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what is editing speed ?
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[Phil Lowe] “I thought this was a discussion about speed, not aesthetics. To get back on point, for a small project like the one I did, I didn’t notice any speed advantage of using X over Avid.”
While I have my own pros and cons about X, I will say that in news editing – excluding an Interplay set-up – I do feel that FCPX would by far be the fastest NLE for cutting news pieces. Assuming file-based camera media, I think you’d be hard-pressed to go from ingest to server as fast with any other NLE. This sort of stuff is very much in X’s wheelhouse.
In fact, if I were building a station facility from the ground-up, I’d very much look at an all-FCPX/Motion set-up for news and promos. If your centralized graphics department created common station branding elements as Motion templates, these could easily be installed on all cutting stations for a consistent look. That’s a nice selling point.
In today’s broadcast employment climate, the world of specialists is gone or dying fast, depending on your market. There’s a lot of use of hyphenated staffers – journalists who cut their own pieces or general-purpose videographer-editors. FCPX is designed for easy and fast adoptions in these situations. That’s one of the reasons that large broadcast operations are deploying FCPX in their news and satellite trucks.
[Phil Lowe] “Would X be faster on long form projects? I suppose that depends on whom you ask and what kind of project they’re doing. The Hobbit (all three) was edited on that “ugly” Media Composer, as have been any number of movies.”
The speed of long-form cutting is all over the place. It really depends on the type of project. Some films are single-camera and 1 editor. Others are multiple cameras and multiple editors. A lot of variables. In my own case I’ve cut features on Avid, FCP “classic” and FCPX. So far the film I got to a first cut fastest was with FCP6 or 7. That’s not to say it was slower with X. Merely that the nature of these different films was different enough to account for a difference in time to assembly. What you cut with boils to to style and preference.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Assuming file-based camera media, I think you’d be hard-pressed to go from ingest to server as fast with any other NLE.
We were doing AMA linking and editing in news trucks with a Panasonic P2 workflow in Avid at last a year before FCPX had been released. It was every bit as fast and still is. For my work, I use a Canon XF-300 (MXF files) and edit using AMA linking in MC 7.05. The station where I currently work uses an XDCam workflow with FCP7. It is, by far, the slowest of the three workflows I’ve just described.
That’s one of the reasons that large broadcast operations are deploying FCPX in their news and satellite trucks.
Oh, I don’t have a problem using X for news. It’s what the boss wants, so I have no choice. I simply want to edit on it in a way that makes sense to me, which is why I originally came to this forum looking for answers. (I ultimately found them myself.) I suspect many of the early responders to my initial queries weren’t aware of the demands of high-pressure deadline editing. Most people who have never worked in news aren’t. The issue for the station at which I currently work (not going to name it as I am only a per diem), is that installing X means changing a whole lot of software at both the local and corporate server level because of incompatibility issues with X and our current software (this coming from our IT guy.)
People knock Avid, but its integrated newsroom is, by far, the best in the industry. To get X to work will probably cost as much – in terms of software engineering and man-hours – as simply installing an Avid newsroom system would cost. And even after X is installed, everyone at the station is still going to have to be trained on it. If early comments from our FCP7 editors are any indication, X is going to be about as popular with them as it is with me.
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[Phil Lowe] “We were doing AMA linking and editing in news trucks with a Panasonic P2 workflow in Avid at last a year before FCPX had been released.”
I’m very familiar with AMA and it is just now getting to be relatively stable. P2 was easy because it uses the same version of MXF as Avid does. If you try some other formats, it may or may not behave quite so nicely.
[Phil Lowe] “The station where I currently work uses an XDCam workflow with FCP7. It is, by far, the slowest of the three workflows I’ve just described.”
I wasn’t talking about FCP “classic”. That would have required Log & Transfer, which is a copy and rewrap.
[Phil Lowe] “The issue for the station at which I currently work (not going to name it as I am only a per diem), is that installing X means changing a whole lot of software at both the local and corporate server level because of incompatibility issues with X and our current software (this coming from our IT guy.) “
I don’t doubt that at all. I was only comparing the NLE in a standalone configuration. In my experience, station engineering and/or IT folks aren’t particularly comfortable with integrating Macs into a mixed network environment with shared storage. Hopefully the folks there are more savvy than some I’ve seen.
[Phil Lowe] ” as simply installing an Avid newsroom system would cost.”
I would agree if you are talking about adding X into this environment. I’d completely disagree if you mean starting from a blank slate, which is what I was talking about. That Avid news installation comes with pretty hefty support and maintenance contracts.
[Phil Lowe] “And even after X is installed, everyone at the station is still going to have to be trained on it.”
Big deal. I’ve done multiple changeover training sessions at one station for years. That includes CMX to Sony, then Avid, FCP “classic” and recently Premiere Pro. All at the same shop. Change can be fun 😉 Learning a new NLE is child’s play. Try learning something like After Effects if you’ve never touched it before!
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Try learning something like After Effects if you’ve never touched it before!
Actually, I taught myself to use AE and found it to be fairly easy to use. Even cut a news package with it once (I mentioned that in another thread) because it required compositing which Avid doesn’t really do well (unless you count 3D PIP, then yes, Avid rocks!) 😉
My daughter tried teaching me Nuke once. My head still hurts from that experience!
[Phil Lowe] “And even after X is installed, everyone at the station is still going to have to be trained on it.”
Big deal.
