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FCP-X aimed at the same market as AVID Studio?
Out of curiosity, not so long ago I looked at Avid Studio 1, as a former Liquid user and wanted to see what the replacement was like (I moved on to FCS2 and FCS2009 after Liquid was declared EOL). It has been commented on that Avid want to target the wedding and event videographer, documentary and indie filmmaker via Avid Studio. I can see many similarities between AVID Studio 1 and FCP-X. But FCP-X has much greater potential and room to grow, whereas AS will always have a ceiling because Avid will not want to impact on MC sales.
Having tried downloaded and tried out FCP-X, I would say that the performance of FCP-X is much better than Avid Studio and in fact it is significantly better than Premiere Pro CS5 (5.03) on my mid-2010 Mac Pro: I can add many more layers of video, colour correction and filters/fx before playback suffers. I tried this with both avchd (to see how cpu impacts) and Pro Res (to see how hdd impacts). The media management within FCP-X is also interesting!
When I got over the shock and stopped trying to work like I was using FCP and started to explore and think openly I could see some interesting features with potential. I like the fact that you can access filters by clicking on the clip and then select and delete individual filters without having to leave the timeline. I like that you can link a title with a clip and if you make changes it stays with the clip. You can set which drive you want your projects and media to be stored on. You can turn off the automatic stuff. The background rendering is not noticeable.
So far, my experience has been that FCP-X is also more stable than Premiere Pro (eg, the Mac kernel panics issue with CS5 which is well documented; I am aware that an upgrade for CS5 users is apparently in the pipeline and the issue is fixed in CS5.5).
Sure, there are issues and they are well known. I can’t use my Blackmagic card and Apple need to add in the missing things quickly; but I am reminded of comments made to me when I first used AVID Media Composer and struggled with it: “don’t fight it; you have to do things the AVID way”. I guess FCP-X is like that.
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3 Replies
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Nice post. FCP X is as you describe. New. You can’t run FCP 7 like you did MC, you can’t run MC like you did Adobe. You have to learn to use the tool as it was designed to be used. FCP X isn’t any different.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
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[Jerry Hofmann] “You have to learn to use the tool as it was designed to be used.”
Avid Studio is not at all related to Media Composer, or even Xpress. It’s the rebranded version of Pinnacle Studio.
Gerwyn’s point is that Avid Studio is consumer software. Prosumer is a pretty long stretch, imo, although it does have the Blu-ray authoring and 5.1 mixing that is virtually universal in the Windows world. It’s $169 software (newly increased from $129) that’s positioned against iMovie.
So I don’t think FCPX is equivalent to Studio…even though Studio has Blu-ray and FCPX doesn’t…but given what else people are talking about here, it’s in play, with the added twist that it’s across platforms.
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[Tim Wilson] “Avid Studio is not at all related to Media Composer, or even Xpress. It’s the rebranded version of Pinnacle Studio.
Gerwyn’s point is that Avid Studio is consumer software. Prosumer is a pretty long stretch, imo, although it does have the Blu-ray authoring and 5.1 mixing that is virtually universal in the Windows world. It’s $169 software (newly increased from $129) that’s positioned against iMovie.
So I don’t think FCPX is equivalent to Studio…even though Studio has Blu-ray and FCPX doesn’t…but given what else people are talking about here, it’s in play, with the added twist that it’s across platforms.”
Indeed – this was software supposedly a setup from Studio (read iMovie) to replace Liquid (read FCP)! There are some similarities in the feature set: background rendering; simplified editing/CC; ingest and archiving of tapeless media. All-in-one-app editing/cc/fx/audio sweetening/export.
AVID supposedly wanted the nebulous middle market, whatever that is (beyond newbies but not broadcast/Hollywoodthat). A market segment that some on the Liquid forums felt that AVID meant to be one EDIUS, VEGAS and Premiere Pro were fighting for; it is supposedly aimed at event and wedding videographers.
BTW FCP-X does have limited DVD and Bluray output via Share (similar to FCP 7 but less than DVDSP). Also AVID Studio had the consumer version of Dolby’s codec – FCP-X the far more expensive Dolby Professional codec. Avid Studio does not do 10bit nor does it do above 2k; whereas FCP-X offers Pro Res 4444 and 4k (including Red eventually, evidently).
FCP-X seems like a product released a little early – is this because CS5 and Mercury playback engine forced Apple’s hand? Many DSLR and tapeless users were making the switch to CS5 away from FCP if the many comments on various forums are to be believed.
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