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FPC_HD or AVID ADRENALINE
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Very well put! Avid is very scared, and they have a reason to be. There time is up.
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Just did a consolidate from 2 sequences at a clients system.
Copied media, trimmed unused a.s.o…..
Now I do have a different edit AGAIN. FCP changed the opacity of some clips to 0% and I have to fix the complete edit by hand.
That’s what I meant. MediaManager is not reliable in FCP 4.5. AVIDs MediaTool is reliable.Greetings
Uwe -
Tomas,
It’s very difficult getting unbiased advice especially when you post on the FCP forum. That said I have used FCP, Media 100 and Avid Composer/Symphony systems over the years. Though I do like the Avid interface, I prefer working with FCP for various reasons. I do a lot of After Effects which suits FCP a lot more. It all depends on the type of work you do.
Bang for buck you get a lot more with a FCP system, however if price isn’t an issue then buy yourself a FCP HD/Kona 2 system with lots of hard drive space. With enough space you can adapt your workflow to avoid any offline/online hassles, i.e. just work at online resolution until Apple sort out their media management tools. As far as I am aware this is the ONLY major downside to FCP, and something I’m sure will be addressed properly in their next release, I’m not sure if version 5 has it or not.
I’m sure Avid are a little disturbed by FCP’s meteoric rise, especially in the U.S. However, here in the UK there is still a feeling, especially amongst facilities and the broadcast industry, that FCP isn’t even close to surpassing Avid. It will take a brave facilities manager to make the decision to switch platforms over here.
What I’d like to see, would be facilities offering a choice, rather than being fiercely loyal to one NLE or another. Hopefully when FCP operates more like an Avid when it comes to an offline/online workflow, then more people will be willing to give it a go.
I used to work at a facility that had 2 aging Avid MC’s, they needed updating badly. As the majority of their work was corporate, I suggested going down the FCP route, most of their clients neither knew nor cared what NLE they used, as long as the job got done to a high standard. After a visit from the Avid sales rep I asked the MD about the upgrade decision. I was told that Avid was the only way to go, and that she wouldn’t touch FCP as Apple was: “Dead in the water…dead in the water”. It seems as well as the usual sales techniques, Avid is also giving it’s sales reps tuition in hypnotism, she had been in the meeting room alone with him for quite some time, and when I walked in on them I did here him say: “…3-2-1 you’re back in the room”.
Cheers from blighty
Otis F
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[Otis F] “Bang for buck you get a lot more with a FCP system, however if price isn’t an issue then buy yourself a FCP HD/Kona 2 system with lots of hard drive space. With enough space you can adapt your workflow to avoid any offline/online hassles, i.e. just work at online resolution until Apple sort out their media management tools. As far as I am aware this is the ONLY major downside to FCP, and something I’m sure will be addressed properly in their next release, I’m not sure if version 5 has it or not.”
I’ll agree with that. I moved from an FCP / CineWave system to the Kona 2 system and it’s just the best as far as SD / HD on the same card with awesome upconvert / downconvert capabilities.
Definitely second you on the Media Mangler, that is without a doubt the worst feature in Final Cut Pro and it’s best to avoid the darn thing. I have about 4 or 5TB of storage in the facility so offline / online is not something we do very often. Prior to FCP I used Media 100 for about 6 years and it had the simplest, easy to use re-capture feature and I’ve requested very often of the FCP team to just give us that option. All you did was select the Sequence, select the resolution, add the handles and re-capture. Perfect recaptures every time of just the material in the timeline with no extra footage and no “We have found 1,000 clips that are referenced by this timeline, would you like to add them…. well it doesn’t matter because I’ll capture them for you anyway, have a nice day.”
