Fear of presents

[gwyn]

I have to sign checks for my dad when he takes out huge chunks o' Benjamins from his retirement account because I'm in charge of his finances and I asked him why he was getting rich so suddenly the other night. He said, "I have two daughters' birthdays coming up and Christmas" and so now I'm figuring that he'll probably give me a hefty chunk of that cash as my birthday-winter shopping festival gift like he always does, because nothing says I love you to my dad like dollar bills -- and he'd always prefer not to actually *say* I love you. And I've been planning that I would buy Final Cut Express, so even though I thought I might make a vid after a long time of not wanting to, I realized that it would be stupid to start with the b-day coming up soon and FCE likely to be in my grubby mitts soon.

But now I'm in a total tizzy -- I stopped at the Apple store the other night and tried to play with it a little and I. Am. Completely. Freaked. Out. There's no way I can use this kind of program! iMovie was made for maroons like me. I can barely figure out how to use iMovie for god's sake. I didn't understand any of it, least of all how to import clips -- with iMovie you point at a button and go click and it puts it right there in a nice little section of the window and you can see the clip and everything is hunky dory for a stupid person. Stupid people like things they can see -- witness Denny's and IHOP menus, witness Ikea furniture instruction booklets where the text is tiny and the pictures are huge. Stupid people NEED to have everything spelled out for them and visually prepared for them. We are the people for whom peanut packages have warnings printed on them that say, "May contain peanuts."

All these people are like, oh Final Cut, it's so easy. Bitches! Arrogant smart competent bitches! People who get computer programs should never ever be allowed to say shit like that. And I have no idea how I can learn to do this in time for Escapade -- at first I thought I should do my LFN vid, but then I thought, eh, I have to do that vid for the con and who knows what the deadline will be this year (I sure don't! So much for being on the vid com!), so I better get cracking. But OMG the anguish.

Last year my dad bought me a camcorder with passthrough so I could finally hook all my shit up and run my tapes through to the computer. Loved it, but there're still tons of features on the camcorder that I cannot figure out and so it sits here, an extremely lovely, modern, multifunctional toy that essentially does nothing more than hook up my VCR and DVD player to my computer for vidding. I haven't turned it on in months.

I want to be able to do more with my vids than I can. I'm tired of always being unable to do the things I see in my head (of course, when I do do the things I see in my head, like in Valentine Heart, people think they're mistakes and they are all messed up on the TV screen because iDVD can't handle them) after years of working on VCRs. But Final Cut Express is scary. I wouldn't even want to touch Pro at this point. They don't even have any good books at the library about the newer edition, and these days manuals are pretty much useless "help" files.

I really want this present, but I don't want it at the same time. I want to vid what I imagine in my mind, but... I don't know if I can ever learn to use this scary program. Skeeeeery. I am skeered.

Comments

[ladywenham.livejournal.com]

>>I really want this present, but I don't want it at the same time.

I say go for it. I bet you'll get the hang of the program before you know it. (Though I might just be a little selfish because I like videos.) ;)

[minim_calibre]

I'll check my FCE manual and see if it's useless or helpful...

I bought it intending to make vids, but have somehow never managed to have the time to actually sit down and hammer out program use.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I found the transition from VCRs to iMovie fairly... well, not easy necessarily, but relatively painless in that it was so mom and pop I could poke around without a lot of confusion. But FCE is so effing complicated. The more of any one thing you have, the more dangerous for people like me!

[just-eunice.livejournal.com]

http://www.cmpbooks.com/product/1286

This looks like a good bet, in that it includes step by step tutorials, and it even includes a DVD video presentation designed for transitioning iMovie users .

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I second this book. good for transitioning to FCE.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, rats, it's $30 bucks... gar. Since I'l probably have to put up some of the moolah for the FCE I doubt books are in the offing (I really don't have the money for anything, let alone books!). Of course, there are tons of Premier editing tutorials at the library... but everyone knows that no one uses Macs, so why get books about editing on Mac programs? ::snarly face::

Well, hopefully I can get something out of the "help" manuals. If I can understand what they're saying!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

It is on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/157820223X/ref=pd_rvi_1/102-7597474-2546508?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

check your e-mail.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Tsk. You should SO not have done that! But I thank you -- more thanks forthcoming privately.

And probably like a flood of emails when I go Waaaahhhhh! if I try to learn it.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

LOL, let the flood come. I am so right there with you on DVD Studio Pro.

On FCE, I've started scrawling tips on index cards. It helps me remember some of the nuances. But for me, the best way to go was the tutorial DVDs and watching Laura.

I've just started Final Cut Pro so another learning curve for me.

[sweet-ali.livejournal.com]

All these people are like, oh Final Cut, it's so easy. Bitches! Arrogant smart competent bitches!

Ha! Exactly. I had to use it and i tried to figure it all on my own and simply ended with a large headache and a big mess. I sucked it up and asked my arrogant smart competent bitch friend who sat beside me and walked me through it. And honestly? I still am really not all that good at it. Blah :(

As far as the present, i say go for it. Jump on in that cold scary water.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

That's the worst part -- everyone I know who uses a Mac and the editing programs are in different cities. Be a piece of cake to learn if I had any friends in town who aren't Premier users! Stupid Windows.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

I'm teaching myself Pro right now. The manuals (there are three) for FCP are incredibly helpful, which is good because I'm completely lost. Completely. I imagine the Express manual(s) will be the same.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Auuugggh... this does not bode well!

Hey, I didn't realize you were a FC user, and therefore a Mac person? If you are, maybe I could pick your brain sometime? I'd still love to meet up and all, and maybe this way I could get the lowdown from someone who seems to have had some experience with this...

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

I actually am/was a PC user whose been vidding solely on Premiere. However, I've recently (i.e., last week) made a switch to Mac and got FCP. So I'm trying to learn the Mac and the program. And the hard thing about FCP right now is that I know how to use Premiere and the way Premiere did things, and I can't quite figure them out in FCP, so I know things exist but don't know how to do them and it's really frustrating.

Anyhow, I would like to get together and talk to you about it nonetheless. I'm subjecting myself to 15 days of unrestricted messing around in December and I'm hoping to come out the other side with some new tricks and, you know, knowledge. Heh. We'll have to work something out.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. felt the same way with I first got my FCE. And I had watched Laura make an entire vid before I bought my own.

What I really want you to do, is for you to come down here, and we'll vid for a weekend. give you some hands on experience.

then when you go home & open your FCE, you can panic just like I did. :-)


And if it maks you feel any better - I cannot figure out DVD Studio Pro. There is Killa sending helpful little messages to me - and it is like it is a foreign language and I want to hurl the software through the window (but then I might scare the squirrels). And the manuals are like some fucking foreign code that is Russian based, but I know it was written by some sick geek who is even now secretly laughing at me......

S says I am losing it. I will now go and bury my head in a Vin Diesel movie marathon.....

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I hope the Vin marathon was good! Yummy.

I just am not a good computer program person. I can understand basic concepts, but I cannot troubleshoot and I cannot figure out how to set things up and I don't understand the terms.

I wish I could afford the trip down -- but as it is, I'll have to pony up some of the money for the program, plus I need to go down and see the sis soon, I think.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Darn. I'm on Premiere Pro and I can't help you. :(

I will say this. The reason most help guides don't help is because they tell you what to do for steps five through ten when you still don't know how to do steps one through five because they assume you've figured those out on your own.

I'm guessing, from your assessment of your own personality, that you opened up FCE and thought to yourself, "What button do I need to click on?" What no one tells you is that this is the wrong question to be asking yourself. You should be asking, "What does this button do?"

Honestly, that's how I figured out Premiere. I just clicked on shit. Anything that looked even remotely like a tab or a button got clicked on or double clicked or right clicked. If nothing happened, I assumed I needed to click on something else first in order for something to happen. Or, as permetaform would say, I'm a red button person. I see a red button, I push it. I wasn't looking to do something specific, and I think that's probably why you're not getting anywhere -- because you're looking to do something specific.

Most help guides assume that you're already familiar with the program. The only way to get familiar with a program is to poke at it randomly until it moves.

If you wonder why some people "get" technology, really, it's just that we have hyperactive clicker fingers.

I don't know if that helps at all. I think laurashapiro might have FCE. You might ask her for help.



*hugs* Good luck with figuring it out.

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's how I figured out Premiere. I just clicked on shit.

That's how I figured out *everything* on computers, from Windows to Word to Photoshop. I've rarely taken tips from people and learned a new skill by being told how to do it. Most of what I know, I know from dicking around.

Case in point: I learned how to operate the clone tool in P-shop on a Mac by hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard. It's not that much of a stretch from P-shop on a PC...but the point is, trial and error does the trick.

That, and I've been using P-shop since about 1998. I'm still constantly reminded how not hot my shit is. Complicated programs take a lot of time, patience, and practice to learn, especially if one is self-taught.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I get the poking thing, I do, but... I'm one of those people who learns in different ways. I mean, I learn best by about three different methods, together: having someone who can walk me through things for explanation and briefing; hands-on experience with them nearby to walk me through problems; and poking/reading the f***ing manual.

I've taught myself programs over the years that were tough to learn, but they resulted in physical damage to furniture. Somewhere there's a desk in a north Seattle office building with a hole in the side from where I kicked my foot through it. FCE is compounded by the fact that computer programs call stuff wrong -- all these dumbass terms they came up with that have no relation to their proper film terms, where my background is (cross fade especially makes me nuts, since that's a music editing term, not a film term, applied to the act of creating a dissolve) and so my brain spazzes out at just trying to figure out what the hell any of it actually is.

Plus it's just intimidating looking. I've never been able to understand photoshop. Ever. And this reminds me too much of that. I can't troubleshoot computers, never have been able to, so I'm completely freaked out by the stuff that can go wrong.

