[Frameworks] Linear film editing

[Dave Tetzlaff]

> I'm interested in 'linear film editing', as in cutting and splicing film at an edit bench or Steenbeck or however you do it.

That’s not linear editing. Physical film editing is non-linear, which means you can edit anywhere in the piece you want by winding the reels to that spot. Linear editing was how editing in VIDEO was performed pre-computerization. That is, you had to add each shot sequentially from beginning to to end, in that order, and once you got to, say, shot 5, you couldn’t go back and trim the cut between 1 and 2 without starting over.

Needless to say, linear editing is a pain in the ass, and anyone who had ever editied film found it extremely frustrating and limitiing. Thus non-linear video editing was invented by commercial filmmakers after video became integrated into feature film produstion via special effects and ‘workprinting’. For example, one of the earliest experimental systems, the Editdroid, was built by Lucasfilm in the early ‘80s. In fact, before the term ‘non-linear editing’ came into common use in the 1990s, these systems were called ‘electronic film editing’, because they gave editors working with video footage the same flexibility that physical film editing had always offered.

You have checked your definitions before creating your survey…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-linear_editing_system#History