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RedShark News: Opinion: Which are the best NLEs right now?
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Hi Oliver.
I’m definitely making an assumption here. Quantel never got much penetration with the Edit Box. The reason I suggest cost and marketing as the issue is that I don’t think they ever properly identified their market. At that time, Avid was really making headway toward being broadcast capable (and broadcast -accepted-, which was perhaps the tougher nut to crack). Linear online still ruled, even if only for a few more years. Quantel always seemed to live in that no-man’s land between online and offline. Not many Avid editors could figure out the Edit Box, and they didn’t need to know it to get work, so freelancers were hard to come by. At the same time, it seemed only high-end facilities or show-specific dedicated edit bays could afford the Box. (All the Edit Box guys I knew were converted linear online editors.) So it really seemed the “neither fish nor fowl” concept applied. More of an early “finishing” platform, like Smoke or DS or Flame, with better editing capability but with fewer effects and compositing capabilities. (Hmm, sounds like Resolve maybe?)
Anyway, I always found that vertical filmstrip UI interesting.
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Thanks for the follow-up, Jeremy.
I found that pref setting, too, but that’s not what I’m referring to. Sorry my meaning wasn’t clearer.
I understand that Finder tags can appear in FCPX after import, but they don’t appear in the FCPX import window itself. For example, the FCPX import window shows filenames, timecode values, etc., but not Finder tags.
As noted previously, the workaround is to drag & drop files directly from a Finder window (where of course Finder tags are visible) into FCPX, but Finder windows don’t display timecode values, etc.
At this late date that seems to me like a silly workaround.
Cheers.
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https://www.peterdv.com
Blog: https://herefortheweather.wordpress.com -
[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?”
No, but that is a niche need. Avid has that covered! 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Andrew Kimery] “They aren’t leaving because of the content, they are leaving because of the distribution medium.”
I would say that they are leaving because most of the content is crap no matter what the distribution method is. So why pay a cable company $90 a month where you an pay Netflix $8/month and find what you want. And cut out the commercials.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “No, but that is a niche need. Avid has that covered! ;-)”
Huh? Delivering to tape might be a niche, but delivering split track masters certainly isn’t. It’s essential for every project I’m ever done.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Jeff Markgraf] “Quantel never got much penetration with the Edit Box.”
Well, not with EditBox, but I would say the Q line (eQ, iQ, Pablo) has been as successful as Flame or DS. Remember that EditBox went out and the Q systems came in during the 90s, so you are talking about something that was around 20 years ago. Don’t forget that Quantel has a full service news product line with servers and editing workstations. Not as widespread as Avid, but visible in places like the BBC and ESPN.
[Jeff Markgraf] “So it really seemed the “neither fish nor fowl” concept applied. More of an early “finishing” platform, like Smoke or DS or Flame, with better editing capability but with fewer effects and compositing capabilities. (Hmm, sounds like Resolve maybe?)”
Quantel always took the finishing angle, except in news. Thanks to the integrated nature of Pablo (editing, compositing, color correction), it has become one of the strongest finishing/grading systems at the top end. Pablo competes for the same market as the full Baselight, the highest end version of Resolve (Linux, NOT Mac or Windows), Nucoda, and Lustre.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver –
I agree on all points. Yes, EditBox was 20 years ago. That’s partly my point. I think it was slightly ahead of its time, which partly accounted for its relatively poor market penetration. Don’t misunderstand – I have nothing but respect for what Quantel has done. Henry and Hal set a very high bar, and the newer Pablo and other such systems are equally great products.
Bringing this back to the UI issue, EditBox came around at a time when I think UI options were being more creatively explored. I’ll point again to Henry and Hal, which were kinda in their own world. EditBox went its own way. Video Cube was pretty different from Avid. Even in the linear world, Sony’s edit controller was very different from the CMX/Grass Valley style. So was the Ampex Ace Micro, for that matter.
In the years since then, I think the NLE UI has pretty much calcified into the form seen in Avid, Fcp legacy, PPro and a host of others that have come and gone. For all the much-argued-over differences, these are far more alike than different. Absent the custom controller, even Lightworks hews pretty closely to the standard model. Only FCP X seems to be exploring anything truly different, and only in fairly superficial ways. I mean, consider all the ink spilled over having only 1 source/record window: it seems silly, at least to old online guys, who almost always only had 1 picture monitor that switched between source and record as needed. Hardly revolutionary or unprecedented, but such angst…
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Tony,
I just picked up this software, but haven’t done much with it yet. I think I need to get some good tutorials. Do you mostly use the few RX4 plugins that install in FCPX? Or do you export the audio and take it into the RX4 stand alone version?
