Tony West
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] ” the lower the “effort penalty” that’s applied to making those changes, the more likely you are to make them. You’re freer to simply take a chance to try something different. “
Well said yourself Bill,
So much of it for me goes back to cutting my doc. I didn’t have a script and I was learning about the topic as I went along. You meet and interview more and more people and suddenly they are telling you something that’s a game changer.
You know of nuclear waste being dumped at an official site. It’s official, so a lot of people know, but then a worker tells you about another site. One that isn’t official, one that nobody but a handful of workers know about. One dangerously closer to the public. He points to a spot on the map, “no”, I say “it’s farther north right?”
“I’m not talking about that one, I’m talking about this one”
It’s time to start moving stuff around.
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[Oliver Peters] “software is a very personal thing and you can’t arbitrarily or objectively say something is better or faster. “
Sure you can.
You can say that it is faster for you. Or you can compare the same exact task Like the swapping video.
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I enjoyed his video, but I usually send people the swapping two shots video that you posted second when they ask me “Why X?”
When I first started working with X I didn’t like it. I just jumped right in without any studying of it and got a little frustrated. I hacked my way through my first project and took it to the client. They wanted changes so I went back to make them and that’s when I really started loving X.
It wasn’t the assembling of the edit at first, it was the making changes fast that got me onboard.
There is really no argument people can make against that strength of X, accept to maybe say I don’t make changes to my timeline that far in.
Well, I make a lot of changes for different reasons and even if I only did it a few times it’s worth it for me.
The thing that I have always found ironic about X early on and now, is that it’s often not seen as an editing program for “complicated work”. I fond that the more “complicated” your timeline is the more useful X is. When he goes to show the example of swapping he actually says “let’s go to a more complicated timeline” (or something like that) Moving stuff around in a simple timeline is easy in most editing software.
What X is doing is much like your iPhone when you start typing and it starts guessing at the next word you are going to type. It’s often correct with it’s guess so it saves you time if you select the word instead of typing the entire word yourself. Or when you mistype a word, instead of backspace, backspace, backspace retype you can select the correct word in a flash.
X is using that technology and it’s connected clips and magnetic timeline helps it do that.
For example, it’s guessing you don’t want to overwrite a section that you built so it moves it out of the way for you. It is guessing that you would have moved it yourself so it will save you the time. Or when you pick up a section and you are dragging it down the timeline and the blue line pops up on the next edit, guessing that you might want to drop it there. You can release the mouse before you actually get there if its guessing right. That saves time instead of going all the way to the edit.
In a track based program it’s almost impossible for the program to guess your next move. Do you want that piece of audio on track 2 or track 14? It has no way of knowing, so you must select that yourself.
People ask me how I can edit faster in X, it’s much like I can text faster now because I’m not typing as much to say the same thing.
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I would second Ronny on RX, Craig. The RX “Dialogue Denoiser” inside X is pretty much all I used. It does an amazing job at not effecting the person’s voice.
If I had something complex to fix I went into the app itself, as I contacted them and was told pretty much what they told you.
I didn’t have any problems throughout the edit and I worked on my film for 5 years through different versions of X and RX, and my Mac pro is a lot older then the one Lance used.
One of the options I am most impressed with in RX is the “Declipper” that you can also use inside X
It used to be that if you overdrove something you were pretty much done. Not anymore.
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[Oliver Peters] ” However, Apple doesn’t make their own panels and these will age and become discolored the same whether it’s an Apple, LG, Dell, etc”
They may not make them but when they put their name on something they oversee the quality of it.
The term you get what you pay for comes to mind. If it’s cheaper to buy it will usually fall apart.
I don’t who made that phone charger cord and don’t really care. I just know it came apart in no time and will not ever buy from that company again.
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One thing that doesn’t get talked about that much with Apple is quality.
I started buying their products because they last, and are well made along with the OS
I have an Apple monitor and have had no problems with it (as far as it working) and that’s how I like it . I don’t mind paying a little more if it’s going to work.
I lost my Apple phone charging cord and bought a third party one. Complete junk.
Grrrrrr
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[John Rofrano] “I don’t understand why people who just want to upload videos to YouTube think they need Final Cut Pro 7 or X. iMovie is quite a capable little program for cranking out simple videos for YouTube consumption.”
I have seen so many people over the years struggling with Legend. In over their heads when they should be in iMovie.
They all seem to feel like it was almost in insult for them to use iMovie. Like they were above it, even though they didn’t know the most basic things about editing.
That’s it. That’s who they are factoring in when they design. That guy who is struggling to upload to Youtube from that automated setup.
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It wasn’t all Apple.
Most people were not in that room for the sneak peek and the ones that I saw were clapping.
One of the main things that hurt this product were one-sided reviews that only talked about what the program couldn’t do, and none of what it could do.
It was missing features but it was better than 7 in other ways.
It’s 64 bit made things faster.
The skimmer made things faster
The organization made things faster
The connected clips made swapping things faster.
Having all those audio tools inside the program made things faster.
Being able to hover over effects before you applied them made things faster.It had a lot going for it but people didn’t hear any of that. All they heard was one-sided. Not to mention people giving their “reviews” online who flat-out didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
All I did was go to work and tell people what the program could do. They liked what they heard and decided to try it and never looked back. Some didn’t like it and went to Pr
What Apple should have done was have their people out there day one to counter those people with what the program “could” do, instead of relying on people like me to do their job for them.
People didn’t have all the information to make an objective decision. They just had part of it.
Most people I spoke with had never opened the program because they didn’t hear anything positive about it.
If everybody had tried it and didn’t like it, that would be one thing. But it didn’t go down like that.
I have a good memory.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “If I search for a clip in FCPX, I can then assign another search parameter to it (like a new keyword or other piece of metadata) and that clip will now show up in multiple places,”
Bingo!
Exactly why I liked the app for sports way back when it was first introduced.
This one clip is:
The Player
The Team
a HR
Post Season
Side Swing and so on.Once you set up your KW short cuts it’s a matter of seconds to put this multiple places.
A time saver also when doing something that has a bunch of family photos where there are multiple people in each photo so it’s tagged with everyone that is in it.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “So my question is: will we always still be using containers of one kind or another, alongside these metadata filtering options, or can you see a time when we might move over entirely to the metadata-driven model?”
I don’t think there will be. kInd of like there will always be filling cabinets even though we have computers.
I think there will always be a multi level approach to most things.
I will use some pics to help describe what I’m talking about this time.
I start off with over 800 b-roll shots from various locations. Some locations have many shots and some just a few. In this example of Coldwater Creek, there are only 10 shots at this location. If you notice, I didn’t even bother to label the individual clips. I didn’t really need to because after one click I went from 800 to 10 and I can see what they are so I don’t waste time naming all these clips. I couldn’t search for these clips by name because I didn’t name them but in this case I can see what they are so I don’t need to.
So when do I use more meta data?
Interviews.
Unlike B-roll or stills, I can’t see what he is talking about by just looking at the interview clip. So when I’m reviewing the interview I make favorites and I label those with notes. Then I can search a subject like Silkwood, and find the section of his interview where he or anyone else is speaking on that topic.
So there you have it. I’m glad Apple was smart enough to give me two options because one size does not fit all methods. Sometimes I need to group with folders because that’s faster and sometimes it pays to add more meta data because that’s faster. It just depends on what you are doing and what becomes more efficient after experience.
