[Herb Sevush]

“FCPX’s default behaviors amount to editorial decisions. When the software automatically resolves a conflict, it’s making default assumptions about my editorial intent. Short of reading my mind, I don’t see how it can ever get this right more often than not.”

This is one of the 2 conceptual ideas that I have the biggest problem with.

The other is related in a way, but it’s the idea of “connectedness’ as a virtue. It seems like X desperately wants to keep audio and video connected to each other – but that is a very limiting way of working.

The first thing I do after creating an assembly is DISconect everything – I literally hit select all and un-link the audio from the video. Now this habit may have come about because I’m normally working with multi-cam files, but I do this even when working on single camera projects. I think it enables me to be much more free with my approach to the material. And this absolutely goes against the grain of what X is trying to do, for fear inexperienced editors may much up their sync.

It’s not that you can’t do things in X, it’s that it seems to be optimized for the inexperienced.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“Did you read Alex4d’s blog about the “Guard” function? All of a sudden, the story lines might make a little more sense.”

Yes I had read them before. Did you remember the opening disclaimer?

“Inside FCP X there hints of features that have yet to be fully implemented, or have been dropped and never to be made available. There’s no way of knowing which is which…”

I’m not holding my breath waiting for the “Guard” feature to come out. Here I’m going to have to simply disagree with you. I think Apple’s handling of this whole rollout makes a simple statement – we are not interested in the high end market.

Apple is out of that part of the business. They will provide the API hooks and let others try to turn FCPX into a high end tool, but they are no longer in that end of the business. They want to make a great Prius – they’ll let other companies try to modify it for NASCAR if they want to, but Apple is out.

If that’s not the case somebody has to come up with an explanation for their behavior. Lacking that explanation, I’ll take the events to mean what they seem to mean. Otherwise I’m like the girl who says, “yeah, he punched me in the face, but I know, deep down, he did it because he loves me…”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Jeremy –

Thanks for taking the time to deal with my obtuseness. When Apple wants me back as a customer I’ll take a look. I agree that this is not a product made for Soccer Mom’s only, it’s just that I don’t think it was made for me either. They seem to have gone to a lot of trouble creating a new UI that fixes things that I didn’t have a problem with, and were not very interested in coming up with solutions to problems I already had.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

And the just released “Magnetic Wheel” prevents “keyboard collisions” – those times when 2 fingers try to strike the same key at the same time. With the “Magnetic Wheel” your fingers automatically slide sway from each other, one ending up in your nose, the other in a nether region.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“FCPx takes care of this by simply sliding the clips out of the way, but keeping them in place and the things connected to them in time, not necessarily at the same exact tc mark, but they are still together.”

But once you’ve slid these things out of the way, don’t you then still have to decide what to so with them. If I get it right, in the magnetic timeline if I extend or move a piece of audio, the already existing audio simply slides to a new track, but keep it’s temporal place in the timeline, and I now have 2 pieces of audio fighting each other.

Generally I don’t want the audio sliding to a new track, I want it to either be rippled down the timeline or overwritten entirely. It sounds to me like you have just delayed making the decision as to what you want to do with the 2 pieces of conflicting audio. If it’s video sliding out of the way you now have 1 clip buried by another doing nothing, waiting a further decision.

I’ll apologize if I’m being obtuse here, I haven’t tried X yet because I’m strictly multi-cam and for the time being it’s not an option, but ever since seeing the NAB sneak, this whole “clip collision” thing has made no sense to me.

I get the Auditions Feature, Compound Clips = Nesting improved, I get that as well. But even after your discussion, I still think most rippling, sliding, trimming operations are either too complex or too simple to need this feature. I’m not saying it would never come in handy, but I consider it a fairly trivial addition to an editors tool kit. Again, maybe it will have to wait till I actually try it, if ever.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“I feel I spent a lot of energy manually accounting for collisions in legacy FCP”

Really? Can you give some examples of this and then describe how it’s easier in FCPX.

Personally, this whole “clip collision” issue is something I don’t get, I’ve never been editing in FCP and said to myself – “damm, these clip collisions are killing me, there must be a better way.” But maybe I just don’t get what you’re talking about so an example would be helpful.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“I don’t want editing to be hampered by my hand eye coordination or lack thereof.”

New slogan – “From the folks who killed of Shake, we bring you FCPX, for editors with the shakes!”

But wait, how do you select the clips to be connected and compounded? No mouse use there?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“So before FCPX it was hard?”

Michael, your not the first to ask that question, and definitely not the last.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/11474

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, referring to or trying to say.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

FCP7 worked well for both of us, FCPX only works well for you. Which is why this whole transformation leaves you smiling and me scowling. So tell me again about the greater flexibility of the relational database model.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions