[John Pale]

You can add comments to clips in the timeline (local) and in the bin (source). In this case you would want local. You can then choose to display those comments on the clips in the timeline. Consult the help menu for the procedure.

[John Pale]

While I agree the Curves pane is wonderful in the Avid CC…the lack of secondary color correction (except in Symphony) and lack of keyframablility is pretty annoying. Hopefully FCP 6 will add curves, but if you want a plug, I will second the recommendation of Color Finesse.

[John Pale]

Thanks. I have been annoyed for about 9 years about this. One of the best and worst things about Avid is the dizzying array of user preferences.

[promoboy] “John–
You have Auto Monitor turned on. Open your timeline settings and uncheck the Auto Monitor button.”

Apologies for temporarily turning this into an Avid user forum. 🙂

[John Pale]

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/FCP_4_trim_dang_it.html

Its written for FCP 4, but the procedure still applies in your situation.

[John Pale]

Okay. Now its lawyer time.

[John Pale]

[walter biscardi] “I generally spend about 5 hours on each 22 minute show here going clip by clip setting the 3 Way CC, Levels and Broadcast safe filter on each clip. The only way to do it right is to go clip by clip and check all the shots and CC accordingly.”

You are a lucky man Walter…I often have to squabble to get at least one hour to color correct a 1 hour show for network broadcast. No joke.

[John Pale]

I own an FCP suite and love it, but I also do a very large amount of freelance work on Avid (mostly Adrenaline). I can say with no doubt, that the delays this guy is seeing are abnormal. He did highlight some of the deficiencies in the Avid interface, but FCP has a few too. He was also not entirely accurate about some of the Avid stuff…You can, in fact turn off Avid’s tape request dialog in preferences. I often do when onlining, after a decompose, as the tape names are already determined and visible in a bin. He is correct that you cannot adjust volume in the mix tool while the sequence plays, but Avid does have an audio automation tool which allows you to adjust volume with a configured control surface during play.

[Shane Ross] “Basically you can set a “monitor” to look at whatever layer you choose. If you have 5 layers and it is at the top, then it sees all five. But if you put it on V1, then all you see is what is on V1. No turning off of the other 4 layers and losing renders and having to UNDO to get them back. Yeah…that I really would like to have.”

Funny, I have always hated how this worked in Avid, as it constantly changes the monitor selection to look at the video track you edit a clip to (which is often not the top layer). This means I constantly have to select to monitor the top layer after making an edit…I would rather have it default to show the top layer, as in FCP. I do agree with Shane, that its nice not to temporarily lose your renders when you turn off a track….but I usually toggle clip visibility rather than turn of tracks in FCP.

[John Pale]

Tom,
Unbelievably strong media managment would be at the top of the list.
It was built from the ground up as an offline tool, and its pretty damn near bulletproof in this respect. This may not be important to everyone, but in a large broadcast workflow, with multiple projects going on simultaneously, you cant just throw storage at it and work at online resolution.

There are many small things about capture (entering clip info during capture), trimming and multicam that work more elegantly in Avid. In general editing, track targeting handles everything…whereas FCP has auto-select, which seems to confuse many people. In Avid you can copy/paste individual keyframes. In more recent versions of Avid, the Color Corrector’s curves pane is great (though it lacks secondary Color Correction except in Symphony). Overall, the Avid interface is more mature and has had the input of many editors over the years. Its age is its greatest strength and weakness.

FCP’s non-modal interface style is superior (no silly Avid Segment Mode)…The Avid effect mode is ludicrously clunky and non-intuitive, especially to people switching from other systems.

I’d have to give this a lot of thought to do an in depth comparison …this is what I could come up with off the top of my head. I do realize some of this a bit subjective.

[John Pale]

Apology accepted.
I work on Avid all the time, so I know full well there are some things it does better…I am no FCP zealot, but I think if you take the time to learn it you may find FCP has much to offer and is better in some areas, too.
Good luck.

[John Pale]

Thanks for watching my back Shane.