Page 138 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

EDITING FOR MOVING PICTURES

A Brief Look at Nonlinear Editing Software

For the first 10 years of desktop computer-based video editing, one
brand name dominated the field: Avid. Loved, hated, or merely
tolerated, the Avid systems could be found in the majority of profes-
sional video editing facilities. Media 100 and others had their admirers
too, but Avid had the highest market share. Adobe’s Premiere product
was not considered a professional tool during this period.
The situation began to change at the spring 1999 National Asso-
ciation of Broadcasters conference when Apple Computer gave the
curious a sneak peak at a new nonlinear editing (NLE) tool called Final
Cut Pro (FCP). Unlike its would-be competitor, Apple did not rely
on custom hardware to do its magic. The Final Cut Pro system was
designed from the ground up to work with digital video. Avid’s claim
to fame was its ability to digitize an analog video source in real time
at a high-quality level. This level was only limited by the amount of
hard drive space an editor had available. The Apple system, by starting
with a digital video (DV) source, only had to capture or transfer the
128 digital video file from the DV source tape using a new type of con-
nection called IEEE 1394 or FireWire. Perfect quality was preserved
through this digital transfer. The DV tape was already compressed five
to one at acquisition time in the camcorder, thus saving more file space
than a high-quality analog-to-digital conversion. Avid would not have
a competing product, at a similar price, for at least 9 months. The
giant blinked and the rest, as they say, is history.
Apple’s Final Cut Pro systems continue to have increasing popu-
larity in “shops” of all sizes, from small operations to major network
facilities. Final Cut Pro and its little brother, Final Cut Express, are
used by tens of thousands of professional editors, teachers, and stu-
dents every day. These editing programs help create the stories you
will see on your TV tonight or on the big screen in the years to come.
Due to this increasing acceptance and its outstanding ease of use, Final
Cut Pro was chosen as the NLE application to be featured throughout
the remainder of this chapter.

In the Field

Before the editing booth comes the shoot. While you can spend a great
deal of time trimming that first edit, adding a fade to black or boosting