Final Cut Pro Mojo

[Walter Biscardi]

[Max Hoffmann] “when I read that Avid Xpress can be purchased with an Avid Mojo and immedeately asked myself why not Apple has a similiar product to add and stabilize the system.”

You can purchase a myriad of third party products to add functionality to an FCP system which takes you all the way to HD so Apple does not need to release anything. Look at AJA, Decklink, Aurora to name a few.

What’s not stable about FCP 4.5? Been running here since it was released and it’s definitely the most stable NLE I’ve run, especially with OS 10.3.8. FCP 5 is still shaking itself out so I wouldn’t recommend throwing that right into a mission critical project yet, but FCP 4.5 with OS 10.3.8, rock solid.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Zman]

mojo is such a scam, as is all avid products. I wish people would just fess up and admit avid is junk, it’s old clunky and very unstable. I love to hear the avid people tell me how great there stuff is, and then i get the phone call as I did on saturday, see I worked on a show for 1 day (thursday night), and then a new editor took over, and on saturday he called and said that the drives are all mounted but all the media is off line,my answer welcome to the world of Avid Adrenaline. Time to digitize, AGAIN!

[Shane Ross]

Yes, the Avid Mojo is a scam…I will give you that. And the later Avids…I don’t know WHAT they did, but people are having trouble with the Adrenaline line.

I still mainly edit on an Avid…the Avid Meridian system primarily. v.11. That is one rock solid machine. Even the old ABVB MC 7 were good, and still in use for many projects. At least in my line of work, and Avid has the high ground over FCP, in meshing with the Post workflow of Hollywood.

BUT…not to rag on FCP. I still prefer the FCP interface and find it much easier to work with and much faster. And it is gaining ground. Build a standalone FCP system capable of offline and online cutting and it will cost about the same as an Avid offline system.

The onle real card Avid seems to be holding lately is that integration into the broadcast production workflow. And it is losing ground.

[Zman]

(Avid has the high ground over FCP, in meshing with the Post workflow of Hollywood.) Do you mean Hollywood Florida? Cause i know your not talking in LA, if you want the rundown I’ll be happy to give it.
dreamworks has multiple FCP-HD’s, trailer park and aspect ratio I believe are all FCP, most of the spot houses have 1/2 fcp and are filipping all over to fcp at an alarming, I was at matchframe the other day in burbank, sweet place, anyway I was chatting with the sales guy mike and he said all they get now are people calling for FCP, so they just bought a few systems, not sure how many he just said a few. I was a colorist form 95 – 2000, and never did I once see a working flow between any avid and the post work arena, now not saying FCP is better, however today FCP does have a smother work flow than avid, the reason most dont see it is because most never took the time to learn the software, FCP is open code, that why so many plug-ins and third party devices, avid is sealed off like windows, and when it comes to the big boy toys Apple and FCP are way out infront with the intergration with shake , lightwave, flame and smoke, it’s amazing, I work on the flame a lot and the avid list never translates well, ok look at this, multi cam in FCP no extra equipment no extra price, Multi cam in avid starts at what a few grand extra for the software and the dongle on top of what you just paid for the editing software, wanna talk soundtrack pro vers anything that the avid has as part of the editing package, no i didnt thinks so, i can really go on about this, this kinda stuff drives me crazy, stop drinking the kool-aid.

[Will Macneil]

There’s a big difference between something like a Mojo and an Io or even the Blackmagic multibridge, and it’s essential to the difference between Avid and FCP. Mojo is an accelerator, the others aren’t. Ever since FCP 4, Apple has made it clear that it wants to keep harware acceleration inside the computer. It can do this, of course, because Apple makes computers. They’ll never have to worry that a platform will change in such a way as to conflict with their software.

Those of us who remember the PCI Apple Avids like the Power PC 9600 (I think, it’s been a while,) remember the conundrum Avid faced with the coming of the Apple G3: not enough PCI slots. Avid eventually found a way around this, but in the meantime, bought every remaining 9600 and ported the software to Windows. So you can see how devices like Mojo and Adrenaline come about. They’ve got no idea what the hardware people are going to do, so they come up with their own and it’s got to be outside the computer.

Understanding this, you can see how our business may change in the years to come. Avid will have to develop proprietary hardware at great expense, that may or may not work. Meanwhile, Apple can exploit its total control of hardware and software. Kind of makes you feel sorry for Avid – well just a little.

Will

[Keith Hill]

I know when it came time to invest in a system that I could scale from my DVX100A work in 23.98 to HD, I looked into the Avid line of products since their name was all that I heard (at that point I had never owned an Apple). I kept running into these obstacles where I needed something else from Avid to get to my goal. As Yoda would say, “Nickel and diming – they do”. I only had a certain amount of money and needed a turnkey solution that wouldn’t be outdated over night. That was back in March ’04. One month after my purchase Apple announced v4.5 as a free upgrade and I have never looked back. Still doing work in 23.98 and, now, I’m fully upgraded into Tiger 10.4.1 and last week installed my upgrade into Final Cut Studio (mainly for the MuliCam and Soundtrack Pro though I’m thoroughly enjoying Motion2 to go along with Combustion 3.0.4-Mac version). So far, everything has been solid. I’m working on some tv ads this week where I will be able to put the round-tripping workflow to a realworld test.

But, back to this hardware thing that started this thread. I hoped (fantasized) that maybe Apple would go and buy the technology that was being abused over at Media100 by Optibase and acquire that 844x hardware and bring it over to the MAC platform. I always thought that that was an awesome machine. To this day I have not seen anything (that would be in my reach, at least) that demonstrated the processing power of the 844x hardware. And, to think that now Optibase is killing Media100 trying to get people to buy into Media100 HD on MAC. They screwed up and destroyed a serious product and engineering team. I said to myself. Apple could get the 844/x technology and build for the MAC. This would be checkmate, but again, I’m dreamin’

Just thought I’d add to the thread.

Keith Hill
https://www.LightedPath.biz
Dallas, TX
Final Cut Studio, Combustion (v3.0.4), DVD StudioPro 4 (v 3.0.2); MAC G5 (v10.4.1-Tiger) 2Ghz, 1.5 RAM

[Dom Silverio]

[ange] “said that the drives are all mounted but all the media is off line,my answer welcome to the world of Avid Adrenaline. Time to digitize, AGAIN!”

Uhm… just rebuild your database? You know automatic reconnection of media – 100% frame accracy and automated? Unlike FCP’s silly Reconnect Tool. Barely reconnects and not really a tool.
Hollywood? You want to count shows in primetime, long form news, feature film releases, reality shows, etc edited on Avid vs FCP?

More major feature films are cut on Lightworks than FCP – and Avid is way ahead of Lightworks.

FCP is a good tool. No need to overhype.

And back to the topic. There will be unlikely an accelerator for FCP. Cinewave tried and got killed by BM and AJA’s cheaper/non accelerating cards [OK, it has some minor accelerations, but unlike HD Adrenaline/Mojo].

[Oliver Peters]

[Will MacNeil] “There’s a big difference between something like a Mojo and an Io or even the Blackmagic multibridge, and it’s essential to the difference between Avid and FCP. Mojo is an accelerator, the others aren’t.
“

Will,

Care to explain that? Neither Mojo nor Adrenaline do any sort of acceleration. Both include A-D/D-A conversion and include hardware codecs to convert DV footage. In the case of Adrenaline, it will also take a hardware expansion card to enable HD I/O.

They pass uncompressed SD video to the computer over FW. That’s essentially the same thing Io does. All effects processing is CPU or GPU based, just like FCP. The only thing Xpro/Mojo enables that FCP/Io doesn’t is mixed codecs in RT (uncompressed + DV) on the same timeline. On the flip side, Io gives you more audio I/O, more video connections and broadcast-quality audio connectors versus Mojo’s RCA connectors; plus, cleaner looking video when using component analog.

In my experince with Xpress Pro + Mojo versus FCP + Io, I find that the Avid app far more frequently loses connection to the external unit over FW. So again, I’d love you to explain how the Avid products accelerate anything, since that’s something Avid has been unable to do for several years to anyone’s satisfaction each time that question is raised on the Avid-L.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Dom Silverio]

I am not Will but,

As you have said, the codec is on board. Thus some of the intensive tasks of compression/decompression is off loaded. No this not in the traditional sense of acceleration ala Ice Boards or Meridien DMB, but the results is compareable to a degree – more FX. Even Aja is touting ‘acceleration’ with DVC Pro HD and HDV with Kona 2 since they too have copied the codec on board technique.

Bottom line is the concept is simple but the results are there. Try using Io for DV. Decent amount of RT as long as you keep it in Unlimited/Low Quality. Set it to high and 10 bit and watch the video turns quarter of res in the top left of your client monitor. With Adrenaline – full quality 4-8 layers of DV. Mojo the same but of course limited to 8 bit.

BTW – as I understand it Mojo does capture DV native via its firewire port if you set it to DV. You can also go from Avid to Mojo FW to DV VTR natively if you set Digital Cut to native mode. You lose some RT, but you can stay native.

[Niti Shah]

I m agree with MPE. I really expect things to improve like offline-online workflow, reconnect tool is really useless some time.