I wish I felt comfortable poking around, but I don't, especially with a timeline looming ahead of me... I doubt there's any way I'd be able to make a vid on this and learn it at the same time in such a short span... Arg!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Lierdumoa is right - clicking on shit is the way to go. I started in one corner and worked my way across. some of is it obvious - others not. But like the first time you vidded on a VCR, it'll help having someone there to show you as you go along.

[ascian3.livejournal.com]

Final Cut Pro is pretty deep, but (unlike Premiere) most of the things it does and the way it does them make sense. Premiere is old, and has suffered too many years of development via a sort of mulching process... something things need to be torn down and built fresh.

It comes with pretty decent manuals (so long as you're looking stuff up and not trying to learn from scratch) and I think there are tutorials. If not with it, then certainly floating around online, and in books, which would be a worthwhile investment if you can find a good one. But you should do the tutorials, because even if they're stupid and boring, it will still get you used to the tools. I say this as someone who very sincerely believes that they *are* stupid and boring, but in this case, it really is a good idea.

You'll like it, once you get used to it.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll have to go through the tutorials because there really isn't anyone here I can learn from, which is how I like to start out (I find it works best for me when I have printed resources and someone to walk with me through hands-on learning). The iMovie and iDVD tutorials were okay, but I found out later that there was some info in the tutorials I could never access again in the help files -- it only existed in the tutorials. Which makes it really hard for me since there's way more info in FCE than in those programs!

I'm not so sure about liking it or getting used to it, though! I mean, I like being able to work on a computer now and vidding is a better process for me this way, but it still reduces me to tears trying to figure things out. That part only seems destined to get worse!

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

If you are a dumb person, I give up on the rest of us. *g*

If Morgan is up for a vidding weekend, go for it! You do not have to know how to use everything in FCE to vid with it. I've been using FCP since January of 2000, and I still don't know what half the stuff is. *g*

of course, when I do do the things I see in my head, like in Valentine Heart, people think they're mistakes and they are all messed up on the TV screen because iDVD can't handle them

Hey, the good news is that FCP had a filter that fixed this, and I bet FCE has it, too. I ran it on the vid for the VVC dvds and bye bye flicker. (The filter is helpfully called Flicker Filter... why they didn't call it DeFlicker Filter, we should probably not bother asking.)

*hugs*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Hey, if anyone would know just how stupid I really am, it would be you, since you have to answer my questions all the time! I had a hard enough time the past couple years just trying to reorient myself and deal with all these newfangled issues (that whole separating your files into MPEGs for the cons, and so on) that I simply don't understand that adding even more confusion with a complex program just scares the crap out of me.

I wish I could fly to San Jose, but I don't think it's gonna happen -- I'm on my own, which is always dangerous!

[sleipnirrr.livejournal.com]

iMovie drives me batty, while FCP (and FCE) make sense to me. Go figure. I'm just too used to the other way of doing it (I've worked on digital NLE systems since '92 or so)

FCE really is easy, if you ignore the extraneous stuff.

1. Import a clip and double click it
2. Set your in and out point
3. Drag from the input window to the output window. It will ask if you want a transition, and apply it automatically if so.

By that point you're already up to (and beyond) iMovie territory, and the rest is gravy. The gravy is really, really good, and worth the time to figure out - but that can all be done at leisure once you get the actual cutting technique down.

I can vouch that the FC Pro manuals are very good, and they start from zero. I've played a bit with FCE, but haven't seen the manuals; I assume they'd have all the beginner stuff from FCP since they already wrote it. Apple wants people to be successful at making vids, because it sells Macs.

Growth is pain. Go for it. :-)

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

I am working on my frist actual vid in Final Cut after working on Premiere. It's making me nuts. I can see that it is a much better program, but I am just NOT used to the defaults of the way everything works. I keep accidentally screwing up the timing of everything else when I change something from the beginning. Urgh!

[barkley.livejournal.com]

I will not tell a lie. *g* It was frustrating to learn FCE. By that time I'd been working on iMovie for two years, and I knew how to do things, and then all of a sudden, I didn't.

However, the DVD tutorial they include? Worth your weight in gold to watch it before the hair tearing part starts. I was stubborn and didn't do so. Hence, hair tearing. Don't be stubborn! Don't be over excited! Watch the tutorial first. *g*

It's not actually a difficult program once you get used to it. It's just making the adjustment from how iMovie does things that's the difficult part.

But if you take it slow. Import clips. Import a sound file. (if the clips are on your harddrive, it's as easy as clicking file->import->mygreatclip.dv)

Drag clips from browser(aka clip panel) to timeline(aka timeline).

Whoohoo! You are now the proud creator of a vid. (Yes, the timing will suck, but that's part two of the lesson. *g*)

I'd be happy to help. Morgandawn also had a webpage that I have bookmarked that talks about making the transition.