Is nonlinear editing all it’s cracked up to be? Has it finally arrived? What can you get for your money? Let’s go beyond the marketing hype surrounding nonlinear editing, and examine its real world advantages and disadvantages. Along the way, we’ll assess the benefits of all those reels of linear tape we leave behind.

"Hey!" shouted producer Dave Riggs to his colleagues. "This is crazy! Let’s sell all this linear tape stuff while there’s still somebody stupid enough to buy it!" He was convinced. The Los Angeles-based Emmy- and Clio-award-winning producer noticed that ever since he’d installed a nonlinear editing system, his world had changed. Take heed: his is but a microcosm of our world, where in just a few short years the tools of the video trade have changed from spinning reels and rows of backlit buttons to quiet mouse clicks and expanses of timelines stretched across computer screens.

Yes, It Has Arrived
In the evolution of video production, nonlinear editing is primed for success. With its ability to flex at a moment’s notice, drag shots from the end of a segment to the beginning and back again in an instant, and spit out multiple versions of a project, it begs for experimentation. The truly creative souls are set free. There’s no more dubbing from one reel to the next. No more re-doing an entire layered composition because layer twelve doesn’t look quite right. That’s because nothing is actually recorded. Now we’re just moving around pointers -- looking down at a repository of footage waiting on a hard disk for instant recall. It all happens so quickly, nonlinear editing is bound to be successful in a climate where time is literally money.

But not so fast. All that footage must be captured, right? And that takes time. Well, that’s not really a problem, either. "It’s like looking at dailies – that has to be done sometime," said Steve McCoy of Filmcore Editorial in Hollywood. "Capturing happens in real time as the footage is transferred to disk. Might as well use that time to size up the shots you’ll be working with," McCoy added. The truth is, it’s hard to find weakness in this new way of doing things.

We’re Staying Right Here
But still, some have made a conscious decision not to edit their masterpieces with nonlinear systems. One notable example is famed producer of the PBS series, The Civil War, Ken Burns. After he finished production of his epic documentary, Baseball, I presumptuously asked him which system he used to offline the series. Not surprisingly, his response was simple and straightforward. "I don’t offline. I’m a filmmaker." Perhaps he’s one who doesn’t need nonlinear technology to get his point across, avoiding video altogether. Others are still trying to fully tap the usefulness of linear systems they purchased earlier this decade before relegating it all to the junk heap. "The only people who are telling you that you should master in a linear suite instead of a digital system are those who are still making payments on a linear suite," said producer Dave Riggs. Others see a cost effective benefit in traditional video tape for archival purposes. And, older machines will be used well into the next century for playing back legacy tapes. PBS Emmy-winning editor Henry Reed notes that "we currently have approximately 10,000 video tapes in our storage facility. That’d take up a whole lot of space on a video server. Plus, you can grab one of those babies off the shelf and ship it off to somebody. For incredibly large archival storage, videotape still does this very nicely and cost effectively." Masterpieces will still be done on videotape. Some filmmakers will still avoid video entirely. Miles of footage will continue to be stored on videotape until it turns to dust. Valid reasons on all counts to keep tape around, but these are special, isolated cases. Overall, videotape is doomed to die a slow death.

However, there’s no ill will on the part of those who haven’t made the jump to the digital video universe. In fact, now we’re seeing lots of what might be called mouse-envy. Across the board, editors are requesting that nonlinear items be put into the next year’s budget. And, with hybrid systems like the FAST Video Machine in which videotape and hard disks co-exist side-by-side, the transition will prove to be smoother that you might have expected. This is a concept that’s welcomed by the huge army of wise, seasoned linear editors. "A high-end linear editing system is what we have here now, and we're trying to do the best job we can with the equipment on hand," says Reed. "That's what we have now. What I'd really want would be a combination of digital and analog. We’re looking forward to a future with systems that are a combination of linear and nonlinear."

For those who decide to make that jump into digital editing now, though, oftentimes expectations are beyond that which their pocketbooks can handle. As in any other pursuit, the dream of complete editing freedom is fleeting as the price tag descends. For example, according to almost every purveyor of NL gear, everything’s "real time". Keep this in mind: Real time in the $10K range (price of a complete system) is not referring to layering of three moving video sources over each other. If you want to do that, you’ll be staring at that old nemesis, the render thermometer. Only when you get into the high end systems like the million-dollar Quantel Henry will you be able to put together an eight layer composition and watch it all play back instantly. Some systems like the Accom StrataSphere ($40K) have struck a compromise here, allowing you to construct a heavily layered effect and then look at individual frames for evaluation. The strength of the StrataSphere is its ability to put together that fifty-layer monster in one pass, so you can look at all those layers together in one frame. Then, you can see it play back after it renders. If you're not happy with, say, layer 32, you're still able to go back and change that layer without destroying any of the others. But, alas, you’ll still have to render the segment again if you’ve made changes.

Making the Jump: How Does It Feel?
Here’s an ironic twist: Some customers decry the freedom nonlinear editing brings to their productions. Chris Speer’s New Media Hollywood supplies nonlinear equipment to the stars. He remembers one customer who wished his production could have been carved in stone: "An editor was dismayed that it was almost air time, and the Executive Producer and others were still making changes to his show. They were altering segments, moving shots around, on a daily basis. The editor’s finely-tuned structure had taken weeks to develop. You could never make these changes in a linear environment." This kind of situation illustrates that sometimes too much freedom can be a bad thing. But it also makes a point in favor of the power of instant revisions. The perception that everything is easily altered allows an inexperienced editor, like an Executive Producer, to take the job away from more skilled editors. "Actually, this kind of thing happens a lot," said Speer. "After a four-hour training session with an Avid Media Composer, you can cut a show together yourself." But, perhaps nonlinear editing is lot like playing the saxophone: Anyone can do it ... badly.

