Avid vs. Final Cut Pro

[Grinner Hester]

I know of nobody over there on an Avid product longer than me.
I know of no bigger Avid fan than me back in the day either.
You are wrong about stability. New Avid users have no problem with the buggyness as thats the way they found the big A. Old Avid users miss the stability Avids had back when they were “Avids”.
If you wrote the checks for these products you really could care less as you’d care quite a bit. It’s price point vs capabilities (actual capabilities not claimed capabilities) that are the decising factors in these purchases… not the temporary telent on the tools.

By our government’s standards, Avid is in line for a bail out.

assuming failure is the qualification for such a thing.

[Moody Glasgow]

[Eric Nicastro] “Cost is not so much an issue.”

If cost isn’t an issue, I would buy a Smoke. I have worked on Avids, FCP and Smoke, and I think the Smoke is the best complete package if cost is not an issue.
BUT, i’ll assume you mean the cost difference between AVID and FCP isn’t an issue. In that case, I would go with FCP. Why? Because, they are relatively close in terms of capability, but $7k is a nice chunk of change that you can’t really ignore.

moody glasgow
smoke/flame

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey All.

I have to agree with Robert. Our firm is currently looking at the next “big” thing, and with the recent cost reduction of a Avid Symphony Nitris with hardware (NOT including drives), it is not that more expensive than a FCP (Double + 15% on a trade in). So when you take the real-time functionality, support and that you can in the right market charge more per hour, then it is not such a difficult decision.

Our facility is PC based, so it has to be added that we also use the Adobe premium suite extensively.

All the Best
Mads
London, UK

Mac Million Ltd. – HD Production & Editing
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[Chris Heuer]

I have to pipe in for Avid here. I haven’t worked on a Mojo (if that’s the system you’re looking at) but have been cutting spots on the Media Composer and Symphony for over a decade.

I have the Final Cut Suite at home (I had to get it to work on a project someone else started). I clearly have more experience on Avid so I may (am) still be biased.

I’ve found many small things that Avid just handles, without the user having to think about it. I had to replace a shot that dissolved into another shot (in Final Cut). I marked the clip (X-key) and overwrote with the new shot. The dissolve disappeared. Not a huge problem, but in Avid, the dissolve stays in tact. I posted in several forums to find out how to get FCP to retain a dissolve and got no solution. Small, but this kind of thing can add up on some projects.

Avid still has far better media management (keeps track of footage and makes relinking and reducing unused footage easy). Plus you never have to “render” footage on an Avid timeline. I waste tons of time in FCP because my timeline is one format and I have to insert a clip from another… I render it… something changes… render it again. Avid handles file conversion when you bring the footage in so everything mashes nicely.

I’m trying to keep this short. OK. For me, if you want bang for the buck, you can’t beat FCP. It does do a lot for the price, BUT in my opinion, prepare to become a bit of a system engineer. Apple makes the software, Kona makes the capture card, someone else makes the storage… you get the idea. My station’s promotions dept. went FCP a few years ago and had a problem where Apple blamed Kona, Kona blamed the storage and the storage manufacturer blamed Apple. It took a while and several threats to get resolved.

Avid provides and supports all components of it’s systems. If you have a problem, just call Avid and it gets fixed. That said, Avid support is NOT cheap, but they have bailed me out every time. I think it’s worth it until you’re more seasoned on the equipment.

I hope this helps some. Any FCP experts who have solutions to my complaints, bring it, I’m always trying to learn!

Chris Heuer
Freefall FX, LLC

[Eric Nicastro]

Wow, these are some great responses. To clarify something, when I said money isn’t much of an issue I was referring to the cost difference between Avid and FCP. The Avid quote we received was $22,000 and the FCP quote was about $16,000.

Looking over our quotes, the Avid system seems to offer less than our FCP system yet costs more. Both systems include M-Audio powered audio monitors. Yet the FCP system includes the Sony LMD2050W hi grade production monitor and two 24″ NEC computer monitors and uses the Black Magic Mutltibridge Eclipse. The Avid system includes neither and has two 20″ HP monitors, the cheap ones and uses the Avid Mojo SDI.

Am I just acting crazy pushing for FCP? I mean I see so much more for such a lesser price. This is just for suggestions, but how would I convince my higher-ups to go with FCP? And they are getting a deal on the Avid system but the deal price is higher than the regular price of the FCP. What am I missing here!?

[Timothy J. allen]

I’ve used both and without knowing more about your system, I’d go with Final Cut. I used Avid Adrenaline HD systems for a few years and never had the kind of problems Grinner had, but the main reason we went with Avid at that time was to keep track of and share media. It can work very well, but Avid cost a lot more to ensure a robust system, especially when you add in the system support contract.

Our main cost with Avid was making sure people had the training to get the most out of the systems. For us, that training was mainly in the media management area, then later color correction and graphics.

The prices you’ve been given for both systems most likely doesn’t include everything you really should have. Don’t get me wrong, you can surely produce quality content with those systems, but the equipment priced in those quotes probably make it more difficult to ensure *consistent* audio and video quality – unless your editors take the time to be very vigilant about it. Are you editing HD content? What kind of scopes are you planning to use?

So, again, I’d go with the Final Cut system, but ask your management for that extra money you save for certified training and perhaps some extra hardware or software that will make your day to day jobs easier.

Whichever system you go with, you’ll only get your money’s worth if you really learn it inside and out.

[Bill Davis]

No, you’re not acting crazy at all.

