[Bill Davis]

Agree with you fully. Which happens annoyingly often in this forum. Please try to me more unreasonably argumentative. We have standards in this forum, don’ cha know. ; )

“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]

——

[Bill Davis] “My take is that a significant piece of the top 100,000 of that two million editors …”

[Bill Davis] “… there are probably a dozen “negative” cases …”

[Bill Davis] “Probably ninty percent plus of standard video editing needs.”

Bill,

You’re making up numbers.

Franz.
———-

Fran’s,

No, actually I’m not. If you read carefully, you’ll see that i’m writing both specifically and with careful intent.
I’m using terms such as “significant piece” and “possibly” to signal to the reader that these are broad assertions rather than ” facts”.

I’m expressing opinions and guesses and my language indicates precisely that.

It’s left to the reader to decide if my speculations match theirs.

As it should be.

“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]

In my opinion, your smart to be aware – very smart to seek reliable info – but shouldn’t yet become actively worried.

The insidious issue with hearing damage is that a component of it is often both cumulative and hidden until much later in life.

So your early awareness of the potential is excellent.

Ty’s advice is spot on. The absolute best path is a baseline hearing test followed by re testing at regular intervals.

If that’s not possible, then try to find a way to formalize and manage listening levels on your own.

Presuming that you have loudness control of your headphones, try to determine your personal lowest effective listening level, put a physical mark on the control nob or slider (or find a way to take a snapshot of an on-screen control) then formalize a process for regular monthly review.

If you find that you’re “creeping up” your levels. Be wary. That may mean that your becoming conditioned to the loudness and need more to perceive the same clarity.

There are “decibel” pegged safe listening levels to be found on the net, but without a reliable sound pressure level meter, it’s very difficult to measure this reliably.

Bottom line is that awareness is your best defense, and you’re already aware.

Congratulations!

“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]

[Rafael Amador] “Without a common denominator lets see if those groups survive.”

I doubt the name change would have made the slightest difference.

What’s killing user groups isn’t any split in products – it’s the general explosion of on-line knowledge.

Back in the day, the whole point of users groups were to share specialist knowledge amongst like minded local people.

Today everyone has instant access to all the knowledge they need via the net and places just like this one.

So you’re left with social interaction. Period.

So the user group thrives, survives, or fades based (in my opinion) on one thing and one thing alone. The SHOW the group can put on. If it’s tightly run, presentations are vetted for interesting content and that content is delivered well – then like a mini- NAB demo, people will come to see it.

If it devolves to just a room where a small group of folks gather to re-hash what someone can actually look up MUCH easier on the internet – then they will fade out.

Here in Phoenix, we used to have UGs for all the major software programs. No more. They’ve all faded to shadows of their former size.

In the final analysis, users groups thrive when they solve problems for their members. When knowledge is scarce, a group that has and shares such knowledge is valuable. But when the knowledge is broadly available, then the hassle of driving to a meeting and sitting through what you don’t want to see to get to what you do find useful is pretty inefficient.

In most “group” settings, what actually keeps groups alive is the economic benefits they provide to members, time being money and all. I think the real problem with users groups is that in a sense they’re like a big “leads group” where everyone is selling the exact same service.

And that’s the real crux of the problem IMO.

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]

[Jeremy Garchow] “That’s all well and good, Bill, I know what you’re saying, but it really has nothing to do with reconnecting clips.”

But Jeremy, isn’t the entire concept of “reconnecting clips” dependent on the database structure? When a clip in legacy had a single clear pathway – from Scratch to Bin to timeline – “reconnect” meant one clear operation. If the path was broken, it was broken in one place ONLY. The link between the Scratch position and the Browser – information there was simply passed along to the timeline consistently – any “missing link” info started at the Capture Scratch – passed through to the Browser (where it was potentially linked to a bin placement, but nothing more) – then to the timeline where the data flow stopped unless you were outputting a final or XML list. The stages upstream didn’t have to keep “track” of anything really. The clips just sat there in an isolated world of timeline position info. It reported out to nothing unless you wanted to generate a “snapshot in time” XML report or save a duplicate of your timeline, but neither the browser, the clip, the bin, nor the timeline had more than very rudimentary communications with anything else, and nothing that was very useful except the XML for round tripping and segmented output for exporting and re-inport of timeline sections.

