Re: Steve Kanter: What FCPX CAN Do

[Herb Sevush] "The problems would all come if you tried to edit with the incorporated footage - at that point mistakes in interpretation would become evident, but if all you are trying to do is create a project containing the proper clips, and have those unedited clips play out the right way, most of these issues would not be crucial."

How crucial or not is left to the editor. If you send an XML to an editor who's not you or in the same building, these kinds of issues can be tough to translate as you will have to guess at the editor's intentions, or how the translation program is presenting the FCP7 timeline in FCPx terms. A lo res reference movie would help, but that might not always be available. For simple cuts only stuff, this will be very easy, but the more layers and the more complex timelines in which the layers interact this process becomes way more difficult to translate.

As I originally said, the simplest way is going to be the "best" but it might not be the most correct.

I hear what Gary is saying, and I think we are saying some of the same things, but it's really not a simple venture, otherwise it would be in there.

[Herb Sevush] "For someone familiar with X you're probably thinking, yeah but why would you want to do that?"

It's not whether or not I would want it to do anything, it's writing the code to tell it what to do that might be OK or not for all timelines. Yes, there are some generalizations that could be made, but I guarantee that people won't be happy, or someone that doesn't know will ask a some forum somewhere "wait, this didn't come over like it was placed in FCP7!". Or "I received an XML of timeline that's 4 years old, all the original media, render files, and editors/producers are gone, I am left to fix it. I have FCPx and some consolidated media. When I run the translation and reconnect, the audio and video is out of whack and things pop on and off randomly. Please help, edit due in four hours!" It is those assumptions that need to be made that make the process difficult.