Re: Motion TRACKS versus FCP X Trackless (now OT: organization in FCPX vs FCP7)

I would love to give you a race Bill, to select, fit and mix a voice over track. With a tool like Fairlight I can sort, select, trim, globally adjust levels, apply EQ and fit to a guide narration all in the timeline at a speed that would surprise. I can also stack alternate takes in preference order on the one track so the director can audition in place during the mix.

I know you have often thrown the V/O example up as an advantage of FCPX methodology but I can't see how it is as efficient as doing the same job in a DAW like Fairlight. To me it isn't an example of why the FCPX magnetic methodology is superior. Whilst it may confer some advantage over other NLEs, it still fails in my mind to justify the awkwardness of handling multi tracked audio that Jeremy was talking about in another thread.

Specifically on the idea of tracks or layers in tools like Motion, how good would it be to have both layers and tracks. By that I mean the idea of keeping track based streams that can be used to blend with other tracks whilst having layers within a track that can also be interacting. An example would be a chroma key with foreground, background elements on one track doing an opacity blend or other blend mode with another track that might have images that dissolve, key, fade in/out plus a title on top which is a composite on another track. Think of it like in Legacy having V2 with a complicated nest doing a blend with V1 which is a nested chroma key. The layers within tracks could be collapsed down to look like a nest but are adjustable in the timeline when expanded so they are not nests that open up another sequence.

I think FCPX by throwing away the track based paradigm has missed out on an opportunity to introduce layers within tracks that would have made Motion unnecessary. It can all be built into the timeline so round tripping to other apps is a thing of the past.