As for the health of AVID, they’re certainly not going anywhere soon and while I’m sure they’re not “scared” they have taken notice of Apple’s lineup. What will be interesting is to see how they leverage the Pinnacle purchase. Pinnacle’s Studio is a very good editor for folks to play with on there home PC’s, ala “iMovie,” so I’m sure AVID wants to try to get into the homes of the next generation of editors. I would expect to see that produce re-branded “AVID Studio” and start appearing in Best Buy, Circuit City and others within the year along with a splashy commercial campaign.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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“Avid is also giving it’s sales reps tuition in hypnotism”
aaa that’s what it is I have been wondering about that for more than a year for now
I am working in a Country wit population 1.4 million so there is not much money moving in brodcast industry (well compared to Germany, UK, USA you name it) and somehow all the small studios take major loans from banks and buy adrenaline’s rather than save the money and be able to upgrade with next big thing they are stuck with their investment for a long time.I have never worked on avid – doodeled a bit just to see how it works, RT stuff seems more impressive than FCP, codec mixing (but then again you have to import 🙁 ) sooo, if money is not a big thing and you do broadcast, not film, then I think avid is still in the race, but think of this way – while FCP would suffice or even perform better then the price difference should appear on yer pay-check
why do we choose between NLE’s – because we want to edit – why do we want to edit – beacuse we want to make some money in the progress
just my 2c and bit of rambeling on top
-Kaspar -
I have had both good and bad experiences with each. It really gets down to the type of work you do, whether you prefer Mac or PC and whether you have a good source for support. With Avid you get a sole-source supplier and a good (in most areas) dealer network. This doesn’t exist with Apple when you combine Apple products with 3rd party hardware, unless you have a dealer to provide all the support. That doesn’t mean you’ll have a bad experience, simply that support falls more in your own hands when it is needed.
Adrenaline is a good product after some early shakiness, but the prevailing opinion is that the PC versions are more stable. There are, however, happy Adrenaline Mac customers. The Avid Media Composer Adrenalines are faster in most things than the Meridien predecessors, but not as rock solid. You can chalk that up to the Firewire connectivity of the Adrenaline chassis, versus an installed boardset. I know you said cost isn’t a factor, but you will have to evaluate long term ownership costs, such as Avid Assurance, upgrades, etc.
As far as FCP5, I don’t believe actual Media Management has changed. There’s too much rewriting involved, so for offline/online workflow, Avid is hard to beat. On the other hand, Apple claims to have rewritten things like image scaling, which should make the quality of DVE moves much better in FCP5 than previous versions.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I have posted below that we are considering switching systems from Avid to FCP. One thing in our five years with Avid is that thier support was terrable when our system decided to crap out two years ago. Over 2000.00 later and the sytem hasn’t had another major problem but the cost was unexpected. It seems for the price(our XPress was 29000) FCP can do much better then Avid ever dreamed of. Now that we are getting more corporate work, commercials etc. and moving away from weddings, dance studios, local events(hey something had to pay the bills) is FCP the way to go? The Avid XPress is certainly starting to show its limitations and to upgrade through Avid the price is astronomically high! ……just trying to do as much research as possible before switching an entire system……
Thanks,
Chris -
Well thanks sharing all your experiences. What I need is a system to captures and works in the best possible quality HD material, color correct it and share material with some worksations (like shake or Smoke HD from Discreet for complex compositions) and then reassemble for mastering. The final output will printed to Film. So I am making ONLINE, the off line sometimes comes from another FCP or from another AVID, they will give an edl and i will capture from VTR. I have heard and read that FCP has problems with the quality of renders, that every render changes the video to 8 bits, and also that there is a different gamma translation between FCP and Shake. By the other side AVID adrenaline is known as very stable, robust but has compression (DNx) so it is not the best image capture you can get in the market, it is supposed to be loss less compression and i have seen it and the image is ok.
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Ok first off avid adrenaline is not stable at all. it has a tendency to dump all media as in the drives vanish and never show up again unless you reformat. it’s slow, it also has poor video codecs. Here’s my best advice buy what YOU want and if it’s a bad mistake you have no one to blame except yourself. In other words take your own chances, yea it’s great to ask advice, but you have to also ask what these people giving advice do on these systems, I edit commercials, cream of the crop when it comes to money and technology. I need the best most up to date gadgets and I have them, FCP-HD, Motion, Shake, DVD pro, Adobe AE/PS, and my 30″ cinema display on my G5 with and Xserve and Xraid. I would never go near an avid again.
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Final Cut Pro, while occasionally hinky and equipped with a woeful Media manager, is perfectly suited to modern digital production methods. I work for a multi-platform animation studio and we could not function with an Avid alone.
The Avid interface is great but their technology is a little behind the curve. The Avid is only truly successful with a tape-based workflow and their codecs are a few years behind.
In addition, I find the Adrenaline to be a poorly implemented and supported product. Our Meridien Symphony still hums along at a good clip but no matter what we do, we cannot keep our Adrenaline stable. We have downgraded the machine to offline editing only.
However, if a SAN is in your immediate future, Avid is still superior. Every problem with Media Manager is doubled when sharing media in FCP. Hopefully a combination of QT7 & FCP5 will fix the major issues.
-b
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