Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Again, I have no idea how valuable my point is or if I know what I am talking about, or am qualified for your level of expertise, but good riddance to STP. The interchange sucked between 7 and STP.”
I really do beg to differ, sorry!
As someone who has used ProTools for a considerable number of years and several other DAWs besides, can I say that STP was absolutely amazing and gave huge speed advantages when working with FCP.
There were any number of really great ideas in there that never got the chance to shine because of all the negative press that came from people who only ever opened it once, and probably didn’t know what to expect anyway.
Yes, interchange could get a bit flaky with longer form but there was one thing in there that made me forgive all the rest, and that was reconform which in the main worked like a charm, and often jsut as well as Virtual Katy costing a serious amount of money. The amount of time this has saved me over the years has been priceless.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I would welcome Motion to be wrapped in to FCPX as well.”
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but could this be because, like STP, you haven’t used Motion all that much? I can’t see that anyone who recognizes the astonishing depth and complexity, not to mention the massive potential, in Motion, could possibly want to see it diluted by being bundled into FCPX to its certain major detriment, as well as almost certainly the detriment of FCPX.
Please, Apple, if you’re listening, shut your ears to this stuff!!!!!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And X allows you to group your clips formally or informally. But it allows really easy access. I find it way more creative and way more accessible.”
That’s because it sounds like you’re a really good editor who’s good at keeping all the balls in the air at once.
My point is not that you can’t get to your material. It’s rather about the editing mindset, the psychological aspect of how you set about the task, and where less good editors can and do get lost.
If the NLE is somehow suggesting, albeit subliminally, that organization is somehow an end in itself or somehow an intrinsic part of the creative process, then that is distorting the picture in a way that I personally fgeel is undesirable.
Organizing your material on the timeline has massive creative benefits as I have mentioned earlier in this thread and I would hate to see this particular editing skill become sidelined in favour of one that promoted Browser-side organization above any other kind.
And while FCPX is great for editing on the timeline in many ways, I don’t think that it’s yet addressing some of the needs of editors who find that this way of working suits them better. Not being able to send a compound clip to the Browser (yes, I know the workarounds), not being able to tab quickly between projects (OK, you can but only sort of), issues with editing with compound clips themselves (the notorious project bloat problem) – all these point to FCPX not being optimised (yet) for the way I like to work, and that I know works best for me, and that I have seen improve the speed and creativity of any number of editors who have adopted it over the years.
That’s all I’m saying …
(At the same time, I will readily admit that different kinds of editing require and/or favour very different editing strategies.)
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “In 7, I can’t take v1 and v2 and literally put v2 inside of v1”
I’m probably being dense here but surely you can!
You can nest the two together, just the same as making a compound clip. I don’t see what the difference is? You can’t put one clip inside another in FCPX either, except in the sense of making a compound of the two of them.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Tracks contain things, but they aren’t real containers in that I can’t put one inside the other and maintain the relationship”
But we were talking about nests and how they compare to compound clips, not tracks and how they compare to compound clips. Nests are in every sense real containers just as compound clips are. You can step inside those containers and alter the contents, you can save them to the browser (now there’s a great idea!!!), and so on.
[Jeremy Garchow] “And this doesn’t even begin to touch on audio tracks, or Browser side containers.”
Again, I don’t see how this is any different to how nests behave(d). You could, if you wanted, use nests as audio busses, or even video “busses”, by applying global effects to them. You could also use them as “Browser side containers”, actually more so than FCPX.
FCPX has made one huge stride forward with the ability to break apart compound clips, which was a massive drawback to nests, but other than that this is not “new tech” we’re talking about here.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Steve Connor] “I also think the new timeline is fantastic for experimenting with edits and crashing things together to see what works and what doesn’t, before you start the edit.
I’m just about to finish the first cut of a feature I’ve been working on. I planned to organise all the media before I started, but once I began playing with shots on the timeline, things just moved quickly and I’ve ended up hardly logging any of it!”
I think this is a really interesting comment, and personally, although it must sound chaotic to some, I belive this is a really great way of working. And one which FCPX is hugely well suited to, as you say.
My argument is based on seeing so many editors down the years who have fetishised the organizational process to a degree that has serisouly crippled their ability to carry out the creative editing side of the job, which is the only bit that actually matters at the end of the day. (Often, to be a bit harsh about this, I have found that the editors that most fetishise the process are the ones that are actually a bit scared of actually doing the editing. Organization becomes a displacement activity rather than anything of any actual value.)
Your audience, whoever they may be, is not going to give you brownie points for a beautifully organized Event Browser.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “Motion is a tease.”
Absolutely, and it has been for years, though Motion 5 is perhaps a promise that Apple are starting to take it a bit more seriously. I really hope so because I think the foundation is really well conceived and the potential is huge.
The worst thing that could happen now is for Apple to “bundle Motion into FCPX”, as I have noticed quite a few users are suggesting would be a great idea.
It would be a tragically bad idea – for both apps.
To make mograph/compositing converge with editing is absolutely a recipe for disaster.
To my mind, it is the repeated and highly vocal demand over the years for an uber-app to replace Final Cut Studio that has been behind Apple’s thinking with FCPX. Gone are STP and Color, and I don’t think anybody who knows what they’re talking about could say this is an improvement.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] ” I think FCPX’s interface “mirrors” Motion’s container based interface much more so than tracks.”
Arguably, but don’t you think perhaps this whole discussion is getting confused between “things that could be described as similar” and “things which are in fact similar”? There is really no design or conceptual link between the two is there?
I’d also argue that the “container based inferface” was already there in Legacy.
In almost every meaningful sense, FCPX Compounds are the same thing as FCP7 nests with the major exception that you can now break them apart. It’s surely pretty obvious that the concept of Compounds was devised as a way of doing classic nesting only better (and hence more versatile).
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Cmd/Opt/Up Arrow and Cmd/Opt/Down Arrow will move a clip vertically in and out of the primary, but otherwise I’d have said the answer is no, not in the way you want, which is to shuffle connected clips up and down.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “Clone layers [link] let you re-use a layer in other places in the compositing stack, similar to how nodal compositing lets you send multiple outputs from a single node.”
Thanks for the explanation. I did know this about Clone Layers but I wasn’t sure quite what you meant about the “nodal” behaviour. Maybe this discussion is using the word “nodal” more as a metaphor a lot of the time rather than an actual reality, and I kind of think you are doing that there. But your point is still a good one.
Motion is pretty amazing in many ways, I think, and doesn’t deserve to be judged so adversely in comparison to After Effects when there are in fact a number of important things that it does much, much better. Pre-comps in AE are really not a good design idea whichever way you slice it, whereas Motion Groups (and things like Clone Layers) give you a distinctly superior control a lot of the time.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
HAve a look here for an answer to this:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/5229
(No ruler though.)
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -