[Andrew J. bricker]

Xpro is the base model. the higher up you go, the more bells and whistles. Nitris, I’m told, is a whole different animal – more a compositor than editor.

Andy

[Andrew J. bricker]

You can get a 3D Warp-like effect by applying 3D PIP to your clip, and resizing to 100%

[Andrew J. bricker]

I do all three – Beta, DigiBeta, and DVCAM. My first choice, for obvious reasons, is DigiBeta. Second is DVCam, with Beta 3rd. I Chroma Key just about every day, and when I have to use the DVCAM, i get around the artifact issue by digitizing at 1;1, 2;1, and yes, even 3:1 – depending on the project, and the quality requirements. The results are quite remarkable! Green screen seems to work better than blue for me. So, my advice is to go DVCAM for $$ reasons, but get a deck with SDI or component output, and digitize into 4:2:2. The DSR-1800 is a nice deck, not too pricey. Good Luck

[Andrew J. bricker]

5 years ago, I purchased an Avid Media Composer for around $90,000.00. 1:1 was a $10,000.00 option. Then, this clunky little program called Final Cut Pro started showing up here and there . . .Long story short – 5 years later, Xpress Pro and Mojo, at about 3 grand, do just about everything my $90,000.00 system does, with a few exceptions. Why? Because Avid was forced to react to FCP. Media Composer Adrenaline at about a third of the price of my meridian system does it all, and more . .

Now, in the professional world, you should be at least familiar with FCP. They’re cutting features and TV shows with it. I like Avid better, myself. But I have FCP loaded on one of my machines. So if I’m ever in a situation where they sit me down at a FCP workstation, I won’t look like a bumbling idiot.

FCP is here to stary, like it or not. Healthy competition makes for higher quality, lower cost products. I like that a lot.

[Andrew J. bricker]

You can use Mojo and an external firewire drive on a laptop. Just use a firewire PC card. I do it all the time with my G4 Powerbook. Attach the Mojo to your laptop’s firewire port, and your external drive to the card.. LaCie makes a good one with firewire 400 & 800 for about 80 bucks.

[Andrew J. bricker]

Avid says it’ll have a definitive answer tomorrow. At least that’s what the customer representative says on the Xpress Pro forum.

[Andrew J. bricker]

You can also use the J-K-L keys to scrub back and forth on the timeline. J=backwards, K=pause, and L=forward.

Andy

[Andrew J. bricker]

Hello:

I’ve been using Avid products for years, from the high to the low end. I find that Avid still holds the title, so to speak, when it comes to being the “Industry Standard.” That being said, it’s apparent that Final Cut is moving in fast. That’s why I installed Final Cut on one of my Macs. I played with it, and had a very hard time with it. Two NAB’s ago I bought the book “final Cut Pro for Avid Editors. It didn’t help much, since it was written for FCP3. Does anyone know of a training DVD teching FCP4.5 or 5 for the Avid editor?

Thanks,

Andy

[Andrew J. bricker]

Go get some lessons!