Winston A. cely
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Agreed. 😀
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
[Jeremy Garchow] “You can choose not to install all of that stuff and install just the apps. It’s worth it.”
Unless you have the drive space. If you have the drive space, it’s totally worth it to have them installed so you don’t have to go to the discs to grab something you want to use. Just MHO.
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Is it possible for people like myself to get involved with the Beta Program?
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Glad to have you at the top!
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
I agree with your motivations behind your opinion. It’s the same reason that an associate of mine still has tape in his camera when he shoots, despite the fact that he’s going directly to hard drive via FW (for years he’s been doing this). To me, the FCP project file is the most important piece in being an FCP editor. This is the one file that must be protected at all costs. Backed up, and rebacked up if need be. So far I’ve only worked on one project that was done on P2, and we made a backup drive of just the footage. As long as we have a project file – which we back up to CD – and something happens to the drive with the media on it, we can go to that backup, the same way we would with a tape and reconnect and be up and running in no time.
And you’re totally right; having an offline process where a finished, picture lock show is solid on tape, or otherwise insures a quick recovery should something happen to the media or even – God forbid – your FCP project file. It ties you to a process that no one can argue with. This is why in the pre-production and production phase, the client, producer, director all agree to the schedule that says offline with picture lock must be complete by said date. After that we are on to onlining and it’s separate tasks. Not to say that the offlining hasn’t been pushed before to accommodate picture tweaks. Sure it has, but no onlining takes place until we have picture lock.*
I also agree with you, as many other do here, that the media management of FCP needs an overhaul. As it’s been said before, it’s not likely to be changed any time soon do to the immense amount of code rewriting that would need to take place. BUT, I’ve not touched Media Manager, in well over two years, nor have I needed to. I learned early on, that Media Manager is a tool that when used within the most strict procedure works perfectly fine, but that procedure is so limiting that it is pointless to use.** However, if you go in knowing that you won’t use it, then you can develop a system that will achieve your goal without it. I believe this goes back to the irritating problem that WE ALL face when transitioning from something familiar to something unfamiliar; “It doesn’t work the way I’m used to things working.” That’s not just AVID, Vegas, FCP, that’s life. Our biggest obstacle is not that the program doesn’t work the way we want it, but that we try to make it work a way it doesn’t. That’s not to say that FCP doesn’t need improvement, and that the way it works is the best way. I’m absolutely sure it needs improvements in this area, but a little (or a lot) of pre-planning goes a long way in keeping the media management demons at bay…….. or at least submissive when attacked!
It’s a pain most of the time, though… all this pre-planning before you can edit. You have clients and sometimes boss’ that want to know why you’re taking so long to get started, when all they hear is how easy and cheap and quick you can do things nowadays. But as we go through these pre-planning stages, we can figure out processes that work as “bible law” and it soon becomes second nature.
I suppose I’m getting a bit off track here, but what I’m desperately trying to say (and not doing in a very eloquent or concise manor) is that I do believe in the offline and online process, but that it’s changed, and still changing from where it was. And if we as editors let our team know what the new ground rules are, we can over come obstacles like poor media management, poor handling of nests (which should be avoided like the plague anyway) etc.
For the time being, there are probably many cases where dealing with mass quantities of footage still forces us to decide if we are going to offline in a more traditional fashion. I won’t debate you there, as I’ve never encountered one because I have not worked on those types of jobs…. yet. As I said before, I think ProRes and others like it, are the biggest step forward for that type of project. Of course, I can’t even talk about ProRes, since I’m still in FCS1.
BTW, “less smoking…” OK sure. But “less alcohol?” Never! 😉
*There are exceptions to ever rule. Kubrick cut scenes from 2001 and The Shining after their initial release!
** The only way I’ve found Media Manager to work flawlessly, was to have a timeline with no transitions, no more than one layer of video, no more than 4 tracks of audio, and no filters or adjustments made to the video. It worked perfectly then!Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
I just wanted to add my small bit of experience in the “offline/online” world. When I first starting editing professionally for broadcast, we had an Avid editor do the offline, then I would use Automatic Duck to to the FCP online. As good as that program was at the time (3 years ago) not once did that process go smoothly. Half the time was completely MY FAULT!!! The other half, was (in my belief) FCP and it’s handling of Media Management. Eventually (after missing a few deadlines) we decided, FCP from start to finish was the way to go. Because we could capture at full rez at the beginning, we did so, but this lead us down the do everything all at once path. Essentially onlining a show as we put it together. Needless to say, this created just as much headaches as the AVID to FCP process. Finally, we decided a modified offline/online process was needed. Even though every project gets it’s own drive (storage is cheap and quick) we saw no benefit to capturing or converting to an offline format for the offline edit, so everything is captured at it’s full/native resolution. So this means that our offline edit is strictly editing and limited audio tweaking. No effects other than simple realtime transitions are added. The client is well aware, and we’ve not had one client say that this was unacceptable. At any time during the offline, we can make notes to our hearts content on graphics, transitions, audio, etc, but we leave that until we have picture lock. Once picture lock is complete, we can move on to the online process; tweaking the audio more, adding titles/graphics and effects. This process has been a great transition for those people we’ve worked with used to the old method of offline/online, and is a great tool to the rest of us, in keeping extraneous work (recapturing) from popping up and keeping projects on time and in and orderly fashion.
I know that some projects have TONS of footage and it may not seem appropriate to capture at full rez, but I really believe that’s where intermediary codecs like ProRez come into play.
Anyway, I know our process doesn’t apply to everyone, but I think it’s an important process to think about when planning the management of any project. 🙂
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Excellent advice, Sean. I’ve used this type of setup and it works very well. Before we set it up, we had actually called ProMax about a SAN setup, and they talked us out of it for the very reasons you give.
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Pop all of your keys out (except for the spacebar and caps lock) and put the keys into a the silverware basket in the dishwasher, and the key board, face down on the top rack of the dish washer. Skip the “heated pre-wash) and turn off any heated cycles. Run through a normal wash and make sure it’s not on heated dry. Let the keyboard dry upside down in the sink until completely dry. Pop the keys back in, and your keyboard is the cleanest it’s been since you bought it. As for every day cleaning, compressed air, and a dust brush work best.
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Nate, to each his own. 😉
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe