[Phil Lowe]

Was your source material RGB or 601/709 color gamut? If it was 601/709, you should import using that setting. That way Avid knows not to compress the luminance values. (RGB has luminance values ranging from 0-255 on the RGB scale, 601/709 has luminance values ranging from 16-235 on the RGB scale.)

If you imported 601/709 footage as RGB, Avid applies another layer of luminance compression onto material that was already at 601/709. This is why your video lacks contrast: instead of black and white levels at 16-235, they are now 32-215.

If you’re working in PAL, you need to find out which gamut applies and import accordingly. The values cited above are for 8-bit NTSC/ATSC.

Hope this helps.

[Phil Lowe]

If that’s your goal, stick with Avid and avoid the frustration.

I am sticking with Media Composer, as I stated earlier, for my freelance work. I am being forced to learn FCPX to do news editing at the station where I work. I am not going to give up everything I know and the financial investment I’ve made in Avid for basic, simple news editing on, what is, in my view, a glorified version of iMovie.

Obviously, were I not compelled to use it at all, I wouldn’t even be in this forum.

Would love to hear from the non-manogomous editors out there how they manage to remember what keystrokes to use as they move from ap to ap.

When I used Premiere Pro, I did remap Premiere’s keyboard using my Media Composer settings. This made moving from one program to another virtually seamless, and there’s one simple reason for that: muscle memory. Take a professional secretary off a QWERTY keyboard and put her on a Dvorak keyboard, and productivity drops significantly until her muscles and hand-eye coordination are familiar with the new keyboard. Now, once she’s used to that, giver her back her old keyboard and watch the productivity drop again.

Much of what comprises editing is “rinse and repeat”: repetitive keystrokes and mouse moves. Sometimes using more than one NLE may be unavoidable, as one program may do something you need that the other doesn’t do as well. Not having to retrain your muscle memory moving from one program to another keeps you consistently fast in both. If time is money, productivity is money in the bank. Anything that makes you think about what you need to do in any given program, just to do the job, costs time.

When I worked on a Newscutter, there were some shots I wanted to affect in Premiere Pro because Avid’s default effect palette is “lacking.” Being able to do basic edits in Premiere with effects using my Avid keystrokes got me where I needed to be in both Premiere Pro and Avid faster.

Muscle memory, or being familiar enough with a program’s shortcut’s to access the keystrokes you need without even thinking about them, is what makes editing on any system fast.

Protecting that investment in training I made to move my muscles instinctively across a keyboard is precisely why I remapped the FCPX keyboard to my Avid settings. Will those settings be as efficient in FCPX as they are in Avid? Probably not. But when I get home at the end of a day of cutting news vo’s, I don’t want to have to think about which keyboard I’m using when I sit down to do my long form work.

Hope that helps.

[Phil Lowe]

In this interview, Matzdorff said once he stopped trying to make FCPX work like Avid he made good progress.

Well, for what it’s worth, Avid is what I know and will continue to use. Progress (beyond basic cuts) in FCPX holds no appeal for me whatsoever. I did knock out a 1:00 long music video in it earlier using my Avid key mapping. Didn’t take long to do but something simple – like color correcting – was awful. The chroma keyer, something I played with when I first started with it, is not nearly as good as Specrtramatte, and, well, I already mentioned trying to do simple dissolves is a chore, especially on audio.

Even he said the precision editor (???) leaves much to be desired. And why do you ned a precision editor anyway? Precision should be built into the very interface itself, not a separate tool you have to open!

I have no doubt in my ability to bend it to my will, and will get the most basic edits I will need to do with it done using it my way. Beyond that, I don’t care. It’s simply not anything I need to go any deeper into.

Thanks for the discussion.

[Phil Lowe]

Better late than never. 😉

One other thing I found that I really dislike about it: the default keyboard layout assigns keys (inconsistently) mnemonically: P for position, S for skimming, E for append, etc. Inconsistently, I say, because select is A, Q is connect, and D is overwrite???

To make things easier, I mapped the position tool (P) to Option-A, in keeping with all my other Avid shortcuts that sit under my left hand.

I’ll only add that I hate the fidgeting you have to do with simple dissolves just to change their starting placement. The quick effect key (backslash) in Avid is both easier to use and more precise out of the gate, and it works for audio without having to break sync!. Dragging handles on a simple effect simply should not take as long as it does, and this is something I despise in Premiere Pro, too.

[Phil Lowe]

Do you have Offline selected as one of your column headings in the Media Tool? If not, right mouse click on the Media Tool and select “Choose Columns” from the pop-up menu. Scroll down to “Offline” and make sure it’s checked. Sine this would be the column you’re most interested in, drag the column header (or tab) close to the Name column, select the “Offline” tab, then sort using CTRL/CMD-E.

If you’re still not seeing offline media at that point, make sure “media files” is checked when you open the Media Tool, and select all drives and all projects. You can then sort on other columns, as needed, to find the missing media for a particular project.

Hope this helps.

[Phil Lowe]

[Steve Connor] “[Phil Lowe] ” I will have no use for it. Therefore, since I already own a Steinway Grand in Media Composer, I have no problem using FCPX like a cheap knock-off of the real thing, if that’s what it takes for me to use both. ”

I think you’ll find FCPX is a modern Synthesiser, not a knock of of your old Steinway”

Having tried to work with it for more than a month now, and having watched a number of tutorials on how to use it, I can honestly say I don’t like it. But then, I don’t care much for modern synthesizers, either.

I hate the trackless, magnetic timeline. I hate the audio controls (I much prefer Avid’s audio mixer), and I can’t stand skimming in the browser. But then, I don’t like the latter feature in Avid, either. I don’t like thumbnail view and rarely use it, even in FCP7. In short, there’s virtually nothing about the interface or controls I like. Having remapped the keyboard to match my Media Composer settings has made basic editing tolerable, but only so. For basic editing, that’s all I need. Going any further with FCPX, quite frankly, doesn’t interest me in the least.

I will do FCPX for my employer because it’s required. I will do Avid for my own work because I am fast with it and I enjoy it.

[Phil Lowe]

You’re appear to be content to NOT know what something is capable of AND simultaneously decide in advance that that it will NEVER benefit you.

I can emphatically state that learning a new editing paradigm when I am already well-versed in one that meets deadlines and makes money will never benefit me. Period.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that your paradigm is wrong for you, but it most certainly would be for me.

Basically, a judgement that the way you solve your professional challenges currently can not possibly improve.

Over the years of my professional life I have had to learn – by teaching myself mostly – many programs to solve my professional challenges, from Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, and Lightroom, to Maya and Lightwave 3D. I don’t have a problem learning new programs when I can clearly see the benefit of doing so. FCPX offers me nothing I can’t already do or don’t already have in Avid except new nomenclature and a trackless timeline. In my view, these are things designed to get iMovie users to upgrade more than they are to get working pros to toss everything they know about their current software and start a new learning curve in a completely new editing paradigm.

If you’ve embraced it, good for you! I’m sure you’re turning out absolutely killer work with it! But so am I while NOT using this “new” technology. I don’t need to learn a whole new way of doing things for cuts-only edits. That’s like getting a graduate level degree to play Mozart (to extend your music metaphor) when all I need is enough to play Chopsticks! And Chopsticks is all I will need to do for cutting basic news.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to play Chopin, Mozart, and even some Beethoven in Media Composer, which is where I feel most comfortable.

[Phil Lowe]

Yeah, your video is precisely why I hate editing in FCP7, too.

[Phil Lowe]

why bother?

Because – as I have explained in other threads – my current job as a per diem news photographer requires it. However, I also own and use Media Composer for paid and pro bono freelance work. I have been using, building, and training people on Avid systems for almost 21 years. There is no compelling reason for me to use FCPX except that my employer will (eventually) expect me to edit with it. Beyond doing cuts-only editing, I will have no use for it. Therefore, since I already own a Steinway Grand in Media Composer, I have no problem using FCPX like a cheap knock-off of the real thing, if that’s what it takes for me to use both.

I have zero interest, at this stage of the game, in trying to learn a whole new editing paradigm just to do cuts-only editing. That’s why.

[Phil Lowe]

Thanks, Oliver. Nice information, but any long form work I’ll be doing that’s not news-related I’ll be doing in Media Composer. Most of the work I’ll be doing in news will revolve around cutting simple vo-sots and straight-cut reporter packages, where heavy organization isn’t really needed. In fact, for cutting a vo, I would simply like to be able to drop every clip on the timeline and trim to :40 there. Someone mentioned a “tops & tails” feature in X. Any idea what that is and how it works?

Nevermind. I found it.

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/top-and-tail-editing-now-available-in-final-cut-pro-x/

I’ll get this app working like my Media Composer in no time! 😉