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Destructive edits
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[David Lawrence] “Simple. Destructive = no undo at the moment the operation is performed.”
I see and appreciate your logic, but this is not the way these words are used across all DCC.
For example, an image manipulation is considered destructive if you are directly altering a raster; it’s considered non-destructive if you are altering it indirectly, such as via RAW metadata, an adjustment layer or smart filter.
Words change?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “For example, an image manipulation is considered destructive if you are directly altering a raster; it’s considered non-destructive if you are altering it indirectly, such as via RAW metadata, an adjustment layer or smart filter.”
My point still stands.
Can you hit undo? If yes, by definition, it’s nondestructive.
Changing raster is a committed change, not a destructive one. There’s a difference.
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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence] “My point still stands. Can you hit undo? If yes, by definition, it’s nondestructive. Changing raster is a committed change, not a destructive one. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t intend that attempt to disprove your definition, but rather to point out that the entire Photoshop-using community has a different definition of destructive than you do, and I don’t think you’re getting your definition back.
Personally, I think the term can be reasonably overloaded so long as it’s clear what the scope of the destruction is.
To actually argue against your point, I’d ask if having a backup copy of a file makes an otherwise non-undoable change non-destructive. Put differently, does Time Machine make almost everything non-destructive in your view?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Doesn’t the term destructive edit come from the film days when an actual slice was cut from the negative, thereby destroying the original linear piece of film? So it carried forward into the AVID which used a lot of film nomenclature and here we are.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Walter,
I think the distinction you made earlier is something crucial to recognize … the difference between operations on media and internal project operations.
In NLE land, media operations are destructive or non-destructive; internal project operations are something else – let’s say “committed” and “undoable”.
Maybe there are better words, but if I were teaching someone, there’s a meaningful difference to be learned there.
I can’t speak to the Photoshop distinctions, but I am sure they are trying to transmit some conceptual framework that has practical implications.
Franz.
Edit: It strikes me that your Time Machine question reframes things (to a data / OS level) and thus the language is context sensitive – ie. Time Machine is meta to the project and shifting the question there is shifting the frame of reference (against which we measure recoverable / non-recoverable changes).
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[Rich Rubasch] “Doesn’t the term destructive edit come from the film days when an actual slice was cut from the negative, thereby destroying the original linear piece of film?”
Rich,
It may have, … but my first exposure to the term was via early audio editing (DAW) software; I’m not sure it would have inherited any nomenclature from neg cutting.
Franz.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “It may have, … but my first exposure to the term was via early audio editing (DAW) software; I’m not sure it would have inherited any nomenclature from neg cutting.”
This is correct.
The term destructive come from the DAW world because DAWs were invented before all digital NLEs were technically possible.
Side note – when I was at Lucasfilm, Digidesign gave us one of their prototype Sound Accelerator boards to use for audio on the NLE we were developing. It was a big deal at the time because it was the only hardware available that could digitize and playback audio at full CD quality – 16bit/44.1khz
The DAW software that developed around this and other similar hardware could permanently write changes directly to disk, overwriting the original media file with no possible undo. This is where the term “destructive” originated and its meaning still holds today.
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David Lawrence
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[Walter Soyka] “I didn’t intend that attempt to disprove your definition, but rather to point out that the entire Photoshop-using community has a different definition of destructive than you do, and I don’t think you’re getting your definition back.”
Actually, if you go thru the Photoshop UI, you’ll find that the term “commit changes” actually originates in Photoshop. I wasn’t aware that the Photoshop community even thinks of things in terms of “destructive” and “nondestructive”. In Photoshop, I think in terms of “commit changes” or not.
[Walter Soyka] “To actually argue against your point, I’d ask if having a backup copy of a file makes an otherwise non-undoable change non-destructive. Put differently, does Time Machine make almost everything non-destructive in your view?”
Nope, that’s called “having a backup”. 😉
_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Bill Davis] “What I spent those 10years learning was how to work around the limitations of Legacy’s program’s design. And that’s precisely what YOU did to become an experienced editor in Legacy. And I presume what you’re going to do to become an experienced editor in Premier or Avid or whatever.”
Yes. And that’s what you’re doing with X today.
[Bill Davis] “You’re likely NOT going to do that with X, because you’re constantly conditioning and reinforcing yourself to see it as the thing that presents barriers to the way you expect editing to happen.”
Yes. I also choose to use spoons without holes because holes present barriers to the way I expect soup to be eaten.
[Bill Davis] “Clip collision avoidance might not mean anything to you. But it does to me. It means I no longer have to go on any more imaginary mental treks “down track” in order to assure that I don’t screw things up. CAN I do that? Sure. I did for 10 years. But now I can jettison that thinking and use the mental time and energy for other things.”
Sounds good to me.
[Bill Davis] “And since X will be VERY likely still be relevant to me in 2025 and Legacy will not – I can comfortably feel like I’m making progress.”
Given the working model of your favorite company, its a good bet that X will be dead as a door nail by 2025, they’ll be on to FCPZ by then, at which point your X skills will be as antiquated as your Legacy skills. But life is for learning, so enjoy.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
As a guy who learned to cut and splice 8mm film as a child, then to edit B&W video by manually punching in and out on two open-reel EIAJ video recorders, using a stopwatch and china marker, and about 15 years doing linear A/B-roll umatic and beta to 1-inch editing, I look at your discussion of “destructive” editing and all I can say is:
“Aren’t they cute.”
🙂
NLE editing is destructive only to the list of pointers to the media, not the source media itself. If I edit my ipod playist, I’ve “destroyed” the old playlist version unless I saved off a copy. But the songs weren’t affected.
If you guys are so concerned about the ability to wind-back edit decisions infinitely, why are you not saving off complete versions of the EDL’s to a drive every 100 or so undos?
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