[David Lawrence]

[Charlie Austin] “I have no idea what this thing does, but it looks very… uh, futuristic. :-)”

Thanks Charlie!

It looks very cool. From what I gather it’s designed for creating spatialized audio. Instead of tracks they have a open, free-form workspace and grouping functions to keep audio clips together and organized. It’s free and works in OSX so I’ve downloaded it and will give a a try when I get some time.

I don’t think its UI will be replacing ProTools anytime soon. 😉

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[David Lawrence]

[Bill Davis] “I know it’s a well understood system that developed over time and all that – but at some point, it’s possible that following rules designed for the days when electro-magnetic multitrack head stacks ruled the industry might be limiting when nearly nobody is using mag tape anymore.”

The UI design you speak of has absolutely nothing to do with “following rules designed for the days when electro-magnetic multitrack head stacks”.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

Great list, Charlie.

I’d add one more – “Pin to timeline”. Basically some way to spike a clip to an absolute time point in the primary, rather than the clips inside the primary. That would go a long way towards solving my issue of “absolute/external” vs “relative” time in the magnetic timeline.

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[David Lawrence]

[Steve Connor] “David, you’ve been on here long enough to know that NO thread stays on topic for long”

LOL! I know Steve! 😀

But I thought you summed up the track vs trackless debate perfectly with your response above.

BTW and for the record, I like tracks for the exact same reason my sound guy likes them in Pro Tools.

And that’s the last I have to say on the subject. 🙂

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[David Lawrence]

[Bill Davis] “I’m just a bit tired of those who seem to argue that everything necessary or useful about audio in an NLE was TOTALLY covered by track based systems, and that because X is trackless somehow that means it’s also hobbled… That’s misinformation that requires addressing.”

Um guys, I thought this was going to be a thread about history? We could be discussing much more interesting stuff if you want. Just sayin’ 😉

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[David Lawrence]

I started with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portapak

We edited using two similar machines (one source, one record), a stopwatch and a grease pencil. Put a mark on each of the reels, use the stopwatch to get timing, then manually synchronize, and punch in on the mark. “Punch and crunch” editing.

MPS was my dream come true.

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[David Lawrence]

[Charlie Austin] “Now I know why you’re so adamant about tracks… you invented them! lol Very cool David.”

Charlie – Thanks! I do think we invented something genuinely new, but it wasn’t tracks. 😉

[Michael Gissing] “Great to see this David. I just wanted to know how much the Fairlight CMI or the Synclavier influenced the layout and the tracks concept.

When I went to the meeting at Fairlight around this same time to discuss a version for film & video post, I asked why the horizontal layout. Why not vertical tracks like a dubbing chart and a mixing desk. They said the layout had been developed by software people in the UK and based on musical notation so horizontal stacking of tracks.”

Michael – Some context — GTV, the interactive program I was producing was a media experience primarily driven by sound. Since sound was as important as picture, we didn’t give one media type priority over the other. The project was named “Multimedia Production System”, because were developing a general purpose interface and authoring model; one that would work well for all media types and media experiences. MPS was made to produce interactive video, but the interface worked just as well for linear video.

We considered sound a solved problem in terms of digital production quality. We could easily produce and deliver CD quality sound with the hardware and software available at the time. On the other hand, high quality digital video was many years away. I remember when Apple gave us one of the first demos of QuickTime. We looked at the slow, grainy, postage-stamps Apple was calling “movies”, all of us thinking “You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.” 😉

We were definitely aware of what was going on with digital audio at the time. Applications like SoundEdit 16 and MOTU Performer were our everyday production tools. We put in a request for a Fairlight (or maybe a Kurzweil) to make music for GTV but we didn’t get it, lol.

Re: influences and why a horizontal layout – I’m pretty sure we were influenced by the typical digital audio software we were using, with waveforms drawn horizontally. But there were other important considerations. We (Westerners at least) read from left to right, and monitors are typically landscape shape. A horizontal layout gives us the most efficient use of screen real estate. For all these reasons, horizontal made sense to us.

Another important influence (mentioned in the video) was the Macintosh Human interface itself. The idea that you point, click and drag to interact. The idea of making a picture of what your program looks like to perform edits.

One of the biggest breakthroughs during development was when the engineering team decided the system would be object-oriented. The workspace would hold collections of multimedia objects (pictures, running video, sounds). These objects could be placed and arranged on the time editor. The length of a box representing media directly corresponded to the length that piece of media would play in time. The horizontal position of the media object along the timeline determined when that media object would play. Empty space between objects (we called them “time bubbles”) would simply play black video and/or silence.

The picture was your edit, and the system had simple building blocks and tools to make the picture. It was very direct, Mac-like and simple. So simple, we believed (as Doug Crockford says in the video) anyone with Macintosh experience could learn it in an hour.

That’s what made this system really different from anything else at the time. The MPS introduced what I now call the “open timeline”.

[Charlie Austin] “Seems like Avid totally ripped you guys off, MC even kinda looks the same today. ;-)”

It’s actually a bit more nuanced than that 😉 I remember we knew we had something important in terms of UI. I told my managers I thought we had a new, billion dollar industry in the palm of our hands. But as the project was winding down in 1990, There was no LFL interest in making a business. George didn’t care to push it forward and the momentum and the moment evaporated. Apple eventually started showing this video to third parties, including IIRC, Avid. The rest as they say is history. Needless to say, I was deeply disappointed.

I want to be clear that there was a lot of parallel development happening at the time. The modern NLE was an inevitability. But it’s interesting to look at the EMC2 and Avid/1 demo videos which were made around the same time as this and compare their UI with our UI. Neither of them performed the actual editing operations on the timeline itself.

I don’t think anyone can say who was first and it really doesn’t matter. All I know is we made something new and special, and it’s a missing link in the history of the tools we use everyday. I’m happy I can finally share it with all of you.

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[David Lawrence]

[Bill Davis] “Tracks were clearly the terminus of the collective NLE imagination … twenty seven years ago.”

So were databases. 😉

Glad you enjoyed!

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[David Lawrence]

[Mark Raudonis] “I laughed at the concerted effort to try to explain how different this “MPS” was from traditional editing systems. We really have come a long, long way.

This video belongs in the NLE museum of history … right up there with the Wright bros first airplane.”

Thanks Mark 🙂

For me in the role of as editor/test pilot, it was a combination of Wright Bros. and the Mercury Space Program. I was using the system for a commercial product for an important client and responsible for client deliverables on a fixed production schedule. All while the system was evolving every day as I was using it. Plenty of nights crashing on a couch at the ranch after discovering a days work lost to a corrupt database. Fun times! Anyone complaining about the beta nature of software updates today doesn’t realize how good they have it 😉

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I hear what you’re saying, David (and Andy) but I think that Project deserves the term. It is much more than a sequence of events (heh heh).

I hope to have some screen grabs on Monday, if not Monday it’ll have to be the week after, but I’ll show you what I mean. I will come back to this as I think there are “important” distinctions to make, and Apple choosing to name a sequence a Project isn’t a folly or blunder, but It is best to approach this notion with an open mind, and buck convention. This is not to say that you, personally, aren’t open minded. I get the sense that you are. It took me a long time to reach this conclusion, even after using X for a couple of years professionally. It really started once the Library system was in place.”

Thanks Jeremy, really curious about your thoughts. Looking forward! 🙂

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