Archive for November 2006

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MC/FCP Differences

November 26, 2006

Several people have responded negatively to my suggestion that Final Cut Pro hews closer to a desktop publishing metaphor than Media Composer does. Admittedly, the differences are pretty subtle, but this issue was hotly debated in the early days and I, for one, advocated the idea that editors were more interested in moving pictures and how they look on a screen than on little rectangles and how you can move them around in a timeline. As much as possible, I wanted you to be able to make all editing decisions based on moving video. Avid’s engineers also did without an explicit toolbar and tried to make the cursor smart enough to do what you wanted when you wanted to do it.

In one sense the difference is just one of visual semantics. The MC has a ‘toolbar lite’ at the bottom of the timeline, where you choose effects, trim, segment or source/record mode. So you’re switching modes in both programs. But there are fewer modes in MC than there are tools in FCP, and to me, that makes it more intuitive. People who started working with one of the Adobe applications before learning to edit often find FCP more intuitive.

One question is whether this difference of approach leads to a different kind of editing, or is more appropriate for a different style, or with different kinds of material. One commentator suggested that FCP seems to be used more for documentaries and music videos and the MC more for features and television.

So how’s this for a hypothesis: FCP does a better job in segment mode than MC. It’s easier to drag things around, easier to rearrange clips, easier to create new and unexpected juxtapositions. MC is better in trim mode, better at tying material together, better at making disparate material look like continuous action. FCP is better for montages; MC is better for dialog. FCP is better at making cuts that jar you; MC is better at making cuts that are smooth as silk.

In addition, FCP is better in a standalone, home-brew environment, where you might be working with full-resolution media and doing your own visual effects, sound work or tech support. MC fits better in a world where teams of specialists have to collaborate and work with various kinds of media.

Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Final Cut

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Tip #9 – Scroll Wheels

November 22, 2006

Later versions of the Media Composer and Xpress finally make decent use of a mouse with a scroll wheel. Many editors don’t know this because they are using older mice that don’t have them, but the scroll wheel is great for moving quickly through large bins, navigating in the project window, or even scrolling up and down through your tracks in the timeline. Even better, if you have a scroll wheel that functions in two dimensions you can use it to move the timeline left and right. Apple’s standard Mighty Mouse works well for this purpose — the scroll wheel is a little ball that can go up and down or left and right.

Recent Apple laptops have trackpads that allow you to scroll by dragging two fingers on the trackpad surface. If you don’t have that capability you can create scroll areas on the side and bottom of the trackpad with a piece of shareware called SideTrack. I’ve been using it for several months and like it a lot. (Apple distributes something called FFScroll which allows older machines to do a two finger scroll, but I haven’t tried it.)

Scrolling in the timeline is instantly addictive because the scroll wheel produces a result that’s proportional to the amount of turning you do. Clicking and holding on an on-screen button is ‘dimensionless.’ You have to watch the result to see how far to go. But with the scroll wheel, your input (how far you roll the wheel) and the output of your action (the movement of the timeline) are proportional and that means you can do it with less conscious attention. It feels more organic, more like an extension of your body.

However, I still prefer my favorite mouse, the venerable Microsoft Intellimouse Optical (available at Amazon), because I can program the right button to be a double click. That one feature has eliminated a persistent pain I had in my forearm and has probably saved my wrist. But the Intellimouse has an ordinary scroll wheel, and that means I can’t use it to scroll horizontally.

For that and other reasons, I wish Avid would go a step further and add a setting that would allow us to control a scroll wheel. It would be great to be able to use that up and down wheel, in the timeline, to move left and right. And it would also be great if we could adjust the sensitivity of the scroll wheel. I can set the sensitivity in System Preferences, but unlike every other program I’ve got, the Media Composer ignores it. Windows always scroll at the same speed no matter what you do and often that speed is too slow.

And last but not least, it sure would be wonderful if we could scroll the timeline while video continues to play.

Categories: Avid Technical Tips, Avid vs. Final Cut

Comments: 5 Comments

Wish List #2 – The Live Interface

November 11, 2006

What I find most frustrating about both the Media Composer and Final Cut these days is the static quality of the interface. We’re so used to this now that we don’t notice it, but if you play around with Apple’s Motion you might start to think differently. Even iTunes feels more live than our beloved picture editing programs.

