User Interface Questions

I'm a UI researcher trying to develop better video segmentation, annotation and editing tools. I'd be interested to hear your personal opinions on what any shortcomings of the Final Cut Pro interface are.

Are there certain tasks in the interface that are just interminably slow or tedious?
What works great? What doesn't?

Thanks for any information!

Functions that are not mappable to the keyboard. Best example, not being able to change the tabs in the Viewer with a keyboard shortcut.

Overall, though, the mode free environment is easier to deal with than other edit systems, like Avid.



Kevin Monahan
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im sick to death of the dark grey on medium grey time markers on the time line.

and when i add a filter to a clip, i click the filters tab to adjust it and it brings that to the top, covering up the clip itself, so i have to drag the filters tab off the docked area and across the screen so i can see the results of what im doing.

ive done my share of interface design over the years and if you ask me - the FCP UI is freakin HORRIBLE all round!

and dont EVEN get me started on DVDsPRO!!!!!!!!

Some of my gripes/suggestions:

- FCP's inability to memorize the last user setting for many commands that are often done multiple times -- for example, Export - Using QuickTime Conversion always defaults to "QuickTime Movie" even if your last export was a Still Image, which makes exporting multiple stills more time-consuming.
- No shortcuts for muting/soloing audio tracks.
- When logging, bugs in the highlighting display often result in painstakingly long log notes being deleted by mistake, with no way to undo.
- When reconnecting media, the original location of the media can be long, but FCP doesn't show you the whole string, which can result in mistakes in reconnecting.
- No External Video playback when a Sequence timeline is dragged outside the primary Timeline window.
- Viewer/Canvas Sync modes turn themselves off presumptuously. Just turn them off when I tell you to, okay?
- An Avid-style double timeline would help clear lots of confusions.
- The controls in Log and Capture and Modify for Mono/Stereo sound. Instead of a nice clear text as it used to be, now in FCP5 we have to read symbols. Geez, that was dumb. And they need to put back some of those CONTROL-click functions that used to speed up changing clip/log properties in the Browsers.