Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Just curious, but what do you need this organization for? Is it just confirmation to keep thinking “Track 6 is SFX”? Why wouldn’t it be possible to think “SFX are SFX”?”
In terms of the stuff I cut professionally, I’m typically running between 16-24 tracks of audio, e.g. 4 mono dialogues, 2-3 stereo musics, various tracks of spot effects, Foley and ambiences (or any combination of the last three, often in multi-track (LCR or 5.1) rather than stereo format). It really helps a massive amount to be able to know exactly where it all is all the time which is where conventional tracks come in handy. It’s not always obvious from looking at a clip what it is unless you’ve put it on the right track. Inevitably fine-tuning the edit gets pretty complicated but it would be a lot more complicated it you didn’t immediately know what was what.
The fact that FCPX encourages audio clips to gravitate “upwards” depending on the available “free space” means that it’s harder to predict what any particular clip actually is at a glance. (Yes, we’ve got clip names but they’re not necessarily going to be helpful to me in the majority of cases for reasons I won’t bore you with.)
This is not to say that I couldn’t devise a working method with FCPX to give me similar visual feedback but I’m not sure that Roles really add enough to the picture at this point to entirely outweigh the disadvantage of losing that visual feedback. So at this point I stick by my assertion that Roles are really so far only making up for the limitations of the magnetic timeline rather than heralding a brave new world of editing freedom as you may perhaps be implying. At least for me – I can easily see how in less complex audio editing scenarios Roles will comfortably give you everything you need.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Kirk Zeel] “What steps would I need to take to:
1) get my rough cut out of the primary timeline
2) put the music track in the primary timeline
3) attach all clips to the primary timeline”Since you’ve started where you’ve started, which makes it a bit more complicated, here’s what I’d do.
Select everything in your primary storyline and Lift it from the Primary Storyline (Cmd/Opt/Up Arrow).
In the Timeline, go to the first frame of your Connected Clip containing the music. Use Shift/F to match frame to the exact source frame of the clip in the Browser. (Make sure you are in Filmstrip view not List View for this to work properly). Use D to Overwrite the music to the Primary Storyline.
All your video edits will now be connected to the music track in the Primary Storyline.
Delete the old Connected Clip containing the music (having first checked that the new music track is perfectly in sync with it, of course!).
Do make sure you’ve got the 10.0.1 update so you can take advantage of being able to add transitions to Connected Clips.
Hope that works out for you – don’t shoot me if you don’t end up liking that way of working. As I say, it’s a personal choice and you could well find it doesn’t suit you.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Matthew Schickler] ” I prefer not to waste the primary storyline on something that doesn’t need to be edited.”
What’s hard about not editing in the primary storyline? I’m not sure I get it.
What I personally really like about Connected Clips for this kind of job is how incredibly fast and easy it is to shuffle them around, which isn’t at all the case when you’re editing in the primary storyline and you’re faffing around with the Position key and whatever.
If you want to be editing in a storyline as against using Connected Clips you could always edit in a secondary storyline (or several) with just the same result as if you were in the primary – all the editing functions being identical (although there is some hassle with having to use the Range selector). Note also that as of yesterday’s update you can now apply transitions to Connected clips which means it’s even easier to work that way.
But I think this will always be one of those situations where the “right way” of doing it will be obvious to you and make no sense to anybody else – it’s always been that way with NLE’s of whatever make in my experience!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
You didn’t mention if your material was 16:9 anamorphic (i.e. whether it not it looks “stretched” vertically in its raw state) which could complicate matters, but assuming not, here’s what you need to do.
Edit your material into a 4:3 Project, and then for each clip that you want to adjust:
… from the onscreen controls select Crop mode (second button along from the bottom right of the Viewer). At the top of the Viewer select “Crop” and then drag over the image to select the area that you want to keep. Press “Done” and you’re good to go.
If you think there’s a crop that will work universally across all your material, you can do the first clip as described, then you can copy and paste the same Crop to all your remaining footage in the timeline. Select your first clip, press Cmd/C, select your remaining clips and press Cmd/Opt/V.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “Stacking with tracks to organize sometimes made editing and screen real-estate difficult to manage. Now it’s easy to highlight key areas of interest and operation without a lot of up/down scrolling.”
I think this is as short as it’s long. Yes, it’s a better use of screen real estate, but at the same time it’s much more of a visual dog’s dinner – and that’s despite the introduction of soloing for Roles which is pretty cute.
It’s not the most ideal situation to have a visual representation of your tracks where the dialogue and narration and effects and Foley and ambience and music are all scrambled together depending on what happens to overlap something else. I accept it comes with the territory of the magnetic timeline and it’s not the end of the world, but I don’t think Roles have helped make this that much better overall. Tracks were overall a marginally more elegant way of working at least in terms of visual organization – despite the need for scrolling.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “You can’t force FCPX to work like it has tracks, because it doesn’t.”
Yup, I know I’m a bit slow but I got that part, I think 😉
But as I say, I think you are slightly overplaying your hand. e.g.:
[Jeremy Garchow] “Sure, but sometimes that would means soloing 4 tracks instead of just soloing a group. This (in my view) is way more efficient.”
I think “way more efficient” is a bit of an overstatement, isn’t it?
Generally I think it’s swings and roundabouts at the moment. Yes, as you say, there is a marginal advantage to assigning SFX to Roles and hence not having to worry where they go in terms of “tracks”. But that is offset by the disadvantage, as I see it, of not having them laid out visually in an organized fashion – OK, so you get the graying-out when Roles are solo-ed but it’s not as elegant as seeing things laid out in tracks to my way of thinking. (And no, that’s not a plea for Apple to reinstate tracks – it’s just an observation.)
I really don’t feel strongly about this either way – just arguing the point out of academic interest, which I know is not the done thing around here 😉
It will certainly be interesting to see where it’s all going, particularly if Roles end up assisting with the better organization of OMF/AAF export (which does feel like an unaddressed issue to me at the moment) – but I’ve absolutely no idea how I would design it better, I’m sorry to say.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “FCPX is now capable of organizing without tracks”
I think we’re probably arguing about different things since I don’t find that I really disagree with you – which is kinda annoying, I mean where’s the fun in that?! 😉
I do wonder whether you aren’t overselling the sexiness of Roles, though. Essentially all they’re doing right now is making up for the limitations of a trackless paradigm – and not even quite doing that in my view. Do they actually as currenly constituted give you more organizational control than you had with tracks? I love for instance that you can solo stems from the Timeline Index, but then you could easily solo stems with the FCP7 track-based paradigm as well.
Which is not to say that they might not blossom into something truly astonishing in the future. Design-wise they are very impressive, but operationally they still feel like a stop-gap to me.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
That does feel like a slightly better dialogue – thanks for pointing that one out.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Battistella] “Wes can charge what he wants and he should charge what it is worth.”
Are you saying that these are the same?
He can of course charge what he wants – but whether it’s “worth” that is a whole other question, I’d have thought.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[greg gilpatrick] ” $500 doesn’t seem like a big expense if you are an audio pro and will use something like that a lot.”
It’s an expense I’m only going to think of incurring when/if FCPX seems like it will be a workable solution in other areas – it’s still an pretty hefty chunk of cash for a translator so I kind of object on principle even though I know I’m probably going to have to swallow it at some point.
[greg gilpatrick] “Why would an off-line picture editor need to have OMF export anyway?”
Cos that’s the way it’s always worked in the past – except it’s been built in to your NLE whichever one it is. Maybe some audio facilities will be happy to acquire FCPX and Automatic Duck and take care of your export for you – I can’t see it happening without you having to pay for it though.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com