Splice Now

Does anybody doubt that the Media Composer would improve tremendously with a live timeline? Today, with a few small exceptions, Avid’s play engine will stop at the slightest mouse click or button press. This dates back to the hardware and software the system was developed for — in the late ’80s. Today these limitations just seem archaic.

As an example of how crazy this is, it’s possible to press play in the Media Composer, leave the application, open iTunes, press play in iTunes and then, with both aps running and the Avid still playing, audition music against picture. But click your mouse just once in the MC and video stops. Final Cut improves on this a bit by making it possible to resize and scroll the timeline while video continues to play. That’s a big win. But imagine an interface where you could do all kinds of useful work with video playing.

Apple’s Motion takes this idea as far as I’ve seen. Video is always playing–in a loop. And whatever parameter you change is instantly visible in moving video.

We all want to evaluate our work in motion. The old paradigm is “change something, press play, see the change.” The new paradigm is “press play and make adjustments live.” Once you use a live interface, everything else feels antique.

This entry was posted on July 6, 2006 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Avid, Final Cut. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.