Re: Editing scenario

[Jeremy Garchow] "I think that multiple primaries would be way over designed. If that's the way it's going to be, just go back to tracks. Why have only two primaries, when you can have three? Or four? How about unlimited?"

[Walter Soyka] "I don't think DL ever suggested limiting it to two. Multiple primary storylines gives you all the advantages of tracks (if you want them) and all the advantages of the magnetic timeline (if you want that)."

Walter's correct. The idea is to let the editor to decide how many "primaries" they want. Want to keep it simple? Use one. Need more flexibility? Add as many as you need. It would let you do exactely what Jim has done with his pseudo-track project template without resorting to a hack.

Think of it this way - one of the great new features in PPCS6 is format agnostic audio tracks. Standard audio tracks happily let you mix whatever audio format you want on the same track.

Apple could raise the bar even further with media agnostic tracks (or storylines). Create a new track container and put whatever you want inside. How cool would that be? I'd definitely want to check something like that out.

Walter's right that things could get a bit weird with video compositing depending on how you set things up, but I think that's OK. A professional tool should be flexible enough for a pro to do exactly what they want if they know what they're doing; and for a novice to get themselves in trouble if they don't. You can only simply so far without losing powerful features.

[Jeremy Garchow] "I guess it seems unnecessary. If you control the primary, you control time."

Well yes and no. It goes back to the original problem of relative time vs. an absolute, external time reference. The single primary forces relative time. Multiple primaries would enable absolute time as on option. I believe this is the thing people who are asking for tracks miss the most. Multiple primaries seem like the easiest way to accomplish this within the existing data model.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl