[Herb Sevush]

[Tony West] “I would never really go dialog to dialog leading in.”

In interviews and drama, as a basic rule, I never want the audio and video to cut at the same moment, because when they do they draw the audiences attention to any discrepancy in room tone and general sound. So even if it’s only 8 frames I will offset any audio cuts from picture cuts within the same scene. Dramatically as well once I start on the interviewer asking a question I want to go to the CU of the interviewee to see how he’s reacting before he starts to answer, and often there is too long a pause so I cheat it and offset the audio.

[Tony West] “For me it’s more like, I hear the truck coming before I see it. I hear the truck sound on the back end of a guy’s interview.
Then I move the truck up because I want it to come in at the back end of a gals interview. It’s still leading in, it’s just leading in behind a girl now instead of a guy. Nothing to clean up here.”

Yes, that’s easier, and there’s much less to clean up in this situation in Ppro – just trim back the audio till it matches the video, make your ripple move, and then extend the audio to fit. Is X quicker here? Yes, absolutely, but not as much as that demo tried to show – there’s no need to fix any gaps or anything else.

While I understand why you like X, for me that pick-up in speed is not worth the lack of a visually coherent track layout. There’s no free lunch – your getting something by giving up something, and if what your giving up has no value to you, then your choice is obvious.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] ” Because I hate to break it to ya bud, but neither did I delete the post, nor is it deleted. Oooh. Bummers. And you tried so so hard!”

When something is posted on the Cow and e-mailed out to subscribers it is time stamped. Your original post was time stamped 8:23, then it disappeared for a while, then I posted at 10:43, then your original post reappeared time stamped at 11:53. Hey, maybe Tim took it down for some reason, but isn’t it funny that your post to Steve happened right in that window when your post was removed.

In any event, if you didn’t remove your post then how do you square up your two statements?

8:23am
Robin S. Kurz:
” … Because I for one have maybe used the position tool TWICE and one of those times was for mere demonstration purposes. So much for essential or “need to know”.

9:29am
[Robin S. Kurz] “And I think you’re interpreting the question as my somehow suggesting no one EVER needs the position tool, which is obviously nonsense. In which case I think you need to go back and understand the context better.”

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Most of us here have occasionally posted something that, on reflection, we wouldn’t have if we’d given it more thought.

That’s why delete is a thing.

And it’s something I think should be respected on all sides.”

True with one caveat, if someone sees and responds to a post before it is deleted the original poster can’t pretend he never said it and that the other person is wacky. If Robin hadn’t challenged Steve about it
Then I would respect his deletion.

But this —

RSK: “And I think you’re interpreting the question as my somehow suggesting no one EVER needs the position tool, which is obviously nonsense. In which case I think you need to go back and understand the context better.”

was written after he deleted it.

I was just helping everyone to understand the context better. It’s called honesty. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t delete something and then insist it’s the other person that’s having a problem when he mentions it.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tony West] “t I would only add that “pushed aside” is not really an accurate description of what’s happening. “Pushed aside” makes me think something is being moved left or right. They move vertically either up or down to make room which is an important distinction.”

I apologize for not being clear, what I meant is that one of the audio files, whether original or new, will now be pushed to another lane, up or down so that they can all exist in the same place in time without overwriting each other. When this happens you get audio overlap – if the new audio is dialogue and the original audio is dialogue – well then you’ve succeeded in moving the audio but failed to create a usable track without further work. Showing a clip flying around a timeline is misleading if it doesn’t show the problems still to be solved by the move. To properly use Ppro you anticipate the problems beforehand, alter the tracks accordingly, and then make the move efficiently. From what I’ve seen of the FCPX demos you can move the clip very quickly, but then in many cases you still have to clean up the results, and that part is always left out of these”demos.”

[Tony West] “I would move entire scenes just to see if it made the story pop more if a certain person opened the scene or another.
It was actually fun and like Bill suggested I found myself trying things more often because it was so effortless.”

I have no doubt that this is your experience.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “And I think you’re interpreting the question as my somehow suggesting no one EVER needs the position tool, which is obviously nonsense. In which case I think you need to go back and understand the context better.”

This quote of yours, from a now deleted post, might shed some light on his misunderstanding:

Robin S. Kurz:
“Tell me how and why it is somehow apparently essential that noobs of all people just have to know about the position tool? Because you obviously have something specific in mind, no? Just please don’t tell me it’s because they need to be able to use X the way it’s not meant to be used, because they don’t “actually learn the application” as you so correctly recommend. Because I for one have maybe used the position tool TWICE and one of those times was for mere demonstration purposes. So much for essential or “need to know”.”

deleted post
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/91370

I’m sure it must be amazing that anyone would think you ever said something like that just because you deleted it after you posted it. It’s so “obviously nonsense” that you unsaid it after you said it and are now trying to pretend it never happened.

Bravo.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “Quite possibly the best, comprehensive and astute comparison and highlighting of old and new that I have seen to date.”

I will start this by stating that I believe, based on demo’s like this since I obviously have not tried it, that FCPX is the absolute best NLE at moving clips around the timeline in such instances. But now let’s talk about the above demo …

We are shown an AV clip where the audio both precedes and then trails the video – both an J & L cut. Then Jesus, the demo artist, wants to move it to another point in the timeline and shows, first, how incompetent he is with Ppro and then how easy it is to do this with FCPX.

Now, for the serious editor, there are a couple of unasked questions here — what is the nature of the audio that is being moved and why is it longer than the video. Is it sync dialogue, which cuts in and out at very specifics points or is it background sound, like a street scene, where the extra audio is for a transition. I would want to know this before moving anything — for instance if it were dialogue, then after moving the clip into it’s final position I would have to clean up and move the other audio that got pushed aside “magnetically” when it found it’s new home, because otherwise you’ve created an audio mess. Bravo and all that for being able to move things around but the move isn’t over until it’s useful – if the audio is now overlapping other sync audio this move is incomplete, no matter how sweet it is to watch it being done. If the sound is background or music, then the simple Ppro way to deal with it is clean up the overhangs, ripple move the clip, and then restore your audio extensions to fit your new position in the show. But this would look too easy so Jesus does everything ass backwards.

In either case the main difference between X and Ppro is that with X you move and then clean up, and with PPro you clean up then move. I will again stipulate that even with a decent Ppro editor X is probably a little bit easier and faster to accomplish this with, but not in any way comparable to the hash that Jesus made of moving stuff in his demo, something that Robin may have missed because, as he so amply proved (https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/91146) he’s not too sharp with Ppro either.

It should also be noted that ripple moves that involved only video, only audio, or video/audio with equal durations are not an issue in Ppro, which of course is why Jesus chose the example he did.

So is X better at doing ripple moves in complex timelines – apparently so. Is it so much better that it should be your sole or even main criteria for choosing an NLE – not in my case.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “they had Adobe staff involved to “optimize” the Premiere Pro software performance – so who knows what they were doing under the hood.”

Yes, what were those nefarious Adobians doing “under the hood?” – ritual sacrifice of little bunny rabbits, playing majang with marked tiles, smoking ether infused crack – Ooooooooh – so spooky and mysterious. And best of all they were — wait for it– “optomizing” and probably without a license. Damn those Adobians, no wonder the poor little trash can melted down, what chance did it have against all that evil.

As a public service and as a recent parent of my own cute little trash can I offer myself up to those Adobi-ites who are practicing ritualized under-the-hood un-licensed optomizing – Take Me. Take me and set all the rest of those little black tubes free. (And while your at it fix the stupid inability to delete multiple transitions.) TAKE MEEEEeeeeeee!

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Oliver Peters] “A nice presentation, but fundamentally skewed to pitch his preference for FCPX.”

Understatement of the year. My favorite part is when he quotes David Lawrence at the beginning of his pitch, about whom there is no greater critic of the paradigm of X. Talk about quoting someone out of context.

[Oliver Peters] “The definition of linear versus nonlinear in NLE software is flawed”

It’s not flawed, it’s flat wrong. Non-linear means you can freely take any piece of source material and slap it any where you want it, it does not mean ripple mode is somehow more “non-linear” than overwrite mode. Non-linear bows to the editors intent, it does not insist than one kind of intent is better than another.

It would also be nice, in a nod to historical accuracy, to mention that over the years linear editing developed tools – most notably “Trace” – that allowed editors to begin re-approaching the non-linear nature of film editing while still restricted to tape. It lacked the speed of true non-linear, but allowed for the same type of freedom. The editing world was not as binary as was presented.

[Oliver Peters] “By presenting the use of “modifier keys” as some sort of hidden function is clearly a way to present that operation in a negative light”

And it has not always been the case that all tracked NLEs defaulted to overwrite mode. Edit* for instance allowed you to switch your overall “mode” between overwrite and ripple – neither was the default. Individual tools did not have defaults they would simply act one way in overwrite mode (trim edit) another way in ripple mode (ripple trim). The editor switched between modes with a single key and each mode was equally weighted.

[Oliver Peters] “There really is no “old” style versus “new” style. There’s simply one way of designing the software versus another way.”

Amen to that.

And finally – I can’t think of any editor who wouldn’t want the magnetic timeline at certain points in his work, the issue is that you can’t have it only when you want it, it’s all or nothing, and while it would be great to have that kind of ease in moving clips around the timeline in the exact scenario demonstrated, that is not the way I spend most of my time as an editor.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Mark Suszko] “There is an inexpensive ring-shaped adapter that lets you mount the “trashcan” on it’s side, in a standard equipment rack, if you’re so inclined.”

It might almost be worth the $500 to get it off my desk, but for now I think I’ll just leave it there with a label on it with a quote from that high-water mark of American cinema “The Towering Inferno” —

“I don’t know. Maybe they just oughta leave it the way it is. Kind of a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.”

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bret Williams] “Surely you can reverse marquee like avid, or use an index like FCP X or something?”

Silly and surprising I know, but there is currently no way to delete multiple transitions in Ppro. There is also no way to delete single transitions without clicking on the timeline transition marker with your mouse. Sad but true.

There is an inexpensive controller surface – palletegear – that will allow you to do this with ease – for $200. “Surely if a third party can do this then Adobe can and will fix this oversight before I have to lay out the cash,” I think to myself every time a new release comes out. And every time I am wrong.

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