[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “THEN you re-surface it, paint one the lines and open for business. And your clients BITCH because essentially, what they see is the same asphalt and paint that they had before all the dust and inconvenience.”

Then there’s the sharp owner who simply re-paves the lot, convinces his customers that he’s computerized everything, triples the prices and rakes the money in while his customers brag about the better service they’re getting because they were smart enough to pay extra for it. And they have the special magic coin to prove it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Steve Connor] “did FCPX win?”

No, Belgium won.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Lance Bachelder] “Also plan to cancel my CC at the end of the month.”

Would love to hear the reasoning behind this – what didn’t work for you?

[Lance Bachelder] “It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.”

I’m very slow today, took a moment to appreciate this. Nice.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Language is a living thing. “

I see, language is a living thing. And you’re trying to differentiate between an NLE that allows you, although it doesn’t force you, to do clip overwrites when moving clips around a timeline, with another that doesn’t allow you to do it, even if you want to.

Well then I might call one a “free timeline NLE” and the other ” a restricted timeline NLE.” or maybe one NLE is “free choice” and the other is “no choice”. But since language is a living thing maybe I’ll call one a bicycle timeline and the other a tricycle timeline. Or maybe we should use some current consumer electronics terminology and call one a pro timeline and the other an enthusiast’s timeline, because, you know … language is a living thing.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] “Clip collisions are (often needlessly) destructive in (most) tracked NLEs.”

This is true, but the first distinction is that clip collisions are entirely avoidable, it is the editor’s choice to make them happen or not. It does take more steps to avoid unwanted collisions (not all collisions, maybe not even most collisions, are unwanted) which is why the claim is made that X is faster, because indeed in the instance of avoiding unwanted clip collisions it is much faster. But this does not make fixed track timelines destructive, it simply makes them slower.

Of course as David Lawrence has pointed out, the inability to cause wanted clip collisions makes X slower when dealing with audio inserts. As so often with X, what it gives with one hand it takes away with the other.

On an historical note EMC, almost 20 years ago, handled clip collisions differently by keeping both audio and video clips available as an “under-layer” when new material was added. You could highlight a new clip, hit a key, and the layers would reverse, bringing the bottom layer to the top. This was non-destructive and could be reversed as often as you wished. There were problems with working this way, I don’t believe it could handle more than 2 layers, and it could get very confusing as there was little to help you identify which layer you were looking at, but it worked. You could at any point flatten the timeline, a destructive act, much like flattening layers in Photoshop.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Clearly I am and continue to be a talentless, hack.”

My your getting touchy. I’ve never seen your work, outside of a nice music video you demo’d, I have no opinion of your abilities, other than to recognize that you’ve been supporting yourself in video for many years, which is no mean accomplishment. I was discussing technique and your own proclaimed problems with dealing with traditional timelines. By the way bad technique does not equal bad editor — Dave Winfield had a terrible hitch in his swing, awful technique, yet he’s a hall of famer.

[Bill Davis] “while you appear to remain pissed off and strangely sensitive to someone using a word you don’t approve of to describe a piece of 4 year obsolete software.”

The term “destructive timeline” was not solely aimed at legacy, it was aimed at every fixed track timeline I’m aware of. I’m currently using PPro, which exhibits those same timeline behaviors as Legacy, as Avid, as Lightworks, as Media 100.

And I’m pissed off because you are actively corrupting the language of media workers. “Destructive” has a specific, non pejorative meaning when dealing with DAW’s and imgage editors, and your use of it in this context confuses that useful term.

I first brought this poor choice of wording to your attention assuming you hadn’t thought it through, but now you stand on your right to be wrong. Well you certainly have that right, you can call black white all you wish, but I will jump in here whenever you do to try and argue for logic and reason.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Then give me a nice alternative term for what happens when an editor used to drop a clip (or the horror, a group of clips) into a Legacy timeline and the underlying tracks and clips all got instantly overwritten.”

Incompetence, if the editor didn’t want the clips to be replaced. If the editor wanted the clips to be replaced, I would call it editing.

[Bill Davis] “I put the clip there. I did something. And unless I played track tetris, the clip that I’d put there was GONE.
To me – that’s “destructive” behavior.”

Yes, the editor was being destructive, but the timeline was acting just fine.

The term destructive is used, non pejoratively, to describe a function of certain types of software. To flatten the layers in Photoshop there is no other choice than to loose all the layers. It is a function of the software, so flattening in Photoshop is rightfully described as a destructive process. In an NLE the timeline doesn’t force you to overwrite clips, that’s a choice an editor makes. For 20 years the term overwrite has been sufficient to describe the act, nobody ever called the action destructive till now. What has changed — it certainly isn’t the nature of a fixed track timeline. The term “destructive timeline” is used solely by FCPX editors as a pejorative to make their chosen NLE seem superior.

[Bill Davis] “And I’m still sympathetic to the loss of your beloved Legacy.”

Legacy was never my beloved. *edit was my beloved, Legacy was just a case of love the one your with.

[Bill Davis] “But I don’t feel the slightest hesitation to use “destructive” in relation to what happened on my timelines for a decade as a Legacy editor. “

I have no problem believing you when you say that your timelines were a scene of carnage, of that I have no doubt. It’s just that I don’t blame the software.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Herb, it’s just a linguistic convention, nothing more than that.”

No, its not a linguistic convention, it’s a distortion of a linguistic convention, used only by editors who need to feel better about their choice of NLE. Nowhere else on the COW does anyone label any timeline “destructive.” If you were interested in describing a real as opposed to imaginary difference you could call Legacy timelines “fixed track timeline” as opposed to either floating track or magnetic timelines. That actually describes the difference. Destructive is just a pejorative justified by it’s use in other situations that are not relevant to the distinction between timelines. Conventions serve a purpose when useful, this one is merely mud slinging, like calling FCPX iMovie Pro.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “or shuffling clips around in old style destructive timelines. “

Now when did this phrase come into use ? I’ve noticed it on this forum for the past few months and I’m wondering what exactly it’s supposed to mean. I’ve been working on timelines for almost twenty years and I don’t recall them destroying anything, at least not intentionally.

Now destructive editing in audio means that you can’t reverse the process, your actually changing the media your working on, the phrase “destructive” is actually describing a process. Similarly destructive editing in photoshop is when you flatten layers and, again, intentionally change the nature of the media in a way that can’t be reversed. But “destructive” timelines — other than the careless actions of an incompetent editor who doesn’t know what he’s doing I don’t see how any timeline can be accurately called destructive, and even in that case it’s the editor who’s destructive and not the timeline.

Really Bill, I thought we had gotten past the name calling thingy.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] ” The real “drop deadline” will be when the app ceases to function at all.”

Actually there will be no deadline at all. When an OSX version becomes incompatible with FCP legacy some users will simply freeze the operating system. I froze mine at mountain lion. You can go on for years that way. Every user will have their own breaking point, mine was an increase in the use of 4K elements. For someone else it might be operating system compatibility, for others retirement.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf