Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] “One of the big shifts in X thinking was a huge diminishing of the traditional emphasis on Finder organization via virtual folders. It’s just not very important to x workflows since X’s “tagged Range” system pretty much eliminates folders as interim steps between what the editor wants – And calling up and landing that asset into a storyline.”
Herb was talking about color coding (the reference to the Finder was just an example).
[Michael Gissing] “I’m finding it interesting that both Adobe CC and Blackmagic Fusion are developing and pushing their VR tools. “
Don’t forget Apple. They made a big deal about upcoming Macs being powerful enough for VR and mentioned FCP X will get native 360 editing too.
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[Scott Witthaus] “Why?
Increased usability in a growing market that FCP X is already a part? When someone says “collaborative editing” the knee jerk thought for many is big movies or TV shows but there are also many boutique shops, indie docs, schools, New Media creators, etc., can/could utilize it as well. If I had to guess I’d say the number of people using shared storage is trending up, not down because the cost and technical hurdles are disappearing more and more each year (just look at what LumaForge is trying to do with Jellyfish), and my rule thumb is that if a place finds shared storage useful then they’ll find collaborative features in an NLE useful.
In my personal experience, even when it’s just been myself (working as an AE) and an editor cutting out of the backroom of the director’s the advantages of shared storage and a collaborative NLE are obviously.
[Scott Witthaus] “No, let’s hope Apple keeps focusing on a product that is fast, stable and works. One that can be expanded with approved plug-ins for those who need it, not bloating the core software. Focus on integrating Motion and Logic for the shops that DON’T need shared or multi-editor projects, which I would dare opine are the vast majority in the visual storytelling space. Zag, Apple, don’t zig with Adobe. :-)”
One man’s bloat is another man’s feature request though. For example, couldn’t expanding integration with Motion and Logic be seen as a waste of time by someone that doesn’t need/want more integration with Motion and Logic?
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So Patrick Southern posted a short video on the new collaboration features in PPro for ProVideoCoalition.
https://www.provideocoalition.com/premiere-pro-collaboration-lumaforge/
At first blush I’m skeptical of how smoothly this is going to work in the real world. The video skimps on the setup details, but it appears that users create multiple projects and then import those individual projects into a Master Shared Project. The individual projects and the individual folders can then be locked/unlocked so users don’t overwrite one another’s work. It seems like a kludgy attempt to mimic Avid where the PPro Master Shared Project is analogous to an Avid Project and the PPro projects that reside inside of the Master Shared Project are analogous to bins in Avid.
A couple of other things bugged me as well. Not being able to set In/Out points in a locked folder/project is a pretty notable limitation, and being able to create folders that aren’t sharable has a high probability of creating confusion/frustration.
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[Charlie Austin] “Mine too. You can have a different user on each “page”. 1 edit, 1 color, 1 mix, 1 media etc….”
In the videos I’ve seen you still have a similar dynamic to Adobe’s solution where changes are pushed/published and then must be accepted in order to be applied, but that’s for the pervious versions of Resolve. I’m not sure how things have changed in Resolve. Looking forward to hearing from people as they start to use it in the wild.
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[Michael Gissing] “Adobe Anywhere? was promising that but did it ever happen and if so does it work properly?”
It’s around, but when it initially released it was a hardware based solution which made cost a huge barrier to entry. I don’t think it’s exclusively hardware based anymore, but I think you still have to subscribe to Adobe Teams which is separate from CC (so another cost barrier). Even then, the collaboration is more or less everyone working on their own projects and then hitting a button to share changes to the other users (who have to hit a button to accept those changes). This inevitably leads to conflicts that have to be resolved which leads to more headaches. This was acknowledged in the Hollywood Reporter piece and seems to be something Adobe hopes to fix with these new changes.
That’s why I’m not really a fan of any collaboration that’s based around each user working on their own ‘version’ of the project. Avid, AFAIK, is still the only NLE where everyone is really working in the same project. Yes, I know there are multiple ways to skin the cat, but Avid’s approach is very versatile, robust and obviously time tested. That’s not to say others should just try and clone it, but it should be closely examined to understand why it is such a good approach.
[Michael Gissing] “The fact that three out of four major NLE companies think collaborative workflows have merit says there most probably is a reasonable market, particularly as Adobe and Blackmagic take user feedback seriously and have much more active update and development regimes.
“Agreed and whenever someone talks about X being used on a feature film or X being used in a facility in Europe with two dozen seats my thought is that those users could use these types of features. My rule of thumb is this, if your situation can benefit from having shared storage then your situation can benefit from having an NLE with collaborative features.
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[Shane Ross] “As for the media being copied, that “feature” (I call it a “bug”) was addressed in the latest version. You can import sequences and NOT all the media that is in it. So I don’t think that’s it.”
