

In fact, to take the analogy further, if a musical score behaved like the magnetic timeline, it would mean you’d have to write special “gap notes” between each of your regular notes to indicate silence.

Gaps are one of the magnetic timeline’s biggest steps backwards. Not only do you have to keep track of the media objects, now you also have to mange all the space in between.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So you don’t use After Effects much? Precomps (nests, compound clips, whatever) are extremely powerful and help keep the myriad of layers organized. It’s so easy to step in to them in FCPx too.”

I use AE all the time. Love it. It’s a nightmare for editorial work — I’d never cut a show in it.

Here’s a true story: A client asked me to bid on posting a four-minute promo. It was to be shot with DSLR and required animatics, animation and motion graphics. In my bid I told them I was fine with editing, animatics on stills and simple motion graphics, but complex animation/motion graphics and original graphics creation would be better handled by a specialist because I’m not a graphic artist. The client did have an animator/graphic artist that they liked working with. To save money, they decided to have the animator/graphic artist edit the entire piece.

I think you know where this is going… Two weeks later, the client calls me in a complete panic. The animator was a nightmare to work with, refusing to make any changes from the original script. Could I please take over and make these simple fixes? I say fine, send me a hard drive with everything and I’ll dig in. I get the hard drive. It turns out the animator/graphic artist made his edit in the tool he uses for motion graphics. After Effects. It’s a mess of nested comps that perfectly match the client script. Making the simplest changes would take hours.

I took one look, called the client and told them I wasn’t sure I could help. I explained why they were getting resistance from the animator and offered to see if I could somehow get his work loaded into my preferred tool.

I would up going from AE to Premiere Pro, then XML out Premiere Pro to FCP. Once in FCP I had to unpack all the nests that the comps come over as, and fix the effects that render differently between AE/PP and FCP. Then I could start making the requested changes. The changes were trivial and took only minutes. Then the client viewed and came back with more changes which I easily incorporated. We even used iChat Theater preview so we could collaborate in real-time together. This blew the client’s mind. In the end they had a piece that they loved and I was a hero. This was my first job with them and they’ve been coming back ever since.

They wound up paying me thousands of dollars more than they would have if they had taken my advice and just had the animator do animation/motion graphics.

Moral of the story: use the right tool for the job.

AE is an awesome animation/compositing/effects program. For fast, fluid editorial work, it’s a bag of pain.

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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “And I’d be much more willing to accept these statements if these advanced users supported them, which would help convince me their frustration was with a structural problem in FCPX’s timeline model and not that it doesn’t behave the way they are used to a timeline behaving. There’s a big difference if we’re debating the merits of the model. If you attempt to apply open timeline disciplines to the magnetic timeline it will be painful and frustrating and seem to be fighting you. You call that Apple arrogantly telling you how to work, I call that driving a nail with the cheek of a hammer.”

I invite you to read and consider Mr. Federline’s recently posted comment here.

[Andrew Richards] “Didn’t we just share an exchange recently where what seemed to take five clicks only took one or two? :-)”

Touché. 😉 Now let’s talk audio mixing…

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[David Lawrence]

Love it!!!

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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “1) Isn’t this a perfect use case for compound clips? You cluster your audio into a nest and it acts as a unit, but you can explode it to make fine adjustments at will. “

The problem with compound clips is that they rob you of your piece’s overall context. Any adjustments must be made inside their own little island. If you break them apart to see context, you lose any transitions.

[Andrew Richards] “3-5) This where metadata shines. Your track assignments in a fixed track timeline are immutable. With roles assigned as metadata for each audio clip, you get to assign output based on role and not have to put any effort into maneuvering your clips into different tracks to meet an output requirement. At least that’s how Apple stated it would work in their FAQ. Further, you can quickly select and disable audio channels by searching the timeline using the same metadata. “

It’s fantastic in the abstract and would be a wonderful as an additional tool in the usual kit. But I don’t believe it’s a replacement for the flexibility of the spatial model. Especially for audio. I do a ton of multitrack mixing in FCP as part of my normal workflow.

Question: How much work have you done with Soundtrack Pro or Pro Tools? Do you think a trackless magnetic timeline model would be more efficient for these applications?

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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “What, are we to stage a race? “

Works for me! 😉

[Andrew Richards] “What should I be seeing in his screenshot that is impossibly cumbersome to achieve in FCPX? Certainly not the compositing layering. Not the layout of the audio. Other than the elevation of some clips above some video tracks, what jumps out of that screenshot as being a nightmare to pull off in FCPX? “

What you’re seeing are each one of his hundreds of editorial decisions fully exposed, accessible, and immediately manipulable, all at the same time, all in the same window view. Each object was simply placed where it needed to be in time, like a note on a musical score. No need to worry about the rules of an abstract object container model. No need to create nests just to do transitions. No need to unpack objects to get access to their audio. No need to create slugs to keep everything from sliding left, etc., etc.

