How good and reliable I/O is?

[Lee Berger]

Solid performance and great support from AJA. The only minus to FCP vs. hardware based NLE’s (AVID and M100 in my experience) is the ability to mix resolutions in the timeline without rendering. Makes things a little difficult if you share media between different projects at different data rates and resolutions.

[Bob Zelin]

With all due respect – Steve is incorrect –

Some things I like about Avid better than FCP 4.5/AJA IO:

[Alexander Serpico]

One of the editors i work with is a organizational mess. He loads at varying resolutions and frame sizes, and doesn’t check to see that indeed nothing matches until i do when his project is exploding and his is output is hours late. Frequently the renders of these 10 minute+ sequences render as if it was corrupt, and footage jumps around or the sequence drops frames as it goes out to tape. My last minute repair is to export the sequence as it renders to a separate drive, and then in a new project/sequence edit to tape.

[Steve Covello]

>>AVID is NOT turnkey – I am the turnkey – I build the AVID systems from a bunch of parts

I am speaking from the users perspective. Once I had my Meridien installed, I NEVER had to touch it. My editors don’t need to mount or setup drives, no going through 5 menus to setup input/output medium, resolution selection, target drives, backup drive, capture track selection, deck control, etc. etc.

>>I am the one that suffers.

And for good reason, too: so my editors don’t have to!! This is my point — that engineering and setup should be done once, and that’s IT. The user should be able to be dumb enough to open one window, chose from a few simple buttons or menus, and go. Avid projects carry with them all resolution, fps setup, and so on no matter who used the machine before you. If there was ONE THING I wouldchange first in FCP it would be to simplify user/project setup. I stand by my opinion.

>>You can find an AJA dealer that can deliver you a turnkey, but if you get a bag of parts for AVID Xpress Pro

If you ONLY use the AJA IO on your FCP editing system, and you ONLY use the SAME disk drives every time, then the system can stay relatively simple. But that’s not how our system is used. Some producers/editors don’t want to use the IO and would rather just jack in the FW drives and use FCP strictly as a DV system [don’t ask me why]. There are various connectivity issues when using several FW 400 and/or FW 800 drives in series, which, to you and me, might be simple, but not for the average knucklehead director. You would be amazed at how many ways there are to setup an FCP system wrong!

And then there was the producer who thought that if you setup FCP to work in FW DV, then all you had to do was run another FW cable from the other FW port on the G5 to an ADC-100 and patch the CV to the monitor to see NTSC, except that it didn’t work because the signal flow was wrong. The ADC-100 has to be in series with the media drive.

My point is, Bob, that an Avid system REQUIRES inflexibility [read: turnkey] in order for it to be easy to use, though there is a price to pay in installation and various proprietary components. This is fine for those who seek it, which is why Avid’s stock has inexplicably risen from the lowly $8 when I owned it in 1997 [and sold at $12] to where it is now around $50!!! Go figure.

But since I have a choice in the matter, and the know-how to manage it, I will sacrifice simplicity for the convenience of price and flexibility. I felt this poster should know this.

steve covello
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