[Jim Giberti]

So when you reproduced it, did it crash and then lose all work to that point?

It’s happened to me, probably not coincidentally, while working once on a graphic and another time while making a color correction.

In another instance (before being aware of this nasty potential) I made a wholesale change to a spot to quickly look at it and then hit undo. Of course after making the change, there was no undo and I lost all of that work.

[Jim Giberti]

I’d like to compare projects/system scope to see if there’s any relationship to my end Steve.

What kind of project – size and complexity…is it something that’s making X chug throughout or is it literally just triggered by a single action.

I’m wondering if there is some relationship between it’s poor RAM management, project bloat, beachballness and the undo bug.

[Jim Giberti]

[Don Walker] “Am I missing something?
“

Tracks?

[Jim Giberti]

Had it happen twice in early versions not since 1.0.3.

The way this program uses RAM is just crazy, with no way to clear the cache. I don’t know if they’re related but I keep Activity Monitor open and quit every time I get close to RAM out. By that time the program is so sluggish that I really don’t need to check and just automatically quit whenever it bogs down.

The 1.0.3 beach ball upgrade has got me scratching my head too.

[Jim Giberti]

[David Roth Weiss] “Right on the money as always Jim.
“

Thanks David. I like David L’s idea of the vestigial tail. Looking at that icon it’s obvious that there was a different stage of development for fcpx than where it ended up. It means there were serious people putting serious thought into what many of us expected and are asking for.

How’s this for another philosophical conundrum: I was wrestling with some complex audio in the timeline last weekend and wanted to see if there was another way of organizing my edit in real time in the timeline, as I would normally do – without using Compound Clips.

Here’s what occurred to me. I had a dozen blade edits from a long clip of VO takes. I pulled all my selects there against my footage and deleted all the rest ready to nudge.

So when I selected the first clip in what was a horizontal array of edits and then clicked the last in that
“linear row”…well, it selected all the clips in between – that’s not supposed to exist in X theory.
In other words I could have done any number of things that would have moved any of those clips out of linear relationship with each other…they would have descended/ascended to the nearest gap toward the Primary.

But for now, the clips were all in the linear row that I want much of my work to be, and when I did the traditional front/back click, X treated them demonstrably as elements in a horizontal linear relationship.

I can’t believe that Apple couldn’t bring back the advantages of, at least, an analogous track concept with both linear and parent child relationships a la Motion. They clearly had the idea in development and maybe that is what was actually meant in the rumor that they developed and ditched a FCP8 64 bit approach.

[Jim Giberti]

Any professional working with FCPX knows that it’s not just an incomplete program, but an incomplete concept.

Accepting an incomplete program as a step ahead of the competition is counter productive.
Companies need reasonable and firm response from users in order to implement critical changes and fixes.

Contrary to some companies philosophies, no one knows what needs to be in a toolset better than the people using the tools.

Campuses and teams are great, but the real work happens in the field and that’s where the real innovations are born.

[Jim Giberti]

They happen to me with dismaying frequency these days. Always when loading X (I’ve currently got maybe ten 30 second spots and one 3 minute short film linked to perhaps 7 Events.)

The other issue I see is how quickly X chugs through RAM – with no purge function. It’s really pretty lame. The only way to restore the program when it reaches the cold molasses stage is to quit it and restart. Not really very evolved.

[Jim Giberti]

Since 1.0.3 I’ve found the spinning beachball moments to be almost intolerable. I’ve been scrupulous about optimizing drive and I always have plenty of RAM available.

There seems to be a major flaw with the constant writing/saving. Also booting and loading the projects and events seems to take longer than previous versions.

It feels like it’s thinking too much and has lost a lot of responsiveness IMO

And then there’s the issue of having to re-render some projects every time you open the project.

[Jim Giberti]

Thank you Simon.

[Jim Giberti]

[Andy Neil] “And BTW, the timeline doesn’t place things in random order at all. There is a method to it. I know it’s not what you’re used to or want, but its unfair to say it’s random.”

Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like it’s an accidental placement, but you’re point is mine – if it’s not where I want it then it’s not manual control.

It’s very much a form of auto or program mode that assumes, to the best of it’s ability, what the user wants in an average situation. Program mode, auto exposure, auto gain – the things DSLR filmmakers pleaded with Canon to restore, and they quickly did, to HD.

Roles are great, but they don’t replace the ability to visually assess your creative in front of you which is certainly a standard practice of visual artists. They give you a mental, representational organizational tool…a way to define your intent. Combine that with a spatial, real time reference to your project and you’ve got something much better than what it is now, because it offers both valuable ways to organize and create.

It’s why Motion is a more sophisticated interface IMO – it intelligently offers a very dualistic approach to creative development – with groups and parent/child relationships that can be opened and closed in one tab and a linear timeline representing the same information that can be opened or closed in another.

It’s a good debate Andy, and I appreciate your ideas.