I don’t hear anyone saying that building a sequence like this in FCPX is impossible. What I’m hearing a vast majority of advanced users saying is that it’s so painful to do that it might as well be impossible. If Apple cares about these users, they need to listen and act on their feedback. Apple’s silence has not been helpful.

[Andrew Richards] “I’m not sure what kind of meaningful evidence anyone could gather in support of one side or the other on this point. Number of clicks? Time spent? Layers required to achieve a given effect? What is your metric for editorial efficiency?”

Those are all fine metrics. In fact that’s exactly the kind of thing tested in typical software UI user testing and QA. If FCPX takes 5 clicks and a bunch of mousing to achieve the same result I can get with a single right-click select in FCP7, then yes, you can absolutely say it is less efficient at that task.

[Andrew Richards] “That’s a cynical way to charaterize it. Is it at all possible it was Apple’s UI designers studying how people use their software and seeking to remove barriers to common tasks? I don’t believe this thing is the product of a gang of cruel scientists and hucksters bent on insulting professional editors.”

As cynical as what Apple did at NAB?

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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “Editing celluloid involves gluing or taping two film ends together, creating tangible links between two clips. Seems to me that is a lot more conceptually similar to the magnetic timeline’s explicit clip connections metaphor than the metaphor employed by the traditional NLE timeline, which if translated literally into meatspace would look like laying strips of film out in sequence with nothing but spatial proximity linking them together. “

I agree that editing celluloid is conceptually similar to the magnetic timeline. Especially since it supports the argument that it forces unnecessary constraints on the user. 😉

The open timeline model discarded the constraints of celluloid and linear tape by allowing the editor to place media anywhere at any time in the timestream. It doesn’t matter how you want to build a sequence. You can work backwards if you want (I sometimes do). It’s totally fluid and open. With the magnetic timeline, you either do things its way or it fights you. It’s great if you want to do things its way. It’s lousy if you don’t.

Tracks allow easy, immediate, accessible layering and organization of media. It doesn’t matter if you have one track or twenty-eight. It works either way. And I can’t emphasize enough the value of scratch space to test ideas and play with footage.

[Andrew Richards] “In the example you cited, the post’s author insists no one could ever match his FCP7 sequence in FCPX. Baloney. Sure, it wouldn’t have all those open spaces on V1, V2, and so on. So what?”

Go back and re-read Shawn Federline’s post a bit more carefully. He doesn’t say that his timeline couldn’t be matched in FCPX, he says that FCPX is currently unusable for trying to create it. Keep in mind that when you look at Mr. Federline’s timeline, you’re looking at the result of many hundreds of decisions that were added to a blank canvas. The structure comes from the composition process. What we’re talking about is the efficiency of this process. Perhaps there’s no specific structural requirement for playback, but if the constraints of the UI makes getting the desired results impossibly cumbersome, then it’s unusable. It might as well be impossible.

I have yet to see any proof that the magnetic timeline adds efficiency to the creation of timelines like Mr. Federline’s. I believe him when he says it is unusable for him. Before you say he’s full of baloney, I invite you to prove that he’s wrong. Prove that FCPX is faster, more efficient, and a better way to work for advanced projects like these. I extend this invitation to anyone who believes the magnetic timeline is better. Let’s see the evidence. Show me how that it’s better for more than just simple assembly.

The open timeline model has proven itself with over twenty years of refinement and success. The magnetic timeline is the result of Apple engineers and marketing people deciding they know better than me how I should do my job. It’s a pretty arrogant stance to take with a professional industry. I’d say the burden of proof is on Apple’s new model.

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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Ray] ” LOVE the ability to use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the timeline instantly in Sony Vegas, but can’t seem to make that work in FCPX. Does anyone have any idea if this is possible? THanks.”

Get Alessandro Levi Montalcini’s outstanding USBOverdrive driver. It works with all USB and Bluetooth input devices and lets you map functions on a program-specific basis however you please. I use it with my 5-button Logitech mouse and in FCP map the forward/backward buttons near my thumb to timeline zoom in/out. It works great!

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Wait, isn’t this thread about Steve Kanter’s presentation? 😀
“

LOL! This is a fascinating tangent!

Really enjoying reading everyone’s thoughts on how to solve the import problem. I’m in the same camp as most of you. Seems like import would be a) doable b) imperfect, and c) give messy results. How valuable that would be would depend on your needs. Agree that anything is probably better than nothing most of the time.

I think another fair question is are there complex timeline structures that FCPX simply cannot handle with its object-based model? Take for example, this timeline sample from Shawn Federline:

What would something like this look like in FCPX? Lots of layers and no notion of “primary”? How well does FCPX’s model accommodate the editorial needs that result in complex structures like these? Looking forward to the day when we can test this. With import!

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