I thought the bug was PPro would sometimes duplicate media erroneously when you imported a sequence.
For example, if you had clip 8675309.mov in Project B and you imported a sequence containing clip 8675309.mov from Project A, PPro is supposed to recognize that 8675309.mov in the Project A timeline is the same as 8675309.mov in the Project B Project window and link them together (for lack of a better term). If clip 8675309.mov *did not* already exist in Project B then PPro would automatically import the missing clip when it imported the timeline. Otherwise the clip would be missing from the timeline. And I mean totally missing as in there is a empty, black hole in the timeline, not ‘media offline’ missing. It’s not like the old FCP where you could have a timeline full of clips but no corresponding media in the Browser window.
The bug I thought Adobe has been battling was that sometimes PPro wouldn’t recognize that 8675309.mov already existed in Project B so it would import another copy of it and you’d be stuck with two copies of 8675309.mov since PPro saw each as a unique piece of media.
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[Shane Ross] “Adobe showed off this feature at Edit Fest. It’s based on using multiple projects, but that’s pretty much what we did with FCP 7…only better because things lock.
BUT…I wonder if it has the same issues that FCP 7 had…and that is not being able to match back to footage across projects. If your footage was in one project, and your sequence in another, you could not match back to the bin the footage came from. That was a major issue.”
I missed this at Edit Fest. Did they have a stand/booth someplace?
My guess is that any required media that doesn’t already exist in your project will be copied into it when you import a sequence from a different project (similar to how PPro does it now). FCP Legend was an odd duck in that media the Timeline didn’t have to reference back to media in the Browser Window. You could have a FCP project full of edited timelines, but not a single piece of media in the Browser. Hitting match frame would get you the “This piece of media is not in the Browser, would you like to add it?” dialog box. Even in Avid if I give you a bin with just a timeline in it all the media for the timeline is in the bin too, it’s just hidden by default (IIRC).
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[Ryan Patch] “Pray tell, what is this “very powerful” audio sync feature. Will it sync 1000s of clips in 10 seconds, as I can do in Resolve? It’s my understanding that Adobe doesn’t have this feature.
“PPro has had sync by waveform and sync by timecode since 2011 or 2012. Just select the clips in the Project Window, Right Click, Make Multicam Sequence and pick your settings. It will create a mulitcam sequence (which is basically just a nested sequence). I have used it on docs for years and routinely sync hundreds of clips at a time via waveform on shoots consisting of 4-8 channels of second system audio and 2-4 cameras (also recording audio). A 6 or 8 hour shoot day can be prepped in a number of hours once you get the hang of it. I’ve only used sync by TC a few times on smaller projects and it was near instant from what I recall.
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[Byrd Mcdonald] “He’s always happy to export out the timeline and send me a file to review and make notes on, but some much of the nuance of editing happens in real time in my opinion. “
If he’s happy to export the timeline can’t he also be happy to render the timeline? When you make edits/changes it only un-renders the affected area so you can just re-render that portion in order to view your changes in real time.
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[Michael Gissing] “I recently interviewed BM’s Paul Saccone for a magazine article. You will be pleased to know making a single tool that does edit, grade, sound and finish delivery is exactly what they are focused on doing. Adding collaborative workflow and round tripping to Fusion is exactly that idea of a complete post ecosystem. And there are people and facilities like me that do actually need that total tool set.”
The big question mark I have with Resolve (and this will take years to answer) is can they make it good enough that it will get users of X, MC or PPro to switch (or put it into regular rotation for those of us that commonly use more than one NLE)? Resolve 14 in 2011/2012 would’ve been a very compelling option for FCP Legend users needing to find a new NLE, but in 2017 all that low hanging fruit is pretty much dried up. The NLE is really the hub of post and w/o it then the compelling aspects of Resolve’s grading ability, Fairlight, etc., don’t carry as much weight.
‘Is Resolve good enough to do the job’ is a different question than ‘is Resolve good enough to get users to switch’. I know it could be a dream come true in your situation Michael, but on a broader scale I hear a lot more people talking about it than actually using it.
[Herb Sevush] “I just don’t “get” the logic behind the Lumetri controls. I much prefer Colorista. Lumetri doesn’t have a keyer, the vignetter can’t be off-set from center – it acts like a stills color corrector adapted for video. I find Colorista IV to be worth paying for even though Lumetri is free.”
I haven’t used Colorista IV, but previous versions always felt a bit clunky to me in terms of their integration into the NLE (both FCP Legend and PPro). For a lot of the work I do with Lumetri it’s fast adjustments uniformly across the image so a keyer or flexible vignette isn’t required. Also, since Lumetri is built in I know it’s always going to be there. If I’m freelancing someplace else odds are they won’t have Colorista installed. I still use Colorista on occasion, but it’s no longer to the go-to tool for me if I’m staying inside the NLE to grade.