Re: Editing scenario

[Jeremy Garchow] "How is that action any different than adding an F key to your i/o process? Are you saying I am working with the limitations of the software? Are you saying that even with subclip limits, I have to hit an extra key to remove those sub clip limits, and then those limits disappear? I don't have to hit that extra key in FCPX, does that make it wrong?"

My point was that storing a mutable range of a clip, whether by favorites or by subclips or by markers, is easily accomplished in both apps -- and yet just about everyone here preferred simply letting FCP7 remember the last set of points while cutting.

Let me turn the question around. Apple designed the software and could have included persistent/remembered/whatever IO points if they wanted to. Why might they choose not to? How is it better for the user to have their IO point decisions blasted away if they click off a clip without first making it their selection a favorite range?

Follow-up question -- how long did it take you between launching the app for the first time and getting burned by this particular design decision? 5 minutes? With such a low Mean Time to First Burn (MTFB, not to be confused with MTBF), don't you think this was the sort of thing that Apple heard about immediately in beta testing with real users?

I know I'm critical of FCPX, but there is a lot I like, too. I think the idea of clip connections is utterly brilliant. It makes some things different, but there's a some design thinking and a real user benefit behind that difference.

I also understand that sometimes features are worth removing. I've even filed a couple feature requests asking for dumb or dangerous "features" to be removed myself (AE, not FCPX).

What is the benefit of not including remembered IO points, or what was the danger of including them, that made it worth overriding overwhelming user preference?

I'm with you that if adding this flavor of persistence would require huge development resources going forward, they would better spent elsewhere. But why was this particular design decision made in the first place?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
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