[Peter Gruden]

[Ronny Courtens] “Hi Peter,

Yes, that footage will be used in a movie that is currently being finished. I will keep you posted.

– Ronny”

Thanks Ronny, looking forward.

Peter

[Peter Gruden]

Hi Ronny,

thanks for sharing.

The IBC 2016 interview was great indeed.

But after that public interview there was another recorded interview with Ben at the opposite side of the room, and it was an absolute inspiration. I was on my way out but I just stood there until the interview was over. I was told that it will be published on the net but I must have missed it.
Do you happen to know anything about it?

thanks,
Peter

[Peter Gruden]

[Michael Gissing] “Until you use a well laid out ergonomic controller with dedicated self labeling buttons and an awesome jog shuttle, you poor keyboard, mice and even pen/tablet editors just don’t know how much more comfortable, fun and fast properly designed controllers are. Watching people adapt MIDI controllers to apps not designed for them seems clumsy to me. Maybe sometimes an improvement but nothing compared to real controllers.”

So true.
I was using general controllers like Euphonix Artist, CM Motormix, Steinberg Huston, Contour Shuttle and also programmable keyboards/macro recorders, but not anymore. Also had JL Cooper MCS 3800 to control video and audio programs (Incite and Nuendo), but all of them can’t touch dedicated surface with a proper jog wheel.

Back in the 90′ I was using awesome Akai DD1500. With a great jog and just a dozen of dedicated buttons you could perform 90% of operations very fast. One of the best dedicated controllers currently is Yamaha Nuage for Nuendo.

But I’m not sure if complex programs like FCPX or Premiere Pro would benefit from a dedicated controller, except for basic transport and editing.

[Peter Gruden]

[Michael Gissing] “Yes. And did you get my point that capabilities plus dedicated controllers are actually what matters. I get you are upset that people criticise a GUI and use it to diss an NLE. GUI matters but capability matters more as long as the GUI doesn’t get totally in the way.”

Main page GUI may look similar – and in Premiere it looks a lot better than it used to – but Fairlight is very different from Premiere Pro and from DaVinci own audio engine for that matter. Fairlight was made by audio people. The understanding of the audio workflow is different, more in line with Pro Tools and Nuendo. I hope that Blackmagic will be able to replace DaVinci audio with Fairlight completely.

[Peter Gruden]

I didn’ hear the presentation of Danish broadcaster, but the next day presentation of English /Finnish director Benjamin Mercer was absolutely stunning.
He is currently editing one of the bigger european films on FCPX. Later he had an interview about FCPX and why he is using it and it was equaly inspiring.

There was also a presentation of Patrice Freymond explaining how Swiss national broadcaster RTS is editing with FCPX and Lumaforge. I think the article about this case was published previously.

[Peter Gruden]

Software only Fairlight supports ASIO on Windows, but not Core Audio. I hope BM will bring Fairlight to the Mac OS.

[Peter Gruden]

[Jeremy Garchow] “In the example I gave above, ducking music for dialog, the mix automation is applied to the music role, but should be anchored by the dialog clip.”

What you are requesting is quite advanced – an object based processing engine where clips would interact with other clips, similar to After Effects expressions.

I think this is only possible in a trackless timeline like in FCPX.

In Pro tools, Nuendo and Logic there is an option to move automation with clips, but not with clips on a different track.

These apps don’t have advanced object based processing like FCPX (or Premiere, for that matter), except clip gain. They can’t apply different effects and pan to each clip, except with rendering. That’s why you can see audio sessions with several hundred tracks, and with just a couple of clips on each track.

One possible way forward for FCPX is to improve Logic.

I created a FCPX project with about 300 audio clips and Logic 10.2.2 did arrange them on 73 tracks named after roles. I did reduce the number of those tracks by half and this could be done by Logic itself.

Logic also does not understand clip effects, whether static or keyframeable. Clip gain and pan is converted to track automation, so here we go again. Handling polyfonic tracks from field recorder is also rather basic compared to FCPX.

[Peter Gruden]

Ducking is not normaly applied using automation. Most of the time it is performed by sidechaining a dynamic processor. This way there would be no issues moving dialog or music on the timeline. In FCPX example, a dialog role would feed the sidechain input of the processor inserted in music role.

Unfortunately, Noise Gate and Expander in FCPX do not have sidechain input like they have in Logic Pro X. The reason is that sidechain source is normaly an audio track, or role bus..

How to display automation, if not on a linear track? Good question.

[Peter Gruden]

Premiere Pro is indeed better for sample accurate audio editing, but the difference is mostly just the ability to zoom in enough which FCPX cannot do currently.

DRW also mentioned one important thing, editing at zero crossing points, which is not possible without sample accurate editing.
If audio is cut in the middle of a waveform, a click will be introduced. This is specially noticeable with low frequency signals. Audio applications can insert short fade on each cut to avoid this, or can cut only at zero crossing points automatically. In video applications one has to do it manually, using fades and keyframes, which is very slow.

In defense of Larry Jordan, I met people teaching FCP that did not understand what is 32 bit fp audio and how to properly control audio levels. Even some questions in Apple FCP Certification exams were simply wrong. Now that audio in video apps has come a long way, it helps to go back to audio basics. This forum is quite incredible in its coverage.

[Peter Gruden]

I was there attending the whole presentation of W.Murch.

The most interesting part for me was about the classic art of video editing, like where to cut, timings, angles etc. He used some historic b/w film footage, with mostly static camera, switching lenses in the middle of the shot etc.
He gave a couple of reasons why he switched to Premiere Pro, mostly compared to Avid, one of them being 24 tracks audio limitation in Avid Media Composer. He did show some of his old projects in FCP legacy and there was really lots of audio tracks. It looked like a Pro Tools project.

I hoped to hear even more about audio from this remarkable man, but it was very interesting nevertheless. Not the usual marketing fluff you could hear on some other presentations. While Adobe was certainly present, it was not in the center of the stage and it didn’t interfere with his message much.