What makes Motion different is that it’s designed to modify your animations while they continue to play. This may not sound like much but using it on a fast machine can feel liberating. You get instant feedback on whatever you are doing. There’s less waiting, less mousing around; you get a much clearer sense of connection to the material.

The Media Composer was born at a time when playing a sequence took all the horsepower the thing had. So it was designed around the idea that you’d press play, look at your work, press stop, change something, and then press play again. The Media Composer was so rigid in this regard that once you pressed play you couldn’t click the mouse anywhere without stopping video. That was how it was in 1991 and that’s how it is today, a decade and a half later.

Though it was designed more recently, Final Cut isn’t much better. But it does offer one huge advantage over the MC, namely the ability to scroll and zoom the timeline while video plays. Once you try that, you never want to go back.

That kind of dynamism, where nothing stops you, where you’re always making decisions based on moving images and sound and where you get live feedback on your changes, is the basis of the user interface of the future.

Here are some initial thoughts about what that might consist of. Some aren’t completely fleshed out — they’ll take some experimentation. But I hope they’ll be food for thought. Please contribute your suggestions.

  1. The timeline continues to play while you resize it.
  2. The timeline re-centers itself automatically when you play off either end.
  3. Windows can be resized or moved around while video continues to play.
  4. Rendering should happen in the background. In fact, whatever the machine is doing, it should do it in the background. You should never be stopped by the pinwheel cursor.
  5. Mixing moves, reverb, EQ, all should work while audio is playing. It should be possible to identify a portion of a sequence and play that material as a loop while you manipulate various effects.
  6. The same should be true for video effects. You should be able to apply and change them and see your changes while video plays. And you should be able to change parameters for transition effects while the transition plays as a loop.
  7. Finally, you should be able to independently play several video and audio sources at once. For example, it should be possible to gang the source and record monitors and play them simultaneously. It should be possible to audition music against picture by cueing the music in a popup monitor, playing your timeline and then hitting play in the pop-up. It should be possible to play dailies in the source monitor while you scroll around in the timeline or do other work.

The old paradigm was “make a change, press play.” The new paradigm is “press play, make a change.” A system that can do this is going to make our current machines seem quaint.

Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Final Cut

Comments: 3 Comments

Edit Lite

November 3, 2006

As our tools have become cheaper and more ubiquitous, competition for editing jobs has increased. The result is that some picture editors and assistants are getting squeezed pretty hard. But it seems like music editors have it worse, and I’m starting to wonder whether they aren’t the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Since they’re often paid directly by the composer, it’s not uncommon to see the them working non-union on otherwise fully union shows, working long hours for a flat rate. They often work out of their houses, using their own equipment, without an assistant. The expectations, time pressure and technical responsiblities can be very high. And if you don’t like the money or the working conditions, there’s often no support from the rest of the crew. The crew is you.

I wonder whether these aren’t the kinds of conditions that picture editors will face in the next few years, at least on lower budget shows. As our equipment gets more portable it’s easier to work at home. As the technology gets simpler and more efficient, crews shrink.

Dovetailing with this situation, Verizon and AT&T just got the right to deliver TV over telephone lines in California. That means we’re soon going to see dramatically faster Internet speeds. It’s going to make all kinds of things possible.

But with this, as in so much of the digital revolution, the law of unintended consequences bites us in the butt. Working at home is a great idea, right? Sure, until you realize that if you work at home you never get to GO home. Cheaper equipment is a great idea, too — until you factor in the idea that you’re going to be buying it yourself, upgrading it, and doing your own tech support. Videochatting with your director over a super-fast Internet connection is wonderful, until you realize that the same connection can be used with anybody in the world, and you’re competing with a whole lot of people you’ll never see.

So what do we do? No doubt, the Editors Guild has a pivotal role to play. We’ll never prevail if we don’t work together and get ahead of these trends. But just saying no won’t work. It’s essential that we think about these issues in the broadest and deepest possible terms. If we don’t want to be forced to be cheaper then we have to be smarter.

And as individuals? It’s much the same. The only thing we can do is to get ready by improving our skills.

That long learning curve that we’ve been climbing for the last decade and a half? It sure doesn’t look like it’s going to flatten out any time soon.

Categories: Editors Guild, Quality of Life

Comments: 5 Comments