Do you have The Touch?

Well, that's good news I'll add that to the FAQ.

Hi,

Lots of you have asked us to add support for more applications. You can now let us know which ones here:

www.arcticwhiteness.com/thetouch/the-touch-poll/

Tim

Hey, it lets me vote for an app more than once. Isn't that going to let folks game the system and give you skewed results?

Well, I'm sure there are people who'd want more than 1 app supported. It should give us an idea of where to target our efforts.

Not the point, you shouldn't be able to vote for the same app 5 times. Anyone who understands math and statistics (I have a research heavy degree) knows that skews results so bad they're worthless. Simple math. Yes, vote for more than one app, but not the SAME app 20 times.

Quite so. I've just stopped that (to a certain degree).

The ultimate for me would be just have one control panel that I could use to assign various gestures to my favorite applications. That way I could make it work how I like it.

So for example in FCP X I'd remove all the transport controls and just concentrate on more grading options and audio options.

Hi all. We'd love to have your opinion on The Touch. If you have a couple of minutes to fill in our mini questionnaire then this will really help us make the product even better. www.arcticwhiteness.com/thetouch/your-opinion-matters/

Done. Good luck with it. I feel you're getting close.

Biggest peeve I have is that I still, after all this time, make mistakes with some gestures (mostly playback, I swipe and half the time it duplicates a clip at the end of my timeline.) Undo doesn't work with any Touch operations. Very frustrating that I have to go back and manually fix any accidental (on my part or the Touch's fault) actions. Not being able to use the normal undo drives me insane.

Hi Ben,

We've had quite a few reports concerning the undo issue. We know that FCP does sometimes lose the ability to do an undo (with out without The Touch), however it seems that for some users The Touch is provoking the problem more frequently, and in some cases it's even systematic. For the moment we're trying to get enough data to target the cause of the issue. Unfortunately none of our machines have the problem, so that's making it awkward to look into. We'll get there, I hope!

We're currently wondering if it's a version issue - do you have the latest versions of FCPX and Mac OS?

As for the playback swipe, I'd be really curious to know if anyone else is experiencing an issue because we've not had any other reports at all concerning gestures not being recognised. I have however just had an idea...

Under normal FCP usage, if you hold down the option key and drag a clip you'll duplicate it. I'm wondering if you're accidentally holding down ctrl-option or option-command instead of ctrl-command. In that case The Touch won't be active, and your swipe will duplicate a clip if the mouse happens to be over one. Not only would this explain the duplication issue, it would also explain why The Touch doesn't appear to be working half the time.

Tim

Holding the correct keys.
The undo is 100% for me. Never a problem with FCP X commands, always a problem with The Touch commands. Very consistent for me.
Just FYI.

OK. What versions do you have of Mac OS and FCPX?

As a test can you tell me if you have the same swipe issue if you:

1) Hold down the keys on the other side of the keyboard
2) Turn on automatic mode instead (although you'd need another input device connected to do that)

Tim

10.8.2, 10.0.8.

I can't remember the swipes well enough to use automatic mode.

Hi,

By automatic mode I don't mean that you should hide the display. Rather:

1) Click on the hand icon
2) Go do the welcome panel
3) Under 'You many use The Touch with a trackpad...', expand the 'Trackpad option'
4) Choose 'Activate automatically when using a supported application'

Now there'll be no need to hold down ctrl-command, and it would be useful to know if the problem persists. Note however that you can only do this if you temporarily reconnect your mouse (because otherwise, once in FCP you wouldn't be able to use your trackpad as a mouse at all!)

Another very useful test, if you have the time, would be to see if the problem persists in another session (that is, create a temporary new user account and try it there).

Regards,

Tim

tarmes wrote: you can only do this if you temporarily reconnect your mouse (because otherwise, once in FCP you wouldn't be able to use your trackpad as a mouse at all!)

I haven't owned a mouse since the Magic Trackpad first shipped.

I get the exact same behavior on my 15" rMBP, too.

Ah OK.

When you use the MBP, do you see the problem with the internal trackpad, the Magic trackpad or both?

We've been trying to figure out other possible causes at our end too. Another idea has occurred to us.

The only time that The Touch itself will send a command that adds a clip to the end of the time line is when executing an "Append operation". To do that you would normally have to do a tap-tap-hold with 2 fingers then move to the right.

Do you see the "connect/insert" box pop up when this problem happens? (This is the box that you would see if you do the tap-tap-hold with 2 fingers?

Tim

Hi all,

As we build up to the next major release of The Touch we though it'd be nice to share our design process, so I wrote a short article explaining how and why The Touch came to be:

www.arcticwhiteness.com/how-we-created-the-touch/

Hopefully it'll be of interest to some of you...

Regards,

Tim

Tim,

Your blog was a great read of the concept to final product. Bravo to the both of you for marching through the obstacles and I appreciate all the work that you both have put into The Touch App.

I'm an early adopter and I understand there will be bugs. I've used it on two projects but stopped there because it has been unreliable for color grading...I was just getting the hang of it and it was very convenient until I encountered a recurring problem. I sent an email under the support link in the app with a video of my problem but haven't received a response. I hope it gets sorted it out. Thanks again.

Regards,

James

Hi James,

Hmm, I can't see anything that's obviously from you. Would you mind sending it again please?

Tim