What Do we Do now? How Do you Feel?

[Ewan Lim]

And to add on…

(i feel like i am spamming but i sincerely feel what he feels)

The only way to master a tool as fast as you can is to: (it works for me at least)
Do alot of editing jobs.
Take on tough editing jobs that will force you to explore the program more.
And throw yourself into the deep end to force you to learn tricks, pick up tips and understand faster.
Tips and tricks can come from tutorials too.

More hands on means that ur muscle memory will remember it faster.

All the best Greg!

Ewan
Avid, FCS3, Premiere Pro, After Effects

[Robert Brown]

Hi Greg, I’m in my forties and have been editing quite a while now. Unfortunately it’s pretty common to have to learn new stuff. Just this week they are having us learn Quantel stuff as it’s what the company decided to use for broadcast applications. We still have FCP but that will be phased out at some point.
It’s actually really common for products to come and go. The main question you should ask yourself is what type of stuff do you want to do? You can cut on your own system and use anything you want, or if you decide to be a free-lance editor for hire you might want to get good at Avid. If it seems like a struggle find a good intensive course and it will go a lot better.

And in regards FCS I had to reload mine yesterday as compressor stopped working for some reason. It takes a good couple of hours as they gave you so much media between Soundtrack, Motion and DVD studio. They are really only offering a fraction of what they used to give you. Adobe is much more comparable to FCS and better in many ways. AE is one of the best video programs ever made. But as of yet Premiere is still struggling with name recognition but hopefully that changes soon. But you could probably learn Premiere in a few days – it’s really easy coming from FCP.

[Chris Jacek]

First a little (possibly boring) background on me:

I’ve been editing for about 20 years. I started cuts-only, then learned CMX, and finally got my first experiences with NLEs in the mid-90s. Back then the systems were costly enough that you were just fighting to get some time on a machine that someone else owned. I started with Video Cube, moved to Media 100, and finally landed a full time job as an Avid editor. Later I (foolishly) started my own business, and got my own Avid MC system for about $65,000 (a bargain in 1997), and a $35,000 BetaCamSP package.

By the time I saw FCP at NAB in 1999, the first prosumer DV cameras were on the market, and I saw the writing on the wall. I realized that my 100K in gear was about to rapidly lose its value. In the ultimate “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” move, I got a job on the Final Cut Pro team in 2000 as a QA engineer. Over the next 7 years or so I edited Avid and FCP, eventually moving away from Avid as decided to shift my career to academia.

Like most professors, I taught FCP almost exclusively, since it has been the top dog for colleges. I also teach After Effects extensively, because I believe it is the most powerful program out there for video professionals. Over the past few years, I started integrating Premiere Pro for a couple reasons. After CS3 came out, I saw its potential as a future player in the market, and more importantly, it was bundled with Production Premium, so it was basically free.

If I’ve learned anything (or re-learned in some cases), it is that you should never stick with only one platform. I came very close to falling into that trap with FCP, because I had such affection for it. Apple has taught us all how dangerous this can be. Luckily, I still remember my Avid skills (like riding a bicycle), and had recently added Premiere to my list.

So my advice for what an aspiring editor should learn is: ALL OF IT. I am going to teach my students all 4 programs (FCP7, FCPX, Avid, Premiere), and also teach them After Effects. Their heads may explode at first, but it is like any other art or science. The more different things you learn, the better you are at each of them. It is a better than 1:1 ratio for the time you put in.

Gone are the days of needing access to a $100K system to learn how to use it. With the free 30 day trials, and free/inexpensive video tutorials, you’d be amazed at how much you can learn in a few months. If you really have the time to put into it, there is no reason you cannot master them all. Beyond the free trials, consider taking a course at a local community college. Not only will you learn in the class, but you will then also be eligible to buy the software packages at an educational discount. Adobe and Avid are especially aggressive with their student pricing.

I’ll also re-state the advice that someone else has already posted. After learning the basics, the best way to get better is to cut, cut and cut. Do projects for pay, projects for free, and make up projects for yourself to do. Challenge yourself to re-create a television commercial that you like, or an effect you saw on a movie or TV show.

My students often ask me how to become a better editor, and I tell them to edit 100 videos. It’s kinda like being a musician. If you practice 6 hours a day, you are going to get better. Also like music, getting better on one instrument (or program in this case) will make you better at others. If you become very good a playing the clarinet, the trumpet will be that much easier, despite the fact that they are played very differently.

