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Avid and FCP
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I didn’t post in the FCP forum because I didn’t want to start an Avid vs. FCP debate over there. Asking this question over here was really just my own way of seeking final confirmation of what I already believe to be true. And I got some excellent information on the major differences between the two from here.
When I have issues with Final Cut Studio I usually call my network of editing buddies. My FCP buddies give me some awesome workarounds, while my Avid buddies say things like, “Wow, I’ve never run into that problem before”. I want to be one of those “never run into that problem before” guys!
Just to give you an example of today’s adventure:
– I open a project this morning only to find out that, for some reason, my file reverted to a version I saved a week ago. Consensus among my FCP buddies: It just does that sometimes.– Then I try to capture some behind-the-scenes footage from a firewire deck. It’s a no-go, so I have to do that ‘close FCP, hunt down the presets files, delete them and restart’ thing. Problem solved.
– I then spent an hour trying to figure out why FCP was ignoring my audio rubber band adjustments in certain areas of my project. Only certain areas. Workaround: replace all audio fades with transitions.
– I then realize that some text overlays are changing the background brightness as they appear and disappear. Again, only in some places. So we go onto a portable drive and to another machine. Problem 2 solved.
– I then spent 2 hours exporting 4 sections of a timeline via Compressor only to find out that only about half of 2 of the sections exported video. Audio is fine. Workaround: export manually to a self-contained file which I then place onto another timeline and export with Compressor. It worked except…
– Despite the fact that I exported 16:9, my output video is still 4:3. I call a buddy who walks me through a way to “trick” FCP into exporting the way it should. Problem solved except…
– My audio is off when I import into DVD Studio Pro. We go back onto the portable drive and back to the old machine. Audio is fine here on 2 of the 4 clips. So I adjust the audio by hand until it matches. Ugh.
– Then a client comes over to record a scratch VO directly onto a FCP timeline. Audio isn’t recognized. I mess around with it for 45 minutes, apologizing repeatedly (I’ve gotten used to that during an editing session). Other programs are recognizing the audio so I restart FCP… nothing. Restart again… nothing. Restart a third time and bingo… it suddenly works! Settings are the same as they were before. Not sure why it just started, but I’ll take it!
And these problems aren’t even counting my usual little headaches that I don’t have time to fix, like why my FCP ‘recent projects’ folder clears every time I reboot and why my Soundtrack Pro only closes with a ‘Force Quit’. And I can’t even begin to understand why sometimes my audio lags when I capture DVCPro via my Kona – the solution to which is uninstalling and reinstalling my Kona drivers. The guy who told me this advised that I should get familiar to this process. Greeeeat. And I should mention that the ‘Home’ and ‘End’ buttons don’t work in FCP when I’m editing text.
Watch this video… this guy is dead on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUeRqS4KqhY
I don’t remember having this many problems with the older version of FCP. Final Cut Studio 2 is giving me hypertension!
Sorry for the rant… just a little stressed after today, knowing I have another day of it tomorrow.
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That video was hilarious!!
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I didn’t say that you should start an FCP Vs. Avid thread. The problems you’re having are not normal, and you are doing yourself a disservice by not asking about your issues in the FCP forum.
If your FCP system is in such a condition now that makes it unusable, I would imagine that your Avid system would eventually fall into the same state of disrepair. They are both based on computers and both need preventive maintenance.
Even when I have been forced to rely on editing systems that I’ve not been keen on, I have always gone out of my way to make sure they perform as best they can.
I have used both FCP and Avid. They are both good editing systems. I have even been a champion of Avid where I work.
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[Daniel Stone] “Watch this video… this guy is dead on:”
I watched about :44 seconds.
You came here to hear what you wanted to hear. You didn’t want any help at all, did you?
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I dunno, that’s been a favourite video of mine for a long time.
Everyone has their own prejudices and ideas, but the advice I’ve seen in this thread has generally seemed pretty reasonable.
Avid has weaknesses for sure, but certainly the types of errors he’s been talking about are things I see more in FCP forums than Avid ones. I think Avid is more powerful as a editing workhorse, while perhaps FCP has a stronger creative bent?
Avid certainly has been designed a lot more rigidly, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage (although once you get past the initial learning curve that swings much more toward the advantage side I think).
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Scott, that’s pretty much what I said in my last post… that I came here to verify what I already believed to be true. I would love to have time to come here every time I have a problem in FCP (which could be several times a day), post and wait for a response that may or may not be helpful – but I just don’t.
I simply wanted to reach out beyond my circle of editor friends to see if other pros had the same opinion. And it seems they do. I had dinner with a fellow FCP editor last night. What did we discuss the whole night? Workarounds and crazy issues we’ve been having. That seems wrong to me.
All 3 of our FCP systems are less than a year old. When we got them I went to my computer guy and said, “Give me the most powerful Macs I can get and put Final Cut Studio 2 on them.” Many people say that an occasional reinstall clears up many issues for a while. Again, I don’t have time to do a reinstall every 3 months. I don’t mean to put down FCP because it’s an awesome tool – and I whole heartedly prefer mac over PC (which is why I’m glad there’s a mac option to Avid) – I just feel I need something more solid and reliable at this point.
I have a mentor who got me into this business and we constantly debate over tools. Whenever I would say something like, “why would we shoot with the Panavision Genesis ($6k/day) when the SDX-900 ($600/day) looks just like film?” Rather than arguing specs he always says, “Dan, there’s a reason why they shoot national commercials on the Genesis and not the SDX”. I think that translates into all aspects of production and post – and, throughout the process of maturing in this business, I’ve come to realize that there’s a very good reason Avid is still the choice of pros when it comes to editing movies and national spots.
I feel like I just rambled, but does that make sense?
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Mr. Stone,
I’m sorry to hear about your FCP problems. I’ve personally been editing on a Mac using FCP for five years, and I have recently started using Avid at my new place of employment. And I have to say that my experience with Final Cut Pro has been far more pleasurable then Avid. To me it seems that a majority of “seasoned” editors have grown up using Avid since its “hay-day” and are simply more accustomed to how it works. It’s like that old dependable truck in the drive way the old man doesn’t want to get rid of. Its out dated, running on old technology, and isn’t a comfortable ride. I find Avid to be less flexible, less economical, and more of a “cutting” machine, then a creative tool. Especially if you run it on a PC. I read in an earlier thread that Avid on PC has been rock solid over the past few years. That is simply not true:
— On a PC Avid has RAM limitations because it cannot run on Microsofts’s 64 bit OS.
— PC’s have a well known problem with memory leakage, which can cause your machine to freeze, or starting having seizures if your run multiple programs at once, i.e. Avid, After Effects, or Photo Shop.
–PC’s are more prone to virus’s, files becoming corrupted at random, and hardware failure in general
I don’t know what’s going between you and FCP, whether you need to upgrade your Mac, put in more RAM, or do a complete wipe of your hard drive(S) and do a clean install of FCP Studio, but I’ve never heard of someone having as many frequent problems as you are. I feel for you, no editor likes to hear of one of his peers struggling, but switching to Avid will no solve your problems.
Here is what problems my shop has run into after switching to Avid Media Composer Adrenaline in January of 2008.
–Random media files in projects unlinking from their clips. Avid support was UNABLE to diagnose the problem. This is not a chronic problem, but this has happened on two different machines more then once.
–While working in projects Avid will loose connection with its Dongle and shut-down. Upon reopening the project everything is fine. But its still a time killer.
— (on PC with 4gb of RAM)If you are rendering a project in AE, or have Photoshop open for an extended period of time, plan on Avid not being able to allocate enough memory to continue to buffer video for playback.
— Avid MC does not allow you to change project formats, or inter-mix SD, HD, 16×9, or 4×4 video in a timeline. Why is this a problem? Try explaining to client why you have to charge them more money so you can have a FCP editor do something they thought you could do.
— Shared media: Simply put unless you have enough money to buy Unity ($40,000+), good look being able to move projects around or allow them to be accessible to more then on editor at a time. Without Unity its a long time consuming process.
As my mentor use to tell me, “Sometimes Gabe its not the computer, its the editor.” And to this day that’s been the best advice I’ve ever been given. If I had a choice between using FCP and Avid in my shop, I would go with FCP Studio. Both systems have their problems, but when it comes down to what’s causing them, its usually the editor who’s making innocent mistake, after innocent mistake, that begin to pile up. To me your problems really sound like a maintenance problem with your Mac. If you go Avid, go Avid on a Mac, avoid PC’s. But if you really want complete creative control of your projects stick with FCP.
Good Luck.
Gabe“Auto save is life.”
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I think a couple of the reasons people are seeing a plethora of FCP users looking for help is because the number of FCP users is growing so there are an increasing number of “newbs” all running into the same problems. One of the great things about FCP is that it is inexpensive enough so almost anyone can afford it. One of the bad things about FCP is that it is inexpensive enough so that almost anyone can afford it. “Back in the day” (and I’m not that old, honest) you had to work your way up at a production or post house before you got to play w/the big toys and in the process of working your way up you learned the right way to do things, proper terminology, how to avoid common problems, etc.,. Thats becoming less and less true. While the dropping prices of tech have removed monetary barriers they have also removed a great learning opportunity.
Both systems are capable editors, IMO, but I wouldn’t switch to Avid and expect it to be a complete walk in the part. I’ve been thru things like the infamous “domain copyin” error (on 3 different gigs no less), bin corruption that spread through a multi-editor TV show like a virus, file-shuffling workarounds to keep the OMFI folders from getting too large, an Adrenaline bug that caused duplicate frames to randomly happen when laying back to tape, bins that refused to “unlock” (not a big deal, but just irritating), one gig where the graphic elements never properly translated from offline which meant we had to always cut them into the online by hand (adding about 10 man hours to the online per show), and other random quirks that can sometimes be solved by trashing the user, site, and project settings files (Avid version of FCP preference files).
As always, YMMV, but speaking in generalities I haven’t noticed a large difference in operational up time between Avid and FCP systems that are properly maintained and don’t have any malfunctioning hardware.
-A
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This has been a great discussion so far, but there are some misconceptions that should be cleared.
[Gabe Cotto] “– On a PC Avid has RAM limitations because it cannot run on Microsofts’s 64 bit OS.”
It’s a 32-bit app. Even if it ran on a 64-bit Windows OS (which it will in version 3.0) it would have a RAM usage limitation. That’s a coding issue with the program, not an OS issue.
[Gabe Cotto] “– PC’s have a well known problem with memory leakage, which can cause your machine to freeze, or starting having seizures if your run multiple programs at once, i.e. Avid, After Effects, or Photo Shop.”
Personally, I’ve never had memory leak issues on a PC unless using Firefox, which is well documented. I’ve never had the issue with Avid, and haven’t had my system “freeze” since Windows 2000.
[Gabe Cotto] “–PC’s are more prone to virus’s, files becoming corrupted at random, and hardware failure in general”
Viruses, yes, but your editing system shouldn’t be online. If it has to be, take the proper precautions. Files becoming corrupted at random? I’ve had a few corrupt render files, but that’s no different than FCP preferences being corrupted. Things happen on computers, but I don’t believe PCs anymore than Macs. Hardware failure? Macs and PCs are built with the same hardware. The OS is the only difference. If you’re using an e-machine, you’ll likely have more failures because it’s built with cheap parts. Go with a quality machine and they’re all the same inside.
As far as your Avid problems–some of your issues aren’t really issues. For example, mixing 16:9 with 4:3–absolutely possible. Mixing SD and HD–absolutely possible. You can’t mix framerates, but you can definitely mix HD and SD if they’re the same framerate. Check the help files for more on this.
If your Avid is losing track of the dongle you have a bigger issue. I’ve never seen this happen, ever. You might have a bad USB port. Switch it to another one and see if it happens, or call Avid and request a new dongle.
Sharing media is expensive with an Avid, but you can just consolidate it to external drives, cut away, then email the project back. It will relink without issue. Very, very simple and one reason why so many people use Avid.
