[Jeremy Garchow] "Now that FCP7 is gone, you have to reinvent the wheel?"
Now that FCP7 is gone, we are all invited to re-invent.
FCP7 was very flexible, and people forced it into all kinds of workflows where it may not have been the best option. It was a Swiss Army knife, and people used it to slice fruit and fell trees.
Now we have the opportunity to step back, evaluate our workflows, and pick the NLE that works best -- not figure out what workaround to employ to shoehorn our favorite NLE into our workflow.
[Jeremy Garchow] "I guess what I don't get is when someone says, "I'm sticking with Avid for broadcast, and Premiere for web videos". Avid can't deliver a web video?"
Agreed, you can do pretty much any kind of work with any one of the tools.
However, they all also have different personalities and different product-specific features that give them benefits over competitors in different workflows.
[Jeremy Garchow] "I am not against learning new things, believe me. It's just that the argument of "throw them all in the tool box" doesn't make any sense to me, as there's simply not enough time in the world to learn it all."
You're right. I was overly simplistic in my original premise.
Buying something and then not using it is a waste of money. I'm in business, and I certainly can't afford to collect packages just to have them. If you can't drive it, or if you can't commit to learning it, save your money.
That said, many of us on FCP came from Avid to begin with, and Premiere will feel pretty familiar to an FCP editor.
I still feel a bit slow in Premiere versus FCP, for example, but even with my lack of muscle memory, I can save a lot of time iterating a graphics-heavy piece with AE/Pr dynamic link versus rendering graphics out and replacing edits in FCP.
[Jeremy Garchow] "Even though there's too many tapeless formats, they are all based on a standard. A windows NLE, a Mac NLE, a Linux NLE can all ready a Panasonic created MXF file. Avid cannot read an FCP project, can't read a Flame project, can't read a Premiere project. There's a big difference."
The point of my DP example was not post-oriented. I was saying that a director of photography chooses a specific camera or lens for what it will contribute to the project or even the shot at hand. He or she does not force the same camera and lens into every shot with no consideration for its unique strengths and weaknesses.
Interchange is possible among the NLEs.
[Jeremy Garchow] "I am not against learning new things, believe me. It's just that the argument of "throw them all in the tool box" doesn't make any sense to me, as there's simply not enough time in the world to learn it all. "
There are plenty of Hollywood editors who know both MC and FCP inside-out. Beyond that, editors everywhere are now expected to be editors, colorists, audio mixers, graphic designers, motion designers, and visual effects artists.
If you're an editor, learning a new NLE is a walk in the park compared to even scratching the surface on any of these other disciplines, let alone the specialized applications they require.
[Jeremy Garchow] "Again, I am not discouraging anyone from learning new things, but buy the tool that's right for you, which doesn't mean you need to buy the entire tool aisle."
We're not talking about that many tools. You say don't buy the whole tool aisle. I agree. But I do say that learning a couple tools is well within reach of a working editor today, and they are all pretty inexpensive now, and you can pretty much run them all on the same hardware.
Personally, I don't care about Edius, Lightworks, or Vegas. I think Premiere will work best in general for me in my internal work, but I've got Avid and FCP7 (and my own history and experience with both packages) ready to go for pieces that have started elsewhere. I worked at getting familiar with FCPX, and if an FCPX project comes in the door on Monday, I'll work harder at it.
Evan Schechtman showed an example at NAB in the Autodesk booth of a spot that saw rough cut on FCP7, fine cut on FCPX, and finishing on Autodesk Smoke. The facility model is to use multiple tools, each for their strengths, to manage the quality-speed-cost triangle. Individual editors can do the same thing today for a couple thousand dollars and a couple hundred hours.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at
Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
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