[Herb Sevush]

[Aindreas Gallagher] ” historically, the director and the editor might as well be the same person right?”

Well yes, actually, historically they might.

I see no reason, historical or otherwise that a film director couldn’t or shouldn’t edit his own film. Most film directors have specific areas of strength and other areas where they are more reliant on the talents of others. Many directors were film editors at an earlier point in their careers – do you suppose Hal Ashby was hands off in the editing room when they made Being There or David Lean when he was cutting Lawrence? Some editors make enormous creative contributions to the films they work on, others work under the shot by shot guidance of a director, and pretty much nobody outside of the editing room knows who contributed what. There is nothing more mysterious than what an editor’s contribution to a given film might be – I actually don’t understand how they can give awards for it without knowing what was going on in the editing room.

The notion that the directors of Focus, the plurality of which is more historically unusual than their intimate involvement with the editing, should not be directly cutting some of the scenes in their own film makes as much sense as being surprised that a director will re-write some dialogue on the set. It’s not always a good idea, depending on the individuals involved, but it’s not some sort of a crime.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[jeff rinland] “4Ghz quad core i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB fusion, Promise pegasus r4 8tb (4 by 2TB) thunderbolt 2 RAID system, AMD Radeon 4GB = $5200 CAN”

16GB ram is a little light if your working with multiple Adobe apps and dynamic link.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Scott Witthaus] ” I mean, I could argue nuclear physics, but who the hell would listen to me on that!”

Science is a bad place to go for that analogy; you could be a clerk in a patent office or a sickly child in a remote Indian village and if your argument had merit everyone would listen, eventually. It’s the ultimate arena where the argument trumps the author.

On the other hand I’m neither Einstein nor Srinivasa Ramanujan, I take no offense that my inexperience colors your reaction to what I say.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Ewart] “And you don’t want to share them with us Herb?”

Beyond the basics of a timeline that can handle any codec/frame rate/frame size you want without trans-coding – which at this point is the minimum requirement for a modern NLE I’d say Ppro has 3 huge advances over FCP7 –

The ability to change and refine the multiclip after it’s been made. This has many ramifications – dealing with start and stop of cameras on specific angles, color correction of entire angles, replacing HD with 4K at any point —

The audio track mixer – I can now assign basic filter packs and levels to specific tracks – sync, efx, music – each gets their own specific treatment and all I have to do is put a clip on that track for the efx to be applied. So for instance if a bit of sync suddenly needs to become bckgd efx, all I have to do is move it from track 1 to track 4 and it goes from my sync compression/eq to my effects package of compression/eq.

Send to Audition. Audition’s spectral analyzer allows you to fix all sorts of problems with background noise and it is an easy round trip away. A huge time saver for me.

Those 3 items would be hard to live without now that I’ve switched to Ppro. Some of these tools are available in X, but then I’d have to give up the spatial organization that I prefer.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Ewart] “what would they be compared to FCP7?”

Mostly it’s the little things. No “close all timelines except this one” command, no ability to copy and move a clip in one stroke as in FCP7. The TC indicators waste space by showing empty tracks and lack the color coding that indicated when tracks are in sync. In FCP7 whenever you entered a time code number into a field, you only had to enter the numbers you wanted changed, so that to enter a “go to” command to 1:12:37:10 if you were currently at 1:12:12:05 all you had to enter was 37:10, in Ppro you have to enter the whole number every time. The command for “joining all edits” is ridiculously complicated, there are still some bugs with aspects of switching audio when editing in multicam … it’s a bunch of little annoyances, but I’m easily aggravated.

On the other hand there are some truly amazing and often unexpected treasures that more than make up for it.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Ewart] “Go on … you know you want to.”

