Re: Editing scenario

[Walter Soyka] "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?"

I think Philip Hodgetts explains it best from here: http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2012/04/some-final-cut-pro-x-data-points/


Phillip hodgetts:
"Actually it would be more difficult than you think as it’s a desire to a throwback of a design that only allowed one in and out on any give clip. FCP X has unlimited in and out via keywords.
Therefore an old-style I and O retained would be a backward step. As Greg said, if it’s important range to be retained, throw a favorite or keyword on it.
And non-programmers generally have a very bad idea of how much work something is to implement."

Phillip Hodgetts:
"From the programming point of view you’d have to create a third category to go with “Favorite” and “Keyword Range” that would be “Persistent I/O” points. How do they relate to the other two? Are you prepared for a complete rebuild of the database structure to accommodate it?

What happens when a Favorite and I/O range coincide (there’s an existing bug related to two keyword ranges covering exactly the same frames losing notes, for example).

In my opinion it’s a throwback thought for people who haven’t yet made the mental transition to FCP X"

Phillip Hodgetts:
...the more we’ve thought and talked about this, the more Greg and I are convinced that it is a deliberate decision to NOT have In and Out points. The more we’ve talked about it, the more we realize how impossible it would be to code around, but much more importantly how complex this would become for users.[[???]]
...Does FCP X edit the keyword range to the Project, or the In/Out range? Or some intersection of the two? When does I/O take precedence over a Favorite or keyword range?
It becomes an incredibly complex matrix of when one takes priority and in an app, from a company where the main focus is “simplify”, that would be anathema.

The more we discussed it last night, the more obvious it was that this is a deliberate decision and that it is the right decision.




And this is my point. FCPX does do this, it's just people, for whatever reason, don't want to use it. So, you have a choice. If another NLE works in that exact way that FCP7 does, and ins/out function is the deciding factor on choosing a new NLE, then there's your decision. In the mean time, I will use favorites that are very handy and are actually more powerful than an in/out that sort of hangs around. The use of them is the same, every time I go back to that clip, I can review the previous choices I've made, or choose to remove them, just like 7.

[Walter Soyka] "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 honestly don't remember. In my article that I wrote soon after FCPX was released, I mentioned favorites. I have been using them since probably day2. I remember it coming up very soon after the release in this very forum. Also, since then, if you choose to name a favorite, it is now text searchable. That has changed and it didn't used to be that way, so more function has been added to this very conundrum since release.

The rest of your questions I think are summed up by Phlip H.