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I wish FCPX adopted these Premiere Pro features
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Okay then Andrew.
Your point is clearly that change over the past decade has been relatively minimal and that if we all just focus on exactly the same thinking editors relied upon, say, at the turn of the last century – then we’ll be just fine.
No more efficiency to be gained.
No advancements needed.
Just keep doing what granddad did and all will be peachy!
Hey, I know! I still have a “cheese grater” Mac Pro with 8 Gigs, a 500 gig oot drive and your highly valued “perpetual” keyboard + single button mouse! Wanna make me an offer?
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “Your point is clearly…
“Interesting assumption… I thought it was pretty clear that my point was to lampoon your post by pointing out all the decades, if not centuries, old technology that’s used in even the most ultra-modern lifestyle. C’mon, it’s just a little funny that you took a shot at Adobe for taking cues from 1960’s era tech while X still takes some cues from 1910 era tech.
Here’s a deeper part of my point, age is irrelevant. If it works it works. The blade tool, for example, still exists in X (and other NLEs) because it still effectively communicates the idea of what that tool does. Just like the guts in a new MP are basically the same as the guts in an old MP which are basically the same as the guts in the Gateway PC I had in college (or was it an HP?) because those same basic guts still effectively get the job done. Sure, everything is better, cheaper and faster today but it’s still silicon-based x86 Intel CPUs, PCBs, transistors, USB, RAM, etc,… The change from HDD to SSD is one of the bigger differences but even the tech behind SSD is pretty old. It’s been constant refinement and improvement but no major shifts like going from vacuum tubes to transistors.
As an older gentleman living in a culture that has problems with ageism I thought you’d put less emphasis on age and more emphasis on effectiveness. 😉
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[Andrew Kimery] “As an older gentleman living in a culture that has problems with ageism I thought you’d put less emphasis on age and more emphasis on effectiveness. ;)”
After 40 years in this business, the only thing I really value any more is mental agility.
The ability to WANT to survey the ever changing landscape and not get stuck encountering new challenges – but always trying to solve them the same way you always have just because that’s all you know.Biggest compliment I’ve gotten in the past 5 years was from Ben King, the senior editor at the BBC who I spent some time drinking with at NAB 2012. More than a year later – after numerous additional on-line exchanges – and on another board entirely, he described me as something like “the least out-of-date guy I know.”
Mental agility breeds that.
So I agree. It’s not age – it’s attitude.
Age just gives one enough life perspective to be a whole lot less concerned about what other people will think about you – if you are saying something you honestly feel to be right.
; )
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Oliver Peters] “Ironically there are a number of big shops that used to be FCP “classic” strongholds, who are shifting to Media Composer/Isis set-ups.”
One of those was Bunim/Murray, among the first (THE first?) major broadcast producers to adopt FCP — currently 10 shows on 4 networks iirc.
Their SVP of Post-Production, Mark Raudonis has been a COW member for over a dozen years, and posts here regularly on topics including this one.
Just 2 days ago on the
[Mark Raudonis] “Why not? Better to ask, “WHY?”. The reasons that AVID is strong in Hollywood center around the few things that they do better than anyone else: Large, shared storage work groups. Large projects (features, reality TV) require many people all working on the same media simultaneously. None of the other players can match Avid’s mastery of this workflow.”
Mark also wrote an article about that very issue for us back in 2012:
Real World Editing: From Avid to FCP and Back Again
You can see it in the COW and in “the world,” and I’ve observed it myself. I also see this process accelerating as many of the longtime FCP 7 holdouts find themselves needing to upgrade their facilities. They look around and find that those few things that Avid excels at are exactly the things for which these folks need excellence.
I’m sure this doesn’t need repeating, but ima do it anyway: none of this says anything about what YOU should be using.
It’s simply to underscore my view that anybody counting out Avid needs to recheck their math.
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[Tim Wilson] “One of those was Bunim/Murray, among the first (THE first?) major broadcast producers to adopt FCP — currently 10 shows on 4 networks iirc.
Their SVP of Post-Production, Mark Raudonis has been a COW member for over a dozen years, and posts here regularly on topics including this one”Mark and I have known each other for a long time. Another company I just saw in Post magazine is Pie Town, who is also heavy into non-scripted TV.
A multi-editor, shared-project environment is important to these companies. And they are in LA, where good Avid talent is easy to find.
Mark pioneered this with FCP so he’s seen the advantages and disadvantages to each system. In the end, it’s which system has the fewest choke points and lets you make your airdates. Everything else is secondary.
I think it was Mark who made this analogy, but FCP vs. Avid is sort of the hot fling versus the stable wife (I’m paraphrasing, so sorry if I have that wrong).
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] ” Pie Town, who is also heavy into non-scripted TV
Yeah, they too are handling 10 series, currently delivering 400 episodes/year. Even though they too were heavy into FCP, when it came time to upgrade their systems this year, Avid was the slam dunk. Not just for the NLE, but for the ecosystem that we WAY too rarely talk about here: ISIS, Avid Everywhere, Avid MediaCentral, Pro Tools, etc etc etc. Apple never had that range of resources at its peak of extensibility, and certainly has far less now.
Some folks critical of Avid might say, “Hollywood has nothing to do with anything.” For Avid, Hollywood (and Hollywood-style workflows outside that one small neighborhood in northern Los Angeles) is EVERYTHING. If Avid is losing in Hollywood, they’re losing. Full stop. If Avid is gaining in Hollywood, they’re winning. Right now, they’re winning BIG.
Avid put together a press release with Pie Town that we posted here.
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Not sure of the exact workflow but I know Pie Town is using Resolve for grading. Who knows, if the editing in Resolve eventually gets good enough it could displace Avid from the inside. Grant Petty’s trojan horse! 😉
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[Andrew Kimery] ” if the editing in Resolve eventually gets good enough it could displace Avid from the inside. Grant Petty’s trojan horse! ;)”
As an NLE, the sky’s the limit. But the NLE part is the lowest bar to pass. I know YOU get this, but that’s something I see come up in conversation here almost NEVER (except on this and the Avid Why Not threads).
“Avid” isn’t an NLE. It’s not just “The Avid.” It’s The Force. “An energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
ISIS isn’t storage, and Avid Everywhere isn’t “the cloud.” They’re extensions of The Force.
So yeah, as an NLE, Avid has a lot NOT to recommend about itself. As an NLE, I think Premiere is still in front by a neck for most people, and a length or more behind for X lovers. Avid isn’t even on the track as an NLE…
…but for somebody with many seats, many TB, many episodes, many deadlines, only The Avid offers The Force.
[Andrew Kimery] “I know Pie Town is using Resolve for grading. “
With a nod of respect to Lumetri and other vastly underrated in-NLE grading tools, EVERYBODY uses Resolve.
We have a whole series of tutorials here at Creative COW by Avid infrastructure whiz Scott Freeman SOLELY for the purpose of managing Media Composer/Symphony workflow with Resolve.
(If you’re using Resolve and MC, you NEED these tutorials. And be sure to keep up with Scott’s lifesaving COW blog.)
For that matter, I can’t imagine an Avid project that doesn’t include After Effects. I was in scores of Avid facilities and talked to thousands (yes, thousands) of Avid editors. Not more than a handful of editors touched After Effects THEMSELVES, but every PROJECT sure as shit did.
It’s worth remembering that Automatic Duck began when one Avid editor, Wes Plate, wanted a better way to roundtrip his Media Composer projects through After Effects. He couldn’t find one, so he built one, and named it Automatic Duck.
(Not that we at Creative COW can take any credit for the name, but we like the way Wes was thinking.)
The second iteration of Automatic Duck was to get MC projects roundtripped through FCP during that window where FCP was the HD online for MC SD offline.
Look, it’s the same thing with Pro Tools. It’s the same reason ISIS supports FCP, FCPX, Premiere, and anything else you can name. Nobody knows better than an Avid editor what Media Composer CAN’T do. There’s a LOT it can’t do, so extensibility has always been a bedrock principle.
That’s why when Apple substantially unplugged the core “hookability” of FCP when they released FCPX (hell, they killed “Send to Motion), there was an entire class of editors who said, “Welp, Apple has nothing to offer me anymore.”
It doesn’t MATTER what FCPX could do with skimming or whatever. The NLE is a tiny part of a much larger universe that Apple decided they didn’t want to be part of anymore.
Which is fine. And if you don’t need to be part of that universe either, also fine.
But for people who do, Apple intentionally made itself useless. To THEM. For THAT.
But it’s more than that, really. Avid’s growth isn’t just being driven by the defectors to FCP defecting back. It’s being driven by the staggering explosion of non-scripted TV on practically every channel. Did you know that there are something like two-dozen non-scripted shows on THE WEATHER CHANNEL?
Sure, if you need an NLE, there are a bunch of great choices, including, increasingly, Resolve. But if you need The Force, there’s only one right now.
HERE’s the Trojan Horse, though. Not Fusion per se, but eyeon’s workflow toolset (only included with the paid version). When Grant finds a way to connect managed databases and workflow management to Resolve, that’s going to leapfrog right over a whole bunch of limitations to the NLE itself.
In the meantime though, this is another characteristically long-winded explanation of something that I think I did a pretty good job explaining at much less length in a previous post. LOL Anybody who counts out Avid because they think MC is ugly or old or full of tracks or whatever — no disagreement here, and none from most MC editors.
BUT
… if you need The Force, then, if I may mix movies, “There can be only one.” Actually, there CAN be plenty of ’em. For now, though, only one that goes to a galaxy far, far away.
Which is why, if there’s a need for flexible, extensible, large-scale workflows for the next 20 years, The Avid will be around for the next 20 years too.
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And CC2020 will still disappear your projects if you quit paying every month. No matter how different it is.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems -
Photoshop certainly shows signs of slowing development. For people who don’t do mograph, I read of little difference even in Premiere for basic editorial. Wasn’t that one of the main reasons that rental became attractive to Adobe as a business model? Will people pay every year for a couple of glitzy non-essential features? (Many weren’t, I recall the angst caused by “every other version updaters”). Rental takes away the onus of development of products that have pretty much reached most of their necessary features and require a little “help” to keep the cash flowing.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems
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