Peter Wiggins decision to scale back posting.

I was shocked when I read the post on the front page that Peter Wiggans has decided to scale back posting articles. I had no idea it cost so much to run a website, this has been a great site be be a part of, if at times I have clashed with others.

I have tried over the last year or so to contact Peter with suggestions on how as the banner says "Aiming to be the number one Final Cut resource on the net", many many articles speak of collaboration, of how FCP X users have linked up and worked on a project when they are in different cities or countries.

I have clashed over the use of show reels, and how I feel they are not always the best vehicle to find work with, that set off a deluge of users posting show reels, to try and prove me wrong..I still believe that there are other ways to link up, without the use of show reels, I could post a 10 000 word essay on the disadvantages of show reels, or demo reels.

So how is FCP.co to be number 1? Getting to the top and to quote A few good men..."You dont get to the top without knowing how to dodge a few landmines", or put another way, knowing when to take a risk.. No one gets anywhere without taking risks, life is all about the calculation of the risk verse reward ratio.. Is the reward worth the risk? Can I afford to take a risk with Mr X or Ms S?

To be fair Peter took a huge risk with this site, it has cost him money over the life of this website, and has it been worth it? has it been worth $5000? Is he charging for advertising? I have no idea, maybe he should, or is? I don't know. It was a calculated risk, he made a calculation of the reward to his career, his growth over the cost of a holiday to Disneyland.. From what I have heard, a holiday to Alcatraz is a better holiday than Disneyland...

What is missing from this website is a way for people to connect, to share ideas and more importantly work.. It has been stated so many times editing is a cottage industry...What does that even mean? I understand it to mean, that people work from home, work is delivered to the cottage, the resident does the work, and hands the completed work back, this save overheads of large corporate suites.

Take the example of my HP laptop, it broke, I delivered it to the agent locally, the work was sourced out to local trained staff that work from home, this speeds up repairs and keeps costs down, no huge premises to maintain, just a small sorting office...laptop repair is now a cottage industry.

I made the suggestion of a test edit, you ask me to edit a short piece, if you like the way I edited the test edit, the quickness of the edit, my pace of editing, then hire me.. How does a showreel show this? Who can tell from a show reel who edited what??

I have had a career in television news, that the company I work for is the national broadcaster, bound by national rules set by parliement, that prevents my having access to any work I produced, owning or producing any work I edited is a criminal offense, and I am not going to risk any time in jail or worse producing examples of my work, this would firstly be theft of video material. No one is allowed to copy video or audio material without a valid license.

It is not my fault I cannot produce examples, I know I can do the work, and sadly my say so is not good enough, so I suggested the test edit, I was asked to do such back when FCP classic was the rage, and I failed the test edit session, my fault, I had not spent enough time editing.

Why am I not editing professionally in 2015? Certain people have issues with my change of gender I believe, this led to the ending of my tv news video editing career in 2009, I have not worked professionally since, I have not been dormant, I have kept my skills current, working through Lynda.com edits, Brandan Boykin edits, the FCP 7 edit from Apple Pro series...

That is what is missing from FCP.co, more human stories, about how through FCP.co projects were edited, I would love to write about how I worked with so and so, how we solved problems of distance and technology...I have the time and the energy....Any one???