[Jim Giberti]

[Charlie Austin] “I think I have a little cred for this opinion, having worked in recording studios since the 80’s, and having been a post mixer (spots, trailers, and the odd indie feature) for about 5-6 years before I magically became an editor. So… I’m not unfamiliar with industry standard, audio mixing environments. ;-)”

I’d never doubt your cred Charlie.

In addition to being creative director and president of my firm I’ve been a performing musician, writer, and producer since I was 18. I built and operated some of the first digital recording and video editing facilities in our region and my personal working studio is a combination 48 track digital audio room and FCP editing suite combined. I’m currently producing a series of 45 short films that I’m shooting and scoring over the next two years.

I’d prefer simple audio tracks as an option.

[Jim Giberti]

[Charlie Austin] “Mixing is one place where X could benefit from… not tracks, but more robust implementation of roles. Roles effectively are tracks in the organizational sense. The problem is, you can’t organize them yet. “

Or actual tracks themselves because they’re a pretty neat way to mix audio now, yesterday and tomorrow.

A lot of us don’t need to utilize Roles for much of what we do, but a common sense, industry standard, audio mixing environment would be a great professional enhancement.

Cause it’s simple, logical, and it would work much better than the current implementation.

[Jim Giberti]

I’m waiting for D Lawrence to weigh in on this discussion.

[Jim Giberti]

[Bill Davis] “I’m not quibbling that many full time seat editors have issues with X. That’s reasonable.
“

But I’m not one of those guys Bill.
I’m the president and creative director of The Imagination Company.
I’m a writer, director, film producer and music producer primarily with a strong focus on strategy and branding.
FCPX is a creative tool I use like Photoshop or Digital Performer.
Now, we do a lot of film and TV work so I work a lot in FCPX, but I’m anything but a full time seat editor.

[Jim Giberti]

[Marcus Moore] “I personally don’t think they’re completely off-base with anything they’ve done. Especially at this stage when it’s obvious some ideas haven’t been fully implemented yet (Roles).”

Obviously I don’t think they were anything like completely off-base either. I’ve produced every film and TV spot we’ve done in the past year+ in FCPX. But I made the commitment to switch to it well aware of it’s flaws and hopeful that they would be addressed through community feedback. Any of the improvements that were actually part of the initial plan get my big thumbs up as well.

But going back to Oliver’s initial question. I definitely don’t see this as part of the initial plan. I do see it as an avenue they’ve opened that does put the “Project Library” concept at a disadvantage in many respects to this different way of managing projects and media through the new CC innovation in 1.0.6

It does, in fact, make the Event Browser a single source of both media and “projects” making it both faster and simpler to access assembled edits or raw media than working through the Project Library. And when you consider the resources that the Project Library requires, the idea of replacing it with a simple browser window looks a lot less CPU intensive, faster and more intuitive as well as improving on the over all paradigm of a self contained environment.

[Jim Giberti]

[Marcus Moore] “So if it had been there from the start, would the concept still be seen as flawed?
“

Well for starters, I don’t know of any technical concepts that aren’t flawed in some ways.
But yes, if Apple had made this obvious and important function part of the initial design then it would have been much more on target as a flexible editor.

Those of us that have been working with X since the fist days and asking for logical and sorely needed fixes to make it a professional tool are being rewarded one way or the other. I think debating what was planned and what is being fixed is a dead end exercise.

But from a simple, definitive standpoint, in very essential ways like these two we’re discussing, the program is moving toward what many of us wanted it to be initially. And the changes most definitely seem responsive at the conceptual level to me, and not part of a “roll-out” of unfinished features.

[Jim Giberti]

[Bill Davis] “I sometimes wonder about the workflows I read about here that seem to try to make X work a bit more like legacy, trying to compound and re-store “edits” in the EB, because to me, that seems to work around what I see as the essential flow of X. “

No more than people wonder about your approach I’m sure Bill.

I like FCPX and use it exclusively in our shop. But it has presented many frustrating moments for me in different production scenarios. Not because, as I see you often suggest, that I am resistant to the new way of doing things. No, not at all. It’s because there are simply some things that, in my and many other professional’s opinions, could be done better than the way it was initially designed. Obviously Apple agrees with us because every upgrade moves closer to our concepts of how it should have worked initially.

That’s all. I Love the program and use most if not all it’s strengths, but you shouldn’t mistake thoughtful approaches to “dams” and “striving for familiarity.” Sometimes people just do smart things that really work better for them and that don’t require a constant assessment of their motives or loyalty to an approach.

[Jim Giberti]

[Marcus Moore] “The tilde key isn’t any indication that the concept was flawed, but simply one that has cases where it needs to be overridden.”

Exactly, it was implemented because the original concept was seen as flawed by so many professional editors.
If it wasn’t flawed they wouldn’t have needed to assign functions to override the initial concept, which they have.
It’s not an added function, it’s a “fix” to give editors the control that was missing in the initial flawed concept.

[Jim Giberti]

That’s a really interesting question, especially when you consider the horse power it takes to manage the project library (or organization necessary to keep it small.)

This simple change, like the tilde key, begs the question: was the initial concept so good to begin with?
I mean that regarding the two most elemental changes Apple made to the paradigm – the project concept and the timeline concept.

A year and a half after release, FCPX is “undoing” two of the most annoying and not so well thought out principles of it’s program.

But yes Oliver, when you look at the project as a scratch pad where you assemble and correct your clips and then a simple command places those edits neatly into a folder ready to be assembled in a final project…then yeah, it seems suddenly weirdly redundant, kludgy and unnecessary to have a project library that loads every startup.
Especially when any events you want access that might contain other clips OR assembled projects/compound clips you might want to use in other projects are all available in the Event Browser.

All that’s needed at this point is a simple viewer to see your projects in order to just open up the file you want to work on…like the perfectly good old days. It would be much faster to access other edits than moving back and forth to the Project Library. And of course you can organize your CCs right there in the Event Browser in any way you like and if you want to make a CC independent of other uses then you can also duplicate it and rename it right there in the EB as well.

On initial thought is seems like a much better option than the original concept in many ways.

[Jim Giberti]

Perfect Brett.
And thanks for pointing out the 1.0.6 change – that’s what had me stuck.
I had just taken the time (which I’m so bad at) to duplicate and copy the used clips all of the X projects from the last year+ and they all did it without the second step.
Don’t you love, as you said, “unannounced” changes.
Everything’s compiling as I type…I can go watch football for a couple of hours.