Final Cut Studio (2009): Frakking Documentation...

[documentation.apple.com]

I'm not seeing anything in there about tab colors or labels. It's like that was a late add on and didn't make the manual. Of course it's online so it can be changed at any moment without warning.

Hi Lisa,
Nothing about color coding labels there at all.

This alludes to it.
[documentation.apple.com]

There's this allusion

if you change the name of the red label to ?Do Not Use,? any clips, [[u]b]bins, or sequences labeled red[/b][/u] will have the label name ?Do Not Use,? regardless of what project they are in.
Which allowed me to infer that I can select a bin or sequence in the browser, just like a clip, and use the same clip labels.

and the language on the Apple "New Features" page says You can now color-code tabs to make them easier to identify

so neither "tab" or "color-code tab" or any variant can even get you the page that makes the allusion. Finding a feature should not be like solving a Rubik's Cube.

I guess your next Final Cut book is going to have it's best sales yet given the state of the documentation.

I could certainly use a PDF version of the Help.

I try to include specific FCP manual cross-references in my book, because I think the FCP manual is generally very good and certainly more detailed than my compact reference guide.

To be really useful, we need an official PDF version from Apple or we won't have a standard page count to refer to. I'm still hoping a PDF version of the manual will be coming.

I can't wait for Apple to issue a PDF though, so in my cross-references I'm substituting the FCP 7 manual section title for a page number -- not optimal but it does steer reliably to the correct manual section.

I understand why Apple sees a benefit in integrating their Help Library: the FCS suite becomes more integrated, the digital video format explosion continues and workflow variations proliferate. FCP documentation is being designed to link more easily to other support documents.

That said, I would ask for the restoration of these tools, now missing from the current system:
Page numbering or some other short permanent section ID.
A TOC -- sometimes we need to see the scope of the overall documentation.
An Index -- to track down all references to a specific item.
Enable word search-- the manual's PDF version allowed a simple word search which worked great. Multiple hits previewed in context. Yeah, baby.

Here's a few items I never want to see again:

A section intro that consists of a single sentence and an ocean of white space.
A section that consists of an intro paragraph and a stack of disclosure triangles.
A Help Viewer where you have to click page forward and page back arrows -- at least you can use keyboard equivalents in the online version.
Release notes that consist of a link to the main FCP website's new features marketing.

The way Alex is pounding out mini tutorials I'm sure he will have one in about 15 minutes.



Michael Horton
-------------------

Here's the text quote from the manual page:

"When multiple tabs appear in a window, you can reorder them by dragging a tab left or right to a different position in the top of the window. When you hold the pointer over a tab, a tooltip appears showing the location of the tab in the hierarchy of tabs. You can also assign colors to tabs that represent bins and sequences by assigning a colored label to the bin or sequence icon in the Browser. For more information about assigning labels, see ?Using Labels to Organize Your Clips.?


By the way did you see that you can now rearrange tabs just by dragging them? I do a lot of screen shots so that helps me....

No FCP book for me. Focal's not interested. Except for Rick Young's easy guide I think they're out of that game and left the field to Peachpit. Can't compete with the lead time.

And to find this all I have to do is go to Page ... Never Mind.

At that point I had no idea they were alluding to the same labels one uses for "Good Take" etc.
I was looking for a new/different" colored label to Tab" feature not, "now you can apply the same labels to tabs as you do to clips. With the latter page I reference helped me infer. If they included where the menu was or maybe the key command it would have been obvious.

So I guess while we're at when can add issues to how it's written in addition to search, indexing, lack of page numbers, not being standalone.

Lisa B Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here's the text quote from the manual page:
>
> "When multiple tabs appear in a window, you can
> reorder them by dragging a tab left or right to a
> different position in the top of the window. When
> you hold the pointer over a tab, a tooltip appears
> showing the location of the tab in the hierarchy
> of tabs. You can also assign colors to tabs that
> represent bins and sequences by assigning a
> colored label to the bin or sequence icon in the
> Browser. For more information about assigning
> labels, see ?Using Labels to Organize Your
> Clips.?
>
>
> By the way did you see that you can now rearrange
> tabs just by dragging them? I do a lot of screen
> shots so that helps me....

Thanks Lisa.

Plenty of room and time for vid tutorials Tom.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Andreas, could you distribute the Apple script, then the user could compile a version from their own HTML documents. That shouldn't violate copyright.

I'm working on an Automator workflow that takes a copy of the documentation and compiles it into a single document using TextEdit. Not sure how good a PDF will be generated from that doc, but we'll see.

@alex