Okay, that’s it for my long-winded answer. I hope at least some of my meandering was helpful.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Scott Shucher]

OK Greg, so you are getting advice from many generations of editors here. I’m in my early fifties, and have been editing for 30 plus years, so I’d like to think I have some perspective. I’ve edited cuts only on 2 inch vtrs, A/B roll where we manually rolled the tape and dissolved with a fader arm on a switcher(nicknamed ‘poke & hope editing’) CMX/Sony BVE/and god-awful Paltex style computer controlled editing, Avid and now Final Cut.

There has always been change in the post industry and it seems there always will be. Change is what keeps us fresh.

First off I am so deeply disappointed in Apple and the direction they have headed. I am not so angry at FCPX as I am in the instant abandonment of the traditional FCP platform. FCPX is not for me. It does not fit my workflow, nor do I see any way of adapting it, in it’s current state, to my work flow. Maybe it’s works for wedding’s and Bar Mitzvahs, but for finishing higher end broadcast or non-broadcast work, it’s DOA, for reasons that have been well discussed over the past 40 or so days.

I can honestly say, that in 30 years of post production, I have never seen a company so carefully build up, not only a quality product, but a whole collaborative hardware/software workflow solution, and then in a day… blow it all up. Mind-boggling. Perhaps something in the water in Cupertino? While Apple may now have more cash on hand than the US Treasury, it’s ineptitude is on par with the US government.

But enough about Apple. My blood pressure is rising, so let’s move on.

I got my feet wet with non-linear in the early days of Avid. By 2002, I started playing around with FCP when a friend “loaned” me a copy to get my “opinion” of how it compared to Avid. I used it to cut a home movie and was very impressed. At the time Avid without storage was $80k. FCP with a ton of storage(640gbytes) was $17k. With all the $$ saved I was able to assemble an FCP suite with top notch support gear and still It was less than half the cost of a comparable Avid.

Today I cut mostly in my own FCP suite, but I do still spend some hands-on time with Avid MC and Symphony. Like some have mentioned above, Avid suffers from Legacy issues and is stuck with some cumbersome workflow issues. The reason “Hollywood” still loves Avid, is based on workflow. Much of Hollywood’s editing is cuts, dissolves, and trimming. Graphics are imported from CG files. But where FCP really shines, IMHO, is that it’s strength is in “finishing”. It is more like an Avid DS than a Media Composer. The FCP workflow for working with Photoshop graphics, text, EFX plug-ins, keyframing, multiple sequences, and sound is more intuitive in the later versions FCP.

As for Premiere Pro… I have no experience with it, but at some point I will likely experiment with it.

But, what do we do now? What do we do today? You said you’ve got at least 10 years invested in FCP, as do I. Throughout my career, I’ve found it takes about 2 years to become so fully familiar with a platform, that you can edit with your eyes closed.(Ha, ha) What I mean is: that after 2 years, you can be fully focused in on the editing nuances, and not be thinking about how you are technically going to achieve a desired look. After 2 years it’s all “muscle memory”.

I’ll tell you what I am going to do. Tomorrow…nothing. The day after…nothing. I am going to keep forging ahead with FCP Studio 3. It’s still a perfectly capable tool. However, I am going to keep my eyes open, because a pathway forward will evolve, based on Apple’s boneheaded moves. Now that Avid and Adobe see an opportunity to make some real market in-roads, I think we will see more than just 50% off deals to switch platforms. There is real incentive for both companies(Avid and Adobe) to develop and push their products to the next level, now that Apple has shown that they don’t necessarily have their finger on the pulse of every trend. Furthermore there is opportunity for other companies to be the next Avid or FCP. I hear some interesting things about “Lightworks” development, a free, open source, NLE. It’s possible that it could be the next FCP. And perhaps we will be shocked and see FCPX develop into something more useful(Although I am not going to hold my breath)

Around 1991 I took a little field trip to see Bill Warner’s new technology. On that day I got to preview a new product that I was told would revolutionize the editing industry. I liked the concept, but the video quality of that first Avid demo left me thinking that it was nowhere near ready for serious use in a professional post production workflow. Later that week , while walking on a Cape Cod beach with an old college buddy, I told him of this new Avid technology, and that someday I could see us working in businesses out of our homes. Getting video and graphics from our clients over phone lines. The technology would enable us to greatly change the landscape around which we worked.

It’s 20 years later, and what I saw then as the distant future, is now, the not too distant past.

MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT

[Bret Williams]

We were still on OS 7 back then. I think OS8 was late 97. I remember my PowerComputing 225mhz tower had it.

[Robert Brown]

Yeah Chris, my background isn’t too different. Started with I think a Sony RM 440 with 3/4″ – yikes – then my first real editor was a CMX 340 with 1″ then moved to LA and worked with GVG 3000/4000 K-Scope,
GVG 251, took an Avid class and did a couple of jobs but never got good at it.

I Invested in some lesser know products just so I could play back un-compressed SD in real-time then I bought FCP in ’04 while at Fox Sports where I’ve worked for 15 years and got to do opens for the World Series year after year, and the Daytona 500, Super Bowl and on and on and on. I’ve probably cut 4000 pieces there of various lengths. I got to go the aircraft carrier USS Truman and edit for our Fox NFL PreGame show in 2000, and in 2009 I took my own FCP system for a similar show at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan. Supposedly they shot a missile at us when we took off. : O They missed.

Eventually I got them to send me to Smoke Level I and II courses about 4 years ago and that’s my system of choice, but not for off-line. I’ve done trailer and some feature work on Smoke for Laser Pacific, Company 3 etc.

Along the way I got into stereoscopic and have cut many pieces in that and learned the Quantel Pablo/SID and have worked on 3 feature films as a stereo specialist kind of guy but not the actual editor which is a world I’ve only barely touched but I got to work with Ang Lee and some pretty serious movie people.

I really have no idea where I’m headed at the moment. But yes for advice to a younger person, take classes and find people who are looking to cut stuff even if they don’t have any money. Of course use discretion and don’t work on a project you hate if you’re going to do it pro-bono but the few projects I did like that paid off huge.

But to sum it up, learning in this industry never stops.

[Greg Burke]

WOW. Thanks everyone I can Feel The Shakes going away a bit, But in all honesty Thank you to everyone for your advice thus far! ITs helping my cope! 🙂

I wear many hats.
http://www.gregburkepost.com

[Sean Davison]

Relax – The more software you are fluent with the more appeal.

I started on Film – then Tape – then Media Composer – then FCP now FC X – First and foremost your an editor – a story teller and you can tell stories with all the above. FCX shortcomings are not with its story telling abilities but with its finishing and delivery abilities which are rapidly changing anyway. I just did a short corporate foe a friend and was quite impressed with FCX. I have NO intention of trying to use it to deliver to a network until the Networks the programmes I deliver for… (BBC, ITV, C4, Discovery, Nat Geo) take tapeless deliveries, and I can lay back the audio in discreet tracks.

Life on the Bleedin’ Cutting Edge….

http://www.twotallmen.co.uk

[Glen Hurd]

A lot of great responses here. Straightforward and smart. I’d like to add that if your experience with editing is based on only knowing one interface, you will very likely be feeling a lot of frustration in learning the Avid.
Ignore the frustration and just keep editing on it. In about 3 months it’ll feel as comfortable as English (you are learning a new language, after all).
But also spend a lot of time browsing the Avid manual. Just read it – like a novel. Not to memorize it, but just to put the Avid culture in your brain, so that when you do have a problem, you can trigger thoughts and solutions from having read through a lot of it. (I know, these days, searchable PDFs may seem to make all that moot, but I think reading manuals is still a great way to get very good at your craft – heh, heh).
Reading is also a great way to learn without pressure – you’ll end up “hating” the software less, because you’re reading up on solutions BEFORE you encounter the problems. That’s a powerful thing.
Avid’s definitely worth learning. Knowing several industry-accepted professional interfaces shows your clients/employers that you’re committed as an editor, and simply expands your options and your career.

Remember that tongue-in-cheek quip that “he who dies with the most toys, wins?”
Well, “he who dies with the most skillsets was never unemployed,” should be added to that. 🙂

[Herb Sevush]

“The reason “Hollywood” still loves Avid, is based on workflow”

Hollywood is actually one of the most conservative cultures around when it comes to editing. By the late 70’s everyone was using flatbed’s except for Hollywood, where old time editors were still marking cuts on uprights while their assistants were splicing away on rewinds. Avid had made a huge inroad everywhere else before Hollywood timidly got on the NLE bandwagon. For every Copola, Lucas and Murch there are dozens of experienced editors who can’t be bothered with “keeping up.” Since most technological advances are about ease of use and speed, these have very little relevance to the glacial pace of feature film editing.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions