Re: What does FCPX teach new editors?

[Craig Seeman] "Keyword and Smart Collections teach good organizing given it's advantage over simply dumping all the clips into a bin or two."

Great point. I've seen people make the argument that FCPX will separate them from their footage, but I agree with you on this.

If you'll pardon the overgeneralization, I've found that editors with linear experience are a lot more willing to spend more time upfront with the footage -- possibly because constantly scanning through it all randomly on a linear system was out of the question. I've found that editors who started on non-linear systems were less afraid to jump right in without spending all that upfront time with the footage.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I'll spend the first four sharpening my axe." Perhaps pervasive metadata will make logging (tree pun welcomed but not intended) attractive enough again that new editors will spend more time with the footage before beginning the edit?


[Craig Seeman] "FCPX handles clips as relationships to each other rather than relationships locked in time. It's not a good or bad value judgement but it's very different than other NLEs."

Agreed here, too -- but what do you think this means in editorial? Will this change the way editors assemble their cuts? The way they adjust them? The way they perceive the timeline? Will an editor who learns on FCPX be less inclined to view these relationships fluidly because the software is less inclined to treat them that way?


[Craig Seeman] "In some respects it's like nodal compositing vs track based compositing."

I see where you're going here (nodal compositing is about managing relationships), but I wonder if this analogy isn't a bit superficial. I think that FCPX's design philosophy is abstraction, hiding technical detail where possible and moving the editor away from the underlying mechanics of what the computer must do to assemble the edit. Nodal compositing requires the compositor to manually manage the comp in excruciating detail and understand exactly how the renderer works to get the result they're looking for.

Walter Soyka
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