Stirring the pot…

[Bill Davis]

Just to be cantankerous, Herb, I’d be totally fine with that. But only if said editor had a reasonable grasp of how X actually worked. In my experience, most editors stopped really assessing it LONG before they had more than a faint clue about how it actually functions.

It would be like somebody forced by circumstances to migrate from iMovie to Premiere Pro and constantly bitching about having to understand “all that new crap that I can’t imagine I’ll ever really need!”

Hard to assess whether you might need it, if you don’t really understand what it actually does.

And so it goes.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Hard to assess whether you might need it, if you don’t really understand what it actually does.”

Maybe, but in many situations you’re forced to make a decision on incomplete information. It would be lovely to have 3 months to asses every decision, both personal and professional, but that’s not often the case.

In my specific case the whole “keywording” thing is pretty much besides the point. All the data I need is contained in the names of my clips (C13R_205 is a Recipe clip from episode 13 from camera C and is the 205th clip shot during production) and the continuity notes I have, (it’a actually a large loose leaf binder)- I need nothing else to find any clip from any angle from any show. All of this work is done in production before I ever transfer a shot to my hard drives, let alone open them in an NLE. So what’s for me to Keyword? Everything about that take is noted and cross referenced in my binder – it would take more time to enter the information than it does to just look it up.

What I do use extensively is a track mixer, with bussing, that will let me add eq and compression settings, as well as level and pan settings, on a track basis. This allows me to change the nature of any part of a clip from Dialogue to EFX and back again simply by changing what track it’s playing on.

I have never had an issue with moving clips, or groups of clips, around a tracked timeline but I do have a strong preference for working with my video unattached to my audio linked only by a sync indicator.

While I prefer to do most of my compositing within my NLE my producer likes to use third party graphic designers to create graphic elements and these are always sent to me as AE project files – (when I was working in Legacy I would request Motion templates but this never happened.)

So looking at my needs, which NLE should I try first?

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

[Bill Davis]

And of course, nobody should ever argue things based on a specific case.

Obviously every editor has different needs and preferences.

Interestingly, I was just chatting yesterday with an editor in the Czech Republic who works for a huge famous management consulting operation with offices all over the globe. He has hundreds and hundreds of “active” corporate edits in process at any one time.

We were discussing how he uses Frame.io for project management, in conjunction with FCP X – a subject very much of interest to me as I’m building my own “micro-sized” group of international collaborators for my XinTwo thing.

Unlike what either you or I do, he has to navigate between literally hundreds of concurrent projects.

For him, (and many others) what floats his boat is not so much the keywording stuff that I love – but rather the Motion templates features of X.

A library with dozens and dozens of re-usable opens and closes for far flung operations all accessible with a style menu and menu selectable from INSIDE X really delights him.

As with the Frame.io collaborative stuff, it’s obvious that X is not at all exclusive with any of this stuff. It’s just seems that he considers the specific Apple implementation as a wonderful fit for the type of work HE does.

So for the wider audience, the question remains, is the kind of work he’s doing more or less likely to be what the editing industry is headed? Or is it the kind of work you’re doing, producing traditional episodic TV programs, more likely to be where editing opportunities will be expanding?

The path you take implies the tools you gravitate to. As it always has.

Remember, I try hard NEVER to write against how Premiere Pro or AVID do things, because I don’t use nor understand them. It just seems that when I write how X does things (something I actually know about!) people get all upset and “push-backy” – or at least quite ready to twist the implications of what I’m actually saying to suite a differing narrative.

Of course, I’m fully aware that this forum is the ONLY place that ever happens on the internet.

/sarcasm.

And so it goes.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Walter Soyka]

[Charlie Austin] “I do like that, but it has the same annoying issue as X in that if you’re in a workspace, and resize a window/panel, then that becomes the workspace layout. There’s no way to just snap to your original.”

Premiere does have an easy way to snap a workspace layout back to its saved state.

Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout, or Alt+Shift+0 (zero)

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Charlie Austin]

[Walter Soyka] “Premiere does have an easy way to snap a workspace layout back to its saved state.
“

Thanks Walter, that’s the first time I’ve ever been wrong! lol 😉

————————————————————-

~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Walter Soyka]

[Charlie Austin] “Thanks Walter, that’s the first time I’ve ever been wrong! lol ;-)”

I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]