[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “I tend to be a stickler for clean, final sequences. It drives me up the wall when I encounter a “final” sequence with a bunch of extra left over clips still hanging out on the timeline starting a few seconds after the end of the actual program or commercial. Clean up after yourself, dammit!”

Yes.

I wonder how many people here look back at their careers – and can remember how messy they often were when they were developing their creative chops.

IME, in the rush to create – I know I seldom stopped to on carefully putting everything away in real time. And things got messy really fast. It’s probably part of “creative focus”, which demands concentration like nothing else really.

As you get more comfortable, the frustration of disorder faced again and again and again AFTER the creative impulse has done it’s work – often leads to a creator increasingly valuing ORDER in their efforts.

Unless, of course, you’re so successful in your creative work you can simply hire people to follow you around and clean things up after you. ????

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Simon Ubsdell] “”The Editor’s Fear of the Timeline” is an all too common affliction”

Second only, perhaps to the newbie shooters irrational fear about “But what if a better camera comes out soon? Maybe I should read a hundred more gear reviews and wait another six months to decide?”

Sometimes I really think the whole internet is a melange of “too much information” butting heads with a pervasive climate of “if I don’t pick the very BEST choice – I’m DOOMED.”

When I was starting out I remember that the folks who got better, quicker – weren’t the ones who spent their time waiting to get ahold of the perfect camera – it was the ones that went out and shot as much stuff as they could with whatever camera they could get their paws on.

Oh well.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

I hope to ever remain someone who enjoys going exploring.

On some long hikes, I want the safety of prepping myself with a compass, a pocket knife and extra water.
Experience has proved to me that for some specific types of adventures – it behooves me to plan and prepare myself carefully.

But I also hope I don’t ever lose the type of exploration that doesn’t need ANY of that. To simply go to a place with out the slightest idea of what I’ll find and no plan in mind – and freely explore as the spirit moves me.

The world would hardly be as interesting if both those journey types – and many more – weren’t out there waiting.

My 2 cents.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[greg janza] “But hours and hours of b-roll in a random project that may have golden moments somewhere or anywhere within the footage is something completely different.”

I’ll just say that this describes MOST of my projects.

And having the database in X available to range select, tag and subsequently retrieve those golden moments – as and when they are needed – has been the single most transformative and efficient change in my workflow in the past 25 years.

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Your original post is concerned, however, that if someone achieves success editing with timeline-based approaches, then it might lead to an inability to conceive of editing any other way.”

That is NOT what I said.

I never implied any “inability to conceive.”

Thats pure spin.

What I was writing about is how it *might* lead them to view timeline based approaches (which BTW, every single NLE in existence that I’m aware of uses) as the exclusive pathway worth reliance or development.

A very different idea from what you imply above.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Sometimes, although you write brilliantly (and I really admire you for that), it’s very hard indeed to understand what point you are trying to make.”

First, thanks – and second, my failure, clearly.

So let me try to be a bit more clear.

But first, let me say I truly enjoyed reading your article. Well, perhaps not enjoyed, but it was fully ENGAGED by it – which is excellent enough. Seriously. It pushed me WAY out of my comfort zone. And that means it mattered to me. So that caused me to re-examine my position. Which is healthy. And while I obviously disagree with some of the points you seemed to be making (and that could DEFINITELY be my flawed assessment at work) I greatly appreciate the time you took to think about the topic, write it down, and do that scariest of things – post it in the open for others to criticize.

I know that’s not easy. EVER.

I also GREATLY admire much of the other work you do, Simon, including your software products. I suspect they help many, many editors get quality work done more efficiently. And that moves the industry along.

Let me also acknowledge, that lots of us here take elements of these discussions a bit too personally. I know I’ve done that a bunch. And if it’s come across as aimed at you personally, that’s me irritably swatting the smoke, not addressing the fire.

So to the extent I’ve done that. My apologies. Sadly, I’l probably continue to do so – based on the fact that this is the area I have elected to work in and it matters to me. But I’ll try to be more careful.

But sometimes a phrasing hits me as personal – even if it might not have really been intended that way.

As I’m SURE it does to you.

So sorry for that.

Please, keep doing this. Engaging in the discussion. Keep making the case for the tools you appreciate. And when folks like me push back, I hope you can continue to do what I try to do. Use the pushback to see if if it helps you refine your thinking.

There are LOTS of video sculptors (and far more, probably now tantalized by the ideas that video editing can be a sculptural process) than there were before this overall discussion.

That’s great.

So long as any foolishness that there may be one STYLE of editor necessarily superior to another – nor in fact, one editing tool that’s deficient in the ability to sculpt, lay bricks, or for that matter – firehose ideas out into the internet – I’m good.

The rest is just debate. And I know you’ll take comfort in the fact that your article and ideas earned coveted Cow front page prominence. So in that sense, your ideas have already won the actual contest.

So well done.

Take care.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

In response, I will make some assumptions.

