Phil Lowe
Forum Replies Created
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[Walter Soyka] “Would you encourage someone new to Avid to approach it the way you’ve approached FCP X?”
I would encourage them to do whatever it takes to get to speed as quickly as possible. Even Avid’s keyboards can be remapped, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I started to work with it. I have never used the default keyboard in any NLE I’ve ever used, and have been able to beat deadlines routinely with all of them: Newscutter, Media Composer, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and now FCPX.
News doesn’t afford the luxury of taking your time to fully learn a system, especially one as quirky as X. You’re expected to start cutting on it after a couple of days of training, so anything you can bring to bear on it from your former experience – including workflows – that gets you turning packages in 30 minutes or less, is what you need to do.
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I find trying to remap keys identically in similar apps to be frustrating — they never work quite the same, and they never have exactly the same feature sets, so they may as well be different.”
My shortcuts: C-V-B: Connect, Insert, Overwrite. I don’t even use Append. It’s superfluous to my workflow.
H: add edit (Blade tool)
+, -: Zoom in and out on timeline.
E,R: set in and out points.
Q: range tool (as in “quick range tool”)
Z: lift from storyline.
Y,U: tops and tails.
X: ripple delete.
A,P: left as X defaults.
Spacebar: start,stop playback.
1,2,3,4: 10 frames back and forward, single frame back and forward.These are all the keys I need to knock out a package and, except for the C,Q,A,S and +,- keys, are exactly what I’ve used in Avid systems for more than 20 years. As you may have noticed, I have grouped my most frequently used keys from the middle to left side of the keyboard, where I use a “touch-typing” method using the mouse for quick navigation and the 1,2,3,4 keys for precise navigation. I don’t use skimming. At all. It’s not precise enough for my taste.
I’m able to knock out 1:30 news packages in 20 minutes, which – by the way – is how fast I could do it using a Newscutter. The NLE is only part of the equation. The workflow is where the real speed is. We were cutting packages in 20 minutes on old 3/4″ tape and Beta SP because of workflows that the format would dictate.
Yes, my workflow works very well for me. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to use it, especially someone committed to a native X workflow, whatever that is.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Walter Soyka] “Would you encourage someone new to Avid to approach it the way you’ve approached FCP X?”
I would encourage them to do whatever it takes to get to speed as quickly as possible. Even Avid’s keyboards can be remapped, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I started to work with it. I have never used the default keyboard in any NLE I’ve ever used, and have been able to beat deadlines routinely with all of them: Newscutter, Media Composer, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and now FCPX.
News doesn’t afford the luxury of taking your time to fully learn a system, especially one as quirky as X. You’re expected to start cutting on it after a couple of days of training, so anything you can bring to bear on it from your former experience – including workflows – that gets you turning packages in 30 minutes or less, is what you need to do.
So yes, again my answer would be do whatever gets you up to speed as quickly as possible.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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And by the way, if keyboard remapping shouldn’t be used in X, why did they put it in there?
I have a workflow that works for me. Your mileage may vary.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Scott Witthaus] “This is the mistake you make: trying to make X work like Avid. Learn the software the way it was designed, not based on what you know from traditional track-based softwares.”
Not a mistake if I get the job done. And I get the job done. And yes, I do want an Avid/FCP7/Premiere CC-type audio mixer, complete with track patching and clip-ganging. I realize leaving a real audio mixer out of the X workflow is probably less threatening to kids editing cat videos for youtube, but an honest-to-goodness mixer doesn’t threaten me in the least.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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Been using X for about a month now editing news packages. Last couple I’ve had to do were cut under intense deadline pressure but made slot. Using my Avid shortcut keys has really made the transition smoother than it otherwise would’ve been, but audio continues to be a major league PITA! So if there are any X developers reading this, PLEASE give us a bona fide audio mixer instead of the garbage pan & volume slider in the inspector!
There’s nothing I’ve done in X that I hadn’t ever been able to do in Avid just as quickly, (except overlays when compositing which I have had absolutely no use for in my news workflow so far) and audio mixing (which is much faster and easier in Avid.)
