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Thoughts so far on MC6 from a FCP7 user
So I’ve been on the quest to find the replacement for Final Cut Pro 7. I’ve dabbled with Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, and now Media Composer 6. They all seem to have their advantages and disadvantages. I used Media Composer 10 years ago before switching to Final Cut Pro and I’ll start off by saying that Avid seems to have come a long way since those days. I’m not familiar with the Avid terminology so please forgive me if I sound a little like I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I downloaded the MC6 trial a few days ago and just installed the Kona 3 drivers yesterday. I’m working on an old 8 core Mac 2,1 Computer with 8 GB of ram. The first thing I noticed was that it seems to be really peppy. Moving the clips around, insert editing, output to broadcast monitor, etc. I have Premiere Pro on this same computer and it has a really hard time keeping up. Premiere Pro seems very clunky and output to Kona works sometimes and sometimes not. Avid worked with my Kona 3 card as soon as I installed the drivers.
It’s taken me a little bit getting used the Avid way of editing again. With Final Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro you can grab clips, throw them on the timeline anywhere you want, drag in and out points, etc. Avid you have to be in certain modes, even though they have an ‘auto mode'(Forgive me for lack of terminology) that seems to do a pretty good job.
The new avid interface is very good. It fills the computer screen nicely. Having source/program monitors are very nice. It seems to be very easy to find commands, etc.
I’m going to try it out for another 30 days, and I’ll report back then. I’m very excited about what’s going on in the post world right now. The prices have come way down since the old days and for the most part, the software has gotten a lot better.
Greg Jones
D7,Inc.
Orlando,FL.
https://www.d7-inc.com -
6 Replies
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Well, it’s nice to hear somebody’s having a positive experience. I, on the other hand, as a long-time Avid user and fan am having nothing but issues with MC6 and Lion. Strongly feeling the urge to jump back to the PC world after I use this MacPro up in a year or two.
Chris
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What issues have you been having Chris? I’ve been testing MC6, granted nothing in the way of heavy lifting, but knowing what issues to anticipate would be helpful.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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Actually, I’m mostly belly-aching. It’s working fine on my laptop, and I’m enjoying it. However, it doesn’t want to play well on my big machine, so I rolled it back. When I get a free weekend, without the wife giving me a bunch of honey-dos, I’ll do a total wipe of the drive and start from scratch. I’m sure with a clean install it’ll be fine, and I’m looking forward to playing with it more.
The things that’s got me MOST tweaked is that apparently there are no official CUDA drivers from nVidia for Lion? Can this be true? If so, it’s that sort of thing that’s got me considering a move back to the PC world more than anything.
Chris
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I’m running Symphony 6 with a Decklink HD Extreme card on a Mac Pro 4,1 8-core under 10.7.2. Everything is pretty solid. A few bugs that seem to have made it through the beta, but which will probably be fixed ASAP with a patch that will inevitably come out. Avid has been good about that in the last couple of years.
If you are new or have returned to MC, then I strongly urge you to check out some of the threads in this Avid Community forum:
https://community.avid.com/forums/299.aspx
I would also recommend these tutorials as invaluable:
https://community.avid.com/forums/t/67003.aspx
https://community.avid.com/forums/t/71781.aspxThese were developed by a user on older versions of the software, but most of the principles will still apply.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I did a multicam edit on MC6 last week and it was rock solid.
Mac pro 4,1 – 8 core, 24 gigs ram. and an Nvidia 4800. I ran it in both 32 and 64 bit mode. 32 was good, 64 was impressive with all that ram. It was so good i decided to spend the 30 bucks and put Lion on. No issues at all, except yes i had to run the cuda update package, it installed a 64 bit driver (?.50???) Not sure the initial number but i know the .50 part is correct. I did have to find a driver for my Esata card, and re-install Resolve after the Cuda update, but everything seems to be working great.
Glenn
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I just wrote a similar write up of my switching experience. I cut a feature right away on mc 5 and had to go back to FC7 to cut a tv show. Boy was I missing the feature in Media Composer! I would suggest buying a copy of Steve Cohen’s “avid agility”. You will jump very far ahead in no time. Its a great read. I haven’t downloaded 6 yet, as I don’t feel like paying another $300 for the borisCC (really sucks). The nice thing is that 6 still works off the principles of 5, so I don’t feel it will be a big deal getting the hang when I do.
You’ll find in time that there’s pretty much a way to do everything you were doing in FC (though some habits you’ll find are slowing you down) and a ton more options you never had.
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