Online Offline Editing

[Keviano]

Ccan someone explain online and offline editing to me? My advanced media teacher couldn't. Not really important I was just interested. Cheers

Regards
Keviano
ReelRaine Productions

[eddie]

As I understand this an online edit is an actual edit: You end up with a cut of the film.

An Offline edit is a list of the cuts that you want, but its not an actual film. You can then load the list into an edit suite along with your clips and leave it to run and render overnight.

My understanding is that Offline is quicker than online. But you will need the right equipment to make use of it.

[marti-c]

Offline editing is when you do an edit on a poor quality system. This usually uses thumbnail clips of low resoluton in order to get a list of all the in and out points that make up the film. This is called an "edit decision list" or EDL. The beauty of offline is that the hire of the machines are a lot cheaper than online.
Online editing is the machines you use once you have the EDL. These edit at full broadcast quality and are more expensive to hire. This is where you input the EDL and add effects /transitions etc. The finished product is then outputed to a tape that is acceptable for a TV company to show.
The point of offline /online system is that it can be a huge drain on budget resources to rent an online suit for lets say 8 weeks when you can go for the cheaper offline for 7 weeks and a expensive online for 1 week.
(with modern advances in computer technology, the gap between online and offine are closing and within a few years every non-linear editing suite will probably end up on-line. In fact some semi-pro home computer systems like the pinnacle dc30 are officially on-line suites)
hope this answers your question.

marti

[miker]

The way I define it is thus:

The off-line edit is where all the creative decisions are made.

The on-line is where all the buttons are pressed and it all comes together.

With NLE off-lining at lower quality isn't worth bothering with - I off-line at broadcast quality. On-line is then a matter of rendering to the 'final' piece.

HTH