Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Jeremy Garchow
Ok, then. Perhaps auditions won’t work for you. For spot work, they are rather flexible. Change the slate/tag. You could do 40 spots on one timeline.
In principle this could work but in practice this would be pretty clunky. The main reason being that you can’t actually identify the contents of an audition without actually selecting it and checking it’s waht you want.
There’s a lot of nice cover-flow type chrome going on there but it would be much more desirable to be able to name your individual audition clips so you could see at a glance which you were trying to pick. Usually what you have to pick out in this kind of scenario is some small detail of text which you’re just never going to be able to see in the audition until you load the wrong one …
Also I would have to set up the slate/tag/clock as an audition and try and work out which was which there as well – experience tells that this would quickly lead to mistakes. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get the wrong slate on the wrong spot even when you’re been really disciplined about it which is why I’d have thought it was always going to be best to have each spot tidily arranged with its corresponding slate and end tag in a conventional timeline type situation rather than selecting stuff out of an audition.
In FCPX I’d still prefer to stack connected clips above each other with variants (muting as necessary) rather than use auditions because it’s just quicker and less tiresome. Auditions really do feel to me like a gimmick at this point rather than a powerful new tool – though anything could change …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I’m talking about all the things you can do with channels in AE under the Effect/Channels menu for example. Or in a real compositing app like Shake, Nuke, Fusion or even the humble (but very clever) Conduit.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
My mistake, Andy, sorry – thanks for correcting me.
But the quote you have highlighted still stands, I think, though now you’ve got me doubting myself. There really should be some way in Motion of splitting out the individual RGBA channels, performing operations on them individually and then recombining them – this is compositing 101 and I haven’t been able to find any way of ever doing that in Motion.
And now you’re going to tell me I’ve been missing an obvious trick all these years …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Bill Davis
I don’t want to be harsh here, but with the advent of cheap “instruction” software and the ability of every and anyone to set up a “screen recording” and a microphone and pretend to be an instructor – are we join to be forever having to wade through content like this?
I had to read this twice before I could get my head around the fact that this is the same Bill Davis who has been so consistently and volubly lauding the democratisation of video editing (or shall we just call it the “advent of cheap editing software”?) as the best thing since the invention of the sliced loaf 😉
Sorry, Bill – a cheap shot, I know, but just too tempting to be ignored.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Mad, brilliant and hysterically funny. Thanks!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Chris Harlan on Nov 26, 2011 at 8:52:28 pm
Yeah, I definately keep thinking about the audition feature and how I might apply it for my work.
I know this is going to upset Jeremy, sorry, but I can’t see how auditions are much of an advance on just stacking alternates above each other on the timeline – except that the latter is easier to keep track of, muting what you don’t want (Ctrl/B) or soloing it (Ctrl/S) to taste.
Compared to this standard practice auditions feel clunky – what you want to get at is hidden away in a sub-menu rather than laid out graphically in front of you.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Thanks for the link, Tony – but more knowledgeable people than I am have come to the conclusion that it’s very undesirable in the long run to use compound clips instead of projects, despite what this guy says.
It’s been quite widely discussed around here – a lot of folks latched onto this workflow very early on and found it problematic.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
As you say, it’s hard to see how the sums work out on this – but it’s definitely worrying that quitting and relaunching doesn’t do enough to correct the issue.
Making selects on the timeline is a fundamental component of most of my workflows with advantages that can’t be achieved any other way, so it’s a concern that FCPX doesn’t seem to be well set up to cope with that.
Have indeed submitted feedback to Apple – but I woukld be seriously concerned if they weren’t already aware of this very basic issue!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Of course the file size itself is largely an irrelevance – the reason I am highlighting it is what it shows about project bloat most especially when editing with compund clips.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Jeremy
The point about the project size is that it does slows you down quite quickly in this instance – or at least it slows my machine down once you get up around 60MB until you start hitting beachball territory (Mac Pro 2 x 2.26 GHz dual quad core with 8GB RAM, not blazingly powerful I know).
Quitting and relaunching does help to reduce the filesize but not nearly enough – see my latest post in this thread for more details.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com