Re: Editing scenario

[Walter Soyka] "Are you giving up control -- or are you changing how you control it? The magnetic timeline has its physics, and if you need to change them, can't you just move the clip in question in or out of the primary as required? Wouldn't that be more or less the same as making a complicated track-based selection?
"

But what's complicated about making a track based selection? Just lasso. If I don't want to bring my music tracks, lock them and then lasso the rest. But, hey, that's me. And, as to it being more or less the same--well, that's sort of my point. I don't understand the need to re-invent the wheel. Other than just to do it. Now maybe if I had larger, more independent segments to deal with, I'd feel differently. But generally, I don't. Most of what I work on overlaps and interacts in ways that don't really lend themselves to easy segmentation.

[Walter Soyka] "I would have thought, though, that clip connections, especially with SFX, were practically made for you. For example:

[Chris Harlan] "The sfx of the hand grenade pin being pulled still has to be cut and placed back where it was taken from to rest under the transition that precedes the clip you just pulled."

Connect the pin pull to the right frame of the visual once, and you never need to think about that SFX's placement again.
"

No. But this is where it gets difficult for me to articulate, and its not a good day for it. But, let me try. If my goal were to give a specific visual a SFX, you'd be right. Pinning it to a frame would be gold. But that, really, is only a small part of my concern. In the case of a transitional SFX, like we are talking about above, I probably want something like the following to happen: A) I want the sound to match the image at the beginning of the transition. B) I want the sound to be relational to underlying music--say a swell or ramp--so that it sits just so. C) I want to crossfade to a second sfx--say a swish--partway through the transition (lets say the transition is a 20 frame Wind Blur), so that the sound itself is now becoming something else. D) this second sound is probably the one that I am most interested in timing to the beat, so the crossfade between the two sounds is going to be finessed to deal with that beat, E) coming out of the transition--which I have now retimed to 16 frames to make the earlier rhythm requirements work--I might be trying to work in sound (a last minute discovery) from the SOT track--lets say a crossfade from the swish to the rustling sound of the protagonist's wind breaker as he swings around--but F) I have to retime the entire transition to 24 frames to make the effect work, and retime the other details. Then, G) it occurs to me that the swish might not be needed because a filtered version of the rustling windbreaker might make a better transition. But, I'm not sure yet, so I want to leave everything in place, create a sound from the windbreaker, and then crossfade it with both the first sound and the natural sound of the wind breaker. H) Nope. Back to plan A.

I believe that a tiered (tracks) relationship to absolute time is a far easier way to work this all out than a hierarchical relationships between clips. I have no doubt that I could find a way to cut the above in FCP X, and after much practice I might find it passable. I concede that if my years of work and experience had come through using X, I might find it just as easy.

But what do I gain by completely rethinking the way that I work? And that was the point of my earlier post. I see no value in it. None. Sure, if I have no experience, plopping this glop of stuck together stuff over between these glops is a lot easier, and I'm less likely to make a mess. But for me? I don't see it. And its not because I haven't been looking.