Another area of disappointment with nonlinear editing is in a fast-paced news shop. Here’s an environment where footage is gathered on analog media, most commonly, BetaCam. Digitize? Huh? When you have a 6 o’clock newscast, and you’ve arrived at the edit bay at 5:55 with a story that needs to be on the air five minutes later, you’re not going to want to digitize the footage before you begin. And, unless you’re going to play back the finished product directly from your workstation to air, you’ll need to spool the video back to tape again. That won’t work. In this situation, it’s time to rock and roll, slap the tapes in and string shots together as quickly as possible. There’s no time to do anything twice. However, this scenario will change as soon as the entire production pipeline is digital, a process that’s becoming more prevalent with the digital tape acquisition formats like miniDV. Using FireWire technology, the shots can be digitally transferred from camera to air master, with no digitizing required. This is where the full benefit of digital video production can be realized.

For you to start realizing the joys of nonlinear editing, be careful when you’re selecting your DV equipment. It’s yet another area where you’ll get what you pay for, especially at the low end. "For a few hundred bucks, you might get surprisingly good capture quality. But once you load editing applications like Adobe Premiere, in:sync Speed Razor or Avid Xpress on your system, you add to the potential for problems," said Speer of New Media Hollywood. "Although it’s much easier to build a system now than it was four years ago, if you choose a video capture card and marry it with your choice of software into a computer of your choice, and if your drives aren’t fast enough, you’ll drop frames." Guys like Speer know where all the bottlenecks are. Using their expertise can save you lots of money in the long run. There are too many hardware variables, especially on the PC platform, to make putting together your own system a risk-free proposition. For that reason, experts advise that you buy a turnkey system, where every component is tested with every other, and all are proven to be compatible.

How Much Will It Cost?
As a general rule, prices have been in freefall for nonlinear editing systems. The latest salvo in this price war is Matrox's DV2000, giving you real time effects and titles with a DV interface for less than $1300. That's just the beginning, too. Expect to see a slew of competitors coming out of the woodwork to match this one.

But still, to make a living, Speer estimates you’ll need to spend around $20,000 for a midrange system like a $20K Media 100 Finish V80 or Avid Xpress 2.0. For around $30-40K, expect full broadcast quality and lots of real time effects. See our Nonlinear Editing Buyer's Guide for a more complete rundown on products and prices.

Above all, talk to people who already own and use the exact system you’re planning to buy. Look closely at the video quality that’s generated by that system. Charles McConathy is President of ProMax Systems, a systems integrator that carries a lot of weight in the Mac world of digital video. He has strong opinions about these systems, and won’t sell a configured system unless he’s sure it will function as advertised. "When you do video, do it right or don’t do it," explains McConathy. "If it’s too expensive for you, if you can’t pay for it, back off and wait until you can." He’s not too impressed with the low end of digital video, either. "Those cheap cards don’t work. There are just not enough components on the cards to get the job done. There’s no buffer space. The quality of the compression processors is very low." He’s convinced that we’re all very sensitive to video quality. "When you play back footage from your Hi8 camera, the quality is pretty good. Then, when you’d like to edit that video, and your final product is not at least that good, you won’t be happy with it. Your eyes are tuned to quality." Don’t be surprised if you’re not satisfied with the results of the lower-priced capture cards. And, McConathy is also sold on the idea of a system in which all the components are matched specifically to each other. "You’ll spend a lot of time making an old computer work. Most of the time, it’s just not worth it. The best way to go is with a turnkey system if budget will allow, or at least qualify your configuration, be that analog DV or digital DV. It’s like plumbing—you have to locate those bottlenecks, and sometimes they’re hard to find."

Beyond the Hype
No machine can improve the quality of your ideas. Even though all the attention is focused on these delightful pieces of technology, there are many thoughtful producers and editors who are more concerned with the message than the medium. Says PBS editor Henry Reed, "It doesn't make any difference what you're recording on. The quality of the images, and the relationship of those images to each other is what's really important. If there's a system that'll let me edit faster, great. But I'm thinking more about content, not technology." However, many video artists are in a struggle to discover exactly what kind of creators they are, with nonlinear editing technology playing the role of facilitator, not dictator. As the technology progresses, faster system speed enables users who were once only editors to become compositors of elaborate collages that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago, on any system. Says digi-guru Bob Doyle, "The great democratization is underway. Are you an editor telling a time story, or a graphic artist depicting an instant in time? There was an era when anything that moved was not considered art. ‘But wait,’ the ancients reasoned, ‘music is art -- and it uses time.’ There was a great discovery: Art can be moving! So now this philosophical construct is playing itself out." Art moves. We’re artists. Digital video makes it easier for us to express ourselves artistically, in ways that weren’t possible with older technology. As long as we don’t get lost in the bits and bytes, and keep our eyes on the content and originality of our work, the equipment will be our servant, and not our master.

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Charlie White has been writing about digital video editing since it was the laughingstock of the post-production industry. He's an Emmy award-winning producer and director for PBS, and producer of this Web site. Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.