[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What’s most important about this is performance.”

Actually, I disagree. What’s most important about this is efficiency. When you have efficiency, you get performance for free. Throwing bigger, faster, hardware at bloated, inefficient code is usually the wrong solution.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” see you haven’t played around with Dynamic Link a bunch in Pr and AE yet?

Bloat is one thing, how it handles bloat is another.

FCP 10.0.4 (in my experience, perhaps not yours) handles the bloat much better.”

My experience on my machine is that it has the exact same bloat and compound clips problems as 10.0.1. It’s identical. Every change to a compound clip adds that compound clip’s data weight to the project. As you compound compounds, it increases geometrically. Why?

I haven’t played with Dynamic Link because I haven’t installed the full CS Suite yet. I’m waiting to get my license, then I want to uninstall CS5.5 and do a clean CS6 install. I’ll do some tests and let you know after I do.

I did test relinking. It works but it’s not as good as FCP7 and not anywhere near as good as FCPX. It may not work for your needs but you should test it and see. I imagine this is an area Adobe is getting plenty of feedback and will improve.

One thing I did test was recursive nesting, the kind of thing that brings FCPX to its knees. This was clearly a fake scenario but I was curious what would happen. I duplicated the project, then nested a sequence, then bladed it 25 times then nested that, then bladed that nest 25 times, etc, etc. About five levels deep.

No change in performance. Just as snappy as ever. I saved the project and checked the size against the original.

Original project was ~4.6MB, Bloat test project was ~7.2MB

Try that in FCPX and tell me what happens.

Now there was a penalty. When I reopened the project after saving it. it took about 15 minutes to reconnect media. I got a beach ball but instead of quitting, I checked the activity monitor. Sure enough, both cores on my lowly laptop were running full throttle and completely over-maxed. I just let it grind and eventually the project found everything and I was back in business. On a bigger, faster, machine, I’m sure it would have gone faster.

Again, try this in FCPX and watch what happens.

I really wonder sometimes if the FCPX project database architecture is fundamentally unable to scale.

The bloat problem should be priority number one on the engineering radar, because it makes the program fundamentally unstable. Autosave trouble is just a byproduct of this.

These problems are the kind of thing that if left unaddressed, will cripple FCPX’s chances in the major leagues.

They really need to fix this.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

Phillip Hodgetts is obviously a really smart guy. Definitely smarter than me when it comes to programming. I mean, he’s the guy who figured out how to do the One Big Thing Apple said was impossible so he clearly knows his stuff.

But even though it’s been a while, I used to program at a pretty deep level so I understand this stuff too. And frankly, his arguments sound like a load of BS to me.

[Phillip Hodgetts] “From the programming point of view you’d have to create a third category to go with “Favorite” and “Keyword Range” that would be “Persistent I/O” points. How do they relate to the other two? Are you prepared for a complete rebuild of the database structure to accommodate it?”

So what? Create another column in the database. Call it Foo. BFD. Seriously, if something this simple requires a complete restructure of the database, then the database design is seriously messed up. Any new feature impacts the database. This is trivial.

Want to talk about something deep? Let’s discuss project bloat and compound clips. Still completely unchanged after almost a year. Why? This is the kind of database stuff I’d be really worried about.

[Phillip Hodgetts]“What happens when a Favorite and I/O range coincide (there’s an existing bug related to two keyword ranges covering exactly the same frames losing notes, for example).”

I described it here, but I’ll write it again so people don’t have to look:

It’s not freaking rocket science!

[David Lawrence] “Just look at what happens to a range on the timeline when you click in the event browser. It remains but grays out. Just do the exact same thing for clips in the event browser. Gray out ranges for all clips except the one in focus. The clip in focus is the one that get edited into the timeline. Problem solved. You’re welcome.”

[Phillip Hodgetts] “…Does FCP X edit the keyword range to the Project, or the In/Out range? Or some intersection of the two? When does I/O take precedence over a Favorite or keyword range? It becomes an incredibly complex matrix of when one takes priority and in an app, from a company where the main focus is “simplify”, that would be anathema.”

It edits the range that’s currently in focus. Why is this so difficult to understand?

What happens if you select a favorite? OK, now drag the handles and change the start and end. OMG!!! What takes precedence now??? It’s the Exact. Same. Thing.

[Phillip Hodgetts] “In my opinion it’s a throwback thought for people who haven’t yet made the mental transition to FCP X”

In my opinion, this attitude says more about why Hodgetts thinks it can’t be done than anything else. But hey, what do I know?

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Simon Ubsdell] “So to reiterate, please let’s stop arguing about persistent I and O, and let’s start a discussion about persistent I only. Or persistent O only. The difference between AND and OR is the crucial one. FCPX allows for AND (kind of) but won’t allow OR in any useful sense.”

Yep!

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

Good one.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jim Giberti] “And if I were Apple’s advertising firm I’d use “Whatever Works For You” as the slogan for the new “FCPX 2.0 Introducing Optional Tracks” release.”

Actually, I think the copy should be:

“Final Cut Pro X 2.0… Back On Track”

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “The primary is time. Control the primary, you control time.”

It’s all relative. Not a great way to work with music. Just sayin’.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “you will find absolutely no one. “

I can think of someone 😉

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Like I said, they don’t look, or operate like fcp7 in and out points, but persistent ins and outs are there.

Sorry, I’m stubborn.”

Me too. 😉

Words matter. There’s a reason Apple calls the I and O shortcuts “Set Selection Start” and “Set Selection End”. Apple is hyper-intentional about what they name things. They specifically do not call these marks In and Out points because conceptually they’re framing them differently than traditional In and Out marks.

You’re describing persistent ranges selections with persistent Start and End points. These start/end points can function as In/Out marks, but they do different things as well.

Just because you can use them the same way, doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Let’s put it this way. Let’s say you have multiple clips in your event and you are sorted in chiclet view, not list view. You mark a range on a clip, you skim to the next clip, you expect the range to stay on the first clip, and then stay on the second clip too? So when you hit an overwrite, which clip does X put in the timeline, both? So if I had ranges marked on all clips in my event and I hit overwrite, that means all ranged clips go in to the timeline?

Come on guys, you have to think this whole thing through. Hit f, it does exactly what you want, and more.”

I’t’s not rocket science, Jeremy. It’s UI 101.

Just look at what happens to a range on the timeline when you click in the event browser. It remains but grays out. Just do the exact same thing for clips in the event browser. Gray out ranges for all clips except the one in focus. The clip in focus is the one that get edited into the timeline. Problem solved. You’re welcome.

The ones who need to think this thru are the UI geniuses at Apple.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “Jeremy was saying USB3 would provide enough bandwidth to support a GigE USB NIC along the same form-factor lines as the existing 100BASE USB2 model.”

Ah, missed that about USB3. All good. Though I’ll still grumble about blowing that port on a dongle.

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