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Stirring the pot…
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[Bill Davis] “But please stop telling me that editing in X is really no different than how I used to edit. Because that’s what I used to do – and you’re wrong. It is. For me, it’s better. Consistently and measurably.”
Firstly, I don’t think he was saying that and secondly there isn’t a single person on here who doesn’t know that FCPX is better for you!
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[Bill Davis] “but the reality is that I still hear voices from the two fringe poles. That either A) Apple ruined it with the total re-write and all the new ideas – or; B) it’s really largely just the same as all its competitors, no better or worse. These are mutually exclusive concepts, and both wrong IMO.”
Let’s discuss B for a moment.
You always react strongly when someone says that such-and-such a function can be done in other NLE’s as well. If you stop and think about it, this will always be true – editing is editing, the work requires certain functions, and any NLE that is used for professional purposes will have to be able to perform those functions. The difference between NLE’s is in how they prioritize those functions, not in whether they can accomplish them – they can all accomplish them.
What makes X unique are the priorities they established – speed of moving clips around a timeline with the ability to attach groups of media together as they move, enhancing search speed by use of keywords, ease of maintaining sync, etc. These benefits come from prioritizing those features at the expense of lowering the priorities of things like visual coherence, ease of track mixing, etc. Therefore it should not come as a shock when someone claims another NLE can do certain X functions, the question is whether they can do it as well.
My guess is you would find that X will do what it prioritizes better and faster than other systems do, while Avid, Ppro, etc will concurrently do the things they prioritize faster than X does, even though, as you demonstrated, that X “can” be used in a more traditional way as well.
All NLE’s can be made to do the same sort of things, it is in the way they prioritize their features that the differences lie, and it is in learning which one’s priorities most closely match your own that happiness in editing lies.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “NLE’s can be made to do the same sort of things, it is in the way they prioritize their features that the differences lie, and it is in learning which one’s priorities most closely match your own that happiness in editing lies.
“Agreed.
For decades, all NLEs prioritized things in an extremely similar fashion.
Now there’s a fundamentally different option available.
But that alone should quash the “there’s just not much difference” argument.
That an individual editor would prioritize conditioned comfort, familiarity and a shallower learning curve higher than transitional stress and a potential boost in efficiency is both rational and defensible.
It’s the argument that there’s really no difference that strikes me as weak. Because there is.
A difference that some editors won’t value, but a real difference with real benefits. And I suspect, ever-increasing benefits, as the direct result of Apple taking the bold re-invention path in 2011, rather than concentrating on the path based more on past workflow compatibility.
Time will tell.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “Or it’s that some of us who have spent decades editing one way – and now are editing another way – are actually getting more work done in less time and understand precisely why.”
Maybe some of that is because we have moved to all digital workflows and things have gotten much faster and metadata has become plentiful. Apple did not invent metadata, or digital capture devices, they just organize it well and know how to design clean interfaces. Sometimes too clean.
You still shoot with a camera and import them into a NLE in a browser in which you organize the clips and then sequence that media on a timeline using appends inserts and overwrites trims transitions and a variation of layers. Its 99% the same basic tool. Did the electric then cordless tools revolutionize wood working?
Construction, yeah. Cabinet making? less yeah. Sculptures? hmmmm. It’s both and not either or. Don’t throw out the wisdom of the old film makersThe interface and features that FCP X introduced and the need to learn a new program helped create some re-thinking as did the move to all digital tools. However, if Apple EOL FCP X and you needed to use another NLE, I’m sure you would carry with you most of this new work flow. Do other programs work as fluidly in the browser as X? X is most likely the best there is at the moment at clip organization. But editors and tutorials have been recommending this organization as a work flow forever; even as far back as keeping a spreadsheet of all media and sorting it various ways and adding names to clips to match that organization. Screenwriters used index cards to sort an entire movie by shots and scenes. In house they would use large index cards on a wall to discuss the scenes in an episode. FCP 7 editors would use log and capture to have editors learn their footage well as they selected what clips should be imported. Scene and reel and custom names would organize this footage. Even those dreaded meaningless labels camera companies assign to clips in a digital “reel” if we bothered to read and master the manual can be changed to label clips with something meaningful. Apple for the most part does not invent new concepts but rather packages them in a cleaner interface that encourages end users to adopt their benefits. And the browser in FCP X is a good example. But it A: could be better still. B: did not apply to the inspector and effects and audio and color correction interfaces. (all of which are improving)
A: how could it be better still?
Well the browser could toggle to full screen with a simple short cut.
Excel has a cool feature in which you can sort by more than one column. So, for example, sort by date and then by name (which is done by default in most sorts and name is clip/file name). But you could instead sort by date and then by column x then by column y then z in other words any other column of metadata that you create or is already there. Very cool.
And this can be done on the fly with one spreadsheet not multiple folders containing various subsets and not rearranging the columns to display in a certain order. So sort by date then by angle then by character then by mood Oh there’s the 3-26-16 CUs of Sue and Joe having an argument. Oh wait, on 3-27-16 there is another CU of Sue – not angry – but breaking into a mock smile and that would be a cool transition before she suddenly gets angry. And it could foreshadow the same look she throws when they make up. All from one full screen sort of all clips not folders which would hide all but the keyworded clips.
Also I am all in with FCP X. I’m not the bad guy, Bill. I’m not putting it down. But I’m not going to assume its the last word or the new word on editing. Some of the greatest movies of all time were shot on film and edited by cutting and taping the film back together. I still like the look of projected film better than digital. But I never could afford it and still can’t. It would be really cool if they came up with a way to project an analog image as a wash of light from our digital exports. Fast is not always better.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Herb Sevush] “I was stating that this is something that holds little interest for me as a workflow, especially as it pertains to making very “tight” decisions early in the editing process. As in most aspects of what we talk about here, one persons strength is another persons weakness.”
When I was regularly writing magazine tech articles ten years ago I noticed talking to other writers that I had a totally different approach to many others. I would take some notes, have ‘discussions’ about the subject in my head and then mull for a while before writing almost final draft. I would write 2000 words for a final of 1800. Final editing was simply about trimming redundant words or clarifying concepts, not changing the shape of the narrative. others would write much longer, tighten and swap paras around etc. I just couldn’t write that way.
If you think that way and use tools to help hone a tight rough, outside the timeline, then you can work like Bill. It is faster but I would never venture to say better, just depends on how your creative brain is wired and what comes naturally. (Who’d of thought Bill and I had something in common.)
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[Craig Alan] “Even those dreaded meaningless labels camera companies assign to clips in a digital “reel” if we bothered to read and master the manual can be changed to label clips with something meaningful. ”
I shudder when I hear people recommending changing file names. In a collaborative workflow the biggest disaster comes when an editor decides to helpfully rename their proxies and break the link back to the camera originals that were backed up in triplicate on location. Or even if they rename the camera originals on their drive but the drive fails and you have to use a backup with all different file names. Fun.. not!
Please please don’t recommend changing file names after location backups are done unless you are going to change every copy identically.
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your point is well taken. Rules need to be set in a collaborative work flow at all levels of production. otherwise things get messy.
I was talking about being able to change the clip names in camera not after the fact. And if this is being done it should be done consistently for the entire production. And yes not when the clip names are already copied to storage.
I have played with batch renaming in FC. But not editing in a collaborative workflow. I don’t remember it breaking the link with the original named clips in the finder.
In Aperture, I always do a batch rename either upon copying to the library or after and that has proven really helpful. I think it could be in FC as well but would need to learn more about how to do this without creating any unexpected results.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/adding-metadata-comments-and-notes-to-media-in-final-cut-pro/
I think this is evolutionary not revolutionary. Organization was always part of the workflow for complex or long form films. FCP X improved the tools. As have other companies. It’s a good thing. But I don’t see how that means that the craft/art of editing has changed fundamentally. Tools are all about ergonomics. Art is all about expression and composition.
Ergonomically, I think the browser in FCP X has set the bar. Not so much in the inspector. But its cropping tools are really good at least on my level of skill. Keying is really good as well. I like the new way of applying many modifications as effects that can be set independently for each clip. I think audio could be a lot better. And the timeline itself I’m finding often doesn’t have enough room – too much mousing around to see what I need. Really like the speed ramps. Really like magnetic behavior in combo with positioning tool.
I would like compound clips – at least by default – to just be a timeline edit and not ripple to other uses of the ‘clip’ and not populate the browser. You compound it, you expand it, you re-compound it. I like all that. I would like the option to save one to the browser but only if for some reason I would want to use the compound in other projects which I could do anyway by opening the two libraries and copying it to the other library. But saving to the browser would be cool for a portion of the timeline that isn’t working but might come into play later.
All these “in their own timeline stuff” I find confusing. You probably have a better handle on this than I do.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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I wish location crew would learn to set meaningful names in camera. And done there is best.
My other gripe is getting file names repeating. Day 1 > 00000.mts and again Day 2> 00000.mts etc. You end up with a whole job with the same file names for each day just in different folders. In the end having unique file names is all that really matters and meaningful ones are a bonus.
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[Bill Davis] “That an individual editor would prioritize conditioned comfort, familiarity and a shallower learning curve higher than transitional stress and a potential boost in efficiency is both rational and defensible.”
We are almost there Bill – now just imagine an editor who doesn’t care about conditioned comfort, who’s fine with transitional stress, but who looks at his project and notices that X doesn’t prioritize what he needs and would be a lower efficiency choice than another NLE – if you can acknowledge that such a person and such a workflow exists, then we’ve arrived.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf
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