[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “[Andy Neil] “Who are you talking to that says anything of the sort about FCPX? Pretty much every single person on this forum and others who you would classify as FCPX enthusiasts, are constantly talking about how easy it is to use.”

I, too, have never once heard anything else either. The only people that I have heard suggest anything similar were in fact those who haven’t seen more of X than maybe some screenshots, but certainly never actually used it.”

This has been part of the standard two headed argument “FCPX is very easy to learn, young students pick it up right away” combined with “well if you tried FCPX and didn’t like it, it’s because you didn’t give it enough time to learn it thoroughly because you were trying to make it work like your last NLE and you have to unlearn your old habits.” Apparently FCPX is both way simple and way complex, depending on what point you’re trying to make.

Bill Davis has repeatedly said that it takes months to truly master FCPX in all of it’s depth and that it is especially hard for experienced editors who have to first “unlearn” so many of their old habits. He has stated that he thinks it will be a financial boon to him that he has jumped on the FCPX bandwagon early as it gives him a head start on those poor benighted editors that refused to go where the puck was headed.

Now if you want to make me go back through the forum and find those explicit quotes I will, because there have been many, but only on the condition that you post a picture of yourself eating crow when I do.

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

[Herb Sevush]

Creating a film is much more like architecture than it is like fine art. It is a massive team oriented enterprise that at it’s best expresses a singular point of view but, one hopes, at it’s worst will keep you dry when it’s raining. For both it is in the merging of the technical with the intuitive that the art, if there is any, exists. I would be as hesitant to trust the building of the Freedom Tower to a novice as in hiring a first timer to cut a Will Smith movie, but Frank Lloyd Wright had to start somewhere.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Andy Neil] “When digitial cinema was in its infancy, there were DPs who understood it, and others who did not. Some of the ones who worked only on film were probably highly experienced DPs and there was a new crop of DPs who were learning all there was to know about digital. If a production chose digital over film, they were making a business decision or aesthetics decision and its only natural to hire people who are comfortable working with that equipment.”

Any producer who hired a DP because he was familiar with digital as opposed to a film DP who was familiar with lighting and would trust his assistant to figure out the digital details, deserves what they got.

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

[Herb Sevush]

I am currently using the same 2010 dual quad 2.4 I used for FCP very happily with Ppro 2014. I would suggest upping the ram to at least 32 GB and changing GFX cards. I’m currently using a GTX 680 with 4GB ram and it’s made a huge difference. If you have the money I’m sure a new Mac or Windows machine would be faster still, but I’m having no problems with my setup.

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

[Herb Sevush]

I guess I shouldn’t focus on the irony that a video about the art of editing contains no editing whatsoever, but is instead a lovely piece of graphic and audio design.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[David Lawrence] “I suppose besides the keyboard, something like a dedicated control surface could provide the same tactile UI, but most of us just have keyboards. What else did you have in mind?”

Dedicated control surface, or even, if someone wanted to set it up, vocal commands. I realize these are far afield, but I wanted to keep the focus on function, not just current implementation. But yes, as far as I know, anyone who is serious about using dynamic trimming at this point in time is using keyboard commands. For me this whole subject is conceptual since I never use dynamic trimming, but at least I know what it is, and as pertains to the beginning of this whole thread, what it isn’t.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[James Ewart] “Surely just a preference but that isn’t really what makes the process ‘dynamic’ is it? Or is it?”

The reason for the keyboard isn’t speed, although it is faster, it’s that you can keep your attention on the screen as you edit. The key to dynamic trimming is to make your decisions while watching real time playback, and if you have to look down at the timeline while your selecting something with a mouse, then your attention isn’t on the screen. As long as all actions can be performed while your attention is on the screen it doesn’t really matter what devices you are using. Currently this has always been done with keyboard commands, but that’s not essential – watching the screen as you make your cuts is.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[David Lawrence] “I would also add that all these options should be possible using only the keyboard.”

I think the keyboard is currently the best way to meet the requirement of never having to look away from the screen, but I could envision other ways as well – I wouldn’t want to limit it to keyboard actions just because that’s the best way at the moment.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Oliver Peters] “, I’ve used the Adobe stabilizer on handheld close-ups of a person. The talent was very smooth, but if you looked at the walls in the background, they picked up some wonky skewing.”

This can happen with many stabilizers. Lock and Load has a nice feature where you can specify just a part of a frame, like a background window, and stabilize that so foreground movement won’t create that “jello” look, although I will say in general I much prefer the ProDad Mercalli stabilizer for most shots to Lock and Load.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[martin dugard] “Do think all think can be done just fine in Final Cut X or do you think that Premiere + After Effects will be stronger?”

You don’t need AE, this can be done totally within Ppro, as well as FCPX. Both have stabilizer’s built in, both have blurs and color correction built in. If you a newbie, then AE is not for you.

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