-
LACPUG – Randy Ubillos
-
[Scott Witthaus] “[Oliver Peters] “where two editors can SIMULTANEOUSLY work within the SAME timeline.”
I’m sorry, but this is a horrifying workflow, IMHO. Who the hell would EVER want that? Maybe I should just consider myself lucky never having had to work in a multi-editor workflow. I mean, outside of broadcast, where does this exist (not counting asst. editor tasks)?
“It happens in films and in trailers\ promo where people are cutting with offline/proxy material.
Someone would be able to simultaneously overcut clean dialogue in your offline while you updated notes in a different part of the cut, etc. Just one example as alot of times I have to do rough cuts with auio that contains music and sfx under the dialougue i want to use.
Hell, tommorow – since a client is asking for too many revisions to something that cant be handled in a sane workday by one person – two of us have to tag team it – we’ll split it down the middle, why does . that sound so far fetched?
-
[Scott Witthaus] “I mean, outside of broadcast, where does this exist (not counting asst. editor tasks)?”
Not to state the obvious, but anywhere where there are multiple editors working off of shared storage you have opportunities for collaborative workflows to be beneficial. ????
I’ve probably split the last 18yrs fairly evenly between broadcast and new/streaming media and broadcast-style workflows certainly include larger new media facilities/divisions. The same types of problems need to be solved and the biggest differences are typically budgets and delivering to streaming/hosting services instead of cable/sat/OTA. I think multi-editor situations will only grow as falling prices and improving tech continue to make collaborative workflows more affordable and more approachable.
-
[Scott Witthaus] “[Oliver Peters] “where two editors can SIMULTANEOUSLY work within the SAME timeline.”
I’m sorry, but this is a horrifying workflow, IMHO. Who the hell would EVER want that? Maybe I should just consider myself lucky never having had to work in a multi-editor workflow.”
ANYONE working on a reality TV show needs this. Most people working on TV docs that have a short delivery time so we need more than one editor needs this. Not sure why you are lucky not to…It’s a godsend to many of us who have a LOT of footage to deal with, and short deadlines (talking tens of thousands of hours of dailies). There are many many legit reasons for needing this from reality to doc to news broadcast to sports to….
[Scott Witthaus] “I mean, outside of broadcast, where does this exist (not counting asst. editor tasks)?”
Oh…NOT broadcast? OK…when I started out in corporate, we had Media 100…we didn’t use Avid because, well, too expensive, quality wasn’t as good (Media 100 had GREAT online quality). But there were many times when two editors on the same project would have been helpful. Cutting corporate getaways where there were meetings coupled with activities where we filmed and cut a “THIS WAS YOUR WEEK” to present on the final day. Two editors on those and had to join the exports and have duplicates of all the media on two sets of drives (back in 1996). I did many corporate jobs where two of us being able to access the same project and media would have been great.
And other types of events like red carpet shows (sorry, broadcast, I know)…multiple editors are needed on the same project.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “ANYONE working on a reality TV show needs this. Most people working on TV docs that have a short delivery time so we need more than one editor needs this…It’s a godsend to many of us who have a LOT of footage to deal with, and short deadlines (talking tens of thousands of hours of dailies)….”
Scott may have been thinking exclusively about multiple editors working on the same timeline vs the FCPX approach where much of the work is of an organizational nature in the Event Browser before reaching the timeline. From that perspective, having collaborative features only used by multiple lead editors in the timeline phase of post production could seem a niche application.
If the material is properly prepped by the AE or team of AEs, the lead editor can work much faster, and in fact this AE/LE labor split is virtually required for a high-shooting-ratio production. In my experience working on large documentaries, I’d estimate the overall labor hour investment is probably split 3:1 in favor of the DIT and AE teams vs the lead editor. If you include color and audio finishing, it might be 5:1. So the timeline editing phase (while crucial) is only one stage of post production. The more labor-intensive organizational phase could also benefit if FCPX had better multi-user collaborative features.
Ideally these features would be designed for both decoupled geographically decentralized collaboration and for co-located LAN-connected collaboration. In the FCPX user profile, it’s probably more common for a few decentralized people to be working collaboratively than they be co-located with a gigabit or 10-gig NAS.
If the NLE (inc’l maybe Lightworks) has limited organizational tools except for the timeline, of course editors will think in terms of organizing huge globs of material on a bunch of timelines. Hence when considering multi-editor collaboration, often only multi-user timeline features get discussed.
I don’t know what granularity Lightworks’ collaborative timeline allows, but NLEs that support this typically have a fairly primitive bin-locking or timeline-locking feature. Even this should ideally include NLE features to reflect who has what resource locked and maybe an in-app chat feature, otherwise you constantly must call the other parties to coordinate. As locking becomes finer grained, this improves concurrency but increases complexity to implement and test.
The problem is such features essentially constitute a distributed database, and that’s very difficult to achieve with extreme reliability — especially without a server. The locking or concurrency control system must be rock-solid, else data will be lost or corrupted. This includes proper handling of many different cases: deadlock, livelock, atomicity violations, rollback, lost or stalled connections, etc. These happen under the covers, even if users don’t perceive it.
There’s a compelling need for improved multi-editor collaborative features in the FCPX Event Browser, not just in the timeline phase of editing. However I understand why Apple may not think the development and testing burden of this would benefit a large % of the user base. OTOH I wonder what % of the user base uses 360 VR editing, yet Apple developed that.
-
The original idea behind this thread was about non editors making editing systems.
Yet Lightworks was designed by editors for editors and yet it lost to systems made mostly by programmers like Ubillos.
Any theory to explain this?Ricardo Marty
-
[Joe Marler] “Scott may have been thinking exclusively about multiple editors working on the same timeline vs the FCPX approach where much of the work is of an organizational nature in the Event Browser before reaching the timeline. From that perspective, having collaborative features only used by multiple lead editors in the timeline phase of post production could seem a niche application.”
Not sure about that, because I think only Resolve allows multiple editors to work on the same TIMELINE at the same time..allowing you to update it as you go…so someone can make an edit change WHILE it’s being graded. Avid can’t do that…Avid allows multiple editors to access the same project file…but the bins that contain the cuts, once opened by someone, another person cannot then make changes to that cut in that bin. They can see it, but not make any changes (they can, but it’s complicated…they can’t save those changes unless they save it as a different bin).
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Whenever I read about this type of “collaborative” approach, it brings to mind the literary hoax of the late 60s where a group of famous journalists decided to do a “collaborative work” to create a steamy potboiler (almost pornagrahpic) novel.
“Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe” – was the result. (Wikipedia will know more.)
IIRC, each participant would write ONE chapter with the presumption that at the end of things, they’d have a nice novel to sell.
Needless to say, the result was widely regarded as a total mess.
Creativity by committee is a kinda difficult bar to clear, IMO.
Sure ASSEMBLY by committee is easy as pie. So if that’s the goal – there should be clear sailing ahead. But that kinda pushes editors into a roles as assembly line players, more than as discrete storytellers.
Which might or might not where a particular editor wants to go.
Interesting discussion, anyway.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “Sure ASSEMBLY by committee is easy as pie. So if that’s the goal – there should be clear sailing ahead. But that kinda pushes editors into a roles as assembly line players, more than as discrete storytellers.
Which might or might not where a particular editor wants to go”Sometimes it’s an absolute necessity. Especially when deadlines are involved. Many projects have parts that work in parallel paths and meet at the end. This includes the edit.
Remember, in this scenario, you aren’t starting from scratch. You are working with footage and most likely a script. Take a look at how many films and TV shows have multiple editors. Sometimes one editor handles all the action scenes and another the dialogue and exposition. Or an editor does the cutting and the assistant handles temp sound design and temp music placement.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
-
Sound post is a classic example of a collective group working towards an end goal. Foley is a whole department. Dialog editors don’t do sfx typically. Specialists do music compose, record and edit while the rest of the sound team are doing their bits. Great sound tracks are collaborations and rather than diffuse the product the many eyes and ears and creative experiences are often greater than the sum of the parts.
The same can happen with software and hardware development. This idea that committees can’t create is fostered by lone wolf operators or ego driven people. Strong vision is great from people like an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. But make no mistake, the history of human technology development is the story of collaboration.
This explains it really well
https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex
-
[Michael Gissing] ” This idea that committees can’t create is fostered by lone wolf operators or ego driven people. Strong vision is great from people like an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. But make no mistake, the history of human technology development is the story of collaboration.”
A director friend of mine was fond of saying “film is team art”.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up