As far as any updates go? I don’t use X at home except to trim up 4K clips for sale on Shutterstock, so no update threatens that workflow (unless they take UHD support out of the program.) As to whether any update will be installed by the admins at work is a different issue. Any threat of workflow interruption would potentially cause an update to be ignored.
I can only think of one other update I’d really like to see: give us audio and video tracks! 😉
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Bill Davis] “I also think it’s fair to note that Phil Loews original push back at the X design would be appropriately viewed by him through a news cutters eye.”
Bingo.
Every investigative script we wrote had to be vetted by corporate legal: every sentence scoured and every word parsed by attorneys. They had to get the first look at it and only when we had it approved did it make sense to start editing because any changes we made after that had to be vetted by legal again.
We got pretty good real fast at what would get past legal and what wouldn’t. We usually had 2-3 days for one of these investigative pieces that would run between 5 and 10 minutes. Often, the first day was spent rewriting and refining the script in the bay so that a finsihed script could be delivered to legal. Once we had the script written, we would start laying sound bytes, narration, and music: the skeleton of the piece. After getting sound down, I would work on any graphics that needed to be created, such as scanning documents and producing animated pull-outs from legal papers, etc.
Third day was a chance to look at the piece for flow and pace, and clean up any rough spots we saw, while waiting for attorney approval of what (now) was the final script, which was transcribed from this first cut. I would drop in graphics and B-Roll the piece while the reporter dealt with legal. On rare occasions, small legal changes in either a shot or the narration had to be made to the piece(s) as late as 10 minutes before air. We never missed a deadline.
News is both intensely deadline driven and extremely detail oriented, especially when it comes to investigative journalism. You can’t simply sit down and rough out ideas in editing without having a script first, and the closer you can get that script to the final cut, the fewer issues you’ll have at deadline.
Just thought you all should know.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Bret Williams] “When people talk non destructive in regard to X, we’re referring to tracks getting out of the way vertically. IOW when you’re editing a shot from the event to the timeline you don’t have to worry about how long the clip is and if it’s going to overwrite a portion of a clip either because you didn’t properly pay attention to the track patching or miscalculated the length of the clip in the source or forgot to put an out in the timeline. For me, editing takes less precise calculation before placing in the timeline and edits are massaged in context with juxtaposed clips/VO. Since the latter massaging is generally going to happen anyway as that’s the nature of our business, it feels faster to me to just be able to quickly get the elements into the timeline without worry of overwriting any audio or video.”
Still don’t see the issue. It takes a second to patch a track in Avid and nothing gets overwritten. Takes even less time to set an out point. X solves a problem that has never existed, as far as I’m concerned. Trackless is just a gimmick to me. YMMV.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Bret Williams] “a timeline that gets out of the way to avoid clip collisions and destructive editing. “
I guess I don’t get the phobia people here have with this issue. In Media Composer, simply turn sync locks off (or don’t work with them at all), and when you want to drag clips around, lasso select them and use “yellow” segment mode (yellow arrow). It ripple inserts selected clips from one part of the timeline to another without overwriting existing clips. And if you’re not in any segment mode – red (overwrite) or yellow (insert), then there’s no danger of inadvertently moving anything at all! And I’m even “snapping” these clips where I want them to go!
Here’s a brief screen cap video I did demonstrating it on a little Christmas music video i put together in Avid.
What people here see as an innovation in FCPX has been in Avid for years.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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[Bill Davis] “if all one thinks about is simply “following the script” as an editor – one may not actually be as skilled an editor as they might become. Just a general observation referencing no one.”
Having helped rewrite scripts in the edit bay while under deadline, I certainly understand and appreciate collaboration. Having won six Emmys for my work as an editor as part of of an investigative journalism unit certainly qualifies me to have an opinion on it. And my opinion is that having a polished script at the outset obviates the need for a lot of experimentation in editing, especially when you’re under tight deadlines.
Most of the script editing my colleagues and I did in the edit bay was directed at eliminating – as much as possible – the need to re-edit on the timeline. It had nothing to do with avoiding dragging clips around, but about getting the story right before ever laying a single clip down. A good editor can see problems in a story while they’re still on paper. That’s where the collaboration should really begin.
IMHO.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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Loved this! Absolute genius! 🙂
Just wondering how the footage from a backup camera on a Ford Fusion would intercut with it. 😉
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.