Serious X Editing for Speed

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “We argued for months over my contention that so many X editors claim to be significantly more productive when they become highly skilled at FCP X.”

Actually we’ve argued for years over the contention that X makes you “twice as fast” or “50%” faster, or some other numerical abstraction that has no correlate in reality. I watched the first 3 videos and they are all very nice demonstrations of how to go about things within X, but nothing shown demonstrates “revolutionary” speed enhancements to most editing work flows.

Tutorial 1 – key words are nice but so are multiple timelines that reflect the various stages of selection. The assembly timeline, the cleaned assembly timeline, the favorites timeline. Using “edit clip in-point or out-point to playhead” makes creating them a snap. The advantage of the timeline approach is that you get a sense of relative length that is totally missing in the browser view. But I do get the flexibility and speed advantages of X at this stage of editing. This is why David Lawrence organizes his footage in X before exporting XMLs to other NLes for actual editing.

Tutorial 2 – Did you notice, as he was moving the combined video + audio efx, that the audio often preceded the video. What do you think he’s gonna have to do once he moves it – why he’s going to have to trim and rearrange those audio efx so they live happily in their new spots, all of which is going to take a lot more time than the simple rearranging shown on screen. Which is to say that the initial re-arranging of shots connected to audio effects is the least time consuming part of the operation. Also you might be interested to learn that you can group and move locked shots in ripple mode in most NLEs – this is not an exclusive idea to X.

Tutorial 3 – Oh wow you can keep cutting as the timeline is moving – which means you are no longer watching what the client is watching because your busy twiddling around elsewhere in the timeline instead of focusing on what’s happening in front of your face. Fantastic. Remind me to fire the first editor who tries that in front of me.

All of which is to say FCPX has some truly elegant ways of cutting, as do most NLEs, and I’m sure it’s faster in some ways that any other system, and in other ways not so much, and nowhere do I see the speed claims often mentioned as justified.

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

[Steve Connor]

[Herb Sevush] “Tutorial 3 – Oh wow you can keep cutting as the timeline is moving
“

I think you missed the fact that you can do this in PPro CC 2015 as well

[Bill Davis]

Herb,

Sorry you wasted your time on 1 and 2. Those are for people who are interested in X and know nothing about it. It helps them grasp some of the underlying concepts. That’s all.

In 3 – you keep looking SO HARD for reasons it’s flawed. Must be exhausting. Look, you’ll NEVER have to use it. Really. No FCP X police will ever come to bother you. Ever. So relax. Again, you don’t use it. So sorry, but you remain unqualified to tell those of us who do how difficult it is to make it work properly.

Tom, who has cut top of the market work at the bleeding edge of commercial television globally is telling you it’s his preferred NLE because it’s much faster to get his projects done. If you like I’ll ask him if he’s ever used a stopwatch and as a result saved precisely 50% of his time cutting something with X compared to AVID (which he used before) but I think it’s silly.

There’s a growing cadre of editors now using it worldwide. Generally, depending on how much prior conditioning they have, they start out either uncomfortable or downright hostile. Some of them LIVID at the required change in thinking. Then they settle down. And usually, start picking it for all kinds of projects as soon as they see the huge benefits of it’s approach.

All I can say is that X has cut MY “editing” time to final in half quite regularly. Not my time to actual final, because I now use a large part of that time savings trying alternate ideas and thinking about how to make the work better – a luxury I greatly enjoy.

So as to proof of whether or not a 50% time savings is possible you have to make a choice… Believe that I’m honest and that I’m reporting actual personal experience. Or believe that I’m so besotted with X that I have lost track of how to use a calendar, clock, or read the start and stop timestamps on my FCP X projects.

Hint: Projects of the same scope and duration for me today typically have SIGNIFICANTLY smaller start to stop actual “time in editing” stamps.

I’m still puzzled as to why you’re so hostile to the idea. You’re not going to use it. That’s clear.

So why bother with those of us who enjoy doing so? All we’re doing is spreading the word. There are a LOT of editors out there who would LOVE LOVE LOVE to transfer even 10 or 15% of their editing energy from mechanics to creativity. If someday, like me, they find it a whole lot more than that – why not let us do that in peace?

I thought the big idea these days is that if you need something that only Premeier Pro offers, you pop out your credit card – subscribe away – and use THAT tool to get the job done.

