Franz Bieberkopf
Forum Replies Created
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[Walter Soyka] “We are very focused here on the situations where FCPX is a poorer solution than Legend. Might not there be cases where it’s a better solution?”
Walter,
From what I’ve read, it seems X is probably quite good and maybe the best A/B model NLE there is.
I don’t read this thread as “FCPX vs. Legend” so much as “new paradigm necessity” vs. status quo; the status quo is quite varied of course, but the claim is that “everything has changed”.
I’m interested in X and the implications, but I also find it interesting, for instance, that the ongoing proponents of X here in the forum have chimed in with comment thats seem to eschew theoretical considerations, and the implications that design models have on editing. It seems to be some of those that are apparently married to traditional models that are most interested in understanding how models impact on editing practice, and most open to exploring those implications.
Franz.
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[Walter Soyka] “… not the global sense of the word.”
Walter,
In the global sense of the word, parent/child groups are pretty hard to define.
Franz.
Edit – on reflection, my humour may have been too dry there; suffice to say I am still trying to understand my relationship with my parents.
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Steve,
Seriously, you’re going to reduce the thread to “you people”, one “suggestion” and a right/wrong sandbox fight?
[Steve Connor] “… if that’s your suggestion …”
You could read the thread to find out …
Franz.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “the fascinating point in that video is that editing can imbue true – and transportive – meaning.”
Aindreas,
Marienbad is a great example, of course. If you were cutting that film and started with questions of story, you’d be lost as an editor. On the other hand it is highly structured (helped in no small way by script and prep). This is all the more wonderful since the film relies so much on story and storytelling techniques.
Franz.
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ADDENDUM
Though he claims the opposite, Walter (below) has provided a good definition of the special kind of groupings that are parent / child connections.
PARENT / CHILD GROUPINGS
[Walter Soyka] With FCPX’s clip connections, one clip is connected to another in terms of the latter; one clip is a parent, and the other clip is a child of that parent (anchored at a specific point on each side of the relationship). Moving the parent affects both the parent and the child because the child inherits from the parent. Moving the child affects only the child and not the parent because inheritance is one-way.
With Pr’s grouped clips, the clips are peers. Their anchoring is based on a common externality (absolute time); there is no single pivot point for that linkage. Once the clip is grouped, they are fundamentally treated as a single object, not as two objects with a hierarchical relationship.
The presence in FCPX of that movable connection anchor point means that reflow is contextual, and editorial maneuvers on one side of the anchor will have a different result than maneuvers on the other side. More on the ramifications of this difference in a moment.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/41599
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[Walter Soyka] “The benefit to the editor would be that the editor can concentrate on the story in terms of the story, without engaging in the editorial bookkeeping necessary to keep a traditional tracked timeline following a story.”
Walter,
This I need to respond to, as it is a fundamental ideological standpoint that I have problems with.
The purpose of an NLE is to arrange video and audio in time. Broadly, we call this activity “editing”.
Storytelling is one application or approach to editing. It does not encompass all that editing is.
Further, A/B editing is one approach to the problem of editing. It does not encompass all that editing is.
Apple have made an ideological choice in an editing model based on A/B editing, and further like to fill out this ideological choice with the language of “storytelling”.
What I see as ideological limits no doubt aid many in their editing. They should not be taken as the limits of – nor even the best way of describing – what editing is.
As an aside, for me the best way to think about editing is in terms of structure – my own theory is that “story” is an effect felt by the audience, and therefore of limited value in terms of thinking about approaches and mechanics. By way of analogy – when you’re trying to learn how to pull a rabbit out of a hat, thinking of the effect (the illusion, the way it plays for the audience) only gets you so far; for the rest, you need to be a magician with attendant stagecraft.
All of which is to say that any marketing campaign that focuses on “letting me tell my story” seems just that – marketing. Storytelling, structuring, editing, filmmaking are complex undertakings. Better tools will help me edit better. That’s what I want.
Franz.
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David,
To momentarily ignore the questions at hand and add further questions – your post (and the subsequent responses) got me thinking about clip relationships. I thought I’d sketch out a summary or lexicon of the kinds of relationships that we’re talking about – since there are a range of relationships, each with its own concerns.
Before discussing “grouping” as you’ve outlined, it’s worth noting that grouping connects clips both serially and in parallel – that is, there are two kinds of relationships being “locked” – serial and parallel.
More on that in a second, but it’s important to note also that there are various levels of certainty about relationships that we’re discussing. This might be best explained by illustrations: so in case one, video sync with associated sound is a fairly “certain” or “hard” relationship that we either want to keep or at least be aware of as an edit progresses; in case two, the relationship of a close-up to a wide shot or video to music would be more contingent, more likely to change more often, and therefor we might call it “softer” (we may wish to lock that relationship to do some work, but it is just as likely to be unlocked and changed as an edit progresses).
