Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Michael Gissing] “I can’t see OMF export as a non core function.”
I entirely agree – whatever else one thinks about it all the fact that they consider OMF to be a third party problem doesn’t inspire me with confidence.
Having to rely on the oh-so-modestly-priced services of Automatic Duck for this function may all work fine both now and at every conceivable moment in the future, but presentationally this is a serious error of judgement on Apple’s part.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “It certainly is a matter of taste. Before FCPX I had no choice though. All the major NLEs where tied to track workflows, which I had been bothered by since around 1990. The scrolling up/down though in projects wasn’t simply a taste issue though. It was a GUI inconvenience that I’m glad is gone in at least one NLE.”
Here’s an illustration of why I think I prefer the track-based model for audio “track-laying” as things currently stand.
Here are two spreadsheets for food types consumed during a week, days standing in for time in the timeline, food groups standing in for types of audio clips, e.g. Fruit/Veg represent dialogue, etc.
First the traditional version:
And now the FCPX version:
Yes, indeed, the FCPX version saves you some screen real estate, 25% less vertically in this case. But it comes at a cost (for me at least) of making precisely what you have called “visual clutter”. The encroachment of lower order tracks upwards into the available space is for me not at all desirable.
(Note that I have actually stacked the decks in favour of FCPX by colour coding and font emphasis which is not actually implemnted in Roles yet though of course it will come.)
Personally I still prefer the traditional version which gives me the at-a-glance “visual feedback” that I have been going on about, and I would trade any disadvantages of increased expenditure on screen real estate to keep that.
I’m not saying I couldn’t find ways of working with the the model but it doesn’t yet feel like an improvement to me. Which is not to say that it won’t get there in the future.
Also note the traditional track-based model has a further advantage that FCPX has “lost” – just as I can very easily scan along my Fish row and see clearly what’s happening with my fish intake, so with numbered tracks my eye can scoot along a track and see what I’ve got going on in with my Musics. The track-based model makes it easier because I can keep my music tracks in view and only scroll horizontally, whereas in FCPX I would have to scroll both horizontally and vertically to hunt it down.
Again this is instant “visual feedback” that I find useful to keep things organized overall and during the nitty-gritty of editing. If I’ve edited out a scene and I need to find the music to trim it out to make a new transition, I know exactly where I need to go to find it on my designated music tracks. In FCPX I would have to hunt up and down to find where my music had go to because it doesn’t live in any one place and it can go scooting around. And the same with dialogue and effects – only more so because being generally a lot shorter they will end up even more “jumbled”.
Obviously I am talking about elaborate, long-form editing with many tracks, not 5 minute corporates with a couple of talking heads, some cutaway audio and three of four music tracks. For the latter the FCPX model is great and presents no obvious limitations. But with greater track numbers and complexity, the issues escalate quite a bit. My example only uses eight “tracks” and a very short seven day “timeline” – convert that to 24 tracks or more and drama length timelines and the FCPX model doesn’t look nearly so pretty.
So, yes, Roles make the visual clutter of the FCPX audio timeline quite a lot less frustrating, but as I’ve said before they are so far not doing a great deal more than making up for its limitations. But who knows what the future holds? I could get very excited about it when I finally see it, but I haven’t seen it yet so I’ll keep my excitement in check for a little while yet 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I need video out. If it had video out, I would start to roll it in to honest to goodness paying jobs.”
Absolutely – once this is there I’m definitely going to start making the move, warts and all, as it’s just too interesting (an oddly fun) to ignore. Not really a plausible option until then, for me at least.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Hey, you know what? I really commend your enthusiasm and I do honestly see a lot of potential in where this is all going and hope for the best from it, but I think we are going to have to agree to disagree as I think we are coming from two completely different worlds of editing … and I really don’t want to bore you with the details of mine 😉
I await further developments with genuine excitement but for me it’s still very much a work-in-progress that’s of academic interest only. Maybe by next Summer, who knows …?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “No it wouldn’t. Those sync tacks would move with the video. It would be one clip instead a bunch of disparate parts. If editing in the primary storyline, all you have to move is the clip in the primary and everything else that was attached would come along. I see this as more efficient and more simple, and even controlled.”
No, you didn’t understand what I was saying, osrry if I didn’t make it clear – I do understand how the magnetic timeline works by this point, thanks 😉
My point was about how the audio clips behave in a vertical sense – they fill the space available. Not desirable at all in this instance if I was to keep the original editor’s plan intact – without a whole load of unnecessary extra housekeeping.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I should also perhaps clarify why I prefer to work with the audio in the primary storyline and use connected clips for the video.
The way I like to work when cutting music promos (and quite a few other things as well) is to stack up multiple choices vertically. From experience I know that a lot of other editors of music promos like to work this way as well so it’s not just me being weird.
Here’s how I’d typically do it in FCPX.
I would likely have a selected edit of each of the camera angles of the band’s/singer’s performance on the lowest “tracks” (apparently these are now called “lanes” according to Apple!) – I might use secondary storylines to keep these more or less organized, putting in gaps or muting sections where I wanted to “see through” to the storyline underneath but I might well not bother with storylines at all and stick with connected clips for this. (The advantage of using them here would be to keep an overall sync relationship so you don’t accidentally nudge a clip out of sync with the music.) Whatever way, it is definitely useful to keep the different camera angles in play so you can dive down and find the close-up that will possibly work better with the overall shape than the wide shot or whatever, rather than have to go back to the rushes and edit it back in.
But for most music promos the performance sync component is not the biggest element at all and this is where connected clips are more attractive to me.
The advantage of using connected clips is their much greater flexibility:
a) you can move them instantly without having to use Position mode (definitely quicker and smoother whichever way you look at it) – the ability to shuffle clips around very quickly is key to efficient and fluid promo editing in my view and I don’t want anything to get in the way of that;
b) you can trim the ends of shots without having to roll the edit points (I find this quicker personally);
c) you can stack up multiple edit choices and easily switch between them using muting (far better than the lousily implemented Audition feature which is way too clunky for this kind of work) – this is a really big plus for me, especially if you’re working with someone else at your shoulder. This way you can instantly try out as many different options as you want without the hassle of undo’s or sync issues or anything else.
There is the disadvantage that you can’t apply transitions to connected clips – yes, in 10.0.1 you can sort of do this but they automatically become secondary storylines which to my mind only replaces one limitation with another. But overall I’d happily live with this limitation in return for all the other benefits I get from working this way.
I also like having my music markers in the primary storyline where they are visually more dominant than if they’re hanging off a connected clip but that’s small thing.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Mark Morache] “The programmers didn’t just put it there to appease us. It’s necessary.
I figure that any keyboard shortcut with a single unmodified letter is an important primary function”
I think the other reason I don’t go for the P option that much is that I have an instinctive hatred of Modes, after may years at the Media Composer workface (before they implemented Smart Tools). It harks back to MC’s use of Segment Mode (two flavours!) for the simple act of moving a clip – teeth-achingly annoying!
This more than anything else was what attracted me to FCP in the first place, that you could move something without having to enter a different mode to do so. It’s kinda ironic that the shiny new paradigm of FCPX has required that this notion be reintroduced!!!! Especially since in terms of the Trim tool they have managed to streamline the implementation of Modes quite elegantly.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “For me tracks at their most organized always represented visual clutter “
To some extent then this is a matter of taste – because for me the “jumble” of the trackless model where clips pop around wherever it makes sense for FCPX to put them represents more visual clutter than the track-based model where associated clips have a designated (by me) place and they stay there unless I move them.
[Craig Seeman] ” think the desire for tracks, in instances where they don’t actually interact horizontally is more of a “psychological comfort zone” than any real function. “
I think there are other issues beyond the “psychological comfort zone”. If I hand off my project to another editor (or get one from him/her) it’s a lot easier to get to grips with it if I/they have used a specific organized track arrangement (it doesn’t even have to be mine, it just has to have a clear pattern) than if the clips are more or less randomly assigned in vertical space.
(I picked up on a feature edit the other day in MC where the previous editor was running a premixed DME in tandem with the original laid/sync tracks which were muted but still needed to be cut in sync. This would have been impossible with the FCPX paradigm I think where everything would have been jumbled vertically. The unequivocal visual feedback of the conventional timeline was what made this workflow possible.)
And the same thing goes for when I want to send my tracks off for the sound mix (via OMF). If they are organized long the traditional track model it will make immediate sense to the sound mixer what is what. At the moment, and unless Roles at some future date come to the rescue on this one, an OMF export via Automatic Duck from FCPX maintains the “random” arrangements of the source timeline.
And no, the audio exporting of Roles as currently implemented really doesn’t help with this issue because everything is “baked-in” without handles and that’s really not a satisfactory way of handing off audio for a final mix as I’m sure I don’t need to point out.
I’m not saying it’s a disaster – I do admire the thought that’s gone into this and can see there’s interesting potential but it’s not there yet by any means.
Clearly for the documentary/corporate/news end of the spectrum Roles will have answered many questions, and similarly the loss of tracks (and hence the “random” vertical arrangement of audio clips in the Timeline) shouldn’t really be an issue where you don’t have that many audio elements in play at any one time, which is clearly the case for you. I just wanted to point out that for those of us at the other end of the scale running lots and lots of concurrent tracks most of the time it’s really not working sweetly yet.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Mark Morache] “It’s even easier than that.
Once you lift from the primary storyline, just use the position tool to drag the music to the primary storyline, and everything should now be connected to it.”You’re absolutely right, of course. That occurred to me as soon as I’d posted and turned off the laptop!
I think it’s because I have trained myself to think of the Position tool as the work of the devil, representing as it does an addiction to the old way of doing things that Apple don’t want us to cling on to 😉 So much so that I forget to use it when it’s the easiest way of doing things!
Incidentally, in this instance constraining the movement so it only happens vertically is achieved by holding down the Shift key.
[Mark Morache] “And the magic of adding transitions to connected clips isn’t really magic at all”
It’s also in my view a slightly imperfect solution – if for example you end up with two (or more) clips inside your storyline which dissolve into each other and then fade at either end and you subsequently want to separate them from each other, you have to break apart the storyline thereby losing all transitions not just the one you automatically made between the two clips.
PS. thanks for sharing your rollercoaster experiences of working with FCPX in real world situations – your reports from the frontline are really helpful and illuminating, both the bad experiences and the good!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com