Which NLE to go for?…

[Joe Womble]

Jimmy,

One of the things you may want to consider when making your choice of NLEs is whether or not you have to send your project to someone else for audio sweetening, color correction, etc. And also whether your shop hires freelance editors regularly. These factors may influence your decision to go with the industry standard Avid line (AXP to Nitris) that so many others own or have experience operating.

Certainly the DS line is incredibly powerful and infinitely capable, but there are Symphony Nitris owners, for example, who insist they can do everything their clients ask of them without having to spend for and learn the DS system.

Interestingly, I give a lot of editors struggling with the decision on whether to buy Avid Liquid or Xpress Pro (at the other end of the spectrum) the same advice…in some cases it depends on whether their product needs to be enhanced further with other programs and if they are looking for freelance editors from time to time. The Avid interface shared by everything from Xpress Pro to Nitris makes going between/among the entire line pretty seamless.

Let us know the direction you decide to go.

Regards,

Joe Womble

[Grinner Hester]

I’d make the swap to FCp and grow from there. You can save alot of moola by not spending it on the smoke, nitris or eQ. Unless you have a clientele that is specifying a machine they’d like to work on, I can’t justify the expense.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Grin,Joe. Thanks for advice chaps.

Yeah Joe, the suite in question will only be used by our senior editor and all grading, etc will be done on there. Audio for more complex projects will go out to an audio house to final mixing, but more basic stuff would be done in our suite. It’s looking like the Smoke at the mo, just purely on reputation, client requests and it’s toolset. Still open to the Nitris option though, but looks lie eQ is a little too much for what it is and perhaps a little behind the times and a bit short on plugins/3rd party support.

We mostly get freelancers in for our secondary suite downstairs (currently a v7 Media Composer on an old PPC 9600! Sloooooow..) so down there we’d want something powerful, but also something our editor roster could handle fairly quickly. FCP looks like the ideal route if we went Smoke/XSAN upstairs and a Symphony or similar downstairs if we went the Nitris route. Possibly an FCP AND Xpress or something downstairs through the same desk could be a good solution? Could that work/is there any point? One of our freelenacers suggested it, but is it worth the hassle I wonder? Hmmm…

Any more ideas graciously appreciated. Thanks again.

Jim.

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[Joe Womble]

Jimmy,

Wes Plate over at Automatic Duck makes a very elegant software solution for getting projects to/from Avid and FCP, and After Effects as well. I have heard of very few issues for editors who need to work this way.

Another reason to consider Avid as your platform is the Avid Interplay hardware/software. It can be a tremendous benefit to manage shared assets among your rooms. There’s a healthy price tag assoicated with Interplay, but I love the concept and execution with this product. If I had multiple rooms that stayed very busy, not to mention freelance editors and multiple platforms, Interplay would not only play a role in my asset management but would likely factor into my decision on which NLE I would choose.

Regards,

Joe Womble

[Grinner Hester]

Jim, I’d go smoke upstairs and two FCP stations downstairs. I realize you’d be weeding your Avid freelance pool here but you’d already have the smoke covered and the cream will rise to the top, starting downstairs. You’d have three fully funcional HD suites, all three capable of handling any SDI projects that come in the door. Going weith FCP downstairs would free up some budget on some sparkage, ect for the smoke suite or salary for the artists on the new gear.
To me, your other logocal choice is to go with DS upstairs and a lower end Avid product downstairs to maintain the current freelance pool. I’d do two Xpress Pro machines before I’d go with Adrenaline. You’d be doing the grafix intensive stuff upstairs anyway.
I still like solution one. FCP with some bells n whistles is a very billable thing. More so than offlining on Xpress Pro and not much more expensive all HD ready. Smoke speaks for itslef. Thats no bash on DS, I just don’t have to sell ya on it.
Agreed eQ is way expensive. You’d have to have a hardcore hourly rate with anough clietele to back that up to make it work. I wish I would have never sat in on a motion tracking session at NAB. Made all other trackers pretty lame after seeing it track stuff off the screen.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks, Joe/Grin.

Grin – yes, i think FCP downstairs (only one room free down there – the FCP/Avid idea was to put both in the same room for choice/flexibility) and Smoke upstairs is going to be the winner. Our current freelancers will just have to go do some training! A couple would need to train on a new Avid anyway, so might aswell go the whole hog. Either that or find some new blood aswell..

Smoke to me provides the better, more rounded solution – plus it could probably handle all/most GFX when I’m away if there is a PSCS2 loaded PC nearby aswell for archived comps. The Smoke may take a little away from the gfx team in terms of capability on it’s own, but it would free up GFX to concentrate on more complex work and push the boundaries for us a bit more…Healthy I think!

I guess all to do now is send our editor on a few demos of Nitris/Smoke/eQ just to make sure he’s comfortable.

eQ is a step up price wise, but is it really a cut above productively over the other two?
We had a huge outlay when we bought the

[Oakmozart]

I’d go with Media Composer software before I went with Xpress Pro…LOTS more functionality, and it’s just as stable as XPro. You could then add in Mojo/Mojo SDI to your suites if you felt inclined, or add in Adrenaline at a later time, or leave them as software-only.

[Fred Williams]

I agree with AK-Jake! You took the words right out of my mouth.