[Simon Ubsdell]

Thanks for the update info. Sounds like there’s a lot of cool new stuff.

FCPX Role Editing looks like a really superb feature.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

This thread has been pretty amazing even by the elevated standards set by this forum, but, as far as I can tell, all anyone has been arguing who isn’t an extreme FCP X enthusiast, is that there are several ways to skin the editing cat, and FCP X is an interesting one and it works well in many editing situations, but there are other options which work as well, or even (dare we say it?) better for other editing situations.

After five years, one might have thought that the need for FCP X defensiveness would have abated somewhat, but apparently that is not the case.

Additionally, one might have thought that we could start talking neutrally about the endlessly fascinating craft of editing and the many, many different ways in which this manifests itself, and it wouldn’t always immediately come back round to “my toy is better than your toy”.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting horribly old but I can’t seem to summon the same enthusiasm for toy competition that I could in my younger days.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Tony West] “I was saying that Apple was making that guess. That “they” were betting more people would want it to default that way. I’m not really saying that they were right or wrong, I’m saying I believe that’s what “they” were doing.

Of course if they sell enough copies to make them happy then they would feel like they guessed right.”

I think you’re touching on a key point here.

The FCP X editing model grew out of, and is the same as, the iMovie editing model.

The iMovie editing model is what it is because it is aimed at “editors” doing a specific type of “editing”. This involves (after sifting material in the Event) butting shots up against each other, shortening some and lengthening others, shuffling the order, maybe adding a music track and possibly some cutaways. The iMovie/FCP X magnetic timeline with its default ripple mode and connected clips is the perfect solution to this type of editing, which is essentially shot assembly with a few refinements.

Apple clearly made the right call here in terms of maximising the appeal of iMovie/FCP X.

However, not every professional editor is not spending the majority of their working day doing this kind of shot-shuffling “assembly editing”, which is possibly why to some the “default ripple” concept doesn’t feel the most natural.

But of course it is not inherently worse or better – why anyone would want to argue that either way is something I can’t get my head around.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

I literally haven’t a clue what you think you meant by what you just wrote, but if you feel happy having written it, then that’s all good.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Andrew Kimery] “My rough cuts are full of black holes because I know putting A next to B is wrong, but I just haven’t figured out/built what should go between them.”

Yes, this was the explanation I was going to give too.

Because most of the editing process (for me) is usually about constructing around a “roughly sketched out architecture”, dictated perhaps by music, perhaps by natural dialogue rhythms, perhaps by sound design, or a combination of these types of elements, I rarely use ripple delete because this would be a disruption of the “sketched out architecture”. As is the case with you, leaving black holes is a key part of how this all works for me.

Obviously I will use sometimes ripple delete and “ripple move” at a very early stage, such as when adjusting a string-out, etc., but once the edit is up and running I will almost never uses these techniques.

It follows that when I do use either technique, my requirements for how it functions are very basic indeed, in the sense that video and audio will be coterminous and not yet multi-layered, which of course makes it simple to do in any NLE.

(As a side note when I ripple move, I will usually Cut and Insert Paste (or whatever is the equivalent on each platform), which is a handier technique then dragging things around the timeline when they are not in the immediate vicinity of where you want them to go.)

I think what we are seeing in this thread (as so often in this type of discussion) is that different editors not only favour different strategies, but more importantly they are doing different types of editing. In my work, editing isn’t about stringing one shot after another and then shuffling the order (ripple move) or losing a shot here or there (ripple edit). But for some editors here that’s clearly the bulk of the task because that’s the type of show they are putting together.

Hence, much as I enjoy the fun of doing ripple moves in FCP X, I just don’t do them very often at all – and on some jobs never.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Tony West] “Instead of leaving a hole in the timeline by cutting a section by default, leave it closed by default. (ripple)

Instead of your audio being separate by default, embed the audio with the video by default.

Trim both the audio and the video at the same time by default.

I agree with his main point because more times than not it’s defaulting to what I want anyway.
“

a) I’d almost always sooner leave a hole rather than ripple.

b) I almost always have to un-embed audio in FCP X in order to be able to edit efficiently.

c) I almost always need to trim audio and video separately.

I guess one editor’s preferred defaults can easily be the diametrical opposite of another’s.

Universal claims about what is optimum are always going to run up against this fact of life.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

I know this question has been asked before, but how often does anyone actually do ripple moves within a day’s editing?

It’s a nice demo-worthy feature, but it’s possibly not at the core of what most editors are doing minute by minute and hour by hour.

If you really are doing ripple moves all the time, then maybe you need to be doing more thinking about what you’re doing and less random moving of stuff around?

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

I’d just like to say, that was a terrifically good post.

Thank you.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

Hi Peter

Thanks for looking into this.

I came across this because I was making graphics in Motion for a Premiere project that a colleague was working on and it really threw us because it seemed impossible for the alpha channel to just vanish.

There are as you say any number of ways of getting around it and it’s quite a special case anyway.

I just wanted to flag it up in case it would be useful to Adobe to know about or other users to be aware of.

Thanks again.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

Here’s what I’d do based on your example.

Find a suitable base layer texture – I’ve used a nice aluminium with enough organic variation but not too much. you may decide to use the colour of your original texture image, or you can colour correct it to taste.

Take the image you want to treat and blend it over the texture using Multiply – add a Blur to this layer and reduce the opacity a bit, down to around 75%.

Add another layer of the image, blend it using Overlay and again add blur and knock back the opacity.

Add another layer of the image, again blend it using Overlay and knock back the opacity but this time don’t add a Blur.

To this result (make a compound or nest or do whatever it required to group it all together in your host application), add colour filters to first of all reduce the saturation a lot, then to tint it and remove a lot of the blue, and then to reduce the contrast a lot, adjusting the overall brightness as necessary.

The key thing is how you add the texture, flattening the contrast, reducing the sharpness with the blurs and reducing the saturation. How much or how little of all this you do will depend on the look you are going for and the actual colour composition of the shot(s) you are trying to treat. You can try different blend modes besides Overlay (eg Soft Light or even Screen) and you could try Darken instead of Multiply – it’s a question of finding the look you want.

Edit: Try adding an Erode filter to your top Overlay layer – this can help reduce the sharpness of the edge detail and make it look more hand-drawn and less photographic.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki