[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “FCPx does not prevent you from finding your footage, you do not have to use keywords, smart collections, or whatever.”

True, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. What Rob describes is a massively parallel process where relationships develop on-the-fly in the editor’s head. It’s not just looking for footage; but looking for footage either in relation to the next or preceding shot (a process made more difficult because of the arbitrary removal of the dedicated source viewer) or in a way that may not even make immediate sense. It’s much more fluid than the assembly-oriented process that the magnetic timeline dictates.

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[David Lawrence]

Brilliant video and brilliant post, Rob. I was especially struck by this remark:

[Rob Tinworth] “It’s the very ‘inefficiency’ of FCP7 that immerses me in a project. It’s endlessly scrubbing backwards and forwards through the rushes that means that when I’m recutting a scene, I know there’s that shot of that thing, which I never thought I’d use, which an assistant editor wouldn’t have flagged, which I wouldn’t even have looked at, but which turns out to be just the shot I need for this sequence.”

I can’t overstate how essential what you describe is to my process (and probably many others’ as well.) Accidental moments that might be completely missed (and could only be keyworded as “unclassifiable”) are often exactly what solves a problem; and at best may take a scene to a whole new level.

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[David Lawrence]

[Chris Kenny] “Timelines are never WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG came out of the print world: you make a page look a certain way on screen, and that’s how it looks when it prints. Nothing of the timeline appears in the finished product. The timeline is an abstract symbolic representation.”

Hi All, still on the road but wanted to quickly jump in. This statement is factually incorrect because it’s confusing literal representation with symbolic representation. A timeline does not look like the media it represents, but it has a direct, one-to-one relationship in space to every frame in time. Where the time indicator is parked in space, directly maps to the corresponding frame. Advance one frame in space on the timeline, advance one frame in time in the media. And so on. Time/experience visually mapped to space — it couldn’t be more direct. More in my next post.

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[David Lawrence]

Everyone, this is an fantastic discussion — exactly the kind conversation I hoped we’d get into. So many outstanding points being raised! Thank you for your great insights! I think I can let you guys write the next piece! 😉

I’m on the road until early next week and will be reading everything in this thread while I’m out. I’ll respond when I’m back. In the mean time, please keep talking. I think you’re really getting into the heart of the big issues. I hope I’ll have something interesting to add to the mix!

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[David Lawrence]

Every Avid guy I know swears by the keyboard. It’s legendary. Maybe I’m weird but I’ve never personally cared. For me, editing with a keyboard and mouse (my mouse that is) feels like playing a video game.

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[David Lawrence]

[Michael Gissing] “I still don’t get why the need for custom controllers never translated. With the hours spent at the tools, it is more important to me than what color the timeline is.”

Good point. Custom controller hardware really does make a difference. I never invested in a control surface for FCP even though it would probably help me move faster. But what I did do is map my five-button logitech mouse to FCP. Huge improvement. With custom mouse buttons and the keyboard I feel like I really fly.

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[David Lawrence]

[Michael Gissing] “Within ten years of those talks I was alpha testing multi track audio editing and mixing systems with dSP an offshoot from Fairlight. I pushed very hard for ergonomic custom controllers as the nightmare of multi colored ASCI keyboards on early CMX editors gave me the horrors.”

Great stuff Michael, sounds like you were in the deep in the trenches too. My theory about why DAW software UIs evolved faster than NLEs is that processor, memory, compression and storage technologies of the time were able to handle production quality audio much sooner than they would be ready to do video. It would be years before all the pieces needed for video would be affordable. So sound came first. As you mentioned in the other thread, there’s still a lot of good ideas from DAWs that still apply.

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[David Lawrence]

Great comment Franz!

You’ve touched on so many huge issues. I don’t have time to get everything now but I hope to address the question of what a trackless timeline means in a future post. I think that’s a key question and you’ve made some interesting observations.

Re: Physical world UI models. You’re correct, the document I posted very much depicts a physical world model. It went away in the next version.

Re: mental models of time — that’s a conversation I really need a beer for! 😉

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[David Lawrence]

Thanks Craig. I’ll do my best although I hope this doesn’t mean I have to read the framework guide now 😉

To be honest, my understanding of AV foundation not deeply technical so I’ll be looking to you and other experts to fill in the gaps. I’m primarily interested in what AV foundation, i.e. an object data model means for FCP UI in broader terms. Where I go with it may not be where you expect but I hope it will be of interest.

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[David Lawrence]

[Lee Berger] “Around the same time I was a producer for an interactive media project at Florida State University. The delivery system consisted of Pioneer 12″ laserdisc player controlled by the Apple IIGS with graphic overlay card.”

That’s the exact same delivery system we targeted as well. It’s entirely possible our products appeared together in the same catalogs.

[Lee Berger] “We offlined (3/4-inch U-matic) using a PC based program called Edit Lister (remember 8″ floppy discs) and then onlined to One-inch tape at a CMX facility. Those were the days.”

Similar for us except we had MPS (Econodroid) for offline. The system would generate an EDL and we’d do an online auto assembly at a 1″ CMX facility.

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