If only I were that kind of guy, but I’m not. When it comes to software I don’t play the field, I’m a serial monogamist. Currently I have LIghtworks downloaded on my PC. I’ve had it downloaded for over a year
and I’ve opened it exactly once and learned nothing useful that day. I’m plenty curious but I know that unless I completely immerse myself in a piece of software to the exclusion of all else I will not get anything out of the experience. Which is why I ask questions of others and kick the tires from a distance. I have no doubts that if my business dictates that FCPX is the way to go it will satisfy my needs and I will be delighted with some things about it and be grumbling bitterly to myself about other things, which is my exact experience with every NLE I have ever used. 9 months ago when I jettisoned FCP7 my evaluation was that Ppro was the best fit for my needs and nothing since then has led me to question that decision, which doesn’t mean that I don’t grumble at what I perceive to be it’s shortcomings as well.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “Someone that hasn’t even so much as seen or used THE DEMO of an app but still vehemently insists on “participating” in a forum for said app, can clearly only be defined as one thing.”

This forum is not “for” FCPX, it for the discussion around it. Read the name of the forum, I’m the “or not.”

[Robin S. Kurz] “Especially if you’re (all of a sudden) graciously allowing us those “individual workflows and preferences”, in which case I have no idea what the point of the whole argument even is”

There is no “all of a sudden” — the following quote is from my very first at the top of the thread:

“If the way you organize your work leads to a Yes to that question, then FCPX is clearly for you. However the opposite holds true as well. There is no free lunch and choice of NLE is based on individual workflow.”

As to not having any idea of the point of this argument, well you’ve got me there.

[Robin S. Kurz] ” One night argue that that (color coding roles) could be a nice enhancement, but it’s kinda hard to “lose” or “trade-off” something that one never even had (even elsewhere) to begin with, don’t you think? I do.”

While it’s true that no other NLE has color coded roles, that’s because no other NLE needs color coded roles because they inherently have the tracked structure that color coded roles seeks to emulate. So yes, that visual structure is lost when going to FCPX and ALL tracked NLE’s have it.

The fact that you don’t miss it because it had no value to you does not mean there is no loss, it merely explains one of the reasons that FCPX is right for you. I never use dynamic trimming, so using FCP7 was not a problem for me, even though if I were an editor coming from Avid I might see it as a great loss. And in analyzing the two NLEs I would acknowledge that it was a deficiency in the software comparatively speaking even though I didn’t use that feature.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Andy Neil] “I’m not positive, but I think you can adjust Premiere multiclips in a similar way to FCPX.”

You can.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Scott Witthaus] “Herb, just to be clear, you don’t use FCPX correct? I think that is what I remembered you saying in some post? You have looked at it, perhaps own it, but don’t use it in a real world environment. Is my memory correct on this? I just want to be clear on where you are making your judgment calls.”

Scott you are correct, as I have stated many times I have never used and never even downloaded FCPX. Weigh that however you’d like when evaluating my posts.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “I unfortunately have no idea how you figure that there is any type of “answer” in there. Certainly not to the questions who supposedly made the claim”

You make the claim Robin. You make it when you state that there is nothing lost when going to a trackless timeline – if nothing is lost then by definition tracked timelines can have no advantages over trackless. Since that is your position, and I have no doubt that it is your sincerely held belief, I don’t see why you have such a hard time acknowledging it.

As to the “long list” of what’s missing in X, I was referring to visual coherence. The lack of these visual clues is why some of the biggest X proponents on this board have asked for such things as “colored roles indicators” so you could see at a glance the nature of the audio clips on the timeline, or “lanes” whereby certain types of audio could always be found in certain areas of the timeline. These are repeated requests by editors using FCPX all the time. The lack of these features are certainly not enough to cause them to switch NLEs, but the request for them shows the trade-off required by switching to X, namely the speed and flexibility of moving clips around the magnetic timeline for the innate visual coherence of a tracked timeline.

And you should note that I’m not making a value judgement here, I’m not saying one is better than the other. I’m merely stating what to me is obvious, that they are different approaches, each with their own advantages, and the decision of which to use should be based on the individual editors workflow and preferences.

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