Yesterday the EDL turned up from Simon. Yes, nearly six weeks after April 25th. I’ll try importing it into Final Cut Pro at the weekend and conforming my rushes to it. It’s bound to be easy, isn’t it? Taking information from one editing program and importing it into another? Yes. Easy peasy.
Of course, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t actually possible.
Avid and Final Cut Pro both treat video clips differently. So, even though an EDL is simply a text file listing the start and stop points for each clip of video, FCP ignores that and starts every clip from exactly the same place.
“What does this mean?” I hear you cry. I’m glad you asked. The seven and a half minute film contains about 100 cuts. That means there are 100 different video chunks. And Final Cut Pro starts each of these chunks in exactly the same place when you use an EDL. “Yes, but What Does This Mean?” It means, dear friends, that the seven and a half minute film contains 100 identical clips when you use an EDL.
“Huh?” It means… that I have 100 clips and they are all showing black and silence, so I have seven and half minutes of black and silence instead of a movie using this method of working. “Oh!” Oh indeed. Next game is to digitise the VHS Simon sent me and match up his work, edit by edit. Actually, I only want to match up some of his work because there are places where I prefer my own cut.
Did any of this make any sense at all? Probably not. It’s a learning experience, I can tell you. And not every Apple product works straight out of the box.