Using these two ways of categorizing clip relationships, we can break down typical relationships in a timeline:
SYNC V&A (PRODUCTION)
– video and sound recorded together in one clip by a camera or recorder (Parallel)
SYNC V&A (POST)
– dual system recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)
– multicam recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)
– playback recording; sync is established in post (Parallel & Serial)SYNC (EDITORIAL) (“Faux Sync”)(Parallel, but could also be Serial)
– Example: adding a sound effect specific (door close, vehicle pass) that you wish to maintain in sync with picture
– Example: adding sound effects to animation that you wish to maintain in sync with pictureCOMPOSITED PICTURE (Parallel, but could also be Serial)
– Example: green screen, titles, etc.Editorial Sync and Composited Picture (the last two) might even be considered the same category – they are things you’ve put in the timeline that you wish to keep together on some fundamental level; in practice though they work quite differently in terms of their workflow implications so I’ve left them separate.
TRACKS
– Tracks represent a Serial kind of grouping – you can see, select, or affect all serial clips in one trackBUSSES
– A supergrouping of Tracks, therefore both Parallel and SerialIt’s interesting to note (as Michael Gissing has) that the idea of tracks (as serial groups) and therefor busses as supergroups, tend to be underused in NLEs. This becomes evident if you think of adding an effect to an audio track (in a DAW) and then try to imagine the same in an NLE (possible in Premiere Pro), and then try to imagine doing something similar to a video track. More on this below
ROLES
– Roles (in FCPX) represent an arbitrary, user-defined grouping (Parallel & Serial)PARENT / CHILD GROUPINGS
– someone else will have to write this one; though I’m not sure it is fundamentally different from Editorial Groups (they could probably be included there)EDITORIAL GROUPS
– Examples: Pro Tools Grouping, Premiere Pro Grouping, FCP7 Nesting (sort of), FCP X Compounds etc. (Parallel and Serial)
– in short this category encompasses any way of combining material in the timelineThe Editorial Groups – the actual subject of your post – is of course the most contingent group; it should be easy to group (to maintain integrity) and ungroup (to change). It’s also interesting because it encompasses serial decisions much more than the other groups, some of which are entirely parallel).
By way of a related digression …
One aspect to all the track conception discussions which has been very evident but not as directly discussed is the different meanings that tracks have for audio and video. Audio tracks are very much modelled on the audio mixer (though only Premiere Pro seems to have taken this analogy in a more developed direction). Video tracks seemed to have arrived as an analogous counterpart to audio tracks, also partially from the multi-deck broadcast & ganged film flatbed analogy, and partially from the Photoshop layers analogy. Video tracks have characteristics of both Photoshop layers and the organizational grid of a mixer, without quite being either. On the other hand, video tracks clearly allow for the audio analogy – you can “mix” layers of video (not quite as easily) as you do audio.
Picture editing tends to be concerned more with serial editing (shot after shot) and sound editing tends to bring issues of parallel editing (mixing) to the fore. Of course there are issues of serial editing in sound and parallel editing in picture (compositing and superimpositions for example). But because audio is often more concerned with parallel relationships, audio tracks are more apparently useful in terms of their editing function (mixing) as well as their organizing function. Video tracks seem to be less evidently useful in this way – this is usually evident from looking at timelines from novice editors – they don’t usually have a use for more than one or two tracks. More experienced editors, and particularly those involved in traditional online situations, tend to use video tracks in a more organizational way.
But returning to the questions at hand …
I think I wanted to outline that basic nomenclature because it’s clear already from the comments here that there are specific differences in the terms of what is needed for the different levels of “grouping” – production sync, for instance, is a very hard relationship that I want to be able to find easily. But it is also useful to think of it as one end of a spectrum of relationships. It’s clear to me that there is some flexible hierarchy of groupings needed – and yet they should in fact be thought of as part of a spectrum.
None of this, of course, answers your questions.
Franz.
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Michael,
I think you’re speeding through some ideas that I’d be interested in hearing about at more length (though you have talked about them before, this might be an ideal forum in which to reiterate).
I think you are specifically talking about Fairlight, but I am wondering if you can elaborate to more general terms per David’s post.
[Michael Gissing] “To take maximum advantage of clip layering it should be possible to show the stack, enable interaction between layers like dissolves, keying, opacity etc plus a simple way to rotate the stack to move various layers up and down. Layering is a powerful way to have alternatives in place.”
I assume by “layering”, you mean something akin to David’s (PPro) “grouping”? Or do you mean more specifically something akin to FCP X auditioning?
[Michael Gissing] “Temporary or permanent grouping has been available to me all those years and I can honestly say temporary grouping is useful and powerful but permanent grouping is far less useful.”
Can you define the differences between “temporary” and “permanent” in more general terms? or is it specific to Fairlight?
Franz.
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[David Lawrence] “Curious to hear what Walter and others have to say.”
David,
Perhaps a new thread is in order …
I’ve often thought that we need some sort of wiki for conceptual references, as I tend to lose the thread and rely on searches and faulty memory later.
Oliver Peters has a sketch for a historical outline, for instance, and there are certain recurring themes.
Franz.
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[Craig Seeman] “I think Roles will allow much more freedom (eventually).
I also think Connections will progress as well into something more nodal.”Craig,
Maybe. Personally I like to distribute my overly-optimistic hopes about pretend software evenly to all comers.
By that measure, Premiere Pro will have the best media relink capability of anyone.
Franz.