[Cathy G’nator]

I am indeed that Cathy G. Yes, please give me a shout next time you’re in the T-dot.

[Cathy G’nator]

That’s quite a history Dennis! I had no idea so much was going on, just quietly plugging away at whatever system a client put in front of me. Now that I’ve invested in my own gear–the above-mentioned XpressPro, I have a lot more interest in all of this. Wish I had figured out that I could acquire a used Symphony for about the same that I paid for the new gear. That was such a stable machine.

I love the last line of your post and think you might have really enjoyed a Final Cut Pro promotional campaign launched by Carbon Computing here in Toronto several years ago. They used old Soviet political posters, with socialist realist figures holding up G4’s and FCP programmes, declaring “Digital Video for the People!”, Lenin declaring “Our System Has Failed” and Carbon Computing advertising “Systems Designed to Conquer the World!”.

[Cathy G’nator]

I’m on an Xpress Pro with Mojo, which is affordable and does what I need it to do. However, as you may have noted from my previous posts, it’s not entirely bug free. I can’t render timecode, which means I have to spend an hour creating a Quicktime for output. And it won’t digitize useable video from VHS which is often how I get stock footage. However, I’m now asking clients to provide stock shots on DVD’s or ftp sites and just allowing extra time for my outputs. I think that the only system I’ve worked on in the past 15 years of NLE that never crashed and never gave me any trouble was a Symphony and I sure can’t afford to buy one of those!

[Cathy G’nator]

Grinner, you really are a Renaissance man of the Edit Suite! I don’t know any other editors who do it all in the long form business. I certainly appreciate your technical savvy and don’t think your critiques are out of place in this forum (or anywhere else for that matter). I just wanted to jump in on a thread that seemed to be getting pretty acrimonious, which seems kind of unnecessary. As everyone keeps saying–we all have the right to our opinions–even those of us for whom the AVID is doing the job!

Peace. 🙂

Cathy
(A not so angry hippie)

[Cathy G’nator]

Thanks for all these tips, Kevin. I will be sure to save your post and refer to it the next time I’m on an FCP. I think that some of the problems I had were also due to a “lemon” of a machine. I was working with one of those very cheap clients who thinks one saves money by using a stripped down system that means the editor spends way more time doing her/his job.

I had three separate assistants try to set up a viewing monitor for me with no success. We did have a hardware device of some kind set up for a while, but it caused the FCP to crash constantly, so I gave up and just worked from the tiny screens, except when screening for the producer.

I did eliminate the waveforms and thumbnails early on and it helped a bit. And it is true that after a few months, I felt more comfortable with FCP and stopped trying to make it do AVID things. It’s just that even with all of this, I can still edit WAY faster on the AVID.

[Cathy G’nator]

Happy to help, Ted, and I don’t mind it being public–if this can help other editors like us, all the better!

The biggest issue for me with FCP is that you can’t put a sequence in your source monitor and edit parts into the sequence in the record monitor. Instead, you must have all the sequences you are using open in stacked time-lines and then you copy and paste the bits back and forth. It really takes some getting used to. And you have to stay really focussed or else you end up working on the wrong sequence.

Also, you can’t have a nice big viewing monitor and a viewer/record set-up going at the same time. It’s kind of like working with that old AVID MC Xpress, which we used to refer to as “an AVID with handcuffs”.

FCP has a hard time with long form projects. Digitize all your material into one project. Make all your pulls in another. Make your scene sequences in a third and make a new project for each cut of your entire show. You can have as many projects open at the same time as you like–I used the projects the way I use AVID folders. And you can edit between projects and sequences. It’s just not as clear a work flow as AVID and takes a lot more thinking about.

Then, when you get to autosave, be prepared to WAIT. It takes minutes for all the saving of all the projects you’ll have open in a typical long form program.

Buy the book Final Cut Pro for AVID editors by Diana Weynand. She talks our language and shows clearly how to make FCP work as much like an AVID as possible. You can even set up your keyboard to be similar to the AVID. Although another problem I found is that there are far more keyboard shortcuts that require two keystrokes instead of just one. In some ways there are too many features in the FCP for creative long form editors.

If I think of more stuff I’ll post again. And feel free to keep asking, especially when you get into the training and have specific questions. I was lucky to have an extremely FCP savvy co-editor on the series when learning. He helped a lot!

[Cathy G’nator]

The kids do know all the new technical stuff, but they don’t seem to know much about story-telling. At least the ones I’ve run into with a couple of sterling exceptions. And they don’t seem to be all that interested in learning about story-telling because they’re so bedazzled by all the new bells and whistles introduced on what seems like an hourly basis.

I recently came off a series in which I was the “elder” editor and the producer was clearly a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up on the technical end of things. My co-editor was a technical whiz–not a “kid” but considerably younger than I. He helped me enormously in handling the technical stuff and became the go-to guy for any sequences that needed fancy pants fx done. However, I was able to edit the shows about 50% faster than he could and with much less input from the producer. Techie guys, kids or not, are pretty easy to find in this world. Editors who can look at many hours of footage and put a cohesive and dramatic story together out of it are not. I hear this all the time from those who hire me.

I don’t think that knowing how to put a long form story together is necessarily a set of skills that can be learned in the same way that one can learn a piece of software. There’s some talent involved and a lot of experience from watching other stories and READING literature. At the risk of sounding like a complete fuddy duddy, I’m afraid to say that the kids just ain’t reading anymore. Playing video games trains great fighter pilots but lousy story-tellers.

I just don’t think that editors like Ted and I will be out of a job anytime soon. Unless a new crop of technically savvy AND literate kids take over. Then we’re SOL. 🙂

[Cathy G’nator]

Thanks for all the info guys! I’ve been spending a lot of time making these darn DVD’s using AVID and iDVD–time to buy a proper recorder!

[Cathy G’nator]

Hey guys,

I think that we’re talking about two very different kinds of editors here. I understand the frustrations that grinner and others express about techie stuff, because they are responsible for every aspect of the picture editing process: all the fx and outputs and graphics. If they say that AVID isn’t keeping up, then I believe them. I suspect that Ted is an editor more like myself. I work on long form shows–lots of one off documentaries and the occasional drama, reality or doc series.

I am responsible for off-line picture editing: I work with the director and/or producer to create a story and put the pictures together to tell that story in the best possible way. I might throw in a few simple fx–motion, transitions, resizes, and some rough titles, BUT I expect an on-line editor who is far more technically minded to do all the other stuff. Or a graphics artist. I have technically expert assitant editors who do all the mixing, outputting, and other stuff for me. It’s not that I’m too good to do all this other stuff, it’s that I’m not good enough at it and I’m REALLY good at the story-telling stuff. And for that AVID just the way it is works just fine. I’ve got an AVID Xpress Pro with Mojo at home and it does the job I want it to do. I was on a series recently where I worked with FCP and I was not a happy camper. After a while I figured out some work-arounds so that I could work more quickly with it, but there was no comparison with the AVID. Some people say that it’s just that I’m used to AVID. I think it’s also because I come out of film and the AVID interface was really designed with us old fogey film editors in mind.

In any case, I don’t think off-line editors like Ted and I are about to go out of business if we don’t get the latest software because we don’t need it for the type of editing we do. However, on-line editors and complete package editors have genuine beefs and it’s good to have a forum in which to air them and perhaps figure out some solutions.

See what happens when I have a few minutes to spare to join in on the rant?!!! 🙂

[Cathy G’nator]

Unfortunately I’m on OSX. The time code won’t render even if I cut it up into 5 minute clips. The first clip renders and when I try to render subsequent clips, the AVID just shuts down. Getting a DVD recorder won’t happen before my first output tomorrow afternoon, although it is definitely on my “to do” list. Exporting the Quick Time reference is nice and fast, but it doesn’t include the time code if it hasn’t been rendered first. Feel like I’m between a rock and hard place….