[Bill Davis]

Thoreau,

If you’re trying to edit this “in the timeline” – you’re totally missing the reason FCP-X was rebuilt.

Tag clips (or much better specific RANGES of clips) in the Event Browser.

Then use those keywords to create one or more story lines that are pre-edited to focus on only those topics.

What you’re describing is a perfect match for the X design.

But if you try to edit in X it like you edited in Legacy you’re going to be totally missing what X is all about.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Come on guys. This is the modern reality of marketing.

Instead of spending vast amounts on paid advertising, a company looks for “influencers” to tell their stories and convince others to follow their lead.

Its a practical extension of today’s shift more toward social media.

I actually dont’ have a problem with this technique. If any editor likes their software, then by all means they should spread the word. And if their software company likes what they say and wants to propagate that message – that’s playing fairly, IMO.

I will say I’m usually more convinced when the link drives me to some passionate users site or a trusted third party source rather than directly to a company promo page, but hey, if something drives me to an Apple site for a story about FCP-X – I don’t have a problem with that – so it’s every bit as fair when a story link drives someone to Adobe’s site.

(I do kinda think it’s amusing that the post was dropped here rather than the Adobe Premier Cow board – could that be because a board about X generates a lot more traffic than any board about Premier after all these months? nah, couldn’t be. ; )

In the end, information is information, and people should be allowed to gather and judge it on it’s own merits, filtered through their own criteria.

My 2 cents, anyway.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Well, “irrationally angry about all things Apple” is pretty much Aindreas’s brand proposition, IMO.

So he’s consistent, if nothing else.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

It can also be argued that in the telling of any story – you MUST begin somewhere – and conclude somewhere else. Those are your beginning and end.

An arbitrary amount of the words you use to bridge between those points that get you from the first to the last is… the middle.

Ergo the 3-act form.

Clearly, nothing is that simple, and it’s quite possible to futz with the form to slice and dice and rearrange anything to your creative ends. But I think that’s as good an explanation of why we tend to talk in “3-act” form as any.

In fact, way back in High School, I was very fond of a Richard Brautigan “story” that consisted in a total of two sentences.

“It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who’s learning to play the violin. That’s what she said as she handed the police the empty revolver.”

Beginning. End. And a middle that lives purely in the imagination of the reader.

That’s the magic of thoughtful, clever writing.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Generally…

Chest height is typical. It provides a slightly up angle which puts the presenter in a moderately “superior” position relative to the viewer.

Neither. Teleprompting creates the illusion that the presenter is talking directly to the viewer. To maintain that illusion, typical practice is to use a beam splitter mirror so that the text is projected from directly in front of the lens and the talents eye line is natural. If you offset the prompter screen, it may appear that the talent talking past the audience -especially in close ups.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Most of the DSLR shooters I know tend to use either the Marshall or Small HD monitors in the field. (I prefer the Marshall’s because the Small HD is cheaper, but has no loop through – and requires one to spend hundreds to add on external loop through monitoring for director/client viewing)

No one I know with solid experience really trusts them for total color accuracy – so you must be able to look at a scene and see where you might have mixed light issues. But the “false color” abstracts are as good as a WFM for exposure if you learn to read them properly. And the focus assist is OK and a big improvement over the terrible LCD resolution of any DSLR screen.

For focus, if your working EFP, just drop out of Live mode and just look through the lens which is 100% dependable.

These (along with the requirement for double system sound) are the trade offs for getting astonishing video capabilities in a super cheap DSLR form factor.

And often, small, agile rigs are superior to large rigs and needing more hands in modern production. Not always – but often enough.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

You do understand that copying the Video_TS folder to any drive and dropping it on any DVD player App produces exactly the same result without the plastic disk?

That file on a 4 gig thumb drive IS a virtual DVD.

A DVD is just a plastic bucket for bits. The plastic is the useless part in the modern world, unless the client is stuck with a dedicated DVD-player+TV rig and no available laptop.

And the root video files loaded on an iPad, or uploaded to YouTube, is typically safer then depending on a plastic disk that can get lost or broken.

But to each their own.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

But Richard, understanding how the Position tool works, makes one less thing folks can come onto this board and still kvetch about six months into X’s existence.

And where’s the fun in that!

You’d think that by now, as affordable as it is, everyone truly interested in it would have explored it thoroughly and understand pretty much how it works, but I think there are a lot of editors out there who’ve tried it a bit, found things that frustrated them, then simply put it away and stopped looking at it.

Shane, btw, is rarely one of them – he gets prickly, but he’s also proved that he’s still exploring the software – but like all of us, he does that in context of what he needs to do – and sometimes that means that he simply hasn’t explored one particular pathway in the context of his regular work.

That plagues me as well. Try as I might, I haven’t had the time (nor a project) that would let me explore Roles yet. I’m bound and determined to look there – but circumstances have kept me busy and none of my now dozen plus projects have required me to open up that part of the software.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Look,

FCP-X costs between $299 and $399 depending on whether you want Motion and Compressor.

The cost is largely trivial in any serious video for money endeavor.

What is not trivial is wrapping your thinking around the FCP-X approach to editing. From overall design, to it’s new database capabilities, to it’s layout and organization, there is much re-training and re-thinking necessary in order to understand and learn what it’s capable of doing.

IMO, it takes most editors at least a few months to fully grasp all of the hallways, nooks and crannies in the software – and what it can and can’t do well.

X may be inexpensive, and downloadable – but don’t make the mistake of thinking that means it’s going to be “easy” to fully learn and use. It’s not.

An increasing number of us believe it’s the roadmap to a more flexible and in many ways “better” editing future – but it simply takes a while to learn to drive the new vehicle.

So if you have to turn out work now – I’d go ahead and buy it and start to explore it, but I’d use something more traditional (Perhaps even Legacy, if you already own a version that still works) if you find yourself facing current deadlines.

In six months, if you’re like me, you’ll shudder at the thought of editing on anything else.

But that’s an evolution for those of us who’s work “fits” what FCP-X is designed to do – not for every editor in every situation.

I would personally suggest you start your journey up the learning curve sooner rather than later. After all, the company responsible for the most successful video editing software of the recent past has signaled that this is the future of their editing products line.

You’ll notice that even lots of those who trash it consistently are STILL coming back here to obsess over it and debate it. So their continuing engagement is a clear sign that virtually none of them actually believe that FCP-X is irrelevant to professional editing.

So dismiss it at your risk, IMO.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Rochelle,

We all know people who are “stuck” in DVD land. So it make sense to cater to them as long as they ask for it. However, in my experience, nearly every client gets to a point where they suddenly realize that having the video creator post the finished work to a play out aggregator (YouTube, Vimeo, YouSendIt, Dropbox, etc) or even buying a bunch of really cheap small thumb drives (less than a buck in bulk) and simply putting the video files on those often makes more sense than “dumbing down” your content onto MPEG-2 for authored DVDs.

Yes, the DVD is still nearly universal and ubiquitous. But the moment a client can have anyone on the planet simply go to YouTube to watch their content – making it nearly universally accessible to anyone they like, the magic of the plastic disk quickly disappears.

Similarly, every laptop manufactured in the last few years, including the cheapest have USB slots so they can playback a video file directly via thumb drive.

So the only “left out” group is people with DVD players but no computer or any form of internet access. A group that’s constantly shrinking.

Not saying you don’t need it now. But I wouldn’t be buying DVDs in large quantities much longer. At some point, you’ll get your last request for one. And will be stuck with the rest like the packs of unrecorded VHS tapes I tossed out a few years ago.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor