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Smarter and Faster
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I thought the “top posters” thing had long since been retired? Where is it now?
Anyway, the reason I’ve talked so much about speed goes back to my very first major editorial experience in X.
I’ve posted about it here before.
The live on-site corporate conference edit i’d done for many years.
Each year (for the last half dozen years) it had taken me 10 days to complete and the last 2 were the typical editing “death march” with little sleep to have a 10-20 minute “best of conference” edit to show at the closing meeting.
After my commitment to X, I was seriously in “heart attack” mode on day 5! I didn’t have a single asset on ANY timeline – and was convinced I was going to spectacularly FAIL and lose one of my linchpin clients.
But on Day 7 by noon, I had 90% of the cut in showable form – and a Browser full of pre-trimmed options – and was calmly waiting for fresh content options to arrive.
I got two FULL nights of sleep before the showing for the first time EVER – and that was when I started describing X as SUPER FAST way to edit.
Over the minths past that, I kept seeing the same thing over and over and over.
My “time to completion” on work types I had years of experience with were dropping.
I had more time for pondering and time to let things “sit” more so I could come back to them with fresh eyes.
And even more palpable – when clients asked for changes to existing X work – it was HUGELY easier to erevise them – provided I had made the correct “managed verses referenced” choices and had stored and backed up my original construction assets sensibly.
A video done and billed in 5-7 days that would have tsken 10 before?
That’s pretty much my definition of “faster” in this context.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Sure Tom works on short form, but Mads and Ryan at Metronome don’t.
Nor Chuck Braverman in LA. Nor a boatload of the LumaFirge clients all around the wotlrld.There are clearly shops, TV stations and documentarians doing nothing BUT long form – and none of them that I chat with grouse about being unable to work efficiently.
So the question Maybe becomes what is your shop doing that is preventing you from achieving the same thing?
It might be useful to note that there are many, many posts about how solutions like Premiere and X are different in how they process files and the type of network topology they prefer. So it might be that if your system is “optimixmzed” for one – it will have lagging issues with the other – if you try to switch back and forth.
I know little to nothing about multi-seat shops – but I know and regularly talk with lots of folks who do – and all they tend to chat about is how to achieve increasingly complex workflows – because they are extremely happy with what they are already doing.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Craig Seeman] “but go to low buy and buy again model”
Developers have told me directly that this is a paradigm they are pushed into by the App Store rules. You can’t develop indefinitely, otherwise you lose money. So the effect is that a given application is targeted to only get a few years of ongoing development. The feature set is finite and locked. Once that point is reached, further development ceases, except for bug fixes and OS compatibility. New development effort then shifts to the new product.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “Sure Tom works on short form, but Mads and Ryan at Metronome don’t.
Nor Chuck Braverman in LA. Nor a boatload of the LumaFirge clients all around the wotlrld”But you really don’t know if they are seeing a lag when dragging a clump of media from one end of a 90 minute timeline to the other. Nor what their tolerance for “lag” might be. Or do you?
[Bill Davis] “It might be useful to note that there are many, many posts about how solutions like Premiere and X are different in how they process files and the type of network topology they prefer. So it might be that if your system is “optimixmzed” for one – it will have lagging issues with the other – if you try to switch back and forth.”
I’m not even talking about network. For me it’s there on local storage on every machine I’ve ever used X on – once you are there with large timelines. My tolerance is ZERO – plain and simple. On a standard shared network (QNAP in our case), FCPX is completely unusable when I start to work with very high-res files (4K and larger). Shorter form, running on a Promise RAID, like butter.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “That’s pretty much my definition of “faster” in this context.”
In most ways that one can think of, all NLEs are very closely matched in terms of their overall speed, with small benefits in one area offset with small annoyances in another.
However today I had to do one of my least favourite editing tasks, in a screaming hurry as always at this time of the year, and given this week’s revival of the “FCP X is unquestionably faster” meme, I was revelling in the fact that I was working not in FCP X but in Premiere.
Because it was a task that related to timecode.
I have had to do this same thing many times before in FCP X and each time I was minded to stick a hot pin in my eye to remind myself what lesser suffering felt like.
I would trade the marginal conveniences of FCP X any day in order to access the superior timecode handling of Premiere or Media Composer … for this particular recurring task.
When you need a specific tool, you need that specific tool and workarounds just don’t cut it.
Not all editors have the same requirements so can we just cut a bit of slack to those whose needs are not fully met by FCP X in every situation?
As I have to keep repeating whenever I say anything slightly disobliging about FCP X, I enjoy and admire many things about it. Just not everything.
(Catch an FCP X enthusiast adding a similar rider when they are discussing another NLE!)
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Bill Davis] “I thought the “top posters” thing had long since been retired? Where is it now? “
It’s still there, just hidden so we don’t get motivated to post for the “wrong” reasons I guess.
https://forums.creativecow.net/hof.php -
[Simon Ubsdell] “When you need a specific tool, you need that specific tool and workarounds just don’t cut it.”
Exactly.
Just today, in another forum, I saw that an editor was handed a script built from sound bites, but with no timecode or clip names to reference them. Because they were cutting on Avid and had Phrasefind, what looked to be a laborious multi-hour slogfest took about 20 minutes to rough out. They couldn’t have done that in any other NLE. That was the right tool for the job.
I had a job a few years ago that was going to be 100% green screen with tons of graphics and compositing that were all going to be done in AE. I chose to cut it in Premiere. When I handed my project off to the mograph artist they literally copied and pasted my timeline from Premiere to AE, and they had my entire edit ready to go in seconds. I can’t think of any other NLE that would have been as fast and seamless going from NLE to After Effects.
The hardest part isn’t learning to use software for a job – it’s learning which software to use for a job.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Bill Davis] “Each year (for the last half dozen years) it had taken me 10 days to complete and the last 2 were the typical editing “death march” with little sleep to have a 10-20 minute “best of conference” edit to show at the closing meeting.”
I realize that my opinion of X differs from yours much of the time ☺ However, in this scenario, given the choice, I would go for X each and every time, as well. And have done so a number of times. On-site conference edits can be a beast and X on a fast MacBook Pro (or other advanced Mac) is pretty hard to top for this sort of turnaround. It really feels to me to be the type of work Apple developers had in mind when designing the app.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Michael Hancock] “The hardest part isn’t learning to use software for a job – it’s learning which software to use for a job.”
One of the most sensible things that’s been said on this forum in many a long year.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Oliver Peters] “Or do you?”
I’d ask them, but Metronome is in the middle of a facilities move and huge expansion right now.
The guys keep posting photos of stacks and stacks of new iMac and iMac Pro boxes as they build things out.
And I know they are simultaneously getting ready to launch a 24 camera reality show – so I don’t want to ping them at the moment. They look pretty busy!
But when things settle down, I’d be happy to ask.
And I suspect as complex as this new show they are mounting appears – it will likely end up on FCP.Co as a case study maybe next year.
I’ve got to believe tho, with the huge cast and crew involved, they’d be pretty intolerant if their systems beachballing as much as you are experiencing.
On a project of that scope – the budget burn rate is likely darn high. And time is still money.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
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