Making the FCP leap

[Mark Raudonis]

Jump in. The water’s fine!

Mark

PS Really, only you can decide what’s good for you. Do your research. Read this forum and many of the other forums out there. You’ll get an eyeful in no time.

[David Fortin]

Switched from Accom Stratoshphere to FCP in 2005. Was an easy transition. If I remember correctly I plunged in feet first and never looked back. My Strat had crapped out so it was baptism by fire. Had a project due and learned while editing. Any questions I had I searched the cow forum and 9 times out of 10 it was already answered. The Strat compressed the video a bit. I was editing in 8-bit uncompressed in FCP so there was no loss of quality (a step up, technically).

Never used the Affinity, but found I could do more with FCP than the Strat. Have never been sorry.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

David

Dual 2.5 G5 {OS 10.4.9}
4.5 GB RAM
FCP2
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL
DeckLink SP
ATTO ExpressPCI UL4S
Medea Video Raid RT320
Sony UVW-1800
Pansonic AG-DV2500
Media Cleaner Pro 6
AfterEffects 7
Squeeze 4.2 (PC)
ViewSonic 19″ LCD
Optiquest 21″ CRT
Bella EZ Keyboard

[Mark Tyson]

Got rid of Affinity and a Strat 5 years ago for FCP3…that was a step up. FCP6 on an Intel Octo
will knock your socks off! It’s a good step.

Mark Tyson

[Pat Defilippo]

Hello,

I, too, made the jump from StrataSphere in 2005 (like David) after being an owner/operator of that system since the VideoCube days in 1994! In fact, my StrataSphere still works very well and I used it in August to update an annual spot that I’ve been doing for years. I’m looking to sell it, by the way, since I’m entirely on FCS2 now. If you know of anyone interested, please let them know to drop me a line (my contact info is below).

I would suggest that you look into a good training DVD. I learned from DMTS and their FCS1 package. It will get you up to speed relatively quickly, however as you know there will still be stuff to learn from there. The DVD Studio Pro tutorial from DMTS is particularly excellent as well, and since Affinity is editor-only hardware and software, you’ll need to get up to speed with the other excellent programs FCS2 offers in addition to FCP6.

You’ll find that the Affinity did some things better. One thing that FCP literally just got today with the FCS 6.0.2 update that even the VideoCube had way back in 1994 is the ability for the playhead to scroll while playing within a timeline. As you know, the playhead in an Affinity TrackSheet scrolls to the right as you’re playing so that you can glance down while reviewing a video, for example, and see what edits you have coming up and then quickly and easily stop to revise anything. Up until literally just yesterday, the only way to do this was to zoom out (Shift-Z) so that the entire Timeline is viewable because the playhead would disappear of the right side of the screen if you were zoomed in any tighter! I missed this feature a lot coming from having it in the StrataSphere world and I’m glad FCS2 finally added it!

I think the thing you’ll miss the most is the Workspace. I miss it every day! Right now in FCS (or Avid or any of them), you can’t place things like alternate takes, etc., anywhere but in the Bin. I remember being able to Shift-Drag alternate takes, etc., to the Workspace below the TrackSheet (Timeline) so that when you wanted to change the take, for example, all of everything was there for you within the edited clip (in-and-out point set, transitions and effects added, and even the in-point of where it started in the timeline) and it was much easier to flip-flop out the shot – and even Shift-Drag the one you’re swapping to the Workspace! The Workspace is an excellant feature that no other software I looked at two years ago embraced.

Other things you’ll miss is Command-Clicking on a clip to automatically jump to the in-point of it, and Option-Command-Clicking on a clip to automatically jump to the out-point. FCS2 has snapping, like StrataSphere and Affinity has always had, so you’ll end up getting used to moving the playhead on the Timeline close enough to snap to where you want to go or using the Up & Down arrows to jump to the previous & next edit points. While these are nice, they’re not as nice.

Other than that, everything about Final Cut Studio 2 is a major upgrade to Affinity – which makes sense because the last time that system was upgraded was at the end of the ’90s! I believe that if ImMix/Scitex/Accom kept up with R&D, that the StrataSphere/Affinity system would still be as highly regarded as Final Cut Studio is today! That system was definitely designed more by linear video editors, which is why it appealed to me in 1994 because I’ve been editing for almost 25 years now and about 50% of that was still linearly (including my first 13 years-plus)! You’ll find a lot of stuff about FCS and Avid uses Film terminology (Slug instead of Black, etc., most of which meant nothing/still means nothing to me doing spots, corporates and infomercials) or that was clearly created by computer programmers learning video/film.

