[Tim Wilson]

Lightworks is a very, very specialized application, designed for people who learned how to edit films on FILM. Dandy features, but the winner for most people is that it’s similar to a Steenbeck editor, complete with wheel.

If none of that means anything to you, move along. I worked with one of its longtime product managers when we both moved to Avid. 🙂

[boofer] “final cut more limited in it’s tools compared to avid”

FCP has MORE tools, most notably in the compositing area. So in that sense, Avid is considerably more limited.

Avid has a deeper toolset among the tools it has…at least when talking about Media Composer.
==Paint. Period. Not available in any Apple product in any meaningful way.
==Animatte. One implementation of the paint toolset is the ability to create custom, animatable masks inside a frame, either as mattes or masks. Also called intraframe editing. Nowhere in FCP.
==SteadyGlide tracker. Slick technology for both tracking and stabilizing. Hook it up to the paint, and away you go.
==Keyer is so much deeper and better than FCP’s it’s almost impossible to describe. 🙂
==Script-based editing – uses actual WORDS on a page to edit film and video. Unbelievable, but true.
==Its media management remains the beyond-gold standard. Nobody’s close. Too many reasons to name, but you can ask around.
==Deeper keyboard control over editing, with many of its approaches patented. (Same with media management, actually.)
==More pull-down options.
==More film-format support.
==More customizable timecode tracking, including options FCP simply doesn’t have.
==Unbeatable collaboration — again, nobody close, patents will keep others at bay for years.
==User identities make it absolutely painless to switch users on the same computer or take your own identity to another computer — built on the recognition that freelancers work on other computers, and that NLEs in a busy facility often stay up 24 hours a day with multiple editors, each with their own layouts, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
==While Apple has added amazing new features with Color, it’s a separate app that’s not immediately easy to use. Avid’s color correction (again) has a number of patented approaches that really work.

Look, I could go on for hours here….and have in the past. Media Composer is a much, much deeper application that’s actually easier to learn. But it’s not as cheap (although at $4995 MSRP, a fraction of that if you’re a student, hardly the biggest expense in your kit), and it’s not as cool or hot or whatever. But what I’ve listed above is a teensy, tiny set of reasons why Avid rules Hollywood, Pinewood, Bollywood, and everywhere else they make movies…and plenty of other stuff.

BTW, I mentioned FCP’s compositing integration. Sweet! But as I said earlier, any editor truly serious about compositing needs to check out Premiere Pro. Integration with After Effects is staggering.

But for every day editing, where film, collaboration and clients over your shoulder are less of a way of life, I still think you show exceptional wisdom to look here as well. Media 100 is far too easy to overlook for such a pleasurable bit of software…..

I’ve been yap, yap, yapping away here. What are you really looking for?

[Tim Wilson]

Also, for much of the year, there’s plenty of weekend traffic, especially on Saturday and late Sunday. Things get much quieter on summer weekends.

Which means that this is a GREAT time to look for help. Your posts don’t wind up at the bottom of the page in 45 minutes. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

I suspect I’m among a handful of people who’ve used all three professionally…but that said, my opinion is worth the paper it’s printed on. What’s that you say? No paper? Well, there you go.

I’m not sure why you want to know about feature films unless you’re looking for a job doing feature films for other people. If so, do Avid. Period. I know there are people who say FCP is up and coming, and it is….

…and last year literally 100 times more Hollywood features were made with Avid as its primary NLE vs. FCP (400 vs. 4). Same for Pinewood. When you look at Bollywood, the numbers skew even heavier toward Avid.

Prime-time TV is heaviest yet. Still only one major show posted in FCP (Scrubs), and it’s on its way off the air after a long, successful run.

No disrespect intended toward FCP. A dandy application that keeps getting stronger, and yes, more widely adopted in Hollywood.

But a bear to learn to use. Don’t believe me? Check the FCP forum. And the AJA forums. And the Blackmagic forums. And the HDV forum. And on and on. People have a LOT of trouble with it.

Avid is the next hardest to learn, in my experience. Media Composer is easier than Xpress, which is cheaper. (Go figure.) Again, Hollywood is built on Media Composer, which is now quite competitively priced for what it does, especially if you’re a student.

While easier to use than FCP, I think Avid has a deeper toolset by a pretty long shot. FCP is terrific, and has a WIDER toolset….but no way it’s as deep as Avid, especially for film.

The only feature I’m aware of cut with Media 100 is The Blair Witch Project. (Other folks, please correct me if I’m wrong.)

But for most people? I recommend Media 100 in a heartbeat….for USE. There’s never been anything easier. And it just WORKS, which is one reason this forum is on the quiet side relative to FCP.

Folks here will surely weigh in, but to me the most distinctive difference Media 100 has really, truly is how easy it is to use, and how well it works.

If you’re using it for yourself and your own work, Media 100 hands down. If you’re using it because you want to use what’s hot or cool or whatever, that’s FCP. If you want to use what will get you a job in Hollywood, that’s Avid.

Finally, I think every Mac user owes it to themselves to check out Premiere Pro for Mac. Any Media 100 user can pick it up in a heartbeat, and while it’s been away from the Mac, it’s become a monster…arguably the most capable NLE on the market.

It all depends on what you want to do, for whom, and why.

Tell more and we will too. 🙂

Best,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

[John Davidson] “organ pirate movies”

Why pirate organs? Better to pirate a harpsichord. Harpischords weigh less, and give you a legitimate reason to use the words “plectra” and “jack mechanism” in polite conversation.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, but now you know his stats. 🙂

tw

[Tim Wilson]

I have ZERO respect for the MPAA or anything they do. I really don’t have any use for them whatever, and it sends a shiver up my spine to think they’ll weigh in on ANYTHING.

Did I mention I have no use for them?

But I don’t have any use for gratutious smoking in the movies either.

To bring things relatively back on the Business topic, you should check out the documentary This Film Has Not Been Rated. A 2006 Sundance smash, it lays out a well-documented case for the MPAA’s biases and their hypocracies — the DVD even describes the MPAA’s unauthorized copying of the movie….which they actually ADMIT to!!

The best part of the picture is the unmasking of the closely guarded secret of the board’s identities. The mind reels.

Well, maybe not so much on topic after all. Unless you have secret societies weighing in on the suitability of your work. I know your company make movies, Pixel Monkey. Do you go through the MPAA? In which case, very much on topic.

[Tim Wilson]

I know that brides often ask for popular songs to be part of their videos, and that that’s where the conversation began. But once we start talking about royalty free music, I like starting with SmartSound. There are plenty of ways to customize tracks so that they don’t sound like “out of the box” music, but it’s some very high quality stuff that I’ve used for years.

My two favorite parts are that you can make the tracks match the length of your clip, and that you can combine elements from several very different sounding clips — again, elements to make your music sound unique and not at all packaged. The newest version has elements to take it farther still, with control over mood, which instruments play and more.

Sony Cinescore takes a similar approach — in fact, they license SmartSound’s technology for fitting music to length. I haven’t heard the music though.

One to watch is the AutoComposer feature in Adobe’s upcoming Soundbooth release as part of Creative Suite 3. The current beta only has 3 scores in it, but the release version this summer will have dozens. Rather than “mood,” their approach is to adjust “intensity.” It’s pretty slick stuff, and even in its beta form, I’ve used those tracks plenty.

Last but not least, I’ve licensed music from professional libraries. The best one by a long shot is FirstCom, but it’s not the cheapest. The coolest thing about it though is that they have truly top-level musicians — major Grammy winners, jazz and popular music artists you’ve heard of, etc. — and a massive library to choose from. I found them totally worth it: I won a number of jobs with their music. I can’t even tell you how many times I heard, “We saw a lot of nice video, but your music was head and shoulders above the rest so we’re hiring you.”

All good options, well worth the money.

[Tim Wilson]

I should have mentioned that Word has always been my preferred method for spellchecking. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Emmett] ” a “shuffle” function (as it’s called in Pro Tools) would be nice.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what I was looking for. There are soooo many things I prefer in Audition, but this is one of the handful of things I miss.

Thanks for the tip about shift-del in edit mode, though. Since so much of what I edit is across multiple tracks, I’m not sure how to incorporate this into my workflow…but this is a useful-enough feature that I’m going to try….

thx,
tw

[Tim Wilson]

Thanks for the good word on the magazine, guys. We really love doing it.

For anyone not subscribed, this is pretty much last call to get a print copy of the next issue. (You can always get them in PDF too — many people do both.) It’s free of course, and oh so tasty.