Avid vs. Final Cut Pro

[Mark Raudonis]

[Gary Hazen] “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.
“

gary… puhleeze. I get so tired of this “Avid” for big shops line of crap.

We’re running FCP/X-SAN with almost 100 seats, creating reality TV shows for six different networks, on urgent broadcast deadlines. We share over 80 terrabytes of storage, spread across ten different shows. We have off-line, on-line (color correcting) and ProTools mixing all interconnected. We’ve been doing it for almost five years now. Haven’t missed a deadline yet.

FCP can certainly thrive in a large “Workgroup” environment. If you don’t believe it, just contact me and I’ll give you a tour.

Mark

[Kier Drew]

Your opinion please.

I have a VERY SMALL prod co and I do my own editing. I’ve done small projects that have sold and don’t edit to make a living. That being said, I want to be able to get the best I can for the money I can afford to spend on editing software.

I’m in a positions to spend a few bucks on either FC Studio 2 or Media Composer. I can get”Avid Media Composer 3.0 with Videoguys Exclusive Software Bundle & Bonus Training DVD $495.00 EDU” (quotes very much intended) but I’ve been told it IS in fact the complete $2500 version

OR

Final cut studio 2 for somewhere in the range of $1200. (education pricing not available)

I’ll be editing with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 1067 Mhz DDR3 Macbook Pro with 2 G or Ram (I may upgrade to 4) split between OS X V. 10.5.5 and Windows XP Pro. Will likely only allow XP about 20 G when I add the new editing software.

I’m leaving the country for a couple of years and don’t mind spending the money on the best editing suite I can afford for what I’m going to be shooting… (which in this case may amount to nothing more than some really great HD video of the pyramids / India / Maldives / Iran) which may become nothing more than home movies… so be it.

In the mean time I’ll keep shooting graduations, weddings and my own indie stuff.

I’m currently using Avid liquid 7… yup that’s where I am now. Not a pro like many here, but I need some bottom line advice. I’m good with the learning and don’t need my hand held. For the record though, I’ve found Avid’s support (knowledge base) to be excellent… and free.

So… professionals, I need your advice. Based on the prices listed above, which is the best deal for me.

Thanks.

[Doug Collins]

“Our newsroom however uses Avid Newscutters and shoots on P2. The only time we would need to work with the newsroom is to grab footage for promo spots which we should be able to access there server from either system.”

This may be part of the reason they want to go with Avid. I would think it would be easier to get files transfered from Avid to Avid than from Avid to FCP. Having worked in a newsroom, if they need video for a promo, they need it right now and if the p2 cards have gone back to the field to cover another story (along with the camera they are in) it might just take too long to do any conversions.

There is something to be said for keeping all the systems the same in-house.

[David Neal]

Storming in rather late for the party!
Where I work we have 6 Media Composers (Mojo) and 7 FCP (Decklink). Unless you can get an Adrenaline Box my choice would be FCP (Color is very nearly a great bit of software). With the RED camera we have stayed firmly with FCP for our offline editing.
Horses for courses really… I’d be happy with either. Any one want to buy me one?

Hi Mads (If you get to see this). Hope you are well!

[Robb Hanson]

As a professional editor who has used both extensively:

Avid is like driving a Ferrari. Final Cut Pro is like driving a Ford Fiesta.