Assistant editors replaced by XML app?

Found this one on the dvinfo.net forums.

www.theassistanteditor.com
the automatic editing app for Final Cut Pro. It throws together a highly competent round cut based on the footage you've logged and captured. This Application shows the power of XML. For lazy editors, it will throw together a round cut based on keywords out oput a XML fil that can be imported into the assistanteditor.app, the exported back to Final Cut Pro. It's not quite as advanced as Avid's Script Sync app, but seems to aim at a similar attitude of speeding up workflow based on prior work done before editing (ie logging, transcripting etc).

Quite who will use it I don't know, it might be good form corporate video editors or some event editors in a hurry, seems ideal for throwing together behind the scenes DVD documentaries, but I can't see real documentaries using it, and, unlike ScriptSync, it looks useless for dramas. To be fair the site does say it's a first cut:

They are not expected to be emotionally compelling nor release grade “finished”. The Assistant Editor behaves as a beginner editor, not a craft professional who knows how to manipulate motion and tell a story across the whole documentary

Though frankly I always thought the first cut was about finding the stiry across the whole documentary.

It does require you to have really good, detailed metadata programmed into FCP so what it does is force you to push your organisation up front. So those threatened assistant editors will find even more of their time taken up with proper logging and data entry.

Ironically in his interview I linked to previously, Walter Murch praised Final Cut for allowing him to pass sequences to assistant editors to they could learn to edit features, here is another feature of FCP that attemtops to cut them out (terrible pun intended)!