All in all, though, I was in the same shoes two years ago that you are in today coming from the same non-linear system. I’d say that if you get the training DVDs and do several jobs on FCS right away (not your Affinity, which will be tempting to use since you know it so well!) that you’ll be up to speed well enough within a few days. Additionally, if you keep reading the Cow FCP forum weekly (if not daily) that you’ll be very comfortable with FCS within a month. A tip to the using the COW – first, do a SEARCH for an answer to the many questions you will have because you’ll get an answer quicker that way. If it’s not there, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can get an answer by the knowledgeable folks here!

Good luck!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Scott Fien]

I knew my Cow buddies would come through for me! Pat and David, we had very much the same progression it sounds like you did: A/B linear to the VideoCube to the Affinity (we skipped the whole Stratosphere thing). I agree, Pat, if only Accom had hung in there, the Affinity would continue to be a great system. The daily system freezes though are killing our productivity. Our workflow to get projects to DVD is so time-consuming. We really are looking forward to the new system. Thanks all for the confidence boost … and believe me, I’ll be checking in for help as we delve deeper.

Scott

[Scott Thomas]

I like you came from a liner, tape editing background. The first computer editor I used was a CMX Edge! I saw the unveiling of the Immix Cube in `94 and was intrigued. It wasn’t until `96 that I was running an Avid MC1000. I later ended up at a TV station where I had to use Cubes, but I never had that fondness for the workspace. 🙂 My solution was to just move my clips to an unused track. I always liked that because the clips would keep their relation to one another. The workspace as I saw it was problematic. I do appreciate the more free-form nature of the Immix. I later worked on the Accom Affinity. Ack! What a mess that became for us. I know it’s strong points, but we had a lot of problems with ours.

We recently moved to a 8-core MacPro with FCP Studio 2.

[Scott Thomas]

The Affinity was almost doomed from the start. After Accom bought Scitex Digital Video, they tried to ramp-up and bring out a knock-out system, but they ran out of money and were laying off people around 2001. There were plans to have a version of Affinity on Windows NT. That would have probably been a better system than the one based on our beloved classic Mac OS. My guess it that it would have taken too much money or time to port over all of the technology to a new platform. Even after I brought up all of the issues with Accom, the company I work for bought the Affinty anyway.

The assets of Accom were transfered to a new company named Abekas… Not quite the same Abekas of yesteryear. It does have the man Junaid Sheikh behind it. One of the founders of the original Abekas.He was also at Ampex before that. There are other things that make him famous. I had the opportunity to meet him at NAB this past year.

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi ScottGFX,

The first linear editor I worked with was the Sony BVE-5000 in ’85. I went 3/4″ to 3/4″ for the first two professional years I was in this field while also editing and directing 6pm and 10pm newscasts for a CBS affiliate in Quincy, Illinois. We also used to edit 2″ to 2″ on the fly, too, where you had to anticipate the edit as it wouldn’t engage until about a second after you hit the record button.

You might think I was spoiled starting out with a Sony BVE-5000, but when I went freelance in 1990, I quickly got to work with all of the other good and bad linear editors at the time including several models from brands including Mach One, Emme, Grass Valley (my favorite was the 151), CMX, Sony, Ampex and the Axial (which was both linear and non-linear).

I edited on several of the early non-linear’s as well, like the EMC2 and D-Vision through the Avid and the like but, until Final Cut Studio in 2005 for me, my favorite was clearly the VideoCube/TurboCube/StrataSphere systems. I never had many problems with any of them (of course, I knew all the work-arounds to keep them running smoothly), but I still did have to buy the expensive extended service agreements and then replacement boards after they were not offered any more. I avoided upgrading to Affinity becuase I heard of all of the problems with it and held off, but the company went under before they made that system stable enough to be in business.

Thanks for the tip on the workaround for the Workspace! That’s a good idea and I supposed I could, like you said, just stack alternate takes, etc., above the take currently being used and either turn the video and audio tracks off or moving the transparency and audio levels to zero. The advantage doing it that way in FCP is that it would ripple, which the Workspace was unable to do. So, thanks again!

Like you, I am happy with Final Cut Studio even though Strat had some things that were better even to this day. By the way, I have played with the new FCP 6.0.2 “scrolling playhead” feature and, although it does in fact leave the playhead over the Timeline area that you stopped at while playing, the playhead still rolls off the screen to the right! So, it’s still not as good as VideoCube (circa 1994) in that the FCP Timeline doesn’t itself scroll to the next screen with the playhead (if you’re zoomed in – if you’re zoomed all the way out, it scrolls just like VideoCube). Hopefully, in an upcoming upgrade, they’ll figure out how to get the Timeline to scroll to the right while the playhead plays off the screen that way so that, like VideoCube, you can even be zoomed in all the way and still see what edits you’ve got coming up as you’re reviewing. Good start for FCP, though – 13 years after ImMix! Again, though, FCP is way ahead in many other aspects.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Jean philippe Stuart]

Hi

Do you still have Malware on your website? I got a warning from my Mac not to go on the site