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Editing Speed Part 2.
As the last thread kinda veered into the usual cowg-mire, I thought I’d start a nice, clean sequel. If you’re new to this thread, please check out Herb’s excellent kick-off post here. Actually, you should read the whole thread first. See you tomorrow… lol
I think editing speed is enabled mostly -as discussed in the original thread- by being familiar enough with your axe that you don’t need to think about what you’re doing, it’s just an extension of your brain. This is the “keystrokes” aspect. It’s also why it’s hard to change editing systems. Doing that means you’re suddenly “back at square one” in many ways, and this isn’t fun, particularly when you work with people sitting behind you. 🙂 I totally get why someone who’s only cut in FCP “Classic” is reluctant even to move to Premiere, though they’re very similar. You need to retrain your muscles and brain. You suddenly need to not only think about what you’re going to do, but how you’re going to do it. And that nicely leads into why I feel I edit faster in FCP X.
First off, this is totally specific to what I do, what my sources are, and how I cut. I’m not working linearly, I’m cutting trailers. lol Taking a line from Reel 1 and cutting to a reaction from Reel 4. Cutting bits of 4 scenes to look like one, that sort of thing. Script? hah! I mean, sometimes yes, but often I’ll just start cutting and figure out what script to use, or write one, once I have a general idea of where I’m going. I prefer X to other NLE’s (which I also regularly use) because… I almost never have to think about how I’m going to do something when I’m cutting.
With tracks, I need to make sure that I’ve got the proper audio and video channels targeted to the proper tracks. Every. Time. I. Make. A. Cut. Now again, this is specific to me and what I do. Unless I’m doing crazy compositing, I don’t have a lot of video layers, but I do have a sh*t ton of audio layers. My sources are stereo DME split features, so most every video clip in the TL has 2-4 channels with it. And I do lots of sound design. Piles of audio, the whole TL is stuffed with audio. 😉 And in a tracked NLE, every time I make a cut, I need to target the audio. I don’t have the luxury of being able to carefully keep all my tracks separate while I cut, I need to move quickly, and I need to see everything on screen as much as possible. So it’s track tetris for me. It’s second nature, I can do this very quickly, I’ve been at it a long time, but it does take time and more importantly, it takes me out of the flow.
With X, I rarely think about that “technical/mechanical” part of each cut at all, and that makes me faster. And it’s not like X is some magical thing, I do need to sometimes switch sources, A/V, V, or A only for an edit. I need to enable or disable Roles on a clip at some point, maybe there’s an effect I don’t want under some dialog or vice versa. But generally that takes very little time, much less than doing it before each cut in addition to checking to ensure I won’t overwrite something when I make the cut. That’s a huge deal for me.
Also… Skimming. Being able to see an entire 2 hour feature at a glance in filmstrip mode. Looking at waveforms for dozens of sound effects in the browser to “audition” them rather than playing them or worse, loading them one by one into a source monitor. Adding to selects by keywording ranges on the fly, (“oops, missed that”… click, move on) possibly days or weeks into the cut without hunting down my selects bin or sequence to add to it. The dead simplicity of doing basic compositing. Great looking titles, Previewing video and audio effects before applying them. Never needing to save. The list goes on…
Rather than write a book here, which I probably could, I’ll just sum up and say that FCP X, more that any other NLE I use, just disappears when I’m cutting. Pick source, cut in, repeat. I can stay right in that “making stuff up as I go” mode. X gets out of the way of my brain.
Not that it’s perfect. It gets bogged down sometimes. There are things I wish it did better or did at all. There are things that other NLE’s do better/faster/etc. But, when it comes to the actual editing part of operating the NLE, you know, the part where I’m creating something. FCP X wins hands down. For me. 😉
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
2 Replies
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I agree. And to your point, when adding assets to the timeline, you can easily change big groups of assets. If you have a bunch of clips with 8 channels of audio, you can select them all, turn off all but Channel 1 (if you need it) and continue editing in 5 seconds.
If you need those channels back, it’s just as easy to turn them back on without rearranging or making room for another track, or match framing back to the original footage, track tetris a new hole, and adding the clip back to the timeline being sure to copy and paste an effects that were left behind.
I made a gif of all the things stored in an FCPX timeline. It’s quite amazing when it’s exploded all out.
This:
Holds all of this:
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I made a gif of all the things stored in an FCPX timeline. It’s quite amazing when it’s exploded all out.
“Zoiks! Yeah, I forgot about that stuff. 🙂 I use secondary’s when I cut music to great effect as well. Make the cuts, expand audio and trim the spines a little, and then slam ’em all into a single, collapsible secondary. Expand to edit, collapse to clean up. Much more useful than compounds if you’re going to change timings etc. This is ludicrous example, but this:
contains this:
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~
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