Jok Daniel
Forum Replies Created
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Interestingly, doors were an important metaphor in the original Lightworks interface. Upon launch, you were presented with a “lobby”, and any number of user created “doors” would lead into “rooms” which you could freely configure for different tasks, e.g. logging, editing, exporting or colour correction. And while the actual doors were dropped in later versions, the “room” metaphor is still in use and is one of the reasons the Lightworks UI is so fluid and malleable.
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Here’s a somewhat long-winded but quite interesting presentation of Lightworks’ new content browser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Nj6vdTOIs&feature=em-subs_digest
Very cleverly built on top of Lightworks’ already strong database foundation, and it looks like it would support some really interesting metadata driven workflows. I am happy to see development in this direction, since this is an area where EditShare excels and where Lightworks could give even X a run for its money.Skip ahead to 17:40 to see a really cool matchframe feature!
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[Charlie Austin] “Editing is an art form, I propose we define those who prefer the order and familiarity of tracks etc as Classicists, and people who prefer a more free form pallet as Romantics. “
Then Lightworks, with its extremely malleable and freeform organisational model wedded to a classic tracked timeline, would be Romantic Classicism.
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[Herb Sevush] “As much as I want this to succeed, LW is not for me, it’s meant for an off-line, on-line feature film workflow, at least for now.”
True, but it’s also one of the best available tools for such a workflow. Maybe even the best. Which is why so many well-known feature films were cut on it.
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[Bret Williams] “Where are you using it? 7 never had it. X doesn’t have it. Premiere just got it. And BMD’s isn’t out yet.”
Media Composer, where it’s been around for as long as I can remember. Actually, I’m pretty sure 7 could do it too, it just never worked very well and I don’t know anyone who ever used it. I tried, and gave up in disgust. 🙂
Of course, Lightworks has been doing it since the beginning of time, and it’s still arguably the best of the bunch.
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[Bret Williams] “Asymetric trimming is a cool demo, but I can’t remember ever needing it. “
Of course you need it, every editor does whether they know it or not 🙂
Asymmetric trimming isn’t some kind of black art which is only useful in extremely rare circumstances, it’s just a natural consequence of a well designed trim tool. A tool that lets you trim heads or tails as required, without imposing artificial limits.
Trimming the head of one clip (e.g. video) and the tail of another (e.g. audio) is hardly some kind of edge case, it’s an extremely common operation. Don’t you ever have a need to trim the head of a video clip, while taking the same number of frames off the tail of a music track? Why would you want to break such a common task into several discrete steps? With asymmetric trimming you do it in one step, and everything stays in sync automatically. Very handy, and I can’t imagine editing without it.
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Reliability is about more than just stability, and in my experience, Media Composer’s overall architecture is more robust than most.
The way MC deals with project files (every bin is a file on disk) has many advantages. For complex projects with tens of thousands of assets, Avid’s design makes a whole lot of sense. On some other systems, I’ve had problems with corrupt project files. Never on MC.
MC’s excellent media management, and its superior backward and forward compatibility also add to its overall dependability. It’s just so easy to put your trust in MC. Its architecture is solid and its design flexible. That’s what makes it reliable. Not that it crashes less than its competitors, which I doubt is the case.
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Also: during trimming operations each track displays its own little “mini playhead”, making it easy to see what’s going on at a glance.
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[David Lawrence] “FCP7 works fine in Mavericks and on the new Mac Pro and is still heavily used in the doc world.”
This is really baffling to me. Why would anyone want to use FCP7 for long form documentaries? What are its key strengths in this area? Out of the main contenders, it just seems like the worst possible choice for this kind of work. What am I missing?
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[Steve Connor] “I’d say Premiere Pro CC is pretty close to Avid in trimming functions”
Yes, functionally they are pretty close. Premiere may even be more capable in some specific scenarios. But operationally Avid is still far ahead IMO. MC makes it much easier to set up a complex trim (e.g. by lassoing multiple edit points), and the live feedback on the timeline is far superior. It also makes it easier to control which trim point to monitor. Trimming in MC is a joy. In Premiere, it still feels like a chore to me.
Having said that, I’m thrilled to see Adobe making an effort in this area, and I hope they continue to improve their “editing finesse” features. As an offline guy these are the features that really matter to me, and as far as I’m concerned, Legacy’s heyday were the Dark Ages for this kind of stuff.