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RedShark News: Opinion: Which are the best NLEs right now?
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[Daniel Frome] ” just barely a head of audio-only dissolves.”
I know this will be unpopular, but not having audio only dissolve don’t bother me. Shift-[ or shift-] to expand and select only the audio combined with comma and period extend the heads/tails and then mouse the fade handles. It would be nice if there were keyboard commands to simply move the fade handles. This comes close to asymmetric audio dissolves as you can assign the amount of fade on each side, as well adjust the fade curve (by right clicking the fade handle node). This helps a lot in tight dialogue editing, as well as mixing music edits, it’s a few more steps than adding an audio only crossfade, but the results that can be achieved are superior, especially when combined with the subframe audio editing.
Plus, when audio is separate in a secondary storyline, you can add audio crossfades by selecting the cut point and adding the dissolve (command-t).
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[tony west] “The bigger issue for me in X is that popping sound on the cut. Most times I can get it with the handles but it’s annoying.”
That’s precisely why I add a short crossfade to every audio edit in every NLE I use. Most of the time these are 2-4 frame dissolves. This is very difficult to replicate with speed in X. In PPro, MC, FCP 7 I can apply audio dissolves to all cuts in one step, just like adding a regular dissolve in X.
When it comes to modifying dissolves, nothing matches MC for speed – IF you are used to using a keyboard and not mousing around. It only takes a few keystrokes to adjust the dissolve timing. If I have applied a 10-frame center dissolve and want to change it to a 6-frame with 2-frame before the cut and 4 frames after the cut, abolsutely no DAW or NLE matches the speed of doing this in MC.
For most experienced MC editors, this has becomes ingrained muscle memory, but even if you don’t have that built up, the steps are still faster.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Peter J. DeCrescenzo] “I don’t see anything in the FCPX import window or menus that says or does anything concerning Finder tags.
Does it involve a secret handshake, special eyeglasses, or what?
“It is right there in the import window?
Here’s a screengrab:
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[James Ewart] “Thanks I’ll look into RX4. What does it do?”
More in this article I wrote:
[James Ewart] “If I were to want to master to tape a stereo master with separate M&E on Audio 3 and 4 is that even possible with X? (Forgive me if this has been debated a million times but have not sen it)”
Yes, by the way in which you assign your roles. Of course, you can’t master to tape from X. You would have to export a multi-channel QT and then bring that into another utility or program to output to tape.
You would have to assign dialogue, effects, music roles (or any custom subroles you’ve created). This has to be correct for all audio in the timeline. Then when you export a master file, select QT with multichannel audio based on Roles. This then gives you a matrix of how to combine the Roles.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “That’s precisely why I add a short crossfade to every audio edit in every NLE I use.”
I don’t think that would fix what’s going on for me. It seems to happen the more filters I add to the clip. Some times it does it and sometimes it doesn’t.
I should be able to grab that fader and pull it and never hear it but sometimes I hear it no matter how far I drag the fade. That part is weird. I have seen others complaining about it.
I wasn’t having that problem earlier. I also notice that X keeps trying to re-render things that have already been rendered even though background rendering is turned off. (I have seen that called a bug on here)
That’s also annoying.
I’m hearing audio drop out on playback sometimes on filtered clips and I think it’s because my computer is struggling to playback while that re-render is trying to go on at the same time.
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[tony west] “I don’t think that would fix what’s going on for me. It seems to happen the more filters I add to the clip. Some times it does it and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Weird, but it doesn’t surprise me. I hardly ever do complex audio in X, because I hate the model, so for me, filters don’t really add to the issue. For advanced audio, I bail pretty quickly to a different tool. It sounds like the audio issues you describe are just another symptom of X’s generally poor performance across the board – even on new machines.
[tony west] “I wasn’t having that problem earlier. I also notice that X keeps trying to re-render things that have already been rendered even though background rendering is turned off. (I have seen that called a bug on here)”
I haven’t experienced that, although I do often have sections of timelines that were rendered, but then the render link is lost after a restart. That seems to be a common complaint.
Have you tried a different user log-in to see if this is some sort of home user corruption?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I bail pretty quickly to a different tool. It sounds like the audio issues you describe are just another symptom of X’s generally poor performance across the board”
I get just as many audio dropouts in PPro CC so I don’t think it’s necessarily X specific. It may be an OS problem
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[Oliver Peters] “For advanced audio, I bail pretty quickly to a different tool. “
That could explain it. I was wondering why I din’t see more folks complaining about it.
Was it that they had newer hardware or not being as aggressive as I am with audio filters or what.
[Oliver Peters] “Have you tried a different user log-in to see if this is some sort of home user corruption?”
I have not. Thank you Oliver, I will try it and report back.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “but not having audio only dissolve don’t bother me.”
I appreciate the helping advice to clear up the situation. It’s quite easy to see how this works for you. If I were to adopt FCPX I would clearly quit fighting this and simply “do it that way.”
I find that many of my secondary elements (as well as audio elements) end on the same frame as the primary story counterpart. This makes the trim functions frustrating because they don’t come with a way to choose whether I want the choose the primary, secondary, or other audio elements. Every trim command defaults to the primary story elements — often not what I want. Eventually you just habitually grab the mouse and click on the element that you want to invoke trim functions on. For a number of wrist and creative reasons, that is just not the way I choose to work.
For me and my habits, this is feels like … by the time we’ve accounted mouse-driven point-and-click of secondary and audio elements, I might as well have just rather had a “track” bound to my keyboard and “done it that way instead.” The FCPX trim commands work well if there is only 1 cut near your playhead, but that means as your edits gets more complex, the work gets harder (and yes it also gets harder with the other NLEs, but not to the same degree in my humble opinion).
If I am to work in a way that is complimentary to FCPX’s design, should I be relying less on trimming? Or is mouse-driven interaction just designed into the process of complex trim’s via FCPX?
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[James Ewart] “Thanks I’ll look into RX4. What does it do?”
I will let Oliver’s article do the heavy lifting but the most impressive thing it can do to me is fix clipped sound.
It used to be that if somebody handed you some overdriven clips you were kind of done.
This fixes even that. It’s worth the price of admission to me if that were all it could do let alone with it’s other tool set.
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