Murch and NLEs from IBC

[Herb Sevush]

When Murch talks about how responsive Adobe has been to the Coen Brothers and himself in terms of adding new features it reminded me of EMC, the original PC NLE. If someone suggested a feature that was later implemented, that person would get credited in the EMC update documentation – a small thing but recognition is both free and powerful.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[David Roth weiss]

So, I sincerely wonder, why is it you guys aren’t teaming up on Walter Murch to call him a Luddite? After all, he’s just repeating many of same things David Lawrence and I spoke of four years ago, immediately after the EOL of 7 and the launch of X.

Take a listen to the 3-parter at the links below to hear what David and I were discussing almost immediately after X was launched… Mr. Murch has had the benefit of four years of watching X development to gain some additional perspective that David Lawrence and I didn’t have, but we were certainly saying many of the same things then that Mr. Murch says now.

https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCPX-David-H-Lawrence-interview/1

https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCPX-David-H-Lawrence-2/1

https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCPX-David-H-Lawrence-3/1

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.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

you’d be curious at the 7 minute mark – where Murch effectively describes how Premiere Pro is being shaped and altered, on a month to month basis, by front rank directors and editors, right down to the buttons we see.
that’s almost crazy. Adobe take it under consideration and he says that, but that’s editing software alive like no one has ever seen. Even Murch himself says he’s never seen anything like it. Adobe are about gone blood simple after editing.

If anyone thinks Premiere Pro isn’t on a massive march they are having a laugh. It’s close to a monster.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Andrew Kimery]

Considering the number of ‘firsts’ in Murch’s career it’s always interesting to get his POV, but a bit to David’s point, the basics of what he said were as a few years ago as they are today. I do think it’s interesting that seemingly the biggest reason he didn’t use PPro on “Tomorrowland” was because he didn’t think he could find enough people with both high level movie experience and high level PPro experience to handle what sounded like a very demanding workflow (even by Hollywood standards). He mentioned the Coen’s using PPro on “Hail, Caesar!” and you can also add Marvel’s new movie “Deadpool” to that list as well. Still solidly an ‘Avid world’ world though for scripted movies and ‘TV’ shows. I put TV in quotes because many original shows on Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are also being cut on Avid (call them TV-style shows?).

To flesh out a bit more about his audio comment, it’s not just the number (PPro being able to do more than Avid) but also the fact that there are still tracks. Murch spoke at Adobe’s booth at IBC and it was semi-live Tweeted and, which his audio background, he pre-mixes a lot in the NLE and having tracks is not just familiar from his NLE experience but also from his DAW experience.

FCP.co’s blurb about the interview is more provocative than anything Murch said, but I guess they wanted to do something to drum up more clicks. 😉

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “FCP.co’s blurb about the interview is more provocative than anything Murch said, but I guess they wanted to do something to drum up more clicks. ;)”

Exactly my feeling. Any conversation with Murch is worth reading — his work with Coppola is some of the best that human eyes have seen — but…

I’m not surprised to hear that audio is part of why he still relies on tracks. Watch, and LISTEN, again to The Conversation. It’s easy to understand why he worked for a year on the audio, why he was nominated for an Oscar for it — and it’s easy for me to believe that he wouldn’t have necessarily have saved all that much time with having it digital.

(I’ve noticed that we never talk about that two of his three Oscars are for SOUND. Or that his only picture Oscar was on The Avid. Not that it matters, but not that it doesn’t. Because if it doesn’t matter, why are we still talking about it?)

Even his use of FCP was in the service of a workflow that had been around for dogs ages — not THAT much changed for 100 years, and ZERO changed from his work with Avid.

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Murch effectively describes how Premiere Pro is being shaped and altered, on a month to month basis, by front rank directors and editors, right down to the buttons we see.
that’s almost crazy. Adobe take it under consideration and he says that, but that’s editing software alive like no one has ever seen. Even Murch himself says he’s never seen anything like it.”

THAT to me is the takeway. Yes, he gets all the way through the interview without unzipping and urinating on FCPX. LOL This is not news. He doesn’t do that kind of thing.

But to Walter, the entirely revolutionary, altogether unprecedented thing is Adobe’s responsiveness to the requests of editors.

(As EDITORS. We’re talking about what Walt says about EDITING, not financial models.)

Heaven forbid that “Walter is nice to FCPX but says that Adobe is responding to editors to an unprecedented degree” be the heart of the introduction.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Tim Wilson] “But to Walter, the entirely revolutionary, altogether unprecedented thing is Adobe’s responsiveness to the requests of editors.
“

Any guesses on what the Coen Arrow is (or whatever Much called the feature that the Coen’s requested)?

[Tim Wilson] “But to Walter, the entirely revolutionary, altogether unprecedented thing is Adobe’s responsiveness to the requests of editors. “

Basically with Apple you get what they give and that’s been in it’s DNA since Day 1 when Jobs and Woz made the Apple I. Jobs basically wanted a sealed box that no one could open and Woz wanted something totally open and available that anyone could modify (at one point I think Woz was actually selling the schematics for the Apple I until someone mentioned that that’s not good for business). Obviously that business model has worked out very well for Apple, but it’s not always the best experience for users that need specific solutions to specific problems.

As much as has changed with X since it launched in 2011 (both in terms of features as well as real world usage and perception) I’m actually more intrigued by what has changed for PPro. Premiere, in some version, has been around since the early 90’s but it’s only been in the last 2-3 years that it hasn’t been an also-ran in the NLE world. That’s a lot of baggage to lose in a very short amount of time. Sure, it took the death of FCP 7 to give PPro an opening but the PPro team has done a great job exploiting that opportunity.

[Oliver Peters]

[Tim Wilson] “Heaven forbid that “Walter is nice to FCPX but says that Adobe is responding to editors to an unprecedented degree” be the heart of the introduction.”

The biggest issue with FCPX is Apple. Their communication with users – even in private – is never completely open. Many users who love FCPX still don’t quite trust Apple. The underlying thought is that FCPX has a 10-year expiration date of which we are half-way through. What next, if anything? Why hitch your horse to that wagon?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Andrew Kimery]

[Oliver Peters] “The underlying thought is that FCPX has a 10-year expiration date of which we are half-way through. What next, if anything? Why hitch your horse to that wagon?”

As has been talked about before, any program from any company can disappear w/o notice but there certainly does seem to be more worry about Apple than others (probably because Apple is infamous for yanking products/features off the market). Given how far in advance they announced the EOL of Aperture I wonder if they learned a lesson from the X launch?

-Andrew

[David Roth weiss]

You have nothing to worry about in terms of X bring EOL’d, because I don’t use it. Typically, the only software that gets killed off is that which I become expert using, then build my company around,

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.

[Andrew Kimery]

[David Roth Weiss] “You have nothing to worry about in terms of X bring EOL’d, because I don’t use it. Typically, the only software that gets killed off is that which I become expert using, then build my company around,”

Sounds like you should start your own protection racket. Nothing like gettin’ paid for *not* using software. 😉