Re: Editing scenario

[Walter Soyka] "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?"

As I've mentioned before, the range selection process is a holdover from iMovie and there may be some fundamental residual design issues that are hampering the provision of persistent IO.

I would suggest that IO functionality was grafted on to the underlying range selection process but IO doesn't "exist" in the same way as in the past - it's merely a keyboard way of delineating the start and end of a range that "mimics" the mouse action.

BUT - the point that keeps getting lost in this whole discussion is that what's really important is not persistent I and O but rather persistent I or O. Yes, you can more or less cope with the lack of persistent IO "ranges" by using the favorite function. But there is no way of simply keeping EITHER an I OR an O.

And this for me and I'm sure many, many others is far more of a pain. I don't believe I mark BOTH I and O in the browser more than 20% of the time (probably more like 10% but I'm being very generous). On the other hand I rely on using EITHER a single I OR a single O on every other occasion.

If I use Favorites as a way of trying to keep this functionality, each new Favorite extends all the way to the beginning or the end of the entire clip, thereby overwriting any previously assigned favorite or favorites. Because you can't have overlapping favorites as everybody knows. That's a really significant thing.

So to reiterate, please let's stop arguing about persistent I and O, and let's start a discussion about persistent I only. Or persistent O only. The difference between AND and OR is the crucial one. FCPX allows for AND (kind of) but won't allow OR in any useful sense.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com