[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Didn’t SonicFire Pro do exactly that with SmartSound about 10 years ago?”

Yes, but the difference is with SonicFire Pro you have to work only with their Smart Sound library of music, which was composed specifically to be rearranged in this fashion. Adobe’s version claims to work with any music clip. If this really works it will be a killer blow to SonicFire Pro, of which I am a happy user.

Again, by itself this is not a huge deal, any editor can cut up a piece of music to fit; in fact it’s one of the pleasures of editing to make a real nice musical edit. But sometimes, under time pressure, if you don’t want to spend the 15 minutes to find the right cut for some recalcitrant music, it’s a nice tool to have. And the point is Ppro is unleashing multiple little tools like this every six months – all of them may not work for you but the odds are some of them will.

Personally I’m more interested in the “text file to synthesized VO” tool. Hearing my own voice in a scratch VO is an irritation I can do without, saving the 20 minutes or so recording it and cleaning it up is even more pleasant. YMMV.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” the innovative energy on the Premiere Pro side has been largely in the new Cloud initiatives – moving what the program already does into virtual space rather than re-thinking any traditional timeline functions. Is that fair?”

Partially. The other half of their innovation is in creating specific new tools for editors to use – tools like Morph Cut, and in the about to be released newest version of Audition a tool that will take a piece of music that runs, let’s say 1:30, and automatically re-cut it to a length you specify without using re-timing but rather by analyzing the beats and chord changes. As well they have a new tool that will take a text file and turn it into an audio file using synthesized speech – perfect for quick scratch vo for those of us lacking your golden pipes. My contention is that the Cloud is creating a context for them to be creating these tools at an extraordinary rate, and it is this new rate of change itself that is a “new direction” for video editing.

You see the innovations in X, the timeline, the skimmer, keywords – all of which appeal to your workflow – and then see “the future” in terms of those type of functions. I think you need to broaden your view and see that innovation can be in team approaches, in remote handling, in speed of new tool introduction, in increased UI options. Then you’ll see that while X is very innovative in some areas, those areas do not constrain the concept of “where editing is going.” It’s going many different places all at once; there is no such thing as going to where the puck will be when the ice is littered with so many pucks.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” I still think the basic truth is do you want to hang on to where editing ideas have traditionally been – or do you see value in where those ideas might be going?”

The Mantra of X according to Bill.

There are many places where editing is “going” and X represents a slice of that – but not the entirety of it, not by a long shot.

I would suggest that before opining about where something is going it would help to have a clear understanding of the breadth of where it’s been.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Eric Santiago] “For some reason Premiere just wants an exact volume path.”

This is the “corrupted” project file. I share media and project files with editors all over the country and none of our directory or file structures are the same and re-link works fine, even if they are working off proxies they made, automatically linking everything in a selected folder and all it’s sub-folders. Then, every once in a while, I get a project like yours that simply won’t link. This is a bug, not a feature.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Jim Wiseman] “Can’t believe multi clip relink hasn’t been addressed yet. One at a time?”

It has been addressed, Eric was dealing with a corrupted project file. Re-link will relink anything in the folder or in any subfolders of the folder you point to.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] ” Hence the (terrible, terrible) move to buy (the terrible, terrible) Medea.”

When I bought my first FCP system I bought a Medea Raid. Later I added an X-Raid. I thought the Medea the better of the two, so I’m curious as to why you label it the “terrible, terrible Medea” ?

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bret Williams] ” Why does everyone need to overcomplicate audio? 7 had it right. None of the multichannel track mess. I prefer 7s straightforward 1 track, 1 channel system where everything was pananble. I can’t speak for Premiere but Resolve’s audio is still lacking and confusing. I’m not a fan of being able to put a 4 channel or more clip on one track.”

Agree totally. This was Ppro’s biggest failing when it first came out, and it has since been corrected so that you can force it to act like FCP7 most of the time, but this fascination with “all-in-one” audio tracks still persists and seems to be in the core of Ppro’s DNA.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “It’s certainly interesting that unlike those “legacy” software programs – conceived and created decades ago and still sticking to their design guns 20 years later – the rest of the entire PLANET has changed so much.”

The wheel – still rolling.

The alphabet – still spelling

the baseball bat – still good for breaking heads

So yes, it’s possible to be over 20 years old and be perfectly productive.

Most new products fail, on merit.

So it’s possible to be an agent for change and be worthless.

Everything changes, everything remains the same.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “Here’s an interesting game to play: whose applications are still vibrant 20+ years later?”

You can’t really include Premiere Pro in here. Premiere Pro was, exactly like FCPX, a totally new program with zero backward compatibility with Premiere. Like X, the only thing carried forward by Adobe was the name.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” I suppose the recent Creative Summit sojourn to Apple where a hundred of us met with many of the product managers and the ProApps development team could have been an elaborate hoax designed to continue the facade that the software is an on-going commercial product with enough value to the company to support the building, and dozens of developers all trained well enough to “talk the talk” with a group of industry pros?”

Many years ago, after Autdodesk bought up Discreet, who had bought D/Vision and renamed it edit*, there was a big meeting at NAB with hundreds of edit* users with big time presentations to roll out the new, long awaited, and very impressive upgrades. After the big meeting there was a special closed door meeting with editors who were influential in the users groups, I believe David Weiss was there, and somehow I was invited. We met with both Autodesk and Discreet brand managers, our input was solicited, we were told the plans for the upcoming year, promises were made about allocation of resources, and everything was very Kumbaya. 6 months later Autodesk announced that edit* was EOL.

This does not mean that FCPX will be EOL’d.

It means that sometimes there are much larger forces at work than an outsider can ever be aware of and I don’t put any stock in developer meetings – because developers don’t control the purse strings and it’s like asking the actors on a set if the movie is gonna be any good – even though they are intimately involved in the project they have no way of knowing.

We are all reading tea leaves without a license.

I think the only thing one can logically surmise is that future development will match past development, until such time as it doesn’t, and then things will change either for the better or the worse.

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