New editor trying to keep up!

[Colin Mcquillan]

Definitely taking a daily gander at this forum is a good start. Also read the monthly mag that the COW produces.

Beyond what you will find here, perhaps a subscription to lynda.com would do you some good. Whenever you come across something you don’t quite fully understand I bet you’ll find a tutorial there that will lead you to a better understanding, not only in software specific queries, but also in fundamentals of… editing, post-production…..

Shane Ross has a great DVD available here on project organization.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Shane Ross]

http://www.kenstone.net
http://www.moviola.com/resource_center_main
http://www.lynda.com

But those are online. I dunno of any editing magazine other than the Editors Guild one, and that is limited to members of the Editors Guild.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello James! I can tell you this, you can never read too much about editing. I would read just about anything you can get your hands on. Information about the technical side (codecs, formats, data rates, compression and the like) is online and in all the program manuals that you may use currently. This site is awesome for learning stuff. Check out online tutorials and basically just live to edit and edit to live. I read about editing online and in books for about 1-2 hours everyday and have been for the past 5 years and I’m always amazed about how much I know…..and how much I DON’T know. Take an inventory of what is pertinent that you must learn and focus on that until you have a good grasp. Try to filter out stuff that you do not need to know, for the moment. Relevance is what it’s all about. Never be afraid to say “I don’t know…But I’ll find the answer soon!” Stay with it and Good Luck! STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Peter Wiggins]

James,

Just edit, make stuff. Work stuff out, look on the net when you are drinking tea or eating toast,

Don’t spend 2 hours a day ‘learning’ by reading, that doesn’t teach you how to edit. Learn from your mistakes. Experiment, go down the ‘I know this is crazy but what happens if’ route

Make stuff, have fun.

Peter

[Stuart Christensen]

I totally disagree with Peter about reading. It’s an essential part of stuffing your brain with the necessary information that you will grow from. Sure, you can edit your heart out and try everything, we all have, but in the end, if you want to be confident in your technical knowledge, which is really what James was concerned with in the original post, you HAVE to read and research all the stuff you need to know. It’s a technical as well as creative pursuit. READING is GOOD.

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[David Roth weiss]

[Stuart Christensen] “READING is GOOD.”

Stuart,

Few editors can actually read — proof of that is all the FCP manuals that have never even been cracked open even once.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Colin Mcquillan]

I feel it is a little of both!

Definitely, as Peter mentions, try stuff out, experiment.
But this wont help you when you need to deliver something for broadcast that has to be to certain specifications. If you don’t fully understand what broadcast safe means or how to read a vectorscope or waveform monitor, data-rates vs drive throughput, what the advantages of maintaining a pure digital workflow is, and some of the ‘gotchas’ that can hit you in a digital workflow if you don’t fully understand the compression of certain codecs… so on…

Trial and error/experimentation is best left for the creative side of what we do.
When it comes to the technical aspect of editing “Just see where this will take you” may very well take you right out the door! Especially when deliverables get rejected by QC, or your client wonders why the colour in the spot you cut is ugly, the contrast is all washed out, movement is jittery and the text/gfx is buzzing like crazy.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Mark Raudonis]

[David Roth Weiss] “proof of that is all the FCP manuals that have never even been cracked open even once.”

… and the “Basic” questions here on the cow, like “how do I make a dissolve?”

mark

[Twann Hudson]

who reads (hahahahahahahah)

I like the post David and Mark

the real fun begins when the program loads
running FCS & CS3 MS side by side on the Mac

[David Roth weiss]

[Twann Hudson] “the real fun begins when the program loads
running FCS & CS3 MS side by side on the Mac”

Actually Twann, and I have a suspicion Mark might agree with me on this, the real fun begins when a job well done is completed, approved, and delivered — when you can kick back for a minute or two to savor the feeling briefly before the process begins all over again.

If you want to savor that feeling more often, it sure helps to read and know the manual.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.