I think it’s amazing that FCP has done what it’s done. It’s become essentially an “equal standing” competitor at EVERY level of video content editing – from monster budget network TV to micro budget indy filmmaking.

For my 2 cents, it’s VERY hard for someone wedded to one software approach to fairly judge another.

We’re all creatures of habit. Chris Heuer was annoyed about not yet having found a way to replace a clip without messing up the transition – but in point of fact, FCP has more than one way to do exactly that. (Chris – check the manual for “Paste Attributes – Content” which replaces only the content and leaves EVERYTHING else about a clip – including transitions, filters, audio levels, whatever – intact – and you can assign an F-key or any other keyboard command you like to invoke it.)

I happen to be an FCP guy and have been since version 1. But there’s not a month goes by when I don’t find other ways (hopefully, more efficient ways) to do many routine editing tasks even now, after nearly a decade of constant FCP editing! I suspect that the Avid folks, the Vegas folks, and the Premier folks can say EXACTLY the same thing.

These are systems you GROW with. Constantly. So all I can tell you is that FCP is a VERY safe choice today given the fact that there are more than a MILLION paid, registered seats out there using it. (and maybe a couple million more unpaid copies in circulation for all we know.)

Your company may not care about the 16k verses 22k cost difference. If so they’re idiots. Any accountant will tell you that spending nearly a third more for something is only reasonable if you get something tangible for that difference.

Maybe they ARE getting something for the extra money like Newscutter integration or access to some kind of special Avid support. But that something won’t have anything to do with basic to advanced video editing capabilities – cuz none of the programs I’ve mentioned in this post have any problems with state of the art video editing. Period.

Good luck.

[Chris Heuer]

Bill, can I get your number!!! Seriously. I spent the better part of the night on forums looking for that answer. I edited around the problem after about 10 minutes but still wanted to know if there was a solution. The treads I started still have no answer.

You are right about us growing with a software. Avid is as easy as breathing for me, and I’m trying to give FCP a fair shake (since I am A Mac FREAK!) but (a) I’m older and learning slower than when I picked up Avid and (b) I’m too busy to train an anything. I have to learn software on jobs. Not the best way to get a thorough education!

Anyway, back on task. With people like the Cow has at your fingertips, either system will work… and training might cost less!

Chris

Chris Heuer
Freefall FX, LLC

[Tim Kolb]

[Eric Nicastro] “Am I just acting crazy pushing for FCP? I mean I see so much more for such a lesser price. This is just for suggestions, but how would I convince my higher-ups to go with FCP? And they are getting a deal on the Avid system but the deal price is higher than the regular price of the FCP. What am I missing here!?”

What you are seeing is at least part of what Grinner was sort of referring to…

Avid, when it first appeared…(1994? 1995?) was changing how video was edited. Adobe Premiere was around at the time, but was a QuickTime editor without the tight integration for video ingest and attention to things like timecode handling, etc. Avid was designed to get old guys like us to feel comfortable coming off our CMX and Sony machine control editors and (at least at first) offline cut on a computer. They were immensely successful. Of course, as time went on they improved their video compression and added some features and were the undisputed leader in the field for a block of time…

But they took their eye off the ball…

Through the period when Avid was very financially successful selling 100,000 USD editing systems along with maintenance plans that also took a significant financial committment…manufacturers like Adobe, Apple, Pinnacle, Canopus, Sonic Foundry (Vegas), as well as Media 100 and DPS were adding features and dropping prices. (as happens in technology based products).

Within the last handful of years, Avid has tried to right the ship, but the issue is how to quickly respond to the market changes that took 10 years to evolve. How do you add features and lower the price of your 100,000 dollar editing system to compete for sales with 10,000 dollar systems, and not make the recent customers who bought the 100,000 dollar systems feel a little ‘taken?’

I happen to think that what made Avid strong…
service…support…just stratight up editing efficiency…very competent networked asset sharing should have been their focus in these trying times. Instead, I get the distinct impression that they’re chasing everyone else to the bottom. Historically, nobody has had the support that Avid had…but laying off many of the people who were the support fabric of the company and lowering the prices on products that already can’t compare on the basis of a ‘feature list’ alone to lower priced options…simply makes them like everyone else. Except of course that even the newest, most aggressive pricing structure isn’t directly competitive with the other options out there…and the feature list is still a step or two behind the other two ‘A’ companies…playing catch up is challenging.

Avid makes a good product, but they just didn’t advance much when what they had was selling…in my observation anyway.

So…that’s why FCP is cheaper…and of course, those who are comfortable with Avid could sit down with FCP and talk about what they feel is lacking as an FCP editor could do with Avid…

What I would recommend that you do is investigate the AJA Kona option with the FCP system as well as the Multibridge. AJA products are quite solid and a worth a look as you set up the system.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Gary Hazen]

There’s a lot of misinformation in this thread regarding the stability Avid. This is from users that either have never actually used an Avid or haven’t used an Avid since the Adrenaline days. Avid’s Adrenaline systems were slow to respond and often buggy. Because of all the problems with Adrenaline Avid made it a top priority to fix these problems with the next release, MC 3.0 which they rolled out about a year ago. I’ve cut on Avid’s for over a decade and I must say that Avid has succeeded making MC a rock solid editor again. The current MC is as stable as the Meridiens and as responsive if not more so.

I use both systems. The Oliver Peters article that Robert posted does a good job spelling out the various strengths and weaknesses of each system. I think the right choice of a NLE is dependent on the type of work done and the scale of the facility. Setting up shop at home or a small boutique cutting docs I would choose FCP. In a broadcast environment I would choose Avid every time.