In Final Cut Pro, why is the timeline window…or PROGRAM monitor if you want to get into TV terms…called the CANVAS? Is it because Apple wants us to think that what we are editing is some form of art? That we are painting on our canvas with video? Each brush stroke is a clip that we add to the timeline?

I guess that we all strive to be making art, but considering some of the things I have edited, I’m not sure they would be anything resembling art. Real estate videos showcasing a home, an actor’s demo reel, a 3 hour conference on the manufacturing process of microchip wafers. Nope…I don’t see the art there.

What’s wrong with SOURCE and RECORD? PREVIEW and PROGRAM? I mean, this is a professional application, right? Or did Apple just think that the main bulk of people using this wouldn’t get the terminology? Viewer I can see. It is the window you use to VIEW the footage you have. But CANVAS?

Oh…wait. Right. This is the same company that calls movement on stills the “Ken Burns Effect,” even though the guy didn’t invent it, nor perfect it. He just used it to bore us to tears watching his loooooong documentaries. OK, fine, I liked BASEBALL…but I am a little urked that Apple attributed that practice to a person who didn’t create it. I always called it MOTION CONTROL…because we did it on motion control platters with a camera pointed straight down on it. Or before that we put the pictures on a music stand and did the moves manually with a camera. Didn’t call it anything other than Move on Stills.

Sorry…pardon my ranting. It is late on a Friday night…I am STILL at work, and on my third attempt to output the Fine Cut of my show. The first two passes I found sections I forgot to address…one 15 minutes in and the other 22 minutes in.

Man, I got to write more about my day to day trials and tribulations. Sorry that I haven’t. Kinda got away from the original intention of this blog.