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Differences: Avid MC & FCP
Hey Gang Avid
So I have been working with FCP for last 6 years and now (after FCP X debacle) plan to move to AVID MC.
Yesterday i downloaded the trial version of media composer on my home computer and started playing with it. I watched a couple of online tutorials but there were no major hiccups. Within a short time i cut a nice little piece.
To my surprise, i did not have any issues understanding the basic layout of the system. Infact, it all felt very similar to FCP to the point that i wondered that apart from codecs, what the difference is between these two. Now my question to you is..
Are there any fundamental differences between MC & FCP that i should consider? I have read somewhere that lot of FCP editors approach AVID in a wrong way and vice versa.
Any input, much appreciated.
Sohrab
2.66 GHz 8-core, ATI Radeon HD 4870,
FCS 3, AJA Kona Lhi“The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally
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11 Replies
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Biggest difference…how they handle media. FCP captures as QT files, audio and video as one file. And you can put them wherever you want. Organize on the finder level. Avid captures to a VERY specific folder. As MXF…and audio and video separately. Move the media from that folder and the connection is lost. You organize inside the app, not outside. But, with AMA and working with footage directly, there is some similarity with FCP.
TRIM MODE. This is a big difference too. Trimming in Avid is far superior to what FCP does. It’s simply amazing. It has to be played with to be appreciated.
IN FCP, the way you drag clips about on the timeline is better than in Avid. Avid is better since the Smart Tools came out, but FCP 7 was very good in how you could do that. But with the smart tools, I can do better than before.
EFFECTS HANDLING. This is a HUGE difference. How you deal with effects in FCP and Avid. I cannot really type about how they are different, other than to say they are VERY different. This is one area where converts might really get tripped up. You can’t just reduce the size of a clip and move it around, and see beneath it. Do that and you see BLACK. You need to use a PICTURE IN PICTURE effect, or Basic 3D effect.
Doing moves on stills in Avid…VERY different. YOu need to use Avid’s PAN AND SCAN option. If you import photos…Avid creates MEDIA for them, and makes them the same size as your project. Zooming and panning looks ugly.
In Avid, EVERYTHING is media. Titles…are media. IN FCP, they weren’t actual physical files, but just code in the application. The black in between clips are clips. It is FILLER, or in FCP land, SLUG. And it is always there. So when you move things, you need to also choose the FILLER. But you can also add effects to the filler and that effects everything underneath it.
TURNING OFF VISIBILITY – you can monitor track 7 and below…or you can move the monitor to look at track 1 only…and NOT lose your renders. Basically you can look under the table at what is there, and not lose the table.
Avid remembers renders. If you trim a clip and take footage away. Then trim back…Avid remembers the render. You don’t need to re-render. You won’t believe how amazing this is.
TONS more. just scratching the surface. But I think I hit some of the major points.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Ah… thanx a lot Shane.
Having you on this forum is such a reassurance because of your FCP background(Not to mention your ever-helping kind attitude).
[Shane Ross] ” You can’t just reduce the size of a clip and move it around, and see beneath it. Do that and you see BLACK. You need to use a PICTURE IN PICTURE effect, or Basic 3D effect.”
So if i am getting this right, there is no wire-frame kind of thing in FCP, everything is controlled the way its done in motion’s tab in FCP, right? As far as effect handling is concerned, you mean i can’t turn off & on an effect to see the difference or you mean i can’t put 2 clips together to see the difference vis-a-vis.
And slugs or fillers(is that whey are called in Avid?). Why would you want to put a filter on a slug? Can 2 clips exist on timeline without a filler in between them? (or did FCPX borrow this stupid idea from AVID)
Another Question:
What happens when you want to use media from another project. Does it need to be ingested again (in a seperate folder) since avid follows file structure so rigidly?
Sohrab
2.66 GHz 8-core, ATI Radeon HD 4870,
FCS 3, AJA Kona Lhi“The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally
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Sohrab,
Entire books have been written on this subject. You couldn’t cover everything in postings on the Cow.
Not trying to be rude. It’s just that we could be posting back and forth comparing how things are done in each system. Just do some avid tutorials and get up to speed. Try to forget how you did things in FCP and learn Avid at face value.
J
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Hey John!
Since FCP is all i know and have been working with it for last 6 years, its a little hard to think outside of it. And not for a moment am I complaining that why is AVID not like FCP. Infact, I am trying my best to have a new approach when I edit on AVID.
As I said in my post, I have been watching some avid tutorials and reading whatever material i can lay my hands on. If you dont mind, can you recommend some good books?
Thanx for Chiming in! 😉
Sohrab
2.66 GHz 8-core, ATI Radeon HD 4870,
FCS 3, AJA Kona Lhi“The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally
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[Sohrab Sandhu] “So if i am getting this right, there is no wire-frame kind of thing in FCP”
Hmmm…not really.
[Sohrab Sandhu] ” everything is controlled the way its done in motion’s tab in FCP, right?”
Not really. You just need to apply an effect to the clip, then open up the EFFECT EDITOR, and there you can manipulate things, and drag things around. But you need to add the effect first. OH…and if you want to add more than one effect, you need to OPT Drag the new effect to the clip so that you can apply it as well, otherwise it replaces the one that is there. And then you need to map the STEP INTO EFFECT option to the keyboard, or screen. So you can basically move a box, to get to the other box, to get to the other box. Tough to explain.
[Sohrab Sandhu] “As far as effect handling is concerned, you mean i can’t turn off & on an effect to see the difference”
Hmmm…no, you have to remove it, then add it. NO on/off switch as I recall.
[Sohrab Sandhu] “Why would you want to put a filter on a slug?”
To effect multiple clips. Say to add timecode to the entire sequence, or a letterbox, or an overall color correction. NO NESTING needed. You can COLLAPSE the clips…that’s like nesting. But you don’t need to nest in order to put one effect on mutiple clips. Also, there are tricks to make filters into transitions by adding it to the filler above the cut points. I might have to make a tutorial for that one.
[Sohrab Sandhu] “What happens when you want to use media from another project. Does it need to be ingested again (in a seperate folder) since avid follows file structure so rigidly?”
You add the media to the Avid MediaFiles>1 folder…and then use the MEDIA TOOL to look for it. OR, you have a bin that references that media, and you bring the bin into the Avid project. On the finder level, bins are folders. Add the folder to the project, and it appears as a bin. Add the media, and Avid will rebuild the database to add the media (it instantly knows if something is different…added or missing and rebuilds).
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Shane, I did a cursory read of your replies here, and most of the stuff seems spot on. However I noticed a glaring error.
BEGIN QUOTE
[Shane Ross]“[Sohrab Sandhu] “What happens when you want to use media from another project. Does it need to be ingested again (in a seperate folder) since avid follows file structure so rigidly?”You add the media to the Avid MediaFiles>1 folder…and then use the MEDIA TOOL to look for it. OR, you have a bin that references that media, and you bring the bin into the Avid project. On the finder level, bins are folders. Add the folder to the project, and it appears as a bin. Add the media, and Avid will rebuild the database to add the media (it instantly knows if something is different…added or missing and rebuilds).
END QUOTE
First of all, I’m a PC person, not a mac person so please correct me if I’m wrong. Second, I’m in a world that sometimes works very slowly, so I’m not yet all that familiar with AMA, and none of what I’m about to say applies to AMA, this only applies to the traditional Avid file structure.
Each BIN is actually a single file on the Explorer or Finder level, or as the Operating System sees them. A BIN may contain multiples of sequences, master clips, subclips, effects clips, etc., yet to the OS, it appears as one entity. A BIN however contains no actual media, just the above items that point to the corresponding media.
Regarding moving or copying media from one project into another, all you really need to do is one of at least three methods, none of which involve replicating or moving the actual media. In Avid land, as you have pointed out, the media on any given system lives within a very specific file path on any of the drives attached to the system. So as long as you are mounted to those drives, either local or networked, any project can read and or write to those drive paths (based on log-in permissions granted to that user for the ISIS UNITY drives).
So then the question is, how do you use media from Project A in Project B? First you can search using Media Tool, which will show you media from any or all specified drivespaces, and any or all projects. Media Tool has sort and filter tools just like any other bin. Second, you can (with the Project Window on the BINS Tab) click on File|Open Bin from the pulldown menus and navigate your way to the project and bin that contains the master clips of the media you want (and remember BINS also include Sequences, SubClips, Effects, etc.) and all of what is contained in the bin is now available to you. Third, and this is a bit more cumbersome, but it’s a method we use as it allows media to be available to other software as well, is exporting and importing “linked AAFs.” This is basically a method that creates files that point to either media or sequences, yet creates an individual file that can be found on the OS level and then imported back again into a different application, or the same application, by a different user. Media within an AAF can either be “Linked,” “Consolidated” (copied as new files to a destination drive), or “Embedded” (create one large file with both data and media). If we are working on the same set of drives, then the Linked option is almost instantaneous in exporting and importing the media, as all it’s really doing is creating new pointers to the same media. AAFs are a little more cumbersome than the other two methods however they do have their uses, especially when dealing with other apps, like color correction and ProTools.M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net -
[Scott Cole] “Each BIN is actually a single file on the Explorer or Finder level, or as the Operating System sees them. A BIN may contain multiples of sequences, master clips, subclips, effects clips, etc., yet to the OS, it appears as one entity. A BIN however contains no actual media, just the above items that point to the corresponding media.”
I know. Read my post again. I said that you first copy the media to the Avid MediaFiles folder. Quote:
“You add the media to the Avid MediaFiles>1 folder…and then use the MEDIA TOOL to look for it. OR, you have a bin that references that media, and you bring the bin into the Avid project.”
By that I mean you copy the media into the Avid MediaFiles folder first. Then you either use the Media Tool, or you bring over a bin that references that media. But either way, you need to copy the media over.
This is one reason I preferred FCP. Media Management was a bit more simple. But then again, it was open to a WHOLE MESS of possible user errors. Some that I saw every day from other editors. So there’s good reason Avid is done this way. Just difficult to move media from one project to another.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Shane,
What I’m saying is that, if the media is already on the drives that the system is accessing, there is NO reason to have to copy media from one project to another. The media folders are common to all projects, so if you want to move or copy media from one project to another on the same system or a system on the same networked storage, you really don’t have to move or copy it, you just need to find it in one of the ways that both of us suggest. There really is no reason whatsoever to even go to the media folders if you are doing things correctly. Again, this does not apply to AMA, only traditional Avid media.M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net -
[Shane Ross] “there’s good reason Avid is done this way. Just difficult to move media from one project to another.”
I spent the $100 on Automatic Duck’s Media Copy and it’s well worth it. Allows you to make a copy of all the media accessed by a sequence, bin, or project, and it works very well.
Chris
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