Re: Editing scenario

[Jeremy Garchow] "I'm curious, how much real time have you put in trying out favorites?"

Well, I’ve just been editing an interview with Mr Complacent Certainty of Inflexible Opinions Inc. and I’ve already keyworded the thing to death, but there’s only so far you can go without keywording every single phoneme, unless you’re Bill Davis.

So I’ve started to use favorites to narrow down my selections and I want to start editing with one particular favorited clip that runs: “When all said and done, favorites are the answer to the problem of persistent ins and out. Period. There’s no argument about it.” And another favorited clip that goes: “OMFs and EDLs are a waste of time. Any idiot can see that.”

I’ve filtered my clips so I’m only seeing favorites. Clearly the point of favorites is to narrow down your selections below the level of keywords so this seems the strategy that Apple have intended for us to use at this point. Let's try and remember that favorites are by definition sections of clips that I am planning to use within the edit, though the chances are very high that they will need further editing, but Apple know all about that don't they, so it's cool.

So, the bit I want from the first clip is that bit that goes: “favorites are”, so in order to get a persistent IO I have to unfavorite the clip because you can’t have a favorite within the range of another favorite and ...

Ooops, what’s happened?

I can’t see my clip anymore. It’s disappeared. I’m going to have to hunt it down again to refavorite just the part that I want.

A minute or so later I’m back on track. Great.

Now I need to go through that whole process again because I want just the words: “are a waste of time” from my second clip.

Obviously I’m missing something again. But it does seem to me that given that favoriting is a process for narrowing down selections, not being able conveniently to select within those selections without actually destroying the first selection is, you could almost say, entirely self-defeating.

That's what I've learned about the ineffable magnificence of the FCPX organizational structure.

But other than that, you’re absolutely right - everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

[Jeremy Garchow] " I am sincerely curious on how much work you've put in to X's organizational structure? I've put some work in to it, and I am still learning a lot."

Life is short and clients will insist on paying me exorbitant amounts of money to work for them so I tend not to have time to waste on exploring stuff I broadly understand already. I genuinely think I learnt as much as I need to learn (for now) within about the first three days - this really isn't rocket science, much though some folks would try and have us believe that it is. Anyone who was familiar with iMovie before FCPX appeared will have similarly had no difficulty getting their head around the "organizational structure". The apparent novelty is only in the eyes of those who weren't already up to speed with iMovie.

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