Re: One year later... NOW: standardizing on one tool or using them all?

[Jeremy Garchow] "I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I can't see this happening."

No disrespect taken. I think there's room for a ton of discussion, pro and con, and I'm sure that there's no one correct answer. I hope to hear a lot of opinions on this topic.

If you stick with one NLE, you are exposed to all its weaknesses. If you use multiple NLEs, you minimize your exposure to any one NLE's weaknesses, but assume much greater complexity. It's a trade-off. It's not the right call for everyone, but it may be the right call for some.

If I were a freelance creative editor that used to use FCP7 exclusively, you can bet I'd be learning MC, Pr and FCPX.

In your business, I suspect your infrastructure and project management -- and their stability -- is a competitive advantage. I'd guess that many of your projects are fundamentally similar, so you would be penalized for reinventing the wheel on every project.

In my business, we often have to fit into other people's pipelines. The projects often have different requirements, so I'm forced to reinvent the wheel on each project to an extent.



[Jeremy Garchow] "The "buy them all and use them all" approach is unsustainable, not from a cost standpoint today, but from an management and data archive standpoint, and let's not forget the sanity standpoint as it's rather important."

Data archive is already a disaster. You need to keep a copy of FCP7 around forever for all those .fcp projects, unless you had the foresight to start exporting XMLs of your projects back in 2004.

I've been shrieking like a banshee here about interchange for almost a year, and this is one reason interchange is so incredibly important.

It's also the reason that primetime broadcast episodic TV requires those old dinosaur EDLs as a part of the deliverable. They don't care what system you cut something on -- they care if they can recreate your cut if they have to. It's a degree of protection against an uncertain future.



[Jeremy Garchow] "Right now, there's a lot of parity in the NLE world between hardware, keyboard shortcut modifiers, and interchange languages (thanks in part to XML, and Quicktime, yikes). What if those world diverge? What if Avid's next move is to start over?"

DPs use different cameras all the time, exploiting their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses. Why should post be different?

If I have a heavy mograph piece in a custom resolution, I'd like to work on it in Pr/AE because anything else would be painful. If I had a mixed format documentary style project, maybe I'd prefer FCPX. If I'm finishing an existing project from FCP7, maybe some combo of FCP7/Resolve/Smoke is appropriate. If I'm doing a reality series, Avid offers a killer workflow from start to finish.


[Jeremy Garchow] "I still can't find an answer if Smoke 2013 has interchange out beyond OMF. Does it?"

Sorry, I forgot to answer this. I'll go back and put it in the other thread. I don't know what Smoke 2013 will do, because it's still a work in progress, but Smoke on Mac 2011 exports EDL and OMF.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
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