Turning off / Viewing Layers

I am a freelance editor and use both fcp and avid systems. in general, i prefer fcp. however, one thing i can do in the avid that i have not been able to figure out in fcp is this: let's say there are 5 video tracks, all rendered. if i want to see what is happening on one of the lower layers in the avid, i just turn off the higher layers and it shows me what is below. if i try this in fcp, i get a warning about losing all my renders. that's not good.

mikey

> if i want to see what is happening on one of the lower layers in the avid, i just turn off the
> higher layers and it shows me what is below. if i try this in fcp, i get a warning about losing all
> my renders. that's not good.

Unfortunately, you're doing something that most people get wrong when they aren't completely immersed in Final Cut Pro.

Don't bother with the track on/off buttons on the left. They are awkward, destroy render files, take a long time to activate, and unresponsive. Use Clip Enable/Disable (CONTROL-B) instead. First of all, you can control exactly which clips to turn on/off. Second, it's a toggle operation, and the timeline is very clear about which clips are enabled and which are not. Finally, it's an undoable operation, so after you see the bottom layer, just undo a few times to get back to where it was.

The track on/off thing, to me, is an ancient concept, possibly from the dawning of multi-track audio. We're talking Les Paul here, early '50s. Turning an entire track on or off made some sense in music, since you would often put just one instrument on a certain track and you can mute the bass for the entire track if you want. Plus, in music you're only often dealing with three minutes, maybe 20 if you're dealing with a really long track. It makes no sense in video editing to turn off 20 minutes of material when you're only trying to preview 30 seconds.


www.derekmok.com

Quote
moonface
f i want to see what is happening on one of the lower layers

if it's just the ONE layer, you can double click it into the viewer.

FCP 7 claimed it has "improved" the way it handled render files.
i had hoped they meant they had addressed this seemingly simple problem,
but from what i've seen so far, it's that same as always.


nick

I do like the clip enable/disable trick. It is a nifty work-around, as is the double click to load the clip into the viewer. But they are still just that- work-arounds. They work, but are clumsy. Renders are still lost- yes i know they come back with some undoing, but the temporarily unrendered clips don't playback smoothly, making it difficult to place things precisely. I still think turning off higher layers with one click to reveal what is underneath with no render loss is a better option. Since we were asked for features we would like to see in future versions of fcp, I think this would be a great tool. I use it all the time in the avid.

I disagree about turning tracks on/off as ancient thinking. The more complicated the timeline becomes, with filters, plugins, nesting, etc. we need more control, not less. Other programs where convenient layer viewing comes to mind are After Effects, Photoshop, and as you mentioned, many audio editing programs. It works beautifully in the other programs in the final cut suite- LiveType, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack....why not FCP?

That being said- thanks for the tips.