[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “But of course. You don’t think that’s on purpose? You don’t think by changing the terms, you might have people change their frame of reference? Isn’t it OK to have a look at what the relationship of media to sequence to container may be? If you read the FCPX manual, timeline is listed all over it. If it’s really that confusing, and someone opens the manual, they will figure out rather quickly what a Project might mean.”

I don’t think this particular change was in any way necessary or beneficial to understanding the new model. I mostly agree with Andy:

[Andy Neil] “Personally, I think their naming convention should’ve been this:

Library —-> Project —–> Sequence

where project is used in place of event and makes a helluva lot more sense in that context.”

[Jeremy Garchow] “I think that Apple has a much bigger hill to climb than Project vs Sequence terminology and if we, as professionals, can’t figure the difference between those two terms, we shouldn’t be here. I would assume that Apple thinks an FCPX user, can figure out what a Project, what an Event, and what a Library can do and how they work. Cameras have all different kinds of terminology for the same thing. Cam Ops get over it and get to work and none of them are all wrong or all right.

Some people might not know what lift and gain means, but they could tell you what shadows and highlights are. Are they wrong, or is it just a different frame of reference?”

I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s a bigger problem for FCPX than you realize. It’s not about whether we as professionals can wrap our heads around Apple’s name change, it’s the fact that Apple is disregarding well established, decades old industry standards and asking us to deal with a confusing, unnecessary change in the first place.

I don’t think your analogy of lift vs gain really works. Lift and gain are different but related properties.

An imperfect but better analogy for what Apple has done renaming sequences to projects would be if Apple one day decided instead of calling files “files”, they would now be referred to as “folders”. Imagine the confusion!

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at what the definitive source of good Mac OS UI design has to say about the subject.

From Apple’s Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines: (link)

Consistency

Consistency in the interface allows users to transfer their knowledge and skills from one app to another. Applying the principle of consistency does not mean that your app must look and behave the same as all other apps. Rather, the principle of consistency holds that an app should respect its users and avoid forcing them to learn new ways to do things for no other reason than to be different.

When thinking about how your app handles consistency, consider the principle in the following contexts. Specifically, is your app consistent with:

• OS X standards? For example, does the app use the reserved and recommended keyboard equivalents for their correct purposes? Does it use standard UI elements correctly and integrate well with the Finder, the Dock, and other OS X features that users appreciate? For more information about these items, see Keyboard Shortcuts and Integrating with OS X.
• The app itself? Does it use consistent terminology for labels and features? Do icons mean the same thing every time they are used? Are concepts presented in similar ways across all modules? Are similar controls and other UI elements located in similar places in windows and dialogs?
• Earlier versions of the app? Have the terms and meanings remained the same between releases? Are the fundamental concepts essentially unchanged?
• People’s expectations? Does it meet the needs of the user without extraneous features? Does it conform to the user’s mental model? For more information on this concept, see Mental Model.

Changing “sequences” to “projects” completely violates the established mental model of how NLEs work throughout the entire industry.

Apple not only breaks industry standards, it violates its own UI guidelines with this change.

As we’ve seen, it’s completely unnecessary and frankly, indefensible, even if you like how FCPX works.

This is why I call it a colossal blunder. It makes it seem like FCPX developers are off in their own little bubble, either unaware or too self-absorbed to care about common standards for technical language and its meaning.

It’s hard enough to introduce something new. Mistakes like this make gaining industry acceptance even harder.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “”Event” is the only one that could be a little misconstrued, but If you have a Library for a client, and in that Library you have several different jobs (or events) and in those Events, you could have multiple Projects.”

I don’t have any problem with “Events” but I think renaming sequences “Projects” was a colossal blunder.

“Sequence” and “Project” are terms that have very specific, commonly understood, technical meaning throughout the entire industry for decades.

From a UI design perspective, a label switch this profound isn’t just confusing, it’s wrong; because it breaks a decades long mental model and it goes against all other uses of the terms.

Apple could easily have called “Projects” “Sequences”. By choosing to reinvent the basic nomenclature of NLEs, they appear arrogant, out-of-touch, and have made industry acceptance of FCPX that much harder.

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[David Lawrence]

David, what specifically in the interface makes you feel the way you describe? I get where you’re coming from and am curious about specifics and what you would change.

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[David Lawrence]

Took a while but was finally able to catch up on this thread. Wow! Great stuff, Tim.

So there one name (who’s in the news these days) I’m surprised didn’t make your list – David Lynch.

I’ve loved David Lynch’s work since seeing Eraserhead as a teenager. It played weekly at The Roxy here in SF and after a while, I’d go just to watch the reaction of friends seeing it for the first time. Big fun. The Guild Navigator in Dune? That’s Eraserhead’s baby, all grown up! LOL.

Here’s one of my favorite Lynch pieces ever – the short film he did for Lumière & Company. This DVD is uneven but the good stuff makes it worthwhile. Then there’s Lynch’s piece, where he takes the possibility of the Cinematographe to a totally different level. One take, one shot, pure CINEMATIC INTENT 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJE0IrDNxsY

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[David Lawrence]

[Steve Connor] “Adobe’s Perpetual license costs weren’t being driven down before they decide to go subscription only, it was probably because not enough people were upgrading regularly enough which may or not be the same thing I suppose.”

True. And the way to get people to upgrade regularly is to offer upgrades that are worth upgrading to. Customers will pay for innovation and value. They won’t pay for gimmicks and bloat. If the big software companies tried innovating instead of resting on their market dominance, they might find they’d have more customers buying their upgrades.

In Adobe’s case, innovation in the Production Suite applications has been remarkably deep. Innovation with Photoshop and Illustrator not so much. We’re a relatively small market but the photo and design applications are their bread and butter. That’s why they have the special photo bundle/pricing. In a sense, we’re experiencing collateral damage from a company that has lost its way with its core products. I’m rooting for Afinity to eat their lunch and bring them back to earth.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/about/

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[David Lawrence]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Tony Zhou is just great – he makes you want to go back and watch every movie he talks about. So inspiring.”

Absolutely! Just love his work. So good.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “In today’s VFX heavy movies, I feel like sometimes the editing done is practical to save on VFX costs. The Avengers, which I found to be a really entertaining movie, had some odd and quick cuts because I think if the shots were longer, or more grand, the movie’ budget literally would have had to have been an order of magnitude higher, from an already really high budget. I imagine as Producer, you have to pick your battles, or pick your battle scenes as it were.”

Speaking of The Avengers (a film I also really enjoyed), check out the newest installment of Tony Zhou’s amazing series Every Frame a Painting.

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Akira Kurosawa – Composing Movement from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

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[David Lawrence]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “oh well.. I’ll definitely check out twilights last gleaming. If bieberkopf was still around he’d probably have some insane examples too…”

This.

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Mike Figgis' Timecode from PSP1 on Vimeo.

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[David Lawrence]

[Craig Seeman] “By reaching for simplicity of the product they’ve now added to the complexity of adaptors.”

Wasn’t this the main critique of the New Mac Pro? 😉 That said, I like the NMP, I like Thunderbolt, and at least they give you more than one port.

A one port MacBook is a pretty radical experiment, but I hope Jeremy’s right and it’s simply a sharpening of the dividing line between “Pro” and “consumer”.

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[David Lawrence]

LOL! You beat me to it! 🙂

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David Lawrence
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