[Craig Slattery]

[John Davidson] “Exactly 20 paragraph breaks. Excellent”

That made me laugh out loud. Very funny

[Craig Slattery]

I turned to the director and said, ‘why do YOU think we have achieved so much in such a short time?’ He said, ‘I think its because its so visual, you really fell like you are in it’.
And that’s what I have been experiencing since we started the trial in X. Its unlike any other NLE, the way it affects you tonally and visually. I will post my workflow later today, but just briefly, Ive been using projects in the same way as I use sequences in FCP7 and the instant visual reference to material that you have already worked on, ie cut down is brilliant.

[Mark Dobson] “I was just wondering how you deal with interview material.

Do you fully transcribe?

We split interviews into sections by creating favourites and then type a synopsis for each favourite.
“
We basically listen to the interviews and marked out the various subjects. The Early days, old work, new work etc. I created new projects for each subject and as we go through the interviews we add other contributors talking about the same subject to the existing projects. When we start to edit the material down I would firstly duplicate the project to retain a long cut of each subject. All the while I will be cutting angles in the multicam fine tuning the interviews as we progress. I find trimming in the timeline extremely fast, so I throw the material into the projects very roughly. The beauty of creating the projects is that the material is aways visually available when you click back to the project library. You can skim and listen to the cuts before deciding to open the project. In this edit Ive done the same with the actuality sequences and montage sequences in that Ive cut them in their own projects. To be honest, I knew in this special there was quite a bit of actuality, which without blowing my own horn too loudly, is what Im credited as being quite good at, but Ive not cut actuality in X before. Ok, I had to think it through, but once I was into it, again its so fast, I powered through about 5 actuality sequences that will probably never make the cut because we have miles too much material.

[Craig Slattery]

[Oliver Peters] ” but trimming in X drives me up the wall”

I simply don’t understand that, I find the trimming in FCPX awesome, fast, intuitive, fun, creative I simply don’t understand how one finds it anything other. Each to their own I guess.

Length!!!! You get to the end of the edit and its 20 sec too long. Ok cut 20 sec out somewhere I cant see how X differs to any other NLE. The networks are not going not broadcast something 4 frames too long or short. 30mins on the BBC is between 28:20 and 29:30 same sort of leeway with an hour.

[Craig Slattery]

[David Powell] “As cool as the multi cam editor is in X, it doesn’t allow you to matchframe to the original clip which is a real pain. “

Totally agree with you on that one.

[David Powell] “So to sum up I would say X is faster at everything up to where you start cutting. If I worked as an Editor with AE’s prepping the project, I’d never want to use it, but for certain jobs that I have to do everything it can be quite faster to load in and just start cutting.”

Im working with AE’s the project is fully prepped, I walk in and just start cutting. This is where I find the speed and creativity, right there in the timeline.

[Craig Slattery]

[David Powell] “As cool as the multi cam editor is in X, it doesn’t allow you to matchframe to the original clip which is a real pain. “

Totally agree with you on that one.

[Craig Slattery]

[Paul Jay] “Awesome! System/storage specs would be nice.”

We use a Mac Pro 2.66 Ghz 6-core with 24GB ram and ATI Radeon HD5870 graphics card. Latest Mountain Lion OS and FCPX 10.0.7. We also use Event Manager and X2PRO. We have two Apple LED Cinema Display, 27″ flat panels. Not sure what we use to get to the external HD Monitor either AJA or Kona. We are standalone at the moment not connected to the Xsan. We transfer rushes from the xsan to the standalone via Thunderbolt drive. I will post my workflow a little later, just putting my toddler in the bath. Nice to be home instead of the edit.

[Craig Slattery]

[Craig Seeman] “One might even proffer that it extends to some of the design decisions that went into FCPX. People will argue the technical merits of a trackless magnetic timeline but I suspect, for some of us, we can process the information faster… and that can’t always be measured in “keystroke counting.””

You said it much more eloquent than I could.

[Craig Slattery]

[Craig Seeman] “So I guess this makes Oliver’s description of “what happens when they can’t afford to hire me back?” more likely.”

Apparently, there are not many skilled FCPX editors about, and these skills don’t come cheap!!!!

[Craig Slattery]

[Craig Seeman] “This what happens when they dumb down an NLE. It makes all the decisions for you and gets done faster.”

I saw this coming so I put my daily rate up on the 1st of January.

[Craig Slattery]

I turned to the director and said, ‘why do YOU think we have achieved so much in such a short time?’ He said, ‘I think its because its so visual, you really fell like you are in it’.
And that’s what I have been experiencing since we started the trial in X. Its unlike any other NLE, the way it affects you tonally and visually. I will post my workflow later today, but just briefly, Ive been using projects in the same way as I use sequences in FCP7 and the instant visual reference to material that you have already worked on, ie cut down is brilliant.