Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m not being snide, but if Adobe is impressing you with their demos, then what are you still doing here?”
Because I’m interested in all of this stuff – the good, the bad, the success stories, the disappointments, the questionable, the arguable, and more than anything else, without partisanship, the genuinely great ideas, whoever happens to come up with them.
But I’ll shut up now and retrieve my outdoor attire …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And if it is? So what?”
As Walter kindly pointed out on my behalf, my point was to try and establish that the development cycle for FCPX has seemingly already been a fairly lengthy one …
And this being so, the pace of that development seems less than encouraging.
I am an enthusiastic fan (yes, I can be a fan too!) of the relatively new 3D application called Modo. It’s made by what appears to be a pretty tiny company that just happen to be passionate about what they do – and who incidentally are making a genuinely outstanding and beautifully designed product. (I have no financial or other interest in the product or the company.)
With their relatively limited resources they manage to turn out major updates pretty much once a year and the latest version (Modo 501) released last Xmas is currently on its fifth Service Pack – yup, that’s right SP5!
With the greatest respect to the technology and design behind FCPX, I find it hard to believe that it is as complex a product to develop as a professional level 3D package (I speak from total ignorance, of course).
My point, which I have finally arrived at by a circuitous route, is that I don’t see Apple working at this sort of rate of development with this product. Conversely, I do see a company like Adobe pushing the barriers of what is possible in ways that are truly breath-taking … for example with innovations like this:
Granted FCPX is new and controversial but is it really as technologically ground-breaking as the ideas that regularly come out of Adobe?
OK, so FCPX is going to move on and we may well not have seen the half of it yet – but is it really moving fast enough in today’s world?
Heck, I don’t know – just posing the question …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
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OK, got you.
When you get a chance to look at the effect, you’ll see that this is what I’ve done. The outer circle of the OSC is the exact shape of the mask (well, not exact when it’s a rectangle shape obviously but totally exact when it’s a circle), so I think that sort of gives the result you’re looking for.
Is there a link to your blur filter or is it something you made for yourself?
Thanks for your input 🙂
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Andy Neil] “As a suggestion, have you thought about creating a guide for the size, position, scale of the power window?”
I’m not quite getting what you mean here – sounds interesting but what did you have in mind?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Hi Andy
It controls the position, scale and rotation* of the “power window” – but you won’t see anything until you actually change the grading parameter values for the window.
* centre control affects position, outer ring affects scxale, handle affects rotation.
Hope that works for you – do let me know if you still have problems but it all checks out this end.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “I agree with this — but I don’t think that’s what Simon was doing at all.
He was pointing out that to the extent that FCPX and iMovie share concepts, interfaces, and data structures, FCPX has effectively been in development for more than 4 years.”
Thanks, Walter – that’s exactly what I was trying to convey. I had to go the long way around to try and make the point … !
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Because they share some of the same terms doesn’t mean they are the same program or even share the code, which means that FCP does not equal iMovie form the very foundation of it, even though they may look the same.”
That old favourite of these forums, William of Occam, he say: entea non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or in the plain language of the Angles beatified by Augustine: entities should not be multiplied if not absolutely necessary.
But of course this somehow doesn’t apply to the iMovie/FCPX conundrum, where of course we are talking about two completely different things.
Let us not talk about the superficial similarities of the entire interface which are well known but utterly irrelevant.
Let’s not discuss why FCPX shares the exactly the same idiosyncratic and not altogether perfect project management window as iMovie.
Let’s not talk about how the Transitions, Generators, Music and Effects, Titles, etc. browsers are identical in design and operation.
Let’s not talk about how the FCPX Event library with its underlying metadata management system was so oddly but coincidentally prefigured in iMovie.
Let’s above all not draw attention to the fact that the magnetic timeline with its default rippling behaviour (!), its connected clips (!), its apparently identical Replace modes (!), its Precision Editor (!) and so on and so on, all seemed to have appeared in iMovie long before we knew anything about FCPX.
Let’s not remind ourselves that the very same designer unjustly vilified for his creation of FCPX was earlier unjustly vilified for his creation of iMovie 08 – naturally he would have remembered nothing of what he’d done earlier with iMovie (apparently in another dimension of space and time) when quite by chance he came to work on FCPX.
None of this is relevant, because old William of O. is just plain wrong in this case.
We are talking about two entities which only appear to be the same by the merest coincidence and did in fact, miraculously, arise entirely spontaneously and independently during the same timeframe in exactly the same spot on the planet.
It is of course much more likely that Apple just happened to design FCPX along the exact same lines as iMovie without having remembered that they’d done it all before, than that FCPX, heaven forfend, is in any way descended from iMovie.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Video now not private so you should be able to see it now – sorry about that!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Chris Harlan] ” I just use ctrl-V to split all my tracks, then “t” or insert edit to move all else over, then I heal as needs be. I can do exactly the same thing in Avid.”
But not if there are dissolves in the way – same thing applies in both FCP and MC. You’d have to take the extra step of removing the dissolves first. (Incidentally why not map the Ctrl/V function onto just plain V? You’ll never look back, especially for ease of adding edits on the fly.)
As I mentioned in my reply to David L., it’s not that I don’t know how to do this stuff in FCP and MC – there are plenty of ways of approaching it. The point I wanted to make is that for all the scenarios of this that I come up against FCPX is the clear winner. On this one point alone, I hasten to add.
I notice that you like me do quite a bit of complex short form spots/trailers where the audio really stacks up in highly complex ways – this is exactly the kind of situation where the FCPX way of opening gaps would be far preferable. If only we could find ways of coming to terms with all the other currently unworkable nonsense!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Lawrence] “1) zoom out to reveal your tracks first
2) TTT – make sure you select forward in front of any overlapping clips
3) A – use command-select to select any clips you missed (you can drag to rubber band multiples) or deselect any clips you don’t want.”I’m sorry – I obviously didn’t make it clear what I was talking about (certainly not the first time!). What I was describing and illustrating was exactly what you have described and exactly how I would deal with this situation. My focus was actually more on the audio side where things tend to get even messier (more elaborate!) than your video example and where I think FCPX particularly scores the advantange.
Here’s why I think the track tool method in FCP is laborious – let’s take a typical example of something that I deal with.
To simplify let’s have one track of video and 16 tracks of audio (typically I will have more like 24 but I know this is unusual).
Let’s also assume that half of those audio tracks “overlap” the selection point and let’s assume that half of them have dissolves on at one end.
So here are the keystrokes:
1) Hit T three times (incidentally you can simplify this by hitting T once and then using the Shift key as you make your selection – I find this a lot smoother and quicker).
2) Hit A to start deselecting your tracks.
3) Click eight times to deselect the overlapping clips you don’t want included in the selection.
4) Click eight more times to deselect the dissolves.
And you’re just about there.
Except that you almost certainly need to zoom out, zoom back in, scroll horizontally and scroll vertically to make sure you’ve made the appropriate selections/deselections.
I make that well over 20 actions to achieve the desired result in this case. Bear in mind that in my situation there will be more tracks to take care of and more actions.
This being the case I really don’t think the one action Opt/W (Insert Gap) FCPX method comes off too badly!
I have yet to try it out over hundreds and hundreds of different edit situations (I can’t use FCPX professionally yet for reasons that should be obvious) but I find that this technique does actually work 100% accurately 100% of the time.
The only wrinkle I could see affecting it is if you had some very eccentric clip connections in the first place.
In the case of a music overhang where of course some “healing” is always going to be required whatever method you use, I suppose I would make an edit in the music clip, attach the end section to where I wanted it to end and proceed with the insert gap method as normal.
I hasten to add that I am in no way an FCPX apologist – I do think there are major issues with everything not least the magnetic timeline (but most of all the lack of essential interchange tools that for me are a non-negotiable must-have for which no dodgy third party workaround is going to cut the mustard, now or ever).
That being said, I wanted to applaud the one thing that I have been able to find that would make my day-to-day editing life substantially smoother. (Maybe it’s because I’ve been stuck on Media Composer for the last three weeks that this feature seems incredibly appealing right now.)
Also I’m not saying I have any special difficulty making any of this work in either Media Composer or FCP Legacy, it’s just that I resent the work involved and the consequent disruption to the speed the creative process (that crucial thing called “flow”). A few extra seconds is still a few extra seconds – individually they represent a hiccup, collectively they add up to significant loss of time over an editing day and believe me I have to perform this operation a lot!
[David Lawrence] “”Jawdroppingly” elegant quickly becomes jawdroppingly frustrating.”
“Jawdropping” in this case was more in the nature of what we Brits like to call “a joke”. I’d stick by elegant though, if that’s OK with you 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com