[Paul Dickin]

[David Lawrence] ” I’m primarily interested in what AV foundation, i.e. an object data model means for FCP UI in broader terms. “
Hi
This is, I think, the $64,000 question.

[Michael Aranyshev] “CoreData and AVFoundation are parts of the system, so they are sort of “free”.”

Apple have nailed their colours to the mast, and bet the crown jewels on their new (iOS-derived) core technologies. For better for worse… 😉

[Andrew Richards] “AVFoundation is Apple’s new framework for dealing with time-based media. …It does four basic things: read media, play media, assemble media, and export media.”

QuickTime has allowed media to be ‘assembled’ within a .mov file, in a manner very similar to Michael Gissing’s layered single track methodology – lots of tracks (video, audio, timecode, chapter points, text overlays etc). But its been a very clunky technology.

[Michael Gissing] “I see no reason why AV foundation versus quicktime should make any difference to how a GUI displays something as basic as a timeline.”

Apple has totally transformed the old QT legacy concepts with their new foundation – this is what they say about how AV Foundation is used to assemble media:
Editing
AV Foundation uses compositions to create new assets from existing pieces of media (typically, one or more video and audio tracks). You use a mutable composition to add and remove tracks, and adjust their temporal orderings. You can also set the relative volumes and ramping of audio tracks; and set the opacity, and opacity ramps, of video tracks. A composition is an assemblage of pieces of media held in memory. When you export a composition using an export session, it’s collapsed to a file.

It seems to me that the section I’ve emphasised is an excellent description of a basic FCP X timeline.

This being so:-
i) There is no ‘Project’ as such to define a timeline – its description is all being recorded by the OS and CoreData.
ii) FCP X is just a GUI and a toolkit to build and modify these AV Foundation ‘mutable compositions’.

[Michael Gissing] “In audio DAWs (good ones like Fairlight) you can stack clips on top of each other on a track. So your other edits are safe underneath. You always hear the top layer.”

That in itself is a complex methodology in a 2D interface, as you have to visually represent the hidden layers in some meaningful way. If you shift the axis of your ‘viewpoint’ by 90º then the tracks are all visible again – all layed out side-by-side or above and below…

FCP 1-7’s Project-based data structure made a traditional timeline an excellent GUI paradigm.
The very different essence of an AV Foundation mutable composition I think requires as different a control GUI,
as say an aeroplane does compared to a car. Joy stick compared to a steering wheel 😉

As to the linearity of time. Musical notation has traditionally had to deal with the progress of time in a flexible way – how fast do the pages of a pianist’s sheet music have to be turned during a Chopin Prelude for the fast and slow movements. The old NLE timeline paradigm is very inflexible in this respect

[Paul Dickin]

[Chris Kenny] “With all the differences in …the rendering engine, the included filters and generators, the available compositing modes, etc. people shouldn’t expect such translation to work all that well, which is probably why Apple doesn’t want to build it in — they don’t feel they can deliver something they can stand behind.”
Hi
I just found this, which presumably explains some of the difficulties:

AVFoundation takes an entirely different tact. It actually uses CoreAnimation as it’s rendering backend, meaning for editing you create an entire CoreAnimation tree, and push it into AVFoundation when it’s time to render. CoreAnimation itself let’s you do the realtime previews.

This is incidentally why importing a FCP7 into FCPX is a bad idea. CoreAnimation is not going to be a pixel accurate representation of what you had in your FCP7 project.
https://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=12882751&postcount=42

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Isn’t Quicktime EOL’d since v7.*?

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Agreed.
This forum needs now to move on to ‘What we have Now’, and not ‘What we Had Then’ and ‘What we Will have When…’.
Chris and all the other stalwarts like Craig – and the rest – have been tireless in explaining both the visible and the invisible aspects of this brand new software tool.
Thank you 🙂

[Paul Dickin]

[Ben Holmes] “I don’t honestly believe Apple did not forsee ALL of this. Cancelling 7 was as clear a marker as we could ever hope to get about their views. … It means all of this is actually going according to plan.”
Hi
Yup. 🙁
Maybe they reckoned that as there are mature alternatives for their erstwhile customers to immediately switch to the spin-off would be less high-profile.

[Paul Dickin]

[Mike Parfit] “So is it really a failure?”
Hi
Whilst FCP X is unlikely to remain on any academic curriculum for some time, I expect the launch, like Edsel or New Coke, will feature in the syllabus of most Business Schools marketing courses for the next half century or so.
The bigger you are the harder you fall 🙁

[Paul Dickin]

[Mike Stroven] “That’s a *BOLD* statement! I guess this “expert” wasn’t there…”
Nah!
He’s moved on to creating the Cloud, and designing a new mothership glass HQ building for Apple.
/LostInTranslation 😉

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Ben Holmes“I hear on the COW FCPX projects won’t be read on an ethernet SAN?
Not true – it took my SAN vendor about 5 minutes and a couple of lines of code to get this working”. OH – OK.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/7278

[Paul Dickin]

[Chris Kenny] “…make what turn out to be hilariously inaccurate predictions about Apple’s future behavior on that basis.”
Hi
Like the fact that the bulk educational deal (hardware + software) that was there on Monday would be there on Tuesday…

[Chris Kenny] “…It’s an old, tired game.”
Good game! Good game!
(British TV gameshow presenter’s catchphrase).

Apple have (unilaterally) decided that educational establishments and professional post businesses don’t need any incentive to get this software to fly out of the App Store.

Like iPhone apps, the kids will download (= pay for) it anyway, so there’s no need for ANY long term formal incentives or committments.
Does that seem a good business plan for a college or business – writing that sort of partner in?

Fine for the kids though…
When they find a Red Scarlet free in their coco-pops 😉

[Paul Dickin]

[Andrew Stone] “Apple has presented itself as being incompatible with the business requirements of the industry… …the industry’s needs and continuity with licensing requirements…
Right now I am trying to figure out the best way to move forward in a business case scenario and so are many other people and production facilities.”

And it appears that Apple doesn’t even care.