What WOULD make a "jaw-dropping" NLE?

Gary Huff said:
To go REALLY crazy, this video has been posted here before, but works for this thread:

http://makingof.com/insiders/media/...er-tamper-s-with-the-future-of-editing/94/209

Is THAT a viable interface? Or does just because something looks cool doesn't necessarily mean you'd want to deal with it day in and day out?

(Sorry, David, if this doesn't quite fit into the topic)
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That's totally in keeping with the thread. Good stuff! Not saying it's THE way, but it's surely exactly the kind of thing to discuss.
 
greymog said:
There's always something I've wanted coming from an audio background, and that's to be able to enter a tempo (bpm) and snap to a grid of 1/8, 1/16th notes etc. Just like in a daw, but you have the option to either lock to smpte timecode, or keep events positioned at their tempo markers moving with any change in tempo. It could be cool. For me it would make a world of a difference... dunno if that's jumping too far ahead in this thread, we're still at ingesting footage? I like this thread. It's nice to constructively dream, it helps you think about how much of 'your way' is actually your way of doing things. I had a similar session with thinking of a camera to no material end, but the stuff we came up with is nuts.... nice thread anyhoo. My kingdom for a tempo based option to edit with.
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We don't have to take it in any particular order just yet; we're just at the stream-of-consciousness idea stage. Let the ideas come however they may.
 
@DJimerson - cool. then I stand by a musical timebar with the option to tag an item to either the musical bar or smpte timecode. also being able to mix media and specs within a sequence like a comp in ae.
 
Gary Huff said:
To go REALLY crazy, this video has been posted here before, but works for this thread:

http://makingof.com/insiders/media/...er-tamper-s-with-the-future-of-editing/94/209

Is THAT a viable interface? Or does just because something looks cool doesn't necessarily mean you'd want to deal with it day in and day out?

(Sorry, David, if this doesn't quite fit into the topic)
Click to expand...

One of the things he stresses in there is something I think is very important -- your tool should work the way you want to work and not force you to do something its own way.

It's harder to do with a graphical interface as we know it. But the first thing I do with ANY NLE is move all the windows around to be exactly what makes sense to me, not to the designer (not that I'm alone in this). If you take that concept and apply it to everything, not just window arrangement, then you're heading down a great path, I think.
 
I would like to see the functions of a colorist's 3 trackball panel mapped to the numerous other functions within the NLE. For effects the balls could be used to set X, Y and Z position. Hit a soft key and change to X, Y scale. In the title tool it could be used for kerning, font type, font size, etc. For audio the balls could be used as a fader or to set the pan of the channel. With a little imagination you could do a lot with a trackball panel. It seems like a waste to restrict it's use to CC and grading. Regarding accessability, there are some relatively cheap panels out there from Tangent and Euphonix.
 
David Jimerson said:
It's harder to do with a graphical interface as we know it. But the first thing I do with ANY NLE is move all the windows around to be exactly what makes sense to me, not to the designer (not that I'm alone in this). If you take that concept and apply it to everything, not just window arrangement, then you're heading down a great path, I think.
Click to expand...

So would FCP X on a high resolution iPad screen be a workable interface? What if it was just the track and your monitor/effects windows were being display via Thunderbolt to a 27" monitor? Would editors with larger fingers find it frustrating, or would there be a way to use sausage fingers for precision work? I think this is more of an interface that's probably a lot closer to reality than the Minority Report one (coming, but I'm sure at least a decade away). Did engineers reach perfection with the mouse/keyboard combination for certain kinds of interface interaction?
 
Well, one thing I don't want to do, as I said in the OP, is start with an existing NLE and "improve" upon it. I want to start from scratch. If we arrive at a similar place because we think it's the best way, then so be it -- but I specifically don't want to be thinking along the lines of "start with X NLE and add this, this, and this."

As for the interface, think about what you do when you work with footage. It's been shoehorned to work wit a keyboard, but that doesn't mean it's the best way.
 
That table from Tamper is awesome! I used to to do a lot of drafting and architectural design back in the day (crap, I'm old enough to talk about the good ol' days, now). I've always thought it would be neat to be able to manipulate my compositing like that. Actually "picking things up" and moving them around. Moving a camera around in a program like AE without having to worry about the xyz coordinates, but instead actually "grabbing" the camera and moving it around with an integrating "smoothing" (for perfect dolly shots, pans, etc) to eliminate the human error of stuttering would be amazing.
 
I've been thinking about this for days now. Something I always get hung up on is how early in the edit process when I am looking at a mountain of fresh footage, I want everything to be very fluid and dynamic. I want to throw stuff around haphazardly to help me find where it all fits together. In this way traditional 3 point editing and the notions or "timeline and tracks" get in my way. I want something more canvas like, something where I could take clips and maybe use a touch interface to get them where I want them to go and trimmed close enough for a rough.

But as soon as I move into audio editing and color correction and the refining stages of editing I want everything locked down, on tracks with like media, and organized so I can find what I want when I want quickly. I don't know yet how to reconcile this discrepancy.

Also I think it would be great to have a "search" feature for your timeline (or where ever your edited footage resides in the program).
 
I've seen NLEs with "storyboard" functions where you can just lay clips around a canvas, and if you have them in a rough order, you can pop them over to a timeline automatically. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
 
There is a storyboard functionality in FCP 6 and 7.

You can control click on the project panel and switch to large icons. In the toolbar under the magnifying glass is the far right hand tool. This tool allows you to scrub thru the clip within the icon so you can set the icon picture.

You would then arrange your clips in the project panel in a rough storyboard reading across in rows. Select all the ones in the arrangement, hit the yellow envelope to send them to the timeline and they appear in that order.
 
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