Thanks
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[James Taylor] “Do you mostly use the few RX4 plugins that install in FCPX? Or do you export the audio and take it into the RX4 stand alone version?”
I started off exporting to the stand alone version. You really have more control that way if you have something that really needs some work, but I have found that the plugin in X works pretty well also.
That Dialogue Denoiser is pretty sweet.
I tend to want everything to sound like it was recorded in a studio even when it wasn’t : )
The Declipper works well right inside of X also.
I still have more to learn on this program but they have gone a long way to make it more user friendly than the earlier versions I used.
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[Scott Witthaus] “I would say that they are leaving because most of the content is crap no matter what the distribution method is. So why pay a cable company $90 a month where you an pay Netflix $8/month and find what you want. And cut out the commercials.”
If the content is such crap why is it so popular on Netflix? What the cord cuttings are watching on Netflix is kinda surprising, IMO (research is from CBS, emphasis is mine).
“He found that Netfix subscribers are spending about 1.1 billion hours a year watching the service’s five original programs. Compare that to the 800 million hours they spend watching NCIS reruns on Netflix. In fact, according to Poltrack, Netflix subscribers only spent 6.6 percent of their time watching Netflix originals.
What were the two most popular shows on Netflix? NBC’s The Blacklist and ABC’s Once Upon A Time, which combined to amount to 7% of Netflix’s viewership. In other words, subscribers watch more of The Blacklist and Once Upon a Time than they do all of Netflix’s original content.”
https://uproxx.com/tv/2014/12/the-two-most-popular-shows-on-netflix-are-not-what-you-think-they-are/
Keep in mind that canceled TV shows that Netflix picked up (like The Killing and Arrested Development) would fall under the Netflix original’s banner.
Cord cutters seem to be similar to people that prefer carry-out. They want the restaurant’s food, they just don’t want to eat it at the restaurant.
A problem with saying most of the content is crap that no one wants to watch is who/what defines “crap”? Is crap something that doesn’t pull big enough ratings? Something that doesn’t satisfy mainstream America? Something that doesn’t satisfy art-house America? The highest rated show in history of Animal Planet is a fake documentary on Mermaids (no, I’m not kidding). Personally I think that’s pretty crappy but ratings would say otherwise. Transformers: Age of Extinction was the highest grossing movie globally last year (over 1 billion world wide, #5 highest grossing domestically)) and it has an 18% or Rotten Tomatoes. 18%! Maybe a lot of people just like crap?
Of course Netflix streaming is only good for back-catalog viewing. For current viewing you need some sort of combination of Hulu+, iTunes or Amazon streaming and the upcoming (and yet to be priced) HBOGO. Of course now this gets into the related issue of costing savings between a la carte streaming and Cable/sat subscription services. While people may cut the cord for cable TV they still need the cord for the Internet and in most of America the Internet cord and the Cable TV cord are owned by the same company (and there’s no competing owners in the same areas). Comcast (or whomever) will get their pound of flesh. While the Comcast/TWC merger is still the big one in the news, a less talked about one is AT&T and DirecTV. That merger would make two companies lagging behind into a contender. AT&T what’s DirecTV’s content subscribers and DirecTV want’s AT&T’s Internet subscribers. Going back to Comcast for a second, their acquisition of NBC/Universal looks just brilliant in hindsight. Comcast sees the trend of cord cutting starting so their acquire NBC/Univ and all of a sudden Comcast is in the content production game, the CATV distribution game and the ISP game (and by extension the IPTV distribution game). Very forward looking move from the leader of an industry that people love to rag on for being behind the times. Adapt or die. Sometimes the adaption isn’t what you expected so be careful what you wish for.
Anyway, now I’m totally rambling. Back on point…. If you don’t watch that many shows cutting the cord is cheaper per month than cable, but if you really like TV (and/or can’t stand the 1-day new episodes are delayed before streaming) then cable is still the better deal. I don’t watch a lot of TV (content) so it’s been pretty painless for me to be cable-free the last 4/5 years. Many people keep banging the drum for more companies to offer over-the-top IPTV services (like HBOGO or CBS All Access) but I think those people will be surprised how quickly all these individual subscriptions will surpass the cost of the cable bill they are trying to run away form.
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