As 2019 winds down it’s hard to believe that another decade is in the books. Thinking about that recently I clicked over to my first ever blog post here on ProVideo Coalition and was reminded that it was just over 10 years ago that I moved The Editblog from my own domain over to PVC. The old Editblog is barely there these days what with various server moves and such so most of the images are gone but it was fun to look back at a few years of Linkage. Moving The Editblog over to PVC was a great decision. Besides gaining more readers it was a good opportunity to connect with other working bloggers and filmmakers and take my writing to the next level as well as find other opportunities to teach and further my post-production skills. I feel in the last couple of years I’ve dialed back the blogging partly due to increased workloads but partly out of general internet blogging frustration at the many click-bait churnalism websites that care only about quantity over quality and creating their content off the hard work of others.
Looking back over 10 years of blog posts I’m reminded of a different internet. YouTube and the iPhone were both alive but they hadn’t cemented themselves as the world-changers they are today. We had fast internet but not as fast as we have now. Not everyone had a blog and podcast and YouTube channel but now everyone has a blog, a podcast and a YouTube channel. We were all younger that’s for sure. Sit back, grab a beverage and let’s take a look back at 10 years of the Editblog on PVC which is also a look back at 10 years in editing post-production. What I consider to be seminal moments in post-production or VIBPs (very important blog posts IMHO) are in bold.
Before Adobe Premiere Rush and Premiere Elements, there was Adobe Premiere Express. And Billy Corgan editing for Hyundai.
Apple might have been working on storyboarding software.
To get cinematic images we used to hang these beast-of-a-rigs onto the front of DV cameras and attached cinema glass just to get a filmic look. And flip the images because they were upside down. And I used to shoot!
Early days editing RED’s R3D media was work. Sometimes a lot of work. And you sometimes had to use third-party utilities.
Avid introduced Avid Media Access as a way to bring media in Media Composer without having to transcode to an Avid media format. It really revolutionized how you could work with Avid though some editors never warmed up to.
Blu-ray was once an amazing and popular thing. But wasn’t always on a Mac. And never really came to the Mac.
Did you know that I was the person who originally put the Rough Cut Lady Song (and the Impossible Promo Approval Guy) onto YouTube? It’s been ripped off many times.
The original 28 Days of Quicktips ended on March 1, 2009 and was about Final Cut Pro 7.
My Keyboard Manifesto asked editors to consider changing the default NLE keyboard layout.
I won’t claim to have gotten a bunch of editors using Twitter but I did get some editors using Twitter. A decade later many of us are still there.
Switching between NLEs has always been a thing for many of us freelance editors. It kind of became my thing over the years on the interwebs and at conferences.
The iPhone used to not be able to edit video. It could trim video, but not edit it. (Sorry for the missing images in this old post.)
Super LoiLoScope did not end up being the future of video editing.
You can refuse to do a freebie edit and not be a dick.
The last Final Cut Pro Classic update was to version 7. It was small, and little did we know it was Final Cut’s swansong.
Ahh CineForm. The codec that Adobe should have bought to make their own.
The original Tangent Wave brought an affordable color grading surface to the edit suite.
The original PluralEyes was amazing automagic the revolutionized syncing. mocha revolutionized tracking.
I had identified Dropbox as a quick way to make client screeners before the review and approval services really came into their own. Years later we’re still trying to get clients to use them.
The Editblog was a top 50 blog for moviemakers according to MovieMaker magazine once upon a time.
I hated the Final Cut Pro reconnection dance in 2010 and I still hate it today.
I believe this was one of the first live mulitcam concerts shot on the Canon 5D. It was a fun challenge.
I had my own how to get the most out of NAB post. Maybe one of the first ones, I don’t know.
Avid showed us web-based editing long before “the cloud” was all the rage.
Blackmagic Design shocked the post-production world when it acquired and introduced Resolve for cheap (and then free). But without editing. Boy how it has changed.
Get for Final Cut Pro was an amazing phonetic search for the NLE. The product never really went anywhere and died. Then kinda returned.
Resolve is our Alexa. This is an interesting read 10 years later.
We all have regrets. RIP Sally.
The first Christmas Gift Ideas for the Editor! There have been many.
There was a 2011 28 Days of Quicktips!
Baselight came to Final Cut Pro Classic. And then Media Composer. Still waiting for Premiere.
Final Cut Pro X was shown to an unsuspecting NAB in 2011. It’s funny to read my burning questions all these years later. 100 questions answered.
It’s hard to believe that Adobe Premiere Pro was once not a staple in the editing suite, with clients in the room. Sometimes you used it by necessity.
Years and years later this post about cleaning Adobe Media Cache files still gets good traffic. Perhaps Adobe should revamp the media cache.
I’m still waiting on a true iPad companion editor application to really supplement traditional desktop NLEs. TouchEdit never really took off.
CRTL+Console was the first attempt at an iPad app to make something unique for editors. PROCUTX kinda sucked.
The Mac Pro trashcan really does now seem like a lifetime ago.
There really were some advantages to digitizing from videotape.
Adobe took all their apps to the cloud. Opinions were divided. The Creative Cloud go down in the past.
I still think these companion articles about taking an edit to color grading are the best primers for this task.
The Southeast Creative Summit was a great conference. One and done.
Adobe Anywhere was going to change the editing world with real cloud-based editing. It did not.
Avid finally killed the Avid|DS. Either RIP or good riddance depending on your POV.
Did you know Technicolor used to have their own color grading app called Color Assist?
If you use hard drive docking stations you might want to learn more about them.
We were amazed at the Thunderbolt connection when it came along for our hard drives.
We have had Dynamic Trimming discussions for years now.
I still miss most of these features from Final Cut Pro 7 Classic.
Many of us tried to get every last ounce of power out of the old cheesegrater Mac Pro tower.
We did a #28daysofQuickTips in 2015!
It’s not all editing software. How about a sitting thing review and a standing thing review and a mousing thing review 2015.
This was a nice discussion about whether editors prefer more shorter clips or less longer clips.
And also a nice discussion about an editor being defined by the tools they use. Some are.
Adobe has incorporated some of these 4 things I wrote about that could take Premiere to the next level.
I never really got a notepad built into my NLEs. RIP Postnotes.
Prime Now was once a novelty and now it’s just a normal thing.
We at the Nashville Filmmakers Guild once hosted the Great NLE Debate!
I still love the simple, little Tangent Ripple.
I did an article about a video editing go-bag back in 2015 and it’s been ripped off by other blogs many times since.
Boris bought GenArts and at that point owned tons of post-production stuff.
The seeds of CommandPost were planted.
My NLE buyers guide has also been ripped off by countless other blogs too.
Final Cut Pro X 10.3 was a big update.
A free Media Composer was announced and it finally shipped.
Magix bought VEGAS Pro from Sony and people do actually use it.
If you don’t know the add edit – step through technique for multicam editing you should.
I don’t think Apple is ever going to create an XML utility to extract sequences from an old FCP Classic project.
There are still editors cutting on Lightworks.
We had #28daysofQuickTips again in 2018.
The Sensel Morph is a cool hardware tool they tried to fit into video editing.
I get a lot of questions and comments about how I edited a feature doc in Premiere with zero crashes
Which non-linear editing application should a graduating high school senior be certified for? This was yet another interesting discussion that had its genesis in Twitter.
Hell froze over when Adobe released ProRes encoding on Windows.
The Frame.io workflow guide is bookmark worthy.
If you ever need to rent a computer for editing this is a good way to go.
The Resolve Editor Keyboard is a pretty big deal for editors as it wasn’t a small investment for Blackmagic to make.
That’s it! Here’s to another decade and a Happy New Year.