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Newbie Introduction
Hello,
My name is Dan and I have a feeling I am going to be a frequent visitor here in the next few months. I’ve worked in television production for 24 years, mostly in live telvision as an audio engineer and director/technical director. However, for the past 5 years I have been working for the local county government television station directing, shooting and editing county related programs.To date our NLE’s have been Sony ES-3 Edit Stations which have been problematic from the start. We’ve been going through the selection process to replace 4 editing systems (three ES-3’s and one ES-7). We were deciding between Premiere w/ Matrox Axio, Final Cut, or some version of Avid. Early on we felt that any respectable version of Avid would be out of our price range and focused on the other two lines. However, our engineer was adamant about not going with macs (we are a total pc environment and he has no mac knowledge). We had reservations about the Premiere product simply due to our bad experience with the Sony systems as far as reliability (crashing). So, we took another look at Avid and to get to where we are currently, we have purchased 4 Avid Xpress Studio Complete systems with Mojo. Two of them went in Friday and Monday and mine will be sometime this week.
I hope very much that this system is stable and user friendly. In a typical week I have about 15 hours to put together a 30 minute weekly program (including graphic creation) and can’t really afford down time. I am starting from scratch with Avid. I use Sony Vegas 5 at home, so between Vegas and the ES-3…that is about it as far as my knowledge with NLE’s. I really want to learn the proper way of storing and managing the file structure and keeping my system “clean”.
I don’t think we are getting much training with these systems. The company that is installing these really pushed us towards Premiere/Axio and I don’t think the rep is too thrilled about showing us how to use the Avid. We do have training videos, but I prefer a more personal way of learning. Does anyone know if there are traveling instructional clinic opportunities for Avid Xpress Pro? How about training that I could possibly travel to?
Again, I am sure once my system is installed and I begin working with it I will have more questions, but I’ll try not to be a pest 🙂 Also, I’ll try to not be so long winded. Sorry for War and Peace version of an introduction.
Dan
Clearwater, FL
http://www.pinellascounty.org/tv_18.htm -
4 Replies
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Good day Dan,
Well, I’m happy to say that your company made a good choice. I use both AVID & FCP and they have their up & down sides, but I like the AVID for it’s media management far above FCP.
There are a bunch of places around the states that have AVID training, Future Media Concepts is one that comes off the top of my head, but if you do a little research you should have no problem finding a place. Do your homework though, don’t go on blind faith about a training place. Some of these places have people teaching that are certified on the machines, but they are not editors and I have found that it becomes very frustrating as an editor that they can’t offer multiple solutions to a problem.
I wish you luck and much success!
btveditor, out
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Hey Dan, Glad to see you are looking for help too. I’ve been editing with Final Cut Pro for the past 4 years and absolutly love it. I’m hoping AVID is easy to learn, so far it doesn’t seem as intuitive as FCP but I think I just need to give it some time to learn it. If anyone has tips for a fast way to learn please pass them on! The engineer told me he didn’t think the avid system could run After Effects, I really hope thats not true, it must.
Good luck Dan.
Your new co-worker,
Andy Roether
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After Effects runs quite well with Avid. Welcome to both of you! If you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Someone will know the answer!
Jon
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Hi Dan,
I do part time freelance work with live sports events. Avid is the only edit system for the big shows that have editors on site. Others I have talked with prefer Avid over FCP because they can do more things faster with the AVID. It is a good platform.
Ben Wilson
Engineering Project Manager
SCETV
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