AVID – Why Not?

[Dan Stewart]

Avid is for cutting. Just.. cutting. On every other front it’s outflanked.

I’m 95% offline with 15 years in Avid (and a few wasted on Apple before they revealed their true colours).
But still, if I had to do a short fiddly promo with minimal cutting but multiple codecs, loads of FX and deliver it myself I would do it on an Apple laptop running Adobe no question.

But a film? 30 mins plus of cutting? With some other fella dealing with tech? Avid every time.

[Oliver Peters]

[Dan Stewart] “Avid is for cutting. Just.. cutting. On every other front it’s outflanked. “

Well, I would tend to agree, but, I’ve done my best and most high profile compositing with Media Composer. It was actually easier and with more real-time than any other option at that time or even today.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Neil Goodman] “FCPX has been hit or miss with me depending on the version.. lots of sluggishness in the timeline and beachballing = kind of a showstopper for me as I get super frustrated duringthe creative process”

Consistent with my experiences, too.

[Neil Goodman] “PPRO has a thing on my system where intermittently the audio just drops out and stops playing even though the levels are still jumping. Rebooting the app fix’s it for me”

I’ve been going through that the last couple of days as well.

[Neil Goodman] “Avid has a lot of little bugs and error messages that dont seem to mean anything or effect the program – but ive never been able to not work through it.”

Yep. Me, too.

It’s sort of the comparison between the race horse that occasionally comes up with a lame leg (FCPX, PPro) versus the reliable mule (Avid MC).

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Andrew Kimery]

[Oliver Peters] “It’s sort of the comparison between the race horse that occasionally comes up with a lame leg (FCPX, PPro) versus the reliable mule (Avid MC).”

I like how you insult everyone equally. 😉

[Neil Goodman]

[Dan Stewart] “Avid is for cutting. Just.. cutting. On every other front it’s outflanked.

I’m 95% offline with 15 years in Avid (and a few wasted on Apple before they revealed their true colours).
But still, if I had to do a short fiddly promo with minimal cutting but multiple codecs, loads of FX and deliver it myself I would do it on an Apple laptop running Adobe no question.

But a film? 30 mins plus of cutting? With some other fella dealing with tech? Avid every time.
“

If i was a one man band – I could see myself ending up on one of the other two, but I dont work this way, and frankly dont want to be a mo graph guy. Dont get me wrong i respect the hell out of the craft – and know a little AE and whatnot, but its not something I want to do professionally, and Im usually upfront about that when i book gigs.

[Neil Goodman]

[Oliver Peters] “[Neil Goodman] “Avid has a lot of little bugs and error messages that dont seem to mean anything or effect the program – but ive never been able to not work through it.”

Yep. Me, too.
“

Whats funny, is i’ll get something crazy flash in the bottom corner source or record window that says “Fatal Error”. Then i’ll click on something it goes away and the rest of the session runs smooth.

Its very rare to get a freeze or endless beach ball spin or get launched straight to the desktop in MC both PC and Apple.

[Misha Aranyshev]

Because it still doesn’t know how to use your screen real estate efficiently? The thing is ugly and it’s ugliness actually gets in your way. When you clean it up to look halfway decent it stops working because “Avid is keyboard–centered NLE” is outright lie. You can’t work without desperately clinging onto your mouse all the time.

[James Patterson]

[Dan Stewart] “Avid is for cutting. Just.. cutting. On every other front it’s outflanked.
“

I always find this an interesting statement when it comes to Avid, I’m not going to overstate it’s ability to do FX work but there are many occasions when I’ve done pretty heavy comp work within Avid that I just couldn’t do within another NLE.

For example, I’ve cut many fashion promo’s on media composer that require retouching and by using a combination of paint tool and animatte have been able to do a lot of (if not all of) it within media composer, now that most of the ad agencies have switched to Adobe all of this work has to be round tripped from Premiere to AE – I’ve tried to do it within premiere but it’s more trouble than it’s worth and i think Adobe wants you to send that sort of work to AE anyway.

But even if you stand by the statement that Avid is just for cutting, that’s not such a bad thing as from a pure cutting standpoint it’s still (imho) the best and I can’t emphasise how much i miss the trim tools when using premiere (which I’ve been pretty much exclusively for the past 6 months).

Titles on the other hand have sucked in media composer since I can remember! 🙂

Best

[Daniel Frome]

Avid is outflanked in many regards in ‘assistant editing’ features: multicam functionality, syncing, exporting to various formats, etc. When starting a project it can seem like a daunting task begin your work in Media Composer. It’s going to take longer to ‘start’ editing in MC, often times.

But if you focus your attention on just the actual editing, Avid is the smoothest and fastest.

For the record, I’ve done lots of high-end FX and grading in MC. It’s far more than just a cutting tool. For compositing, though, it’s usually an awkward choice due to its layering structure (again, exceptions exist).

For me, Avid will remain part of my arsenal no matter what. For anything longer than a week’s worth of work, it’s still my top choice.

[Shane Ross]

[Michael Aranyshev] ” “Avid is keyboard–centered NLE” is outright lie. You can’t work without desperately clinging onto your mouse all the time.”

I’m pretty sure that you need to hold onto your mouse while cutting in FCX too.

Shane
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