James Ewart
Forum Replies Created
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… only got involved with lo band Umatic edits (with no TBC) and found it incredibly laborious.
Of course Avid was the saviour (and Lightworks) but I found it too complicated for my brain.
I downloaded a trail Media compose when I was struggling with FCPX and still found the interface really confusing.
So maybe FCPX is a better tool for us “thickos” (that’s not meant to sound chippy)
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and you don’t feel comfortable in FCPX?
I think a lot of it is habits and who we get used to working. It’s a bloody pain having to learn a new set of shortcuts and doing things a different way when they way you did it before worked perfectly.
X looked ridiculous to me at first.
Now 7 looks prehistoric.
That said I am not under massive time pressure most of the time.
It goes as fast as I can think.
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Pretty dull not being able to go into the middle of an edit and remove a few seconds here and there without going down a generation. And a limit to how often you could do that. Very restrictive way of editing.
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Compared to film editing though? X is the closest “look” for me. I like seeing the images in the timeline. It feels like a bit of film on a flatbed. To me Avid feels like I’m sitting in a tape suite watching some bloke pushing loads of buttons. Actually even legacy feels like that to me now.
Not to mention if I’ve got something on v8 the audio is bloody miles way down on a15 and a16.
Not that I ever get as far as more than about 5 layers these days. The joy of Auditions! -
You come from online tape?
I come from Moviola and Steenbeck.
I always hated linear online tape editing.
I know which looks more like a film strip to me.
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“I’ve found that most people who shoot and edit don’t tend to use any real power function of any NLE, and I think that shooter/editors are X’s primary market. Not a knock. Some people don’t have time to really dig in the manual to unleash all the power of an NLE, they just need to know where to drag and drop and thats good enough. X is great in that regard”
I find that quite an invalid generalisation and a rather ignorant thing to say.
Avid takes a long time to learn because well, it’s not very intuitive is it? The interface is designed to (or at any rate does) make editing look very complicated. It was designed by and for Linear Online editors. it’s all a bit geeky.
I have found FCPX to be rather more complex and deep than 7 since I embarked on the journey of learning and embracing X.
Of course that’s just my opinion… which according to your generalisation is of little value probably.
After all I’m just somebody who shoots (sometimes) and edits myself.
But you probably never cut on film did you which is … yup … putting one picture in front of another to tell a story using a razor blade and a bit of sticky tape.
Some pretty good movies got made that way.
Out of interest David what is your main area of work?
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You see that really interests me because FCP came along just after my first Avid course and was right place right time for my journey. I have played with Premier quite a bit but hardly at all with Avid. I have good friends who are stalwart Avid Editors and whom I respect hugely. They talk about Avid’s superior Media Management. I have not heard trimming mentioned before.
As for trimming. What are the shortcomings of FCP7 and X compared with Avid and Premiere in your view. i find them fine for me but I am not speaking form an informed position as I’ve only really ever used FCP in anger. For the last year exclusively X.
Because I work alone this does not really effect me so I have no way of comparing or understanding the deficiencies.
Genuinely interested.
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I have to admit I find the editing process more fun with X. I enjoy working with it now. Sometimes I find dragging from event browser to timeline a bit clunky but old habits die hard.
It works better with keyboard shortcuts.
And I have advanced because it has enabled me to advance. It’s made stuff more accessible. In a way it has encouraged me to try stuff though making it more intuitive and approachable.
I actually love the trackless way it handles audio now.
18 months ago I was ready to commit myself to a mental asylum!
I am absolutely sure they will release on Xmas Eve.
In fact I’m going to see if I can get a bet on it.
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For sure it is way beyond the capacity of my brain to understand what’s easy and what’s difficult when it comes to creating an application as complex as FCP or any of these things.
These people are superhuman.
So I guess I am the fool on the hill thinking “why did they think that we would not need the Join Through Edit tool” or the tool I found most useful having started very briefly with Avid for my first dip of the toe in the water in the journey of multi-skilling back in 2000, but which I loved so much about FCP from the outset: “Slip or move into sync”. So easy whereas with Avid you had to enter the frames and figure if it was ahead or behind. FCP made that so simple.
But I would be genuinely interested to know who and how and why the call was made to not include some of those very basic functions.
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Yes I guess for something very subtle they may work but but generally I find them useless.
All those Logic plugins are great. Except I am restricted at the moment to limiter and compressor.
A whole new “thing” to learn.
No end to it is there?