[Jok Daniel]

Hi all, longtime lurker/first time poster here.

I think David is right. I edit primarily on Avid, but I like to keep an eye on developments in the other camps. And Premiere’s new trim tools have definitely made me sit up and take notice.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the problems that the magnetic timeline is designed to solve hardly even exist in other NLE:s. Clip collisions, for instance, are almost never a problem on Avid or other NLE:s built around solid trim tools. Once you get used to setting up trims across multiple tracks (and in multiple directions), you can do in one operation what used to take several steps in FCP Legacy. There’s no need to “open up space” or play “track tetris” – tracks ripple at the exact points I want them to, making space and/or extending clips wherever needed. And it’s all real time, which means I can make my edit decisions while looking at the video monitor, and not the little rectangles in the timeline.

The poor trim tools are the number one reason I always disliked editing in Legacy, and while the magnetic timeline has some clever solutions to some of Legacy’s shortcomings, I still prefer the control, precision and feedback that well implemented trimming offers. Sure, Apple’s drag-and-drop style editing is very approachable even to new users. Advanced trimming techniques less so. But if you spend all day, every day in front of the machine, that should be of little consequence.

If you’re interested in a more “trim centric” style of editing check out Lightworks, arguably the king of trimming.

[Jok Daniel]

I agree about the window focus behaviour — it is very annoying. On Avid, I can assemble really quickly with my hands on JKL, IO and B. The focus never leaves the source window, and I can zip through a camera roll making selects. On FCP I need another few keystrokes after every edit, which really breaks the flow.