Avid over Final Cut Pro

Ryan Janek Wolowski

at AVID "New Thinking"

The Edison Room

New York City

05-15-2008

Avid Video Editor Editing FCP Final Cut Pro Xpress Pro digital dv mini dvcam documentary film films filmmaker

Contact:
ryanisland@aol.com
www.myspace.com/ryanisland
www.ryanisland.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Avid
• Video
• Editing
• Xpress
• Pro
• Media
• Composer
• mac
• vs
• PC

[ElectricWallpaper]

A lot of facility managers with tight budgets buy FCP because it is cheaper. But they're not the poor sobs who have to use it. Anyone can drag clips around the FCP timeline, but you can bet after 6 months at it they won't be working much faster. If you're putting out a show under deadlines, you'll need an Avid. If you're cranking out wedding videos in your basement Final Cut will be great, especially if you've never experienced working on an Avid. You'll never know what you're missing..

[redeyeproductions1]

FCP modeled its user interface after AVID. I've been a producer and editor for TV programs using both formats, and AVID is indeed a better platform to use. But you have to keep in mind that it is much less forgiving than FCP. I was trained on AVID and taught myself to use FCP. I prefer AVID. And big studios look for AVID editors, so bigger paychecks generally go to the editors who know AVID well. I love AVID so much that I even give it a credit in all of my personal projects.

[SenorCajones]

@ElectricWallpaper There's not a single type of project that I wouldn't want to use Avid for. Avid is far and away the best, mostly because of "little" things that make up for a lot of time.

[Zekee27]

One word: final Cut X..... should close the argument quick enough, everybody who works in broadcast knows what I'm talking about.. AVID all the way!!!

[moproducer]

@sycophant01 I know what Avid "said" and what it actually does - I've been cutting on them since 1992, and they have yet to live up to all their claims. 5.5 still has multiple framerate issues, especially in the area of field interpolation. This is about the only thing that FCP does better than Avid, and it's due to vastly differing system architecture. It's also the same reason why FCP can't do true multi-streaming.

[sycophant01]

@moproducer Avid introduced "Mix & Match" timeline in Media Composer 4 (late 2009) - it will happily mix all manner of framerates (and sizes) in a single timeline (in realtime) and does a much better job of it than Final Cut, which has been criticised for it's terrible motion effects for a long time.

It is marginally less intuitive than FCP's - you have to import each framerate into a project that matches it, then open bins from that project into your target format project - but works better

[moproducer]

@avidfcp7 You're right about that, you can't do multi-streaming on FCP. Never could. I said 2 mos. ago; you'll have to show me where I ever said it could.

Everytime you do a preview on FCP, there has to be a render. It's the architecture of the system. The same architecture also provides for a few nifty things, such as resolution independence, that FCP currently enjoys over Avid (this will change, however, with the next release of Media Composer).

[avidfcp7]

@moproducer LOL you know nothing! 2 months ago you quoted: "You can't do realtime multi-streaming with FCP". Lesson just started.

[moproducer]

@avidfcp7 LOL, you're really showing your bare ass. Go read the history of nonlinear editing. When I started using Avid in 1991, it had multi-streaming. Where was FCP in 1991?

[avidfcp7]

@heccyweccy - Funny guy here.