[Bill Davis]

[Chris Harlan] “Hey, Tim. I want to apologize if I got steamy at all. My father passed away last night, so I’m doing this as sort of a diversion right now, and I have no real sense of up or down. Strange world.”

Chris,

Oh heck no. I’m so sorry for your loss.

Take care of yourself as best you can and I hope the sharpest of the grief passes as quickly as possible.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “[Bill Davis] “Premiere “standard scrubbing” which I’m afraid I remain ignorant about. Perhaps you can help me by explaining how it works compared to how scrubbing works in X?”

Are you pulling my leg, or are you seriously asking me what scrubbing is? After all, it’s been in NLEs since day one and generally works the same way in most. Hold down the mouse button and move the cursor/playhead across the timeline. Same as in FCP7.

Of course, if doesn’t work at all right in X. If I turn off skimming, in order to scrub, I lose the ability to hear audio when I scrub. If I try to scrub in the event, it wants to set a range. It then won’t let you scrub within that range, because it thinks you want to drag it to the timeline. Clearly they designed X for skimming and broke scrubbing in the process.”

I’m sorry.

i must be describing this badly. Since there may be folks reading this without the years of experience you have,
let me try to be more clear.

I’m talking about the behavior that has existed in FCP X since day one – to wit: the use of the cursor to either scrub (JKL or mouse control of the playhead) or skim (mouse or trackpad indicator hovering separate from the cursor location) across the content at will – in a fashion that lets you monitor the underlying content in order to easily target a specific frame location. In X, that’s obviously done partly by visual cues, but also with pitch shifted audio content. And it works the same whether you’re exploring an Event or working in a Primary or Secondary – or audio content in the Timeline.

THAT to me describes scrubbing and skimming as FCP X enables it.

It’s the overall softwares interface to allow the user to rapidly assess content and target specific frames for operations.

I’m trying to understand how the functions might (or might not) DIFFER in it’s implementation in Premiere Pro from how I’ve been using it in Final Cut Pro X for the past six years.

That’s all.

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

[Bill Davis]

Zade,

One aspect of this to consider is the production schedule.

You can’t have shot A reveal shot B unless you shoot B “before” you shoot A.

You have to shoot out of sequence.

So part of the planning is to storyboard everything in advance – then if you want such a seamless transition – you would need to have the scene you’re transitioning TO in the can before you shoot the scene you’re transitioning from – AND you have to shoot it with enough time to not just show the scene, but to have seamless content available to show during the entire “run up” to the transition point – and, of course, afterwards with enough “tail” to get you to the next transition point.

This is why planning is always critical to video production. You have to plan your shoot – then shoot the plan for the best chance of success.

Hope that helps you understand the thinking a bit.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “You’re moving the goal posts by adding the timeline stipulation. Premiere offers standard scrubbing in the timeline, as it always has”

We’ll have to disagree on that. Moving the goalposts, not Premiere “standard scrubbing” which I’m afraid I remain ignorant about. Perhaps you can help me by explaining how it works compared to how scrubbing works in X?

For me skimming has ALWAYS been a “storyline thing” at heart.

My “skimming in the storyline” to “skimming in the browser” ratio has to be 100 to 1 – or more.

In the Event, I use nearly 100% keyboard commands to markup and tag stuff at the Event level in X. I rarely skim things using JKL transport nearly exclusively. It’s just faster than mousing around. And my content is rejected and tagged, I have little reason to skim anything at that stage againt. In fact, you could easily argue that this is precisely what keywords are DESIGNED to do in X – make the need for asset skimming in the event far less necessary.

I’m sure it’s just a difference in conditioning and orientation.

I’m also sure, now that I think about it, there are likely lots of people still skimming assets in FCP X. I wonder if the people doing this have ever considered that once again, they are sorta making X work slower (even with SKIMMING available!) by trying to match their prior “bin” conditioning, rather than learning more about how X is designed to work?

Skimming ANYTHING in the Event Browser is VASTLY slower than having the asset you’re seeking pre-defined by a keyword range. Don’t get me wrong, as an exploratory process I’m all for skimming and randomly exploration of footage “at will”- and X does that just as well as all the other NLEs – BUT – in X it’s NOT the optimal way to bring content to into your storylines. I find organization via keywords and instant range addition to the timeline via keystroke beats it by a country mile for efficiency.

Oh well.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Shawn Miller] “Sorry, that just doesn’t make any sense to me. How would Apple be losing focus by updating the CPUs and GPUs in the Mac Pro?
“

Managing a much wider array of retail SKUs would just be the beginning. Optimizing the App code for half a dozen CPUs and GPUs with different designs, strengths and weaknesses could easily turn into an unnecessary hassle. One strength of the Apple approach is that you’re pretty well assured that if it’s an Apple system, everything will be pre-tested to work smoothly as a system (presuming no non-spec anomalies – which ALL computer parts are subject to.)

[Shawn Miller] “Crushing which competitors (not all of them I presume)… doing what? And… weren’t we talking about workstations? ☺
“

I’d cite editing magnetically for expanded storyline construction efficiency and stuff like the render speed advantages many have reported because the Mac OS, Hardware and Software is properly optimized for an All Apple workflow.

[Shawn Miller] “Sure, and for many – the choice that “just works” is a machine with faster GPUs and newer, faster, multiple CPUs. ☺
“

I’m not convinced the “workstation” tag is long for this world. Not with the push towards modularization of components such as outboard GPUs making their way towards us due to modern fast I/O pipes. Who knows, really what the future will bring us? If I were a betting guy, I’d probably bet AGAINST the focus remaining on single box “workstation” development in the future. I’d bet more on modular components attached to “at will” – as the location and tasks demand. Your I/O module might look like a laptop with some on-board storage and a utility screen, but if you’re at the “office” you connect to assets including perhaps more CPU or GPU power, nicer displays, and a fatter pipe.

When you leave that situation, you keep the keyboard and personal device with decent memory and the core capabilities you need, until you attach it to the network at work, or in the clients space, where you leverage THAT array of peripheral assets to work with.

The “workstation” becomes kinda irrelevant in that scenario.

It’s been broken down and distributed with dedicated modules doing what USED to be housed in the workstation better and faster?

Just thinking out loud here.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “For example, with PDF Viewer, I can see my client’s script right inside of Premiere Pro. In theory I could do that with a PDF in an event in X, but then it’s seen as a graphic, not a PDF with pages.”

Not that it’s directly equivalent, but it’s perfectly possible to bring a text based script into X via the Notes field for any Range Selections you’ve created.

IIRC, Lumberjack uses this technique for script sync and lookup in their system.

Doing so will keep the script text in virtual sync and allow for text search with visual range call-up via the standard database query’s inside X.

FWIW.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Shawn Miller] “What keeps Apple from offering more powerful GPUs and CPUs in the workstations they do make though? That doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the offerings of other PC integrators…
“

I suspect maybe the cultural impact of the famous “4 quadrants” drawing Steve Jobs did about keeping the company focus on making fewer products, but making them as excellent as possible?

Purely speculation on my part.

But the fact that those famously “under spec’d and under RAM’d” Touchbar MacBook Pros are crushing some higher spec’d competitors in open comparative performance tests speak to the value of looking beyond the easy answers.

At one level (how much RAM is on board, etc.) they maybe shouldn’t work as well as they do – yet they actually DO work really, really well.

Maybe the path to satisfaction isn’t always more choice, but being given a choice that just works better than the other alternatives?

Again, just guessing.

; )

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

[Bill Davis]

Simon.

That comment was in the specific context of comparing how I see X working against what I understand about the Adobe approach of preferring separate monolithic Apps for everything.

I thought that was clear.

Just as MOST Premiere editors host the software locally, most X editors do as well.

I’ve known Ronny for years and am fully aware of the amazing things he and Eric Altman and Sam Mestman and the LumaForge teams do in creating facility-wide adaptations of multi-seat X editing around the world.

It’s great stuff and I’m pretty sure he believes, as I do – that the X future is bright in this area.

But I think you’re doing the Apples and Oranges thing here.

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

[Bill Davis]

So a year later Premiere had a skimmer-like capability in what I presume was the rough equivelent of the X Event Browser?

I don’t remember seeing it IN THE TIMELINE (where the editor presumably does the vast majority of their actual editing in a traditional NLE.)

I know Premiere Pro has feature parity via “hover scrub” in the actual Timeline now. Right?

Did that also appear in 2012 and I just missed it?

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

[Bill Davis]

[Steve Connor] “and Bill will no doubt tell us what a great move by Apple that is”

Nope.

I’m sure It SUCKS for the fraction at the top of the industry that needs that type of capability.

But not every car maker competes in the space that the guys building NHRA dragsters do.

That’s just how the world works.

BTW, isn’t it interesting that the new electric cars are WAY faster “off the line” than the vast majority of gas powered vehicles? May be something to learn from that. Or not. Who really knows?

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