remember the old days!

[Craig Seeman]

. . . and I remember all the Avid editors/facilities who laughed at the toy, thinking it would only be a “home” toy (kinda iMovie ish) and never a competitor . . . almost like all the FCP hand wringers are saying about FCPX.

I remember convincing the Avid based facility I was engineer at, to get one FCP copy which they used for some of there simple “in house” low end work. Although I was gone before the changeover I believe they are an FCP facility now.

The new “home toy” will be facilities setting up FCPX on the new Thunderbolt Quad Core iMacs to save costs.

[Richard Herd]

[Craig Seeman] “The new “home toy” will be facilities setting up FCPX on the new Thunderbolt Quad Core iMacs to save costs.”

And it’s gonna be AWEsome!

[Bret Williams]

I never understood all those comments. I was using EditDV at home to edit my demo reels back in 1999. I was a freelance Avid editor and would take my XL1 to edit suites and dub the final project to mini dv to take home and add to my demo. I even started doing small DV productions with EditDV. When FCP came out I quickly realized it was a competitor, and actually had more high end features than composer. It had compositing modes, resolution independence, precomposing (nesting) , and even some animated text like animated tracking. Plus I could use my BorisAE in FCP. It had it’s limitations and gotchas, but so did Avid. If you were a little savvy, you could hook up a beta deck thru the svideo of a camcorder and digitize betacam as DV with full TC support. For 2-3k I had a system that was pretty similar to AVR77 or 2:1 meridian media composer suites which were still prominent. In some ways, better image quality. For the longest, Avid didn’t have any FireWire support. I was editing some broadcast work at local PBS where they shot on DVCam, then ingested it at 2:1 compression. They were running DV through compression making lesser quality, but more than doubling the file size. And that was considered broadcast quality. I had a G4 laptop that was better than that with FCP.

[Ariane Fisher]

jaw-dropping!

[Richard Dee]

I never upgraded past FCP 1.0. Did I miss an update?

[Craig Seeman]

[Craig Seeman] “The new “home toy” will be facilities setting up FCPX on the new Thunderbolt Quad Core iMacs to save costs.
“

The new 27″ iMac has TWO Thunderbolt ports. With the built in monitor, it’s possible to have a 3 monitor setup. Of course TWO Thunderbolt ports is a major connectivity gain, sorta like two PCIe slots but better.
I certainly think we’re going to see facilities with this along with FCPX.

I really do think this is another chink in Avid “attraction” given the already limited I/O options they have. Given that one wont be able to install an nVidia card in an iMac, it can make FCPX look very attractive for speed compared to Premiere.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Craig Seeman] “I really do think this is another chink in Avid “attraction” given the already limited I/O options they have. Given that one wont be able to install an nVidia card in an iMac, it can make FCPX look very attractive for speed compared to Premiere.”

Avid supports AJA and Matrox in addition to their own hardware, so I’m not sure that this is valid anymore.

As for Adobe, CS5 was already 64-bit enabled and already took advantage of Grand Central Dispatch and all of the RAM – FCP X promises to catch up in that regard, so you’re applauding Apple for finally supporting their own platform 3 years after they made a 64-bit OS and hardware.

[Craig Seeman]

[Dennis Radeke] “Avid supports AJA and Matrox in addition to their own hardware, so I’m not sure that this is valid anymore.”

Not on an iMac. Remember COST is a big factor for many.
Price of Avid plus MacPro
vs
Price of FCPX plus iMac

Matrox and Blackmagic showed Thunderbolt products nearly ready to release.
AJA showed that they are working on something.

For many smaller facilities as well as others under budget pressure, FCPX, iMac with Thunderbolt willbe cost effective.
This is in addition to MBP with Thunderbolt as well for those who need to edit in the field.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Craig Seeman] “Not on an iMac.”

Craig, what is preventing Avid or anyone else from running on an iMac? If Avid supports Matrox now and a thunderbolt version comes out, I think it a pretty good expectation that Matrox and Avid will support it. And as others have pointed out, it’s the talent of the editor and the quality of the tools that count not just the price.

Sheesh, I’ve seen everything now. I’m an Adobe guy defending Avid on an Apple forum. Oh, the irony! 😉

[Craig Seeman]

[Dennis Radeke] “If Avid supports Matrox now and a thunderbolt version comes out, I think it a pretty good expectation that Matrox and Avid will support it.”

Avid’s history is SLOW to “certify” things. Avid may well be slow to “certify” Lion compatibility. Lion and FCPX may take advantage of things that will take some time to adopt.

Adobe, on the other hand, will be right there from the start but Avid specifically has ALWAYS been SLOW to officially support new hardware as well as new OS.