Hiyah! In the old days of Reel to Reel type of editing, videographers used to use this "linear" workflow. All footage would be marked up so that if you wanted to get to a section 1hr and 30 seconds in you would have to reel forward to that point. Get what you wanted and then either reel back or onto another recording deck to dump what you had got hold of. But, you would have to do a lot of scanning backwards and forwards "linear" running of tape. Much the same as when real film is edited. I'm sure others will embellish what I'm saying, but that's the essence of "linear". Now, we are more fortunate because we don't have to run backwards and forwards through huge miles of footage to get to where we want to get to. We put all our footage onto a hard disc and we have almost "instant" access to where ever we want to get to and to be able to copy/paste/cut etc etc without the necessity to do all this "linear" activity. That's how I understand it.

Now none of this should be confused with the final product. That is we all end up with . . as far as I know . . with a video that starts, has a middle then it ends. That's a linear narrative. Some people do get confused with appreciating the difference. But that's the actual finished product. Both NLEs and LEs end up with a long string of clips, strung out in a linear fashion - one after the other . . .

NLE - Can very easily physically edit out of capture footage sequence

LE - Cannot very easily edit out of captured footage sequence

Now, the interesting philosophical point here is : Has NLE activity actually produced - I wont say "better" - different way filmmakers and scriptwriters approach an idea? Or,again, has NLE ways of working "film" had a feedback to how filmmakers or creatives now think in terms of film making? - I'm not talking just in terms of ease ect, but has there been a radical shifting of the centre of filmmaking. Of course - and it wasn't always the case - NLE costs have plummeted. Hardware, s/w and the peripherals to NLE have tumbled in prices even in the short 2 years I've been involved in this malarkey. Maybe this has allowed many more individuals to get involved and express themselves through film/video . . yes, this will have widened the base of experience and experiences. I'm not talking about this. I'm talking about, has the actual essence of filmmaking been changed as a result of the NLE approach? . . Any takers on this one? . . 'Cos, after all is said and done, LE and NLE is really about the same thing: Getting a cogent and captivating story out to others . . well mostly it's about that anyway.

Interesting question: LINEAR . . . . . and oh yes it wasn't a question was it? All you said was linear in your post title . . . you just threw out that line and reeled me in ;-)

Cheers,

Grazie

It is so late here and I have been editing all day...but I will try to give this a go.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc - linear. Mostly in reguards to tape based editing because you have to run through the entire tape to get what you want. This does not really apply to motion picutre film because 1> you can print select takes and 2> you break down the dailies into senes and takes and hang them in the bin.

NLE sort of kind of started off to be a 'best of both worlds' type of scenario. Another way to think of this is that non-time coded tape based editing is NLE. This is just a concept - not meant to be argued. :) See, if you wanted to do an online session you needed an EDL thusly you needed to start off with a tape that had time code on it. This allows for deck control and 'frame accurate' editing. It also allows for more complex A/B/C editing. If you don't have the TC than you are using deck control only and guess-ti-mating your ins and outs. So the concept is that TC/Online would be linear and no TC/Offline would be Non-Linear. Again, moving that between the film world and video world and *than* tossing into the computer world - you ended up with NLE. And also you had products that were "offline" and "online" - "D/Vision Online" was just that - it allowed you to offline your edit and than dump out an EDL and with the "online" option you had access to deck control for your mastering.

Audio is an entirely different boat. That you think of Vegas, not as an NLE, but as a DAW. At least that makes a lot more sense. Maybe we need to start calling things like Prmeiere, Avid Xpress, Edit and so on "DVW" and not "NLE" Hmmmm....

Like I said - it is late. Excuse the ramble. :)

Oh, and Grazie - Editing has always been, and always will be, a creative means of expressing ones self. the same way photograpgy, videography, cinematography and music are. And pretty much anything else you can think of arts related. The means to do it have grown and even changed somewhat but the core of being creaitve is exactly the same. If anything the world is more accesable. We can turn on CNN and watch live coverage of a war as it happens. We can buy a new PC and if you have XP and a mini-dv camcorder you can pretty much start making a movie. The truth is out there.

>If VV is non-linear editing system, what is a linear editing system ?<

Let's see if I can be more concise than my colleagues.

If you are working with tape, to get from point A to point C, you are going to have to go through point B one way or another (it is linear). Non-linear lets you go directly from point A to point C.

BTW, there was non-linear editing since the late 19th century....film!

Gary

Linear really is not related to how you access the material (that is called Random Access) but how you assemble the material.

In a tape edit situation, you use either 2 or 3 tape machines. One is a recorder, and the other two are playback. You have to start editing from the beginning of the program. You edit scene one and then scene two, etc. Now if you want to insert a scene between scene 1 and 2, you cannot just open up the timeline. You have to either reedit scene 2 after inserting the new scene, or make the record tape into a playback tape, and re-rrecord scene 1 from the tape, insert your new scene and then re-record scene 2. And this has to be done in REAL TIME or less. You can't just copy a file.

Linear is basically from beginning to ending. Now you can use Linear Style editing in a Non-Linear system and probably most people do. Few people edit the middle of a show before they edit the beginning, but in professional situations, such as movies, tv programs etc, this is quite common.

Another way to think of it is a mechanical typwriter vs. a word processor. On a typewriter, if you decide to add a paragraph, you have to start again sometimes, on a word processor you just insert and everything is rippled.

Apparently, no one has been able to give you the definitive answer, possibly because they are all too young.

The technically and historically correct answer (ca 1984) is: two VTR's, a TV, a BetaMax, and a Multiplexer (and if you don't know what those are, you're too young to be asking!). Do you agree, Spot?

Grazie,
in general the answer to your question is NO. A story still needs to be told in a linear fashion. It can have many threads but basically it still flows the same way as that thing that drives everything in the universe, time.

Certainly advances in technology have made it easier to tell the story through sounds and images, are we getting better at doing that, I doubt it. We've really being doing that for thousands of years. Sure more of us are able to get our story seen by more people than ever before, that doesn't make the stories better told.

The other thing I find kind of curious is hardly anyone here talks about editing. After all editing is a very small part of the process, how many can remember the last person to win an Oscar for editing?
What defines good editing and what is bad editing?
I've read only one relevant comment by a cinematographer when he said he likes to shoot a certain way to give the editor more to work with.
I can see how lighting, camera angles, music and all the other things we talk about here help tell the story but what about the editing?

farss - I agree.

Of course my question was rhetorical. I was hoping that it would be picked up, and that the whole question of storytelling would be aired and that the actual "linear" thing, in essence, is a bit of a red herring. Thanks for "moving" this along.

And yes, I find the conversations here "appear" to leave out the actual aesthetics and value of the editing process. I suppose that's not so strange as this is a technical support forum for an NLE called Vegas. Should this, is this the appropriate place for the debating the "value" of editing, and what it gives to film-making? Probably not. But hey, why not? Let's break the mould here . . .

The other major drawback is the actual nature of the media. It isn't about words, it's about film. One of the forums that gets nearest to what we are talking about is over on Chienworks site where Vegas users can "post" their creations and invite feedback to their work. - I like this site. Seeing examples and then posting a comment I find very valuable. Apart from anything else it helps me to "consolidate" what my thoughts are about my own film/edit activity.

I'm happy to continue here speaking with you . . I like doing this - HAH! But maybe you might want to start a fresh thread under something you feel would generate the necessary interest. - I believe Sony-Vegas would love to observe such a thread. It would identify how people are serious about their work and what Vegas lends to the whole process - yeah?

Best regards,

Grazie