Mark Raudonis
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Another vote here for “final Touch”. Sure it costs $995 for the SD version, but you’re essentially getting a DaVinci on your desktop.
Awesome capability. With this software, a well trained eye, and a dollop of “good taste”, you’ve got a truly “no excuses” set up.
Initial cost isn’t everything. You have to consider workflow and efficiency as well. Often the “right tool for the job” is NOT the cheapest.Just my .02 cents.
Mark
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Lisha,
Monitor is fine. We have five of ’em. Better get them fast though, ’cause Sony is getting out of the “Bottle” biz and only going flat panel. Yes, component is fine, but nothing beats SDI for ease of operation. One cable carries everything. It really comes down to cost. If you can afford it, I’d get the SDI… gives you many more options for looking at decks, etc.
Mark
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Training… books… just jumping in. All good advice.
Don’t underestimate the learning curve. We’ve transitioned close to a hundred former AVID editors to FCP, and I can accurately say that you’ll be functioning in a few days, but not really comfortable for weeks. Like learning a foreign language, you’re not really fluent until you start “thinking” in the new language, or in this case, when one stops trying to turn FCP into an AVID. It’s not. Those that approach FCP with an open mind are ultimately more successful than those that just complain about how it’s not like their Avid.
Good luck, and welcome!
Mark
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The other advantage of having TWO monitors with FCP is that you can turn one of the monitors into a full screen playback of your canvas. (The old AVIDS used to have this feature before they went to a dedicated NTSC monitor).
We run two apple 23″ monitors in all of our rooms. In my opinion, you can never have enough screen real estate. Put your money “on the screen”, and you’ll have many happy edit sessions.
mark
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Yes… but. The catch is that you’re going to need two macs to do it. One to playback the timeline, and then you feed it to another with iChat active.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you can do this off of one machine.
Mark
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Doug,
NO dongle needed for FCP. Activation is via a registration number.
Mark
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Bottom line, the more expensive the deck, the faster the cueing. For example, most of our digitizing is done off of an IMX tape. The el cheapo “J30” decks take about 2-3 minutes to process a timecode break. The “MSW-2000” decks, which costs 4 times as much as a J30, processes the tc break in about half the time.
We’re digitizing around 30 hours of material a day, so those minutes certainly add up. I feel your pain! A typical tape will take 2 – 3 times realtime to get digitized. The only way that we can deal with this is to use multiple systems (up to 10) to digitize simultaneously. This is an organizational and operational pain, and I wish someone would rewrite the deck control protocol to address this. I don’t understand why the deck has to “creep” back one frame at a time. I’m not a software engineer, but this seems like a fairly easy issue to address.
In the meantime, if you can’t avoid the TC breaks, you’re in for a long night.
mark
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I’d have to say, “Leave ’em on”. In our shop, we often have people working at night, so the systems have to stay on anyway. However, in my experience, most drive failures have occurred on Monday morning after being shutdown all weekend. (Seriously!)
Other considerations are air conditioning. Those drives generate a lot of heat, so if your AC goes off at night, and the drives stay on, that can really raise the temperature in the room. In that case, turn ’em off.
This “on/off” debate has existed forever. There is no conclusive answer.
Mark
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Anders,
Do you know about the “reveal in finder” function? Highlight a clip and then “right click” on it to show the pull down menu. One of the choices is called “reveal in finder”. This will open a “finder” window showing you the path to where that clip lives on your drives. From that you can then “pull” that clip into the project if necessary. This is the “workaround” that you’re looking for. As far as I know, even AVID can’t do this! So round up your “Avid centric” troops and show them how to find their long lost clips. One of the biggest differences between Avid and FCP is the way that media is organized. AVID= Bins. FCP=Mac file structure. We use this to our advantage by networking all of our systems together. Anyone who needs to see the original media has access to it from the finder. You don’t even need FCP to view it. QT player is fine. In fact, you don’t even need a Mac. QT player on Windoze works too.
Mark
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Mr Videodep,
Welcome to the world of Final Cut Pro.
If the material included within the software isn’t enough for you, I can suggest a book by Diana Weynand called “Final Cut Pro 5”. It’s from Peachpit press and it’s part of the Apple Pro Training series. Very well laid out… includes a DVD of practice material, projects, etc. Give it a look.
Mark