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A bridge too far?
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[Phil Lowe] ” 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.”
Prior to my wearing my editor hat, I was a Mixer here in LA. Trailers, indie features, tv spots etc. Full time for maybe 5-6 years. I’m not threatened by a mixer either. At all. Thing is, in about 20 years of editing on MC, FCP old, on to X and Pr, I’ve used an NLE mixer to “mix” maybe… 4 times. Seriously. Might be nice to have, but don’t miss it at all.
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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\”~ -
[Phil Lowe] “I would encourage them to do whatever it takes to get to speed as quickly as possible.”
Sounding like a broken record again this year, but I just finished teaching a technical “bootcamp” to 38 graduate marketing students who start the semester in one week. Only 4 had edited before, 2 on Premiere the others on FCPX. After 2 hours of lecture and demo from me on our Terrablock system, how to set up FCPX libraries on that system and basic FCPX import, organize and edit functions they were ALL editing at the end of the 3rd hour. And experimenting with some cool shit. Barely a question asked. I guess I shouldn’t be astounded after 3 years of seeing the same thing, but I was again. And in three weeks after they finish the Lynda.com FCPX essentials class, they will be that much better. Apple has done something very good with X. So much easier learning path than with FCP7.
So it seems ease of use and speed don’t seem to be an issue unless one is trying to “unlearn” another software or forcing a work pattern on X that should not be done. Just my humble observations.
[Phil Lowe] “I don’t even use Append. It’s superfluous to my workflow.”
Too bad as it might really speed up your work. The Append function is one of the most useful functions to get a project rolling. I use it all the time. Get your good clips and soundbites in a row very quickly using Append and then polish from there. It just makes the process go faster. In my educator role I tell my students not to sit there looking at the footage waiting for inspiration, rather get some stuff on the timeline (append) and start working it around. That’s where the inspiration comes from; doing the work.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Phil Lowe] “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. “
The fact that you’re in a fast-paced environment is, in my mind, all the more reason to learn your tools inside-out. It’s like that Abraham Lincoln line, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” If you are using the exact same workflow, irrespective of your tools or your situation, I bet your axe is not as sharp as it could be.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
That said, you’re the expert on your own workflow. I don’t presume to know your job better than you do. I just disagree with you on how to compare the utility of a couple different tools.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Scott Witthaus] “So it seems ease of use and speed don’t seem to be an issue unless one is trying to “unlearn” another software “
That’s been my experience when helping people learn NLEs. The first one always seems to be the easiest because the person learning is a blank slate. I think the second NLE is more difficult because you have to become a blank slate again, and that’s hard because what you are trying to forget is the only point of reference you’ve ever had for what you are trying to learn. I think the third NLE is almost as easy as the first because by now, hopefully, the learner understands the importance of becoming a blank slate (and can do it more easily) and now that the learner has two NLEs under their belt so I think it’s easier to think of things conceptually as opposed to just NLE-specific procedures.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think the third NLE is almost as easy as the first”
I’m one’a them thar pointy-headed liberal arts nerds that’s been destroying America, and I can tell you that this is true for languages too. Learning the second one is tough, but the third one comes surprisingly easily. After that, you can learn pretty much as many as you want. Learning languages is a skillset that supersedes the TASK of learning any PARTICULAR language.
The hard part is letting go of the bad habits you picked up while learning the second one in the first place. LOL
And yes, that absolutely applies to remapping keyboard shortcuts from one application to another. If all you need to do is a task or two at hand, fine, remap shortcuts to the ones you already know. If you want to actually learn the new NLE, don’t. It’s a trap.
To me, though, the real ninja power is mapping each NLE to a UNIQUE set of custom keyboard shortcuts. For example, my rule is if it takes three fingers, it probably ain’t short enough, so if I use the not-short-enough-cut a lot, I remap it. But I use different shortcuts in different applications, so my customized shortcuts in one NLE have nothing whatsoever to do with my customized shortcuts in another — but I’m always looking out for efficiencies to be gained from unique remappings.
That is, there’s nothing sacred about the stock shortcuts, per se. They’re not incantations. They do reflect sets of priorities, though. Top level commands are top-level for a reason, but the specific assignments of keys to those top-level functions can always always always be improved upon, imo.
But that’s different than deciding not to explore efficiencies already built-in…which is also different than deciding not to maximize those efficiencies even further. 🙂
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[Tim Wilson] “I’m always looking out for efficiencies to be gained from unique remappings. “
While I agree with the general principle that one should start by learning the mappings of the NLE itself (rather than slavishly importing mappings from a different NLE), there are so many examples of just plain downright appallingly bad choices that it is always important to consider better ways of mapping than the developers came up with.
One of my particular bones of contention is to do with zooming, which in my opinion should always be accomplished with a single unmodified keystroke and should always be achievable with the left hand (unless you happen to be left-handed). When you grasp this principle it is so obvious that you will never go back.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Tim Wilson] “To me, though, the real ninja power is mapping each NLE to a UNIQUE set of custom keyboard shortcuts. “
I kinda agree and I kinda don’t as default keyboards can be hit or miss. For example, PPro’s kinda sucks IMO as many functions aren’t mapped by default, and FCP 7’s had oddities like the actual editing commands along top row function keys. Avid’s default is pretty good from a ‘commands probably used most often are close to each other’ perspective, but even then it depends on what commands you use most often.
A year or two ago I started using a Logitech G13 gamepad to replace my keyboard for 95% of my NLE needs and this really had me rethink which commands I use most often. A lot of what I use most often is pretty universal (play, pause, rev, ff, mark in, mark out, go to next edit, go to previous edit, insert, overwrite, lift, extract, replace edit, add edit, add marker, add keyframe, etc.,) so of course I’m going to remap the commands so that no matter what NLE I’m using things like that will be the same. There’s no reason insert edit should be a different key for every NLE I own (which I think is up to six now).
With that being said, not all the NLE’s have the exact same feature set so each of my keyboard/G13 layouts is unique in the end even though the core commands the same no matter which NLE I’m using.
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[Scott Witthaus] “After 2 hours of lecture and demo…they were ALL editing at the end of the 3rd hour… Barely a question asked… much easier learning path than with FCP7…So it seems ease of use and speed don’t seem to be an issue unless one is trying to “unlearn” another software or forcing a work pattern on X that should not be done…
You’ve had good results and we’ve heard of many “new student” situations like that. However I think there’s a valid point that some things on FCPX are simply less intuitive than a track-oriented editor. E.g, doing a J or L cut “the FCPX way”, vs detaching the audio.
With a track-oriented editor the A and V tracks are just right there in front of you and there is no concealment or special deductive reasoning to figure it out. With FCPX I’m not sure I could have ever figured the “right way” of doing a J/L cut it out if I didn’t see a tutorial video. Apple page on doing split edits: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12635?locale=en_US
The new way made sense once I learned to do it, but (to me) it wasn’t an intuitive, discoverable process.
One of the most extreme examples is stabilizing or applying optical smoothing to a multicam clip in FCPX vs Premiere. In Premiere it is intuitive and logical, whereas in FCPX it (ironically) requires an arcane sequence of steps.
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[Scott Witthaus] “In my educator role I tell my students not to sit there looking at the footage waiting for inspiration, rather get some stuff on the timeline (append) and start working it around. “
Short-attention-span-instant-gratification crowd is quite big. It makes sense to cater to them if you’re after the numbers.
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