The foundation of X changes that. In this early stage, we’re given new pipes. The most important is a “report loop” that involves bi-directional communications to and from the Event Browser. Clips land there first. They can be left there without doing anything to them, but if you decide to apply metadata – that information will not only persist for this project, but for all your future projects you want to link to that Event. That’s a BIG fundamental shift in thinking. It’s why editing IN the event browser in X is arguably more powerful than editing was in the timeline in Legacy. The decisions are not just persistent but accessible for any and all subsequent projects where you would like to take advantage of those decisions. Then when you drag your “edited” and “tagged” clips, to the timeline, they carry all the Event Browser metadata AND give you the opportunity to add more metadata that is project specific.

The “issue” with re-connect media. Is that it now has to become a “modal” operation.

If what you’re re-linking is just fixed length video a clip – and the data is a perfect reflection of the original that has become “unlinked” it’s probably not a very big issue. But what if it’s not? What if the element you want to “re-link” is is something like a LOGO? What if your new one is a different size or bit depth, or aspect ratio from the original one? Now the software has to figure out if your intent is to replace not just the timeline occurrence, but occurrences in the EB, and in connections like sub clip relationships and compounds – or if your intent is to re-link to everything – including where that clip resides in the EB – which might, in turn, include effecting changes to other Projects which might have other metadata applied to them.

It just seems to me that when you bring “relationalism” into any database, you’re adding a world of complexity that is very, very useful, but also very finicky.

I can see a situation where the decision to “re-link” a single clip might set off a chain reaction where in order to properly gauge user intent, the only safe thing to do is toss up a host of conditional choices where it somehow lists all projects, timelines, compound clips, and titles that the “re-linked” asset resides in, and asks you to decide whether you want to re-link to all, some (or potentially even none!) of them at this point in your work.

Maybe I’m over-thinkng this. But it just seems to me that in Legacy, “re-linking” was kinda trivial. Connect this to that – everywhere, always- and you’re done.

In the database world of X, it’s a bit more complicated.

But I could certainly be wrong.

Again, thanks for your responses here. It helps greatly to push me to expand my thinking about the X interface and how it “really” works. Something that isn’t always what I expect even now.

Take care.

BTW, Someday I’m going to resurrect that Taxonomy group idea. I’d love to do it, it’s just that all my historical client seem to have been kissed by princes/princesses and they’re all suddenly calling for work. No complaints, but it’s been limiting on how much time I can spend here. I greatly enjoy the debate, but work is work.

“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]

[Jeremy Garchow] “But I don’t find this to be true. I change something in the event browser, it does not change it in a Project. If I dupe something in an event, and change the original, what I changed does not effect the dupe.”

I agree Jeremy that “change flow” in X is largely contextual.

The sense I’m thinking about is how, if you make a decision to apply IN and OUT points to a clip in the event browser that metadata will persist for that clip in the EB – and is available for the user for re-use in any subsequent use of that clip for any project at any time in the future. It’s “edit once” and use the edit decision everywhere – across all projects – as you like.

Same with keywords. Apply the metadata once – it persists across all subsequent uses of the clip, regardless of how or if it goes into a particular project.

That metadata flows into sub clips, connected clips, project libraries and partially, I think, even into XML exports (tho I haven’t played much with that so it might be limited.)

I agree that everything isn’t free flowing and bi-directional – I think that would be a huge relational mess as I implied in my original post.

The key is to learn how the flow goes (generally from the Event Browser into the Timeline then into the Project Library with an offshoot of the data populating the Timeline index – and exporting via SHARE and XML.

The key is how different this is from Legacy where there was a much more simplistic data flow from Capture scratch to Bins to Timeline – then out. Thinking about how the new Event Library fit into that and building the links between it and the timeline – along with the gutting and re-building away from Quicktime toward AV Foundation and Core technologies ARE the big central changes Apple made to Final Cut.

And its a large enough change that it takes serious getting used to – particularly with legions of Legacy users needing to understand the differences in order to make informed adopt/not adopt decisions.

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]

[Craig Seeman] “As video craftsperson I may pick up a morsel of important information or be introduced to a new technique or tool in a general User Group. I think there’s still purpose for tool specific User Groups . . . but maybe I’m wrong about that.”

Craig,

I couldn’t agree more.

If you seek to be a “generalist” – walk in somewhere and cut on whatever they use – then the correct path is to understanding the widest range of software and it’s strengths and weaknesses.

If you seek to be the best you can be at getting your work done in a single program environment – then while general knowledge of the wider industry is of some use, it’s largely inefficient in helping you master the tool you most often need.

