Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Man, but you’re an ingenious bloke!!! Hats off!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “For instance, in the timeline, always keep the layers sorted by Role. This could be a preference or something.”
Now that sounds like a really good idea – I think Roles are powerful enough that they could accommodate a lot of good stuff like this. Hope you suggest thie one to Apple as it’s a good ‘un.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
FCPX does not prevent you form stacking the layers as you want.”Yes, I had realised that, I wasn’t suggesting that you can’t manually move things vertically – but the point about this is that it involves a lot more “housekeeping” that isn’t there with the track based model where you can choose your “layering” with one editing step, and not have to go back and revise it if it doesn’t go where you want it to.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “But what would stop you from layering the tracks as you like?”
Isn’t this exactly what you can’t do in FCPX?
In FCPX I have no real choice as to how my audio clips get arranged vertically – the only way I kind more or less control it is to be very systematic about the order I edit the various items into the timeline.
As long as I do all my dialogue edits first, then my effects, then my music, they will more or less stay in that order, with the proviso that they will (as per my diagram) sneak their way upwards at the slightest opportunity.
However, if I don’t edit in this order then the vertical arrangement gets completely muddled based – whatever clip is edited in last goes down to the bottom where I like it or not. If for example I add in a new effects clip after I’ve already laid up all my dialogue and effects and music as per the above system, it will sit all the way down below the music and separated from the rest of the effects, which I wouldn’t want. I can see this easily becoming very messy and “visually cluttered”.
On another note, however, having reached a better understanding of the colour coding in the Timeline Index, I do now see that it’s easier to pick out what’s what in the timeline – but they do need to think about introducing distinct, user-selectable colours for each role and not just the video/audio distinction.
One final thought – on reflection, I really do like Roles a lot. But I keep thinking that they would be even better applied to a traditional track-based timeline – the randomness of the magnetic timeline ironically means that a lot of their usefulness is getting wasted.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Mark Morache] “TRACK EXPAND WORKAROUND: create a role called “max”. Minimize all of your audio roles, and when you want to maximize a single or a group of clips, select them and add them to the “max” role. When you’re done working on them, put them back where they belong.”
Yup, that’s sounds like a pretty quick and easy way to get around the unspeakably horrendous problems of having to scroll vertically 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Again, have you tried this yet, or just thought about it?”
Sorry, I forgot to answer this question, but yes, I have tried it – I’ve been working with FCPX from literally day one and I think I do actually know it pretty well by now.
You may not have noticed but I’ve also created a fair few Motion 5 templates (Effects and Transitions)* for it, such is my commitment to seeing how far and how fast it will go 😉
* Not as many as Brendan Gibbons by a million miles or so, but then that man is not human …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Effects? No, I do wish there was a similar option for Effects in the Timeline Index.”
No, sorry, misunderstanding here – by Effects I meant my Effects tracks, nothing to do with Effects 😉
[Jeremy Garchow] “you know Veg will be towards the top, Nuts towards the bottom.”
Not good enough – “towards the bottom” and “towards the top” are too vague for my purposes.
I know I’m being pedantic – but that’s what editors are, a lot of them way more pedantic than I am, especially feature film editors 😉 For FCPX to gain any traction at my end of the business, believe me, it will have to satisfy the pedants to the ultimate degree.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] ” What if you hit a button and your snacks and cereal came ot the forefront?”
I don’t think this happens in FCPX, does it, or am I getting lost with my own analogy?! Do my effects pop to the forefront under Roles? What am I missing?
[Jeremy Garchow] “In your example, the top sheet is an an example of how the OMF will look and the bottom sheet is the FCPX timeline. Once you sort what you need, the OMF will show up like you want in the top sheet.”
Although I do have a separate beef about the whole OMF situation, my point here was entirely to do with how I feel I need my audio to be laid out in the timeline and how the absence of the traditional type of visual feedback was not being made up adequately just yet.
[Jeremy Garchow] “If you want to see how much fish you have, you simply look in the Index, or solo the role.”
Solo-ing the role isn’t really going to cut it, though. Given FCPX’s propensity to jumble the vertical arrangement of clips at will I woulkd almost certainly have to keep scrolling up and down vertically to try and get an overview – in fact, an overview is the one thing I couldn’t actually get if I had anything like the number of tracks that I typically use.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “Maybe I’m seeing it different”
There you go – I’m not saying for one moment that I’m right, I’m just saying what I prefer and what I think I need to be able to work most efficiently. The factors that I pointed out and tried to illustrate with my “spreadsheet” diagrams are pretty important to me and I don’t think these are being adequately addressed just yet by Roles or anything else.
[Craig Seeman] “I can go to the timeline index and select what I want to find and it’ll highlight and take me to the location”
Yes, you can do this but this seems to be adding an unwelcome (to me) level of “fiddliness” – I don’t want to have to check out the Timeline index, I want to see it right there in front of me in the timeline itself, where I am focussing in order to edit. Anything that makes me have to change my focus or attention is going to slow me down and break the rhythm of the process. For example, I hated Media Composer’s Segment Modes with a vengeance precisely because they forced an undesirable shift of attention, however momentary.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Thanks, David. Sometimes I find I need to look a things graphically to make this sort of point clear, to myself as much as anyone – especially since what we are talking about is graphical “readability” in the UI (which is something I know you have talked about a lot most perceptively).
It’s interesting that the first three months of discussion focussed rightly on how the magnetic timeline impacted on the video side of things and very little attention was paid to the ways in which it affects audio. The introduction of Roles has enabled us to be able to take a fresh look at how it all works on the audio side – and the considerations look to be every bit as complex, for better or worse.
That said, I am still prepared to be “agnostic” at this point – there is obviously some very clever work going on that we haven’t seen the full results of yet, so who knows?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com