And if X can make you more efficient on something else, you pop for the $300 one time stick it in your toolbox launch IT and get the job done that way. No need to stress so much.

You and I. We have the luxury to stick with what’s comfortable. Many don’t.

And so it goes.

Oh and before I forget. Season’s greetings of the appropriate type for your personal traditions. Hope the year ends strong and happy for you and yours. Really.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Charlie Austin]

Valid points Herb. I won’t make any percentage speed claims here but, as I do work in both tracked and trackless NLE’s I just want to point out a couple things:

[Herb Sevush] “The advantage of the timeline approach is that you get a sense of relative length that is totally missing in the browser view”

Not true, you can adjust the zoom level in the browser to see relative timings if you want.

[Herb Sevush] “Also you might be interested to learn that you can group and move locked shots in ripple mode in most NLEs – this is not an exclusive idea to X.”

True, but what is unique to X is that when you move a group of clips nothing overwrites anything else. This is not true at all with tracks and makes doing this in X a whole lot more useful in practice.

————————————————————-

~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “What’s it to you?”

Just went back and re-read your original post and now I have to apologize and say that I read stuff into it that you didn’t actually say. It read into it that you were making claims when you were actually discussing the subjective experience. My bad. I have a lot of long exports today and too much time on my hands.

[Bill Davis] “Oh and before I forget. Season’s greetings of the appropriate type for your personal traditions. Hope the year ends strong and happy for you and yours. Really.”

Same here.

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

[Oliver Peters]

These are nice tips in the tutorials, but I have to say that any claims of “faster” should be taken with a grain of salt for every NLE. Of course, I don’t see TGC making any generalizations about speed, other than improvements in how he works.

It all boils down to your personal style of working, the cutting demands the project imposes, and how the NLE fits into that workflow. For example, there are plenty of things that FCPX does in quite superior ways. However, there are also some in which PPro blows its socks off. It just comes down to whether those specific features are something you need in how you work.

Take film editors for example. I’ve interviewed a lot of them. Across the board there are probably at least 6 different distinctive ways in which they work. Some of these workflows are actually quite the opposite of each other. So it’s great to see how people are using X, but you can only extrapolate those experiences to yourself, if you do what they do and you work in a similar fashion to them.

– Oliver

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] “Not true, you can adjust the zoom level in the browser to see relative timings if you want.”

What I was talking about was looking at a timeline and seeing how long the entire grouping is ( my first assembly is 1:40:00, my cleaned assembly is :55:00, my selects are :22:30) and how any one clips length differed from the other clips in that group. Can you get that info out of your keyword bin without clicking anything?

[Charlie Austin] “True, but what is unique to X is that when you move a group of clips nothing overwrites anything else.”

True, but only in the case of overwrite edits – with ripple/insert in a traditional timeline nothing overwrites either.

As for overwrite edits — once you move the audio to it’s new home, it doesn’t overwrite anything and now you have clashing audio elements where the new and the old are fighting each other. So at some point you have to make a decision as to what is to stay and what is to go – with Ppro I tend to do it before I move anything, with X you do it after the move.

I do understand the X way is a little bit quicker, but in order to accomplish this you have to live with storylines, secondary storylines, attached clips, 2 different playheads and all the varieties of rules that govern their movements, to say nothing of a, to me, visually incoherent timeline. As is often the case on this forum, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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

[Scott Witthaus]

[Oliver Peters] “It all boils down to your personal style of working, the cutting demands the project imposes, and how the NLE fits into that workflow.”

Exactly. For us freelancers, it also may depend on what a post house may have to use.

I am working on Premiere today and I surprised myself in finding some things I really like over X. On the other hand, there are some things in Premiere that just kill the good feelings. Nothing’s perfect.

To each their own and it’s best to know as many as you have to to keep working!

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

[Steve Connor]

[Scott Witthaus] “I am working on Premiere today and I surprised myself in finding some things I really like over X.”

Tilde key expanding the currently focussed panel to full screen is awesome, great to be able to get a full screen timeline immediately. I’ve already sent that as a feature request to Apple

[Scott Witthaus]

[Steve Connor] “I’ve already sent that as a feature request to Apple”

I do like the fact that in Premiere, you can simply grab a dissolve and move it where it works best at the transition point. Pssst. Hey Apple, take a look at that.

On the other hand, there’s the Premiere title tool…gak.

Nothing is perfect.

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter