Not a pro and certainly not agreeing with any claim that a logger falls and bucks 200 trees a day for logs, but the more experience you have the quicker you can assess a given situation.
Also not saying folks should unnecessarily speed up, however, from the videos posted from time to time there are folks that may have textbook perfect falling cuts but spend so much time at a stump that another competent faller would have 2 or 3 on the ground in the same amount of time. Usually a lot of leaning over the saw and around a partially cut stem to inspect progress that in my opinion is either unnecessary or should be done by stepping back and around the stem. Bore cut falling seems to attribute to this. With experience, one should have a good feel for where the bar is in relation to the hinge regardless of your falling methodology.
Ron
I do find it silly when the bar is long enough to constantly be peeking at the off side, however, on bigger trees or when the bar just isn't enough, I end up cutting by brail a lot, sure its easy enough to walk over to the off side and nip the corner, but thats also wasted motion, its easier to peek over and check progress...
As for limbing, it can be just as dangerous as falling, pretty much every time i've been around someone thats gotten cut by a saw, its from limbing and generally with a saw that is small, more often then not cowboy homeowners that insist on "helping" and "proving" they are just as fast with a small saw.
They are only faster because they are in my ******* way...
the benefit of using a longer bar for limbing is that the bar will more likely hit dirt before hitting your foot, benefit of using the bigger power head is powering through bigger limbs like butter, sure its heavier, but it not that bad after a couple days, and there are several techniques that take advantage of the longer bar, least of all the ability to walk the top of a log and still hit the limbs on the side without blowing a disk, or fighting through all the slash you just created or walking a log 10' in the air... not to mention you don't have to hike back and grab a second saw to buck or fall with, you just have the one saw and in the darkness it binds them... etc...
Anyway, i've had this conversation with a whole slew of folks that "knew more then I ever will" one of them eventually ended up in litigation, he was that convinced I didn't know what I was doing.... (he refused to pay me, despite coming in a month early, and $3000 under budget... so... yeah..) one of his claims was that I would of been faster and less work to use a top handle saw to limb 4' dia cedar, one of these guys got real feckin stoned, charged out in front of me and proceeded to nearly cut his foot off with his little ms 171... He at least stopped getting in the way after that.