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Screenlight: Will Accounting Woes at Avid Spark Big Changes or an Acquisition?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Chris Harlan] “THAT is quite a statement! Apparently you don’t have to do much dialog work.”
The pieces I am working on are all dialog.
“Well, I’m fascinated by that. I have to clip chunks out of sentences, slide a clause a few frames this way or that under a cut-away, only to have to reconnect it in a different version of the edit. I have to retime dialog, drop in ADR, shave this way and shave that way, constantly. Me? I use sync markers and TC. How you are doing all that fine-tuning and finessing without have to separate audio from video and slide it around, I would truly like to hear.
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[Andrew Kimery] “You are aware that you can drag and drop into Avid yet you choose to come up with the most bizarre method of media ingest into Avid imaginable. Not really an apples to apples comparison. “
It’s not ‘the most bizarre method of media ingest into Avid imaginable’, it’s the standard method for importing pre-existing MXF files without having to copy or transcode anything. It’s precisely what you’d do if you had e.g. rendered a bunch of dailies to MXF out of Redcine or Resolve and wanted to start editing with them. If you do a Google search of ‘Media composer import MXF’ you’ll find lots of people asking how to do this, and this is the standard answer.
[Andrew Kimery] “Doesn’t that put the user in the same position as Avid w/regards to new media generation?”
In some sense. I mean, there’s no way around having to generate offline media if you want to have offline media. But FCP X doesn’t have any of the arbitrary limitations or arbitrary differences between how formats are handled that MC has, doesn’t require the same bizarre workflow to import media that’s already in its ‘preferred’ format, and doesn’t require the user to manually manage and relink to different sets of media.
[Andrew Kimery] “Some aspects, like AMA, need improvement but what software doesn’t?”
Eyeballing this as someone who has some software development experience, I’ve got to say that these distinctions and limitations in how Media Composer handles different media formats look very ‘deep’ — like, replacing this stuff might be like trying to replace a building’s foundation with the building still on top of it. And this stuff is all going to be tied up with Avid’s shared storage solutions as well, making things even more complicated. There’s probably a reason they went and did AMA instead of adding more flexibility to ‘native’ media handling in the first place.
In my view, if Avid wants to reverse its long, slow decline, they need to pull an FCP X — except with much better communication with users, no radical new timeline paradigm, no immediate discontinuation of the legacy product, and a more complete feature set in the 1.0 product. I think they really need a clean start. As I mentioned in an earlier post, MC is the only major NLE that hasn’t had one. FCP obviously had one with X, and Premiere had one with Premiere Pro in 2003, which was also a complete rewrite. There is little desktop software that has 24 years of technical continuity, and there’s a reason for that.
I ran across an article a couple of years ago (the link I saved to it sadly now appears to be dead) that quoted an Avid employee saying that Avid actually started down this road once, but backed away precisely because they were worried about a backlash from existing users.
[Andrew Kimery] “The downside to that is that the program would readily give you enough rope to hang yourself and happily watch as you did it. It might sound odd that I like some of the restrictive parts of Avid and at the same time like the lack of restriction in FCP7 but some situations benefit from rigidity and some situations do not. “
Working at a post house (and getting to see lots of projects as they transition from offline to online), I know exactly what you’re talking about. But there are ways to prevent self-hanging that don’t involve restricting options as much, and there are certainly ways to do it that don’t compromise user friendliness. FCP X’s proxy workflow, for instance, is both more friendly and more foolproof than manually managing original AMA and offline MXF versions of clips in MC.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Herb Sevush] “I’ll bow to the wisdom of Aidnreas and ask “where are the job postings for this oh so popular application?”
“hey – wait , just stop. – Herb come on – screw wisdom right in it’s face. I’m in this exclusively for Apple kicking.
after the blade across 7 – it is the sport of kings.
that said – X just is a dead letter outside the thunderdrome.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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There’s a real interesting issue when you look at pricing. Apple has always sought to keep software prices low. When MC cost thousands, Apple priced FCP/FCS at $1K. But all of a sudden, MC gets down to $2500 ($300 academic) and Apple drops FCP X to $300 plus multi-seat licensing at no extra charge. And if some interpretations are right, willing to hold back a year’s worth of revenue from it by pre-announcing upcoming features. In other market sectors, this would be considered predatory.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Chris Harlan] “Well, I’m fascinated by that. I have to clip chunks out of sentences, slide a clause a few frames this way or that under a cut-away, only to have to reconnect it in a different version of the edit. I have to retime dialog, drop in ADR, shave this way and shave that way, constantly. Me? I use sync markers and TC. How you are doing all that fine-tuning and finessing without have to separate audio from video and slide it around, I would truly like to hear.”
I guess my question back is, what is preventing you from doing this in fcpx?
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[Herb Sevush] “But normally I’ll have a bunch of video clips over one audio clip and often I’m just trying to replace one of those cuts with the video. If I match back I’m getting the video for the whole audio – either I have to cut the audio just where I want the video to match back, or drop the video on a higher track (in legacy terms) and then trim the in and out. both of these cases are a lot more time consuming than just hitting re-sync. I do this kind of replacement constantly, so a couple of xtra steps on each instance adds up.”
So you have a bunch of video, and a ‘master’ audio track and a bunch of other audio tracks below, right?
You then want to sync one of those video tracks with it’s own audio.
In 7, you simply select that clip and slip the audio back in sync using the sync markers.
In X you’d go to the audio tab and turn the audio on.
I am probably misunderstanding.
[Herb Sevush] “By the way, I’m not busting your chops here, I do appreciate your taking the time to explain how you are working with X.”
My chops don’t feel busted. We are all learning something and I like having these comparisons. I edit a decent amount of different things, but I don’t edit everything. I’m always curious to hear how other people go about their edits.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Chris Harlan] “Well, I’m fascinated by that. I have to clip chunks out of sentences, slide a clause a few frames this way or that under a cut-away, only to have to reconnect it in a different version of the edit. I have to retime dialog, drop in ADR, shave this way and shave that way, constantly. Me? I use sync markers and TC. How you are doing all that fine-tuning and finessing without have to separate audio from video and slide it around, I would truly like to hear.”
I guess my question back is, what is preventing you from doing this in fcpx?
“I’m sure there is a way that I could end up achieving what I needed to. From what I can fathom, though, it sounds like a real PITA. Do you actually have to do this kind of high density, granular audio editing? Trying to do this without separating audio sounds crazy to me. To me, it sounds like I’d end up with a massive clog of crud.
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[Chris Harlan] “Do you actually have to do this kind of high density, granular audio editing?”
I don’t really use ADR, but the rest of it sounds like a normal day of editing.
So, yes.
[Chris Harlan] ” Trying to do this without separating audio sounds crazy to me. “
Isn’t that how you are doing it now? Audio is in a separate space than video?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Chris Harlan] “Do you actually have to do this kind of high density, granular audio editing?”
I don’t really use ADR, but the rest of it sounds like a normal day of editing.
So, yes.
[Chris Harlan] ” Trying to do this without separating audio sounds crazy to me. ”
Isn’t that how you are doing it now? Audio is in a separate space than video?
“
I guess I’m just going to have to be skeptical. You’ve made a really bold statement that there is no reason to ever separate audio from video. Since that has never been the case in any other NLE, ever, you can understand my doubt. If what you are saying is true, then I guess you don’t need sync markers, but I’m having a very hard time believing it. How do you deal with stems that aren’t initially attached, and only match with time code? Doesn’t having an unnecessary 18 layers of audio attached to every single clip bog things down a bit? Doesn’t having hidden video for every single clip you are using get cludgy pretty fast? It seems like a nightmare to me.
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[Herb Sevush] “But apparently not the desire, or 2 years in it would be capable of my workflow.”
I don’t know what your workflow is, but I’ve found that a lot of people in this industry — hell a lot of people in general — seem to have a fairly unrealistic idea of how quickly large software projects evolve.
Also, it’s worth noting that commercially released software is generally developed along two ‘branches’ — one for updates to the current major version, and another for bigger stuff slated for the next major version. While this practice is nearly universal, it’s actually not 100% clear that FCP X has been following it (since Apple has been dropping major new features into current-version updates), but if it has been, then it’s possible that Apple has done quite a lot over the last couple of years that we haven’t seen yet because we haven’t seen 10.1 yet.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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