An observation

[Bret Williams]

Jimmy Page would have been the sole guitarist by then. Pretty cool.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I actually recommend FCP X to directors who wish to edit.

For someone unfamiliar with the actual interfaces, FCP 7, Avid, Premiere Pro, ask too many questions and create too many barriers before one can even edit one shot. Project settings, user settings, sequence settings, bins, media folders, project folders, media locations make the process complex for a director, who’s not a novice as far as film-making goes, but unfamiliar with NLE interfaces.

With FCP X, for, say a docu shot on a C300 or DSLR, the director simply starts a new event, drags media, scrubs through shots, and assembles a narrative. Everything stays in sync always, and there’s sufficient support for XML and conversion of XMLs so that his edit can translate to something else, even Avid. And everything gets saved to one place, its all saved all the time.

I do agree that, at least if they wish to keep the ‘Pro’ in the name, there should be a provision to switch off the magnetic timeline, and to have some kind of a ‘track’ methodology.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Mitch Ives]

First of all, who you calling an old-timer Bill? 🙂

Tracks may be comforting, but they are also damned useful on certain types of projects. Now I realize that I was too proficient in 7… I didn’t need a magnetic timeline to avoid screwing things up. So, I admit that those who I routinely watched screwing things up probably welcomed the trackless, magnetic timeline with open arms. I’m okay with that. What bothers me is when I see people who I know damn good and well never edited the types of projects where tracks are a godsend, telling all of us that tracks are crap and unnecessary. I especially appreciate when I being told that I’m a dinosaur because I understand the value of tracks.

I have no axe to grind with the trackless environment… I’m fine with it. And even though I didn’t need it, I can appreciate the magnetic timeline. I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is the condescending comments I keep having to read. If I can appreciate someone elses view, why can’t they be enlightened enough to appreciate mine?

So I’m fine with everyone here. What I’m not fine with is waiting years for Apple to fix things that should not have been broken in the release, let alone several releases ago…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Bill Davis]

Calm down Mitch.

Don’t be like the religious victim thinkers who run around yelling about how their faith is “under attack” when you can’t drive 5 miles in any city in the US without passing a couple of houses of worship. And every possible sub faith and sect has representation everywhere.

Every NLE had tracks for the first 20 years. 7 of the top 8 NLEs have them now. And nobody wants to take yours away. Want tracks? You can have them for $600 a year. Simple.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Mitch Ives]

Priceless Bill. You managed to completely miss my message.

If this video thing doesn’t work out for you, go to work for Apple in the marketing department. I’m sure they’ll appreciate your approach of chasing people to other products…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Steve Connor]

[Bill Davis] “Calm down Mitch.

Don’t be like the religious victim thinkers who run around yelling about how their faith is “under attack” “

That made me laugh for reasons of irony 🙂

[Bill Davis]

I just tell an editor that if he wants tracks, he should use one of the many track based alternatives – and I take another hit hit for being the super X partisan.

Plenty of irony to pass around these days.

“Doesn’t matter how many good things this thing has…If it doesn’t have the things *I* want … all I’ll do is bitch…”

Goodbye half full/half empty. It’s the era of find the flaw – press your nose against it – and then go on line and RAGE about how bad life is cuz it comes with flaws.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s the current broadcast news / political talk model, isn’t it?

; )

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Ryan Holmes]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “I do agree that, at least if they wish to keep the ‘Pro’ in the name, there should be a provision to switch off the magnetic timeline, and to have some kind of a ‘track’ methodology.”

If you do a “Lift from Storyline” with your selected clips it breaks them out of the magnetic timeline structure. It’s basically like a track based editor without the clip collisions at that point. I should emphasis that doing this is “basically like” a track-based editor, but it’s not “exactly like” a track-based editor, especially if you’re getting audio heavy with music, sound fx, dialogue and you need to get that out to another program for finishing.

I was at a FCPX event at an Apple store in Dallas last week where the FCPX certified guru was showing this “Lift from Storyline” as his primary workflow on projects. Most of the editors in the room (including myself) were Premiere Pro users. I believe, he was arguing that FCPX is a clip based editor and therefore more visual and fluid than the other track-based editors when using either the magnetic timeline or the “Lift from Storyline” approach. All that to say, I’m still a Premiere user… 🙂 But I just wanted to be fair to X saying that it could work track-esque (track light?) if you want it to Neil.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[David Roth weiss]

[Jim Wiseman] “Adobe: Love the software, dislike the business model. Does not work for me. YMMV. Thought I made that clear.”

Jim,

If you really love the software you’re simply shooting yourself in the foot.

Get over it man, $50 a month is chicken feed. Time is money, and you’re frittering it away by grousing here and taking the time to learning a silly new way to edit instead of just making money.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Jim Wiseman]

Not if you are planning on spending your semi-retirement on non paying projects. Which I have been doing for the last few days without having to think about inane comments like yours, David. Go ahead and be a sap for a system that keeps you in fealty for the rest of your life. I’ll stick with products like FCPX, Resolve, and even Media 100 to always have access to my projects. That took exactly one minute out of my work day.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.2, Final Cut Studio 2 & 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC: 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500: Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro Retina 2015, i7, 500GB, M370X 2GB: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems