For the people who grew up in the non-linear era with Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro, we’re a little spoiled. Actually, a lot spoiled. We can edit something from beginning to end on our computers and not really give that much thought to the process going on underneath the hood.
That wasn’t the case before, and still isn’t the case in many production environments. You see, more often than not, we modern editors are doing something without even noticing: we’re combining offline and online editing. Essentially, it used to be that you captured much smaller, lower quality versions of files, and edited those. That was offline. Then, you’d send your edit to another department (or do it yourself) and they would do the online editing, meaning they would put in the full quality files from the source tapes, color correct, etc.
Now, you probably capture at full HD and edit at full HD because our computers can handle it. It’s simpler, and for a smaller operation, it makes sense.
But even though we’re editing in different ways, the fundamentals under the hood are still the same.
