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A bridge too far?
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And by the way, if keyboard remapping shouldn’t be used in X, why did they put it in there?
I have a workflow that works for me. Your mileage may vary.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Craig Alan] “Have you used it enough to know it’s bug free and full featured enough to be “viable.” “
It was good enough and viable for:
https://www.cinema5d.com/davinci-resolve-studio-delivers-jason-bourne-goldcrest-post/
Ricardo Marty
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[Scott Witthaus] “This is the mistake you make: trying to make X work like Avid. Learn the software the way it was designed, not based on what you know from traditional track-based softwares.”
[Phil Lowe] “Not a mistake if I get the job done. And I get the job done.”
Would you encourage someone new to Avid to approach it the way you’ve approached FCP X? Or would you say that there are a few important things that Avid does fundamentally different than other NLEs, and that there’s a real benefit to learning the Avid way and driving Avid like it was designed to be driven?
Personally, I find trying to remap keys identically in similar apps to be frustrating — they never work quite the same, and they never have exactly the same feature sets, so they may as well be different. But of course, your mileage may vary.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I find trying to remap keys identically in similar apps to be frustrating — they never work quite the same, and they never have exactly the same feature sets, so they may as well be different.”
I’m with ya there, I jump between NLE’s and I always learn the defaults. The only thing I do is make additions. You miss way too much functionality. Big X updates usually add new features, with new KB shortcuts, so I start over from defaults when that happens. All NLE’s let you play, and choose a source I/O the same way, after that, nothing is the same. 😉
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~ -
[Walter Soyka] “Would you encourage someone new to Avid to approach it the way you’ve approached FCP X?”
I would encourage them to do whatever it takes to get to speed as quickly as possible. Even Avid’s keyboards can be remapped, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I started to work with it. I have never used the default keyboard in any NLE I’ve ever used, and have been able to beat deadlines routinely with all of them: Newscutter, Media Composer, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and now FCPX.
News doesn’t afford the luxury of taking your time to fully learn a system, especially one as quirky as X. You’re expected to start cutting on it after a couple of days of training, so anything you can bring to bear on it from your former experience – including workflows – that gets you turning packages in 30 minutes or less, is what you need to do.
So yes, again my answer would be do whatever gets you up to speed as quickly as possible.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Walter Soyka] “Would you encourage someone new to Avid to approach it the way you’ve approached FCP X?”
I would encourage them to do whatever it takes to get to speed as quickly as possible. Even Avid’s keyboards can be remapped, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I started to work with it. I have never used the default keyboard in any NLE I’ve ever used, and have been able to beat deadlines routinely with all of them: Newscutter, Media Composer, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and now FCPX.
News doesn’t afford the luxury of taking your time to fully learn a system, especially one as quirky as X. You’re expected to start cutting on it after a couple of days of training, so anything you can bring to bear on it from your former experience – including workflows – that gets you turning packages in 30 minutes or less, is what you need to do.
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I find trying to remap keys identically in similar apps to be frustrating — they never work quite the same, and they never have exactly the same feature sets, so they may as well be different.”
My shortcuts: C-V-B: Connect, Insert, Overwrite. I don’t even use Append. It’s superfluous to my workflow.
H: add edit (Blade tool)
+, -: Zoom in and out on timeline.
E,R: set in and out points.
Q: range tool (as in “quick range tool”)
Z: lift from storyline.
Y,U: tops and tails.
X: ripple delete.
A,P: left as X defaults.
Spacebar: start,stop playback.
1,2,3,4: 10 frames back and forward, single frame back and forward.These are all the keys I need to knock out a package and, except for the C,Q,A,S and +,- keys, are exactly what I’ve used in Avid systems for more than 20 years. As you may have noticed, I have grouped my most frequently used keys from the middle to left side of the keyboard, where I use a “touch-typing” method using the mouse for quick navigation and the 1,2,3,4 keys for precise navigation. I don’t use skimming. At all. It’s not precise enough for my taste.
I’m able to knock out 1:30 news packages in 20 minutes, which – by the way – is how fast I could do it using a Newscutter. The NLE is only part of the equation. The workflow is where the real speed is. We were cutting packages in 20 minutes on old 3/4″ tape and Beta SP because of workflows that the format would dictate.
Yes, my workflow works very well for me. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to use it, especially someone committed to a native X workflow, whatever that is.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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Great reply!
In the lights of ‘This Guy Edits’ a question:
Would it be possible to document this 20 minute workflow in a similar fashion?
I know, rights and all that stuff, but maybe you can sell it to your employer as ‘free’ advertisement:)I’m pretty sure a lot of folks would highly appreciate such an effort…..
….it would be dumb and lazy not to ask:)
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[Phil Lowe] “o if there are any X developers reading this, PLEASE give us a bona fide audio mixer instead of the garbage pan & volume slider in the inspector!
“I agree FCPX’s Audio automation is one of its challenges, however using the Range Selection (R) tool with audio on the project timeline is more than adequate IMHO.
Then with keyboard shortcuts in the project timeline, you can make tweaks to audio as you need.
Knowing how simple News Edits (and the software used by them) is often very basic – I am surprised you need anything that elaborate.
Network TEN in Australia for example – use Vizrt EasyCut and it is very simplistic indeed.
What I would like to see however in ‘X’ is a baked in quick audio-only dissolve (I use one thats a hack now) and also would like to see a ROLES based mixer for more complex edits and projects.
Dean Neal…
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The “rights and stuff” is not trivial.
It’s the reason all of us who try to post visual examples of the concepts we are learning and discussing – generally have to post our examples using the LAMEST projects we have worked on!
It’s only the minor and self-funded work we hold the clear rights to post about.
Trust me, It’s really annoying to have something complex sitting on your machine that a lot of people could potentially benefit from discussing – and knowing you can’t show it to anyone without going through a huge time sucking hassle.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Phil Lowe] ” I realize leaving a real audio mixer out of the X workflow is probably less threatening to kids editing cat videos for youtube, but an honest-to-goodness mixer doesn’t threaten me in the least.”
Well, I guess if we get a mixer, my “cat videos” can only get better on YouTube!
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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