[Adam White]

Thanks to everyone.

I will try your suggestions and see if they resolve the issue.

[Adam White]

Thanks guys, good to know this little trick can still be done.

[Adam White]

Hi Jeff,

I was having similar frustrations with the colour board…it dawned on me that what I was really missing was the old “RGB Balance” tool from FCP7, which allowed for quite precise (and subtle) alterations that seem to be much harder to achieve with the standard colour board.

Someone on here kindly pointed me in the direction of a free plugin that I now use every day, and it’s amazing. It brings back the RGB Balance tool from FCP7 that can be so useful in certain scenarios.

Check it out here – https://www.fcp.co/forum/colour-correction/10962-free-fcpx-effect-wvl-rgbbalance

Give it a go, it might help you get to where you need to be.

Adam

[Adam White]

Thanks Simon,

The free option there is perfect and exactly what I was looking for. Amazing! Cheers for that.

Adam

[Adam White]

Thanks both for the input. Good to know.

Think when the time comes I’ll go ahead and get the 780M card…I asked over at the Avid board as well and a couple people came back saying that it worked fine (they had the card themselves I believe).

Cheers again

[Adam White]

Hi Will,

Thanks so much for your detailed info on this. Very helpful.

A very pleasant surprise to hear your good experiences. Whilst I still need to look at upgrading sooner rather than later, it’s good to know that I will be able to upgrade to the latest version without everything grinding to an unholy halt.

And like you…MPEG Streamclip is always my first port of call right now. It seems crazy to me that it has taken this long for paid software to overtake something that was free to download, on the hardware we use at least.

Are there any “gotchas” that you experienced I should be aware of, or just certain tasks that are still a drag on the system?

Thanks again!

[Adam White]

According to the Apple Mavericks site, it can run on;
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)

I’m running a early 2009 iMac…so I guess I should be fine?

Take the point that it’s time to upgrade though…I was waiting on the new Mac Pro. Now it’s here I think I might be better off with a well-spec’d iMac, however.

[Adam White]

Your right….but at least we have Fit to Fill now.

HAPPY XMAS – WAR IS OVER

Now there will be no more disagreements and everyone can coalesce around the new beloved editing system of choice…

*trying to bring back some festive cheer to proceedings

[Adam White]

I got majorly stumped by this recently.

Had a colourist export a MXF DNXHD file from Resolve, assuming that this would be the best way to get the file into Avid. I couldn’t get it into Avid at all, and tried numerous things. In the end we just got a MOV DNXHD instead and imported it in the usual fashion.

I do find it quite odd that it seems to be so difficult, or at least pretty unintuitive to get a file in Avid’s native format into the software.

[Adam White]

Although I sometimes miss the option to have multiple timelines open when I’ve worked in Avid, after a while I just kind of got used to it. It didn’t really bother me so much.

I recently cut a short in Avid MC7, and for pure CUTTING I think it is probably the best NLE available. I really enjoyed the editing experience working with it, and I was really happy I chose to cut the film on Avid as opposed to the other options out there. I like the way the audio mixing works, and dynamic trimming is a lovely option to have – it’s so simple but it’s probably one of the very best features I have ever used in any NLE. And it’s implemented perfectly. When I really got to grips with trimming in Avid, I felt as though I had never properly trimmed a clip before whilst using FCP7.

I have also tried to use Avid for short-form content destined for the web. In truth this was a far less happy experience. The problem seems to be that for this kind of edit, I really needed to be able to do additional finishing tasks (effects/titles/grading) and quickly. This is where I found that Avid didn’t seem to be the right tool for the job.

The title tool is god awful (and I’ve tried the new one in MC7 – I still think it’s terrible), so I ended up using After Effects – whilst this workflow worked (though I do find the way Avid imports files with Alpha channels needlessley complicated and confusing), creating these elements right inside the NLE is always preferable for jobs where budget/time are at a premium. I have yet to discover a way to create any effects or transitions in Avid that don’t look like they are from a cheap 90s corporate video, but that may well be my lack of experience. On the plus side, colour grading wasn’t too painful.

So my rule is generally to avoid using Avid for any edits where anything more than very basic finishing is required. I find that FCP7 (and even X) do a much better job of these kind of tasks and I can get it done a whole lot faster.

But where it’s more straight-forward cutting, with less finishing required (maybe it’s going out to a grader or vfx artist once I’m done anyway) Avid is still an exceptional tool. And I certainly feel as though I’ve learned a whole lot about the craft of editing from learning Avid.