[Herb Sevush]

“Sometimes I think the mismanaged marketing did more to damage the credibility of the product than any missing feature or radical GUI change.”

Absolutely true, especially if your include releasing an alpha product as a marketing decision. There would still be useability issues, it would still not work for everyone, but it would not be facing the kind of scorn in certain markets that it now generates.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Just add the Blake Griffin filter.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Craig –

I oversee the post for a 26 episode series. I cut about 8 shows myself, the others are cut by a diverse group of freelancers, working at home on their own gear. When they finish their cuts I spend about 2 days polishing and finishing on mine. Up till now I’ve standardized on FCP7. Most editors can switch to Avid or PPro very easily because of the shared conventions. The pool of these similarly trained editors makes my kind of workflow possible. The time savings from a new type of insular editing approach would have to be very large to offset the advantages I get by being in the mainstream.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

If you see yourself as a soloist and you like the way FCPX works, it is indeed a good match. I don’t see myself as a soloist however, I often play in an ensemble in which new members often sit in at a moment’s notice. In my setting, shared conventions help.

For me it’s about financial efficiency. When X comes out with multi-cam and if it’s implementation of it seems more valuable to me than the inefficiency of it’s iconoclasm, then I’m not too hidebound to switch.

Multi-cam seems to me a perfect use of the metadata strength of X so I’m curious to see what they come up with.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

From the point at which well tempered tuning was established, back in Bach’s days, I am not aware of any sudden changes in orchestral playing. Intonation has evolved slowly. Tim’s point was not that music and musical instruments haven’t changed, but that an oboist in Paris in 1840 could sit down in a recording session in LA today, look at a sheet of music, and play along with a bunch of modern musicians because of a shared set of conventions. Yes there have been changes in music since then – that same player would be lost playing with Brian Eno, the Ramones, or Miles Davis (especially Miles because he’s quite dead.) However he could get by in most situations because our music notation is still based on those ancient European conventions.

This is about the value of shared conventions and the inefficiency of changing them.

Back to car analogies – It doesn’t really matter whether you drive on the right side or the left, as long as your going in the same pattern as everyone else. The inefficiency of sudden change can really be felt the first time you rent a car in England and take it for a spin. So the question is whether the value received for breaking these conventions is worth the inefficiency of the change.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Aindreas –

You make it worth turning on the computer in the morning.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“You tell me, you’ve tried it, right?”

Still waiting for multi-cam, which should be a great opportunity for FCPX to flex it’s metadata muscle. Except for that single viewer thingy.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“You wouldn’t know VO is VO?”

I have 2 chefs talking about the proper cooking temperature for scrambled eggs as they crack the egss and then start frying them in a pan. In my first pass it’s sync dialogue. In my next pass I use the sync of them talking as VO behind the sound of the eggs frying in the pan. Now it’s VO and the actual frying sound, which had been sync at one point, is now EFX as I use it over a later shot of the eggs frying. A clip started as sync dialogue, then became part vo, part EFX. How often do I do this? All the time, maybe 30 – 40% of the show ends up like this depending on how much I have to compress time. The problem with roles is I never know which part will remain sync dialogue and which will end up as VO plus EFX. Which is easier, constantly changing roles after I move the clips, or just moving the clips?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“What do we know about CS6 exactly?”

That it will be backwards compatible with CS5.

I had to jump in, the setup was too good.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

VO would be labeled VO (as you can view roles on clips in the timeline today) and frying sounds would be labeled something meaningful to you. This is without clicking. You then grab what you need.

Lets see if I get all of it though –

Because I don’t know what the audio is to be defined as till I actually make the edit, does this do away with the “mass browser approach” ?

I would have to label the clips after I laid them in the timeline?

Then if I wanted to change something from dialogue to EFX I would have to re-define it’s role ?

If I’m correct here, I still don’t see anything but a time drain. If I’m wrong, please enlighten me.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions