[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] ” if you’re shooting a feature, each day on set is an “Event” which generates dailies that are associated with it. I agree it is all semantics, but event, as it’s defined, is a correct term.”

And if your building a piece using stock footage that’s conceptually organized – how is that an event? If your using graphic elements – how is that an event? Sometimes “event” is applicable and sometimes it isn’t. On the other hand a container – be it a folder, a bin or a garbage can – is always applicable.

[Charlie Austin] “We’re just gonna have to disagree on this. “

Agreed.

[Charlie Austin] “It’s not really complicated at all once you get it, and gives you way more flexibility than any track based NLE in this regard.”

It IS really complicated, because the work is really complicated. Now you can either have complicated tools with simple usage, or you can have simple tools with complicated usage – to me the difference comes down to personal preference – but you can’t uncomplicate a complicated process.

[Charlie Austin] “And this is a bad thing? You’re only constrained if you A-want to be or B-need a feature that isn’t there. Which I sometimes do FWIW. X is not all rainbows and unicorns (at all), but for me there are more of these in X than other NLE’s.”

As I said, it’s neither good nor bad, it comes down to style and preference.

[Charlie Austin] “can we maybe just agree that all NLE’s are a baffling PITA to a greater or lesser extent. ;-)”

Yes we can.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Charlie Austin] “I wrote a long winded opinion post about this here if you’re bored. I do think it makes sense FWIW. :-)”

Hope you don’t mind me quoting from your post.

[Charlie Austin] “Library” is defined as “a collection of films, recorded music, genetic material, etc., organized systematically…”. And “Project” is defined as “an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim”. In X, I use the contents of Libraries to create my Project. Sounds right to me. Moving on…

I have one library in my house. The Library of Congress is one library. Library implies a singular all-encompassing collection. I have a video library on my computer, it contains everything in my permanent archive. I do not have many separate libraries for each didly thing I do. If I have a collection of things that I’m using to construct a singular other thing, I call that work a project – whether I have a bunch of lumber and tools to work on fixing my garage door, or whether I’m rearranging my DVD library (that’s one singular library.) All of these organized efforts are projects. So yes, let’s move on.

[Charlie Austin]First of all, “Bin” is a stupid name for what is just a folder in NLE’s like FCP 7 and Premiere. A bin is a different beast in Media Composer, but it’s still a silly name in the digital age. Without a history lesson, it’s unlikely anyone under the age of 40 knows why they’re called bins. And people in the UK probably wonder why you’d want to put all your media and cuts into something with the same name as the garbage can. Good for Apple for changing it.

So now, somehow, a sense of history is a bad thing. I suppose you type on a DVORAK keyboard. I’m fine with calling a bin a folder, either one makes sense to me. What doesn’t make sense is calling it an ”event” unless you’re a wedding videographer. As to the garbage can thing, well you lost the war, so get over it.

[Charlie Austin]In any case, “Event” is defined as “something that happens or is regarded as happening;
an occurrence,” so I think it’s a good name. If you’re cutting a feature, each event might contain a scene. But going further, an FCP X Event is much more powerful than a flat MC Bin or a folder of folders as in 7 or Premiere. Using Keyword Collections, Smart Collections, Favorites/Rejects and Folders, what can quickly become an unmanageable mess of tabs and open “bins’ and stacked windows in other NLE’s, can be very nicely contained in a single occurrence in X. An Event. 🙂

It’s not a single “occurrence” because it doesn’t occur just once. Your collection of data is not something that is happening, they are objects to be acted upon. As for how unmanageable your work-space is, well maybe you should review your work habits.

[Charlie Austin]In most NLE’s you can open NLE created objects (“Sequences”, Nested Clips, and Multicam Clips) in the Timeline. That’s it. In FCP X there are multiple types of timelines.

Which some, well at least I, see as a weakness. In order to have the simplicity of a magnetic timeline to avoid clip collisions Apple created a multiplicity of everything – storylines, playheads, timelines – that introduces a whole level of complications no tracked NLE has.

Legacy had the greatest simplicity of elements of any NLE I have seen. One type of video track, one type of Audio track, one playhead, one set of tools to work with no matter if it’s audio or video. A simplified toolset that could create anything, but it required using them in complex ways.

FCPX has the most complicated toolset ever made for an NLE, but it allows you to use them in the most simple, constrained, way to accomplish your complex goals.

I find the Legacy methodology much more elegant, but that is merely personal inclination, others will disagree.

[Charlie Austin]So, when I work in FCP X, I am creating a “Project” in a timeline using “Collections” of media organized in “Events” contained within a “Library“. Seems pretty logical to me.

In a vacuum it would be. In the highly evolved world of media editing, it’s a baffling PITA.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Scott Witthaus] “Does the “I would have built a faster horse” analogy work here? ;-)”

Yes, but then you have to establish that you are clearly much faster, otherwise you are just a horse of a different color.

[Scott Witthaus] “those older terms we used in Avid, EMC and the like were pretty damn new too at one point, but we seemed to get over that pretty well….”

Both Avid and EMC used existing terminology as much as possible to smooth the transition for film and linear tape editors. Since the technology was so totally different they wanted to hand-hold the new users as much as possible. With FCPX, since the technology is only subtly different Apple seems to want to use new terminology to emphasize those differences.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] ” all I have to do is look at my 3 year old and see where he is starting from and the tools that will be available to interact with and make sense of, the issues of his time for better or worse, hopefully better.”

My how time passes. I remember in the early days of this forum when you were still expecting. No wonder you don’t post that much anymore – a 3 year old is a handful. Delightful, magical, full of wonder – but definitely a handful.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Andrew Kimery] “For example, X still uses things like sprocket holes and a razor blade icon because those bits of skeuomorphic UI design still effectively communicate the desired information to the user.”

This.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Alan Okey] “Resolve and Smoke come to mind.”

Smoke is great for promos but as you mentioned, no multicam; neither is very good for audio, so I stand by my statement that Ppro has the most complete set of tools under one “roof” – for maximum usage in the widest number of situations it’s tough to beat. On the other hand not everyone is looking for a unified work space. If I’m cutting for broadcast in an Avid environment where the audio is getting mixed on Pro Tools and the video is getting graded on Resolve while my graphics are being done by the GFX department, I could care less about any of this so YMMV.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[jordi robert] “I learned that in order to CC an entire camera in multicamera, first I must flatten the secuence, correct?”

No. Not necessary. Open the multiclip and add the correction to the clip your interested in. That’s it. This holds for all audio and video EFX.

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

[Herb Sevush]

You don’t have to flatten anything to do what you want. Open the multiclip in the timeline (right click on the multiclip-clip and choose that option in the drop down menu.) Add your CC effect to the clip you want. Done. All clips pointing back to this clip will have the CC applied, even if they were already edited into a timeline. You can do this with any audio or video effect.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “And Herb, do you find yourself able to live in one environment because of the range of your tasks, or because of how extensible your NLE is (whether with native structures, plug-ins, or whatever)? It’s obviously a mix of both, but what’s the dynamic between tasks and tools for you?”

Both. I’m primarily a picture/content editor. I don’t do many promos, or anything else under 5 minutes, and lately nothing under 30 minutes. My current clients want me to finish for broadcast internally – no budget for grading or audio mix sessions. Given that I have to grade, mix and composite myself, but none of these at a very complex level, I’m looking for “high floor, low ceiling” tools that are as compatible with the 90% of the time I’m spending in my NLE as possible – which is why I preferred Motion to AE, and was quite happy with Boris FX back in my edit* days.

I’m not looking to have everything done within the same NLE UI but it would be nice. I’ve grown accustomed to highly integrated round tripping between task specific UI’s – does it really matter to me whether or not Audition is a “room” within Ppro or an integrated third party ap ? – to me it doesn’t.

Every CG in every NLE I’ve worked with had a totally alien UI to the host, but as long as I could compose my titles with reference to a specific video background specified by the timeline I’m working with, it doesn’t matter to me if the CG is considered “part of” the NLE or “third party.”

I don’t want to have to open and close third party programs, nor do I want to have to manually import assets into a third party ap that I’m already working on within my NLE. This was part of my concern with FCPX – no round-tripping to Motion, video capture from tape strictly using third party aps. While the latter concern is a thing of the past, I don’t like the approach.

So to answer – ideally I would like to have all aspects of my work under one roof, but not at the cost of having inferior tools to work with. Pragmatically, round tripping is a form of unified “roof” and at the moment Ppro supplies the best version of it that I’m aware of.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Steve Connor] “Features like…..?”

EMC2

Ripple Wall –
which allowed everything to the left of a specified point to ripple while everything to the right of that point is frozen – similar to locking tracks, but horizontally, not vertically.

Shot overlay –
when overwriting shots the previous shots are still there, but hidden by the higher level shots. Think of layers in photoshop – underlaying layers remain unless and until you decide to “flatten the timeline.

In-point/out-point/duration calculator –
Any of those time code attributes of a clip could be stored as a value and then used in a mathematical function to quickly and accurately calculate proper values for specific trim functions, i.e., (Extend out point clip of A by (In point clip B – minus out point clip A)) this was done faster than you can say it, with keyboard shortcuts.

Edit*

Rendering in context –
When compositing in a timeline and messing with effects edit* “knew” which part of an effect actually needed re-rendering and instead of re-rendering the whole effect it would only render that part of the effect that had actually changed. Instead of a single “red line” above a render, you could see a group of lines, each indicating a specific partial render and you could play around with these lines, turning them off and on which enabled and disabled that aspect of the rendered effect. It was brilliant.

Archive –
Edit* had the best archiving function I ever used. It would save the project file, the clips from the timeline, any nested clips, any clips used in any third party aps associated with the timeline, and any titles or graphics, all into a single zip file.

There are many other bodies in the NLE graveyard, and, like people, they all had something memorable, worthwhile and unique about them.

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