Put simpler, the steps necessary to pull a clean key in Software A is what I need to master now. The steps necessary to pull clean keys in ANY software is a more complex body of knowledge and I have to be careful about how much time I spend on comparative knowledge if operational knowledge is what makes the the most money.

This is where choice makes things difficult. Also where the constant evolution of the products makes the choices ever more persnickety. A feature in A today (for instance the “unusual for a general purpose NLE” weight on database management in X) might migrate to all it’s competitors over time.

The best any of us can do, in my opinion, is to take whatever time we can afford for “exploration” gain as much general knowledge as possible, and then get off the pot and make the choices that we feel are the best for our particular circumstances.

We don’t always be right. But if we hesitate to even MAKE the choices, we risk more than choosing wrongly and having to reverse ourselves at some point.

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]

[Shane Trowbridge] “The reality is I am still in the learning stage with X so it’s possible I made some small mistake that I overlooked though I’m not sure what that would be.”

You and me both, brother. Even after six months and quite a bit of use, I’m still fuzzy on many concepts regarding X.

I fully expect to write stuff here and have others tell me I’m either partially or fully wrong. The hope is that if I keep the discussion going with my thinking, the “hive mind” will help us all figure out which are the solid ones and which are off base.

This is how I “see” X at this point.

I want to know how others see it as well – and may the most accurate understandings rise to the top and be the real influencers of the readers here.

Peace.

“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]

[Jeremy Garchow] “The same was true of fcp7. Fcp7 is still a database. If reconnecting and something didn’t match exactly, fcp7 adjusts. The same should be true with X.”

Jeremy,

I’m not convinced it’s true in the same way. My thinking is that connections in a flat file database system are constrained to “single state adds” in most cases. In other words, you can link new things to other things easily, but the buck stops when it comes to a change to one thing – rippling down the tree to lots of other things.

That’s kinda what happens in a fully-relational database. The “bi-directional” cross-linking that provides the power – also makes change potentially orders of magnitude more complex.

I might be totally wrong since I’m not a database pro. Just someone who’s had minimal experience building rudimentary databases, largely in Filemaker Pro over it’s evolution. And seen glimpses of how complex things can get when, for example, I changed some “lookup” data and got surprised when ALL the damn numbers changed – including the numbers in the forms that I didn’t WANT them to change in.

It showed me that with the power of relational complexity – comes the need to limit potential conflict.

After all, I don’t want to TINT a scene in Timeline A – only to find that the color change ripples back up to the source clip – then back down to every use of that scene in every project it’s ever appeared in. That’s perfectly possible in a fully relational database, but it’s not the behavior we want or need.

In X, the more sensible structure seems to be employed. Changes made in the Event Browser are “global” and available to all connected timelines – but changes in timelines are specific to that use – and don’t necessarily reflect back to the source clip.

The database “reports” data like clip length to the timeline index. But they seem to be very careful about how they’re implementing the database to timeline relationships so that things stay sensible.

That’s the sense I get anyway.

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]

Quite a bit, actually.

The originator and long time head of the San Francisco group, my old friend and early adopter Kevin Monahan now works for Adobe and contributes here semi-regularly. He’s a great guy, very knowledgable, and I begrudge him nothing in his ability to publicly weigh in on issues. But he’s not exactly an neutral observer. I

As to Boston, that group is largely run by Dan Berube. Another great guy I’ve known for a long time. He and his fellow Supergroup organizer Mike Horton have had to navigate the treacherous waters of the FCP verses other NLE manufacturers schism.

That users groups might be doing some fracturing along “party” lines isn’t surprising in the least. If I was in PR at either Adobe or AVID, I’d be looking at this as a golden opportunity to spread some marketing money and talent around to do whatever I could to influence public opinion as well.

It’s just smart business.

The question at the core isn’t whether a users group changes direction. Volunteer groups do that all the time based on the personalities and perceived needs of the group in charge at any given time.

The real question is whether FCP-X has a future.

The more I use it, the more I think that’s a solid yes.

Witness, the cover story in this weeks Broadcast Engineering. Under the subhead “Some of broadcasts brightest reveal where the industry is headed.” the universal themes are “file based workflow,” and “merging IT with broadcast.”

Nope, none of them mention FCP-X. But that parochial view doesn’t account for the fact that all of them are obsessed with managing file based metadata in the coming years. And what sets X apart from the competition? The elevation of data handling into a role arguably equal to image manipulation.

If that is increasingly the skill set that drives efficiency and results – I’m more convinced then ever that what I’m learning with my migration to FCP-X is the right direction change to enhance my career.

YMMV.

“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