First, while I’m sure there are some (like you?) reading this thread who focused on the behavioral theory, I suspect the vast majority of those reading my post didn’t get confused at all and understood what I was arguing, which was NOT about Psychology as a topic of critical importance to my point..

Second, Many people in the threads relating to this topic have referenced “muscle memory” – a clear form of conditioning.

Third, – … oh why bother.

I wrote something about people getting “conditioned” (see, it’s even in scare quotes this time, so it clearly doesn’t need to be taken literally anymore!) to prior habits that got them good results in the past – and making those habits their default because it might feel rational to them to presume that those same behaviors might get them equally good results in the future.

My point was that sometimes conditions exist (or have changed?) that make said thinking situationally WRONG.

Not always. Not exclusively, Sometimes not at all. But sometimes.

That’s the simple core of what I was saying.

If you’d like to address THAT – I’d welcome reading your thoughts on the topic. It would be WAY more useful than a discussion of how many hairs we might split (or at least the ends of them?) before we need to discuss “conditioning” any further.

; )

That last graph turned stealthily, surprisingly FUN to write. Thanks!

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

What?

What part of this implies ANY luddite or dinosaur thinking whatsoever?

Addressing prior conditioning is a long standing part of understanding human behavior.

It’s IN NO WAY good or bad. It just IS. It’s how we learn to hit a baseball – OR type, for heaven’s sake.

Without conditioning – we have to re-learn EVERYTHING anew each time we face it.

The question isn’t ARE we conditioned. It’s stepping back occasionally and asking a very simple, and very reasonable question. Does the conditioning we’ve accepted still serve us optimally.

The answer can VERY much be YES IT DOES. The conditioning Michael Phelps went through in swimming propelled him to amazing achievements.

So the conditioning is neutral. The only thing dangerous might be if we NEVER question our conditioning and merely keep assuming that our prior methods are always inviolate.

Which is distinctly NOT saying anything IS bad. It’s just asking for occasional “re-examinations” in order to make sure the original criteria for advancement are still being met.

Seems simple enough.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d argue that you are making precision SELECTIONS in the event browser. They’re not precision EDITS until they’re made in the context of their neighbors in a timeline. There’s something to montage theory”

OK, I’ll bite.

And argue (a bit tongue in cheek) that your fully “sculptural” editor is needlessly forcing themselves into starting with a massively huge block of marble every time they go to make a statue. And it’s silly in an era where we now have better tools that let the carver rough out the shape they envision without having to cut through so much dreck.

I don’t know any actual sculptors, but the ones I’ve read about seem to iterate endlessly.

And the ALL universally start out with a subset of a larger body of materials to face.
(The Mt Rushmore guy not withstanding)

But I’ve never seen anyone carve a finished work at the first pass.

Big chunks fall and fall until the sculptor sees the form start to emerge. Simon apparently argues that the real sculptor must start with the largest block and know before the mallet strikes the chisel if the removal being contemplated is righteous.

And heck, no one wise would castigate a process that has led to a universe of great works.

But I wonder if he might be making the same mistake I’ve been accused of – to wit, having a beloved hammer and thereby seeing every serious problem as too much like a nail?

Editorial adjacency. The ability to “see” the effect of one shot against another? Nobody argues that isn’t an important or even a critical thing.

But the central thing? The thing that causes you to value one editorial approach over all others.

By arguing for “large stringout pile reductive focused editing” to coin an ugly descriptor – as the de facto standard, you’re fighting against the major benefit of a HUGE part of the progress we’ve made in the digital age.

The ability to carve away, but if you feel unsatisfied, to Uncarve!

Hint: this is why we generally prefer word processors to typewriters, right?

And if you remain unsatisfied – ADD.

It FEELS to me, perhaps, that those arguing for the sculptural approach may be doing so (at least partially) because they expect every project really should start with a block of marble or wood and needs to end up looking like a statue.

And I think that’s increasingly worth questioning. Not Always. Some gigs definitely needs lots and lots of sculpture.

But many, many, many (perhaps even most) projects don’t.

I think I prefer a system that values subtractive and additive in more balance and encourages the user by delivering a wider range of tools – and lets the editor elect which approach to use and when.

Fun to discuss, anyway.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Simon Ubsdell] “However, one of the most important things for me about the method that I use is that from the earliest stage of the entire process I am building what I have called “editorial chunks”. (I guess you could say these are my version of “bricks”!)”

And it strikes me that you have just ideally described the way I think about a vertically and horizontally magnetically connected assembly of assets in X’s magnetic timeline!

“Editorial chunks” is EXACTLY how I think about them!

Everything in the total raw material pool unfiltered and sortable not just in such “instant string-outs” as I might wish -, but available with or without whatever curation and/or sorting as I might wish to impose upon it!

All I’m doing is cutting out what I see as “the workflow middleman” that you’re describing above.

And cutting out the middleman is often a nice path to better results.

Not always, obviously. There’s always systems where additional steps in the supply chain will add value. But in this era, real wealth is being generated by those who learn to work direct as well.

YMMV.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.