My only point in mentioning training was that there are costs associated with it in terms of hiring trainers and lost productivity. Most stations think that they’re getting off cheap when they see that FCPX only costs $300 a seat. What they don’t often count on are all the other costs that come with it including integrating it into a collaborative workflow.
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I was only comparing the NLE in a standalone configuration…
Which brings us back to the point of my comparison of using both X and Avid on my small project. In a stand-alone configuration, using both X and MC on the same MBP (I also use MC on a PC), I saw no significant speed difference. I shot all the material for both cuts using my Canon XF-300 and used AMA linking of the source footage in Avid.
The source footage was shot at 1080/30p using the MPEG-2, 50Mbit codec in an MXF wrapper, with 422 color subsampling. MC had no issue when AMA linked to this footage right off a very fast CF card. (It doesn’t have any issue linking from other sources, either.)
I used the Canon XF Utility to back the card up to my external hard drive, then imported into X leaving files in place. The import was slower than AMA linking, and some of the files weren’t immediately ready for scrubbing, as there were some background tasks going on with them. I assume it was something akin to conforming in Premiere.
Editing was identical in both: one cut in the music to shorten it down to a minute, then a series of 3-point edits on the b-roll. In. Out. In. Overwrite. Repeat.
There was neither – nor would there have been – any advantage to pre-screening then keywording or favoriting and rejecting clips before editing them to the timeline. In fact, it would have slowed the entire process down on the X end of things. That simply leads me to conclude that the type of editing one does determines the type of workflow one uses.
If the argument – as it has been stated – is that X is only fast when used as designed, and it is designed to be used with all its organizational features in play, then I would argue, as you have also stated (in so many words), that such an argument is not true. Moreover, as I believe I have shown, in a standalone environment given the type of project I did, there is no significant speed advantage of using X over MC, and probably not over Premiere, Vegas, or Edius, either.
What my comparison settled for me (if no one else) was that I can do basic, news-style editing using my Avid keyboard settings in X in a way that incurs no time penalty on me, previously expressed misgivings from some notwithstanding. Being able to use almost identical keystrokes across two programs to achieve the same thing means I can continue to use both programs in a way that neither forces me to learn a whole new keyboard nor a whole new paradigm. And that for me is a good thing. 😉
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[Michael Gissing] “Thanks for the condescending dismissal. For my own projects I will employ editors who can creatively cut. Couldn’t give a rats about the software they choose as long as the workflow is solid and reliable.
But hey if I need to ‘connect’ I’ll give you a holler.”
What the heck is “condescending” about that for heaven’s sake??? I spend a significant part of my time connecting people with X experts all over the place. I’ve lost count of the introductions I’ve made between people interested in X editing and people who can help them. .
It was a simple acknowledgement that you have no interest in X – so I don’t have to think of you when people ask me about editors and producers who are conversant in it.
Period.
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.
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[Michael Gissing] “Too modest. Having just told us how “internet famous” you are, I find that amusing.
“Try – to – learn – to – read – accurately.
I told a story about something someone said to me.
I told it as a cautionary tale about how far what we post here sometimes reaches and how that surprised me.
It was a true story. Like all the posts here – my NAME is attached to it clearly.
If you don’t like my stories, heres a clue. When you see my name on something DONT CLICK on it.
I’m reliably told the ENTIRE internet pretty much works this way.
Yours for safe browsing…. Bill
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.
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Thank you. This helps me understand your thinking and why X presents a bit of a brick wall for you.
And you are correct, it probably always will.
It takes a while and a willingness to confront some of the new ideas in X. For example, it confuses editors at first that there is no longer a brick wall at zero seconds in the X storyline as there is in most NLEs – and you can attach and work LEFT just as easily as right when building things (the zero point floats as needed.)
It’s counterintuitive at first and so I avoided it for the first 6 months or so when I converted.
Then I had a project on a killer deadline where the content for the middle arrived before the content for the beginning, and I woke up to the fact that there was literally no penalty for working “from the middle out” rather than left to right in strict progressing time.
I eventually started giving myself permission to think back to front, or jumping around as the project required and it was another one of the many “foreign” concepts that once understood, presented another a-ha! moment in my editing.
But again, it’s not going to be for everyone. Many people find no reason to EVER value not needing to begin at ZERO and build everything in strict “left to right ascending time” (something by the way you can “force” X to do when it’s appropriate – but is an OPTION – not the only way the software works.
Thanks for the response. I appreciate the time you took to explain your thinking.
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.
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I can build from the middle out and even from the end back in Avid, too. I do this one of two ways: building these elements on separate timelines then dropping them into the final cut as needed (which is what I did on the church video I produced earlier), or build these elements on the same timeline with gaps where other elements will eventually go.
Dropping them into the final edit can be done one of two ways: copy and paste or by dragging the first edited sequence into the source monitor then inserting (or overwriting it) it into the second.
This was the method I used most often when editing half-hour news specials where I worked in Detroit. Each segment would be produced on its own sequence then dropped into a final timeline with all the commercial bumps. Cutting a single segment to hit a certain length on its own timeline was a lot easier than trying to cut it as part of a full half-hour show, then trying to adjust the timing of a single segment on the finished sequence.
Again, a workflow thing. 😉
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[Bill Davis] “For example, it confuses editors at first that there is no longer a brick wall at zero seconds in the X storyline as there is in most NLEs – and you can attach and work LEFT just as easily as right when building things (the zero point floats as needed.)”
So a ripple insert then? Also I’ve yet to see an editor that starts their work at the beginning of their timeline.
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