Otherwise, if you’ve only been using Avid since January, give it more time, and don’t try to drive it like FCP, because it’s a vastly different workflow. You may never like it, but it has it’s place and it is hardly outdated or uncomfortable. For many, it’s the perfect tool for their workflow.
And the PC versus Mac debate–you can argue the OS till you’re blue in the face, but the guts are the same. And the OS is a personal preference, that’s it.
To the original poster, you really need to take a test drive on an Avid. Have someone who knows what they’re doing show you around the interface, explain the strengths and definitely the weaknesses. There may be things you need in your workflow that Avid doesn’t offer, or struggles with. If that’s the case, then switching won’t help you. But try it out to see how you like it.
Good luck!
Michael.
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[Gabe Cotto] “PC’s have a well known problem with memory leakage, which can cause your machine to freeze, or starting having seizures if your run multiple programs at once, i.e. Avid, After Effects, or Photo Shop.”
There is no such overall problem with Windows or “PC’s” – some applications have memory leaks, but there’s certainly nothing endemic in the operating system. I very often run Avid and Photoshop together, and After Effects too at times, and very rarely have stability or memory issues (although with some large HD projects there just isn’t enough memory for AE which can be very demanding).
[Gabe Cotto] “PC’s are more prone to virus’s, files becoming corrupted at random, and hardware failure in general”
That is perhaps true, but it’s really not hard to avoid. I’ve not had a virus or trojan on any of my computers for at least 5 or 6 years.
[Gabe Cotto] “Random media files in projects unlinking from their clips. Avid support was UNABLE to diagnose the problem. This is not a chronic problem, but this has happened on two different machines more then once.”
In more than 6 years of using Avid constantly and literally thousands of hours of footage, I’ve never seen anything like that. Even if there were an error like that, Avid robust media management would make it very easy to recover from something like this.
[Gabe Cotto] “While working in projects Avid will loose connection with its Dongle and shut-down. Upon reopening the project everything is fine. But its still a time killer.”
Another very weird and definitely atypical error. I’ve used more that 30 different Avid edit suites and never had any dongle errors (aside from when there wasn’t actually a dongle present).
[Gabe Cotto] “(on PC with 4gb of RAM)If you are rendering a project in AE, or have Photoshop open for an extended period of time, plan on Avid not being able to allocate enough memory to continue to buffer video for playback.”
AE is a massive memory hog, that’s true on Windows and OS X. With a large comp rendering in AE I can barely operate FCP.
[Gabe Cotto] “Avid MC does not allow you to change project formats, or inter-mix SD, HD, 16×9, or 4×4 video in a timeline. Why is this a problem? Try explaining to client why you have to charge them more money so you can have a FCP editor do something they thought you could do.”
You might have to enlighten us a little more on this one, because Avid can definitely mix all those things. I’ve finished HD projects that include 16:9 and 4:3 standard def footage. I’ve had 4:3 and 16:9 standard definition projects that use HD footage. The only limitation is frame-rate. And while FCP can mix framerates, there seem to be a lot of caveats in doing so (the results can be pretty poor in some cases).
[Gabe Cotto] “Shared media: Simply put unless you have enough money to buy Unity ($40,000+), good look being able to move projects around or allow them to be accessible to more then on editor at a time. Without Unity its a long time consuming process.”
There are a number of other options for shared media with Avid (EditShare and MetaLAN string to mind).
In practice we’ve had very good success with replicated media where media is consolidated to different suites. In one case the ingest process was to capture 1:1 footage on one suite and then make transcode 15:1 versions of that footage onto removable drives. The low-res media was copied to a number of edit suites. All that needed to be shared between the suites was the sequences. It was surprisingly simple really and pretty time-efficient.
[Gabe Cotto] “But if you really want complete creative control of your projects stick with FCP.”
The ‘creative’ angle is one I hear a lot, but I don’t really get it. There’s very little I can do in FCP that I can’t do in Avid really. The real creative aspect of video post is in the actual editing, and really in that case there’s not practical difference in terms of what can be achieved.
For the offline/online workflow, or for multiple versioned projects I think Avid’s media management alone makes it a better choice.
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