Re: Editing scenario

[David Lawrence] "For me, all the roadblocks I hit in FCPX feel like places where the designers weren't paying attention. Either thru over-simplification, or by making narrow assumptions. Jim's tracked timeline workaround is a wonderfully creative solution to a problem that a good design wouldn't have created in the first place."

lolcats


People seem to think fcpx is complete. It's not.

I have said from the beginning, that the timeline is what is going to change about fcpx. But let's look at what it does do well, professionally.

First, is media management. Once learned, fcpx has some very useful ways of keeping your media tidy, transcoding in the background while allowing you to work on the material as its transcoding, and the software switches to the optimized media when it's complete. It allows you to move media around, fairly easily, and mount projects/events on other machines super easily. I allows the sharing of big swaths of media, but not duplicating that media into the event.

It has SAN Locations which allow a manual check in/out process that is, in my opinion, better than most NLEs in terms of a built in workflow. It's right there in the file menu. What iMovie user gives a hoot about a SAN? How many fcp legacy users do?

Fcpxml, while still needing functionality, is already pretty decent. You can get to resolve, RCX, smoke 2013, and via through a bit of jockeying/paid apps, you can get OMF/fcp7 XMLs/EDL. Is that professional, or no? Bad design?

If you like it, then Event structure is very well thought out. It is useful, very powerful, and keeps thngs as messy or as organized as you want. It is dynamic and allows multiple descriptors per clip, and by its very design allows multiple "locations" of clips without actual duplication. This is very useful to me.

So, you can tell where the development time has gone. It has gone in to very professional features that iMovie converts will never use.

The timeline, needs more development, and in my opinion, it will probably get there. Apple even said they are working on it.

I mean this with all due respect, and I know adobe can take it, but have you media managed anything, or used any sort of interchange out with Pr yet? How about relink of avchd media, or any media for that matter?

These things matter to us in a "multiuser" environment, we switch users/projects and have offsite and onsite edits happening. Fcpx makes these types of processes extremely easy to share.

When we were talking the other day about the timeline being "just the surface" of an NLE, I wasn't kidding. I spend most of my time editing in a timeline, but these back end features, the ones that will stop you in your tracks if everything isn't lining up, are important to me and our business. While it takes a bit of getting used to, this part of fcpx works very very well and it is things that iMovie heros have zero use for. While I agree that the timeline needs some beefier controls, the backed of fcpx is looking to be rather robust. That's important to someone like me.

[David Lawrence] "This disconnect between functionality and intentionality is why so many people are clamoring for persistent in/out marks. It's not that you can't achieve the same functionality, you certainly can. What people are asking for are tools that match their more specific intentionality. And it just so happens that this intentionality is one of the core actions in the editing process itself."

I'm sorry man, but Fcp7 in and out marks aren't even persistent. Fcpx's are if you just hit f. I will argue this in to the ground.

Ins/outs don't work like fcp7, it doesn't look like fcp7, it actually works a bit better than fcp7, unless you use extended markers (which I do in 7 a lot). X allows actual persistent in/out, when 7s last until you hit another in, or clear in/out in the browser. So, really, what is your intention? Persistent, or sort of persistent sometimes? If hitting 'f' is too much task, than yeah, fcpx will never fit.

Jeremy