[Mark Raudonis]

Tracy,

I’ll try to give you as unbiased, straight explanation as I can.

Since Avid was the first NLE to really achieve dominance in the marketplace, it was able to establish itself as “THE” brand. Unlike any other NLE, AVID focused on the 24fps film edit, developing software and hardware that enabled editors to easily cut on an AVID, yet finish on film. As a result of this, AVID’s were universally adopted by any editor doing a film finish. Obviously, these were the cream of the crop of the industry’s talent.

Cut forward to about five years ago. Advances in processor power has enabled other platforms to
achieve parity in features and capabilities with Avid. Specifically, FCP has now matched AVID in EVERY one of the “must have” features. Some would even argue FCP has exceeded AVID in many areas. What
AVID has maintained all these years is excellence in media management and in the process of trimming.

This “perceived” advantage in trimming is often debated by users familiar with both platforms, but users who would rather fight than switch cling to this as the major reason for sticking with AVID.

When the cost of all the other NLE’s represented an undeniable bargain compared to AVID, many people abandoned Avid despite any “perceived” quality difference. I would objectively say that now, in most circumstances, choosing which NLE comes down to “Pepsi vs Coke”. In other words, it’s really a matter of personal taste.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Gary Hazen] “Setting up shop at home or a small boutique cutting docs I would choose FCP. In a broadcast environment I would choose Avid every time.
“

gary… puhleeze. I get so tired of this “Avid” for big shops line of crap.

We’re running FCP/X-SAN with almost 100 seats, creating reality TV shows for six different networks, on urgent broadcast deadlines. We share over 80 terrabytes of storage, spread across ten different shows. We have off-line, on-line (color correcting) and ProTools mixing all interconnected. We’ve been doing it for almost five years now. Haven’t missed a deadline yet.

FCP can certainly thrive in a large “Workgroup” environment. If you don’t believe it, just contact me and I’ll give you a tour.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Sean,

Contact Bouke… it’ll be worth your time.

We work with XDCAM almost exclusively, and Bouke is creating some utilities that will be of
tremendous help to anyone working with that format.

I’ve seen them in action and it’s amazing what can be done with XML programming.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

This is what you want. NOT FCP.

https://www.boinx.com/boinxtv/overview/

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Go to the apple page and do a search for “X-SAN”.

In your situation, “X-SAN” would be a very flexible, capable solution.

Most traditional IT departments do NOT understand the unique requirements of video SAN storage and try to leverage their existing storage and infrastructure
into your media system. As Bob points out… you will fail!

You really do need professional advice on something like this. For the size of your installation, the small
“SAN in a can” solutions will limit your flexibility and ability to scale the network to a larger size.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Christian Hart] “Can anyone suggest a good compression codec/data rate to set it to
given the above?”

Christian,

Have you ever used the “Off-line RT” codec? It was specifically designed for the workflow you’re describing.

We’ve been using “Off-line RT” for over five years now… not because we like the “crappy looking” pictures, but because it offers a low bandwidth, low file size alternative. I know that many people on this list simply don’t understand why anyone would ever use an “off-line” codec is this day an age of terrabyte drives for $100 bucks. My answer is that we simply have too much material and too many editors working to support the bandwidth or storage needed. The happy by product of this workflow is that editors can take a project and it’s associated media away from the office and work on it.

Our standard procedure has been to either digitize the original material at Off-line RT or use the compressor in it’s “Distributed rendering” capability to transcode the original high rez media to a more workable low rez form. While the Sony XDCAM proxy workflow is promising, there are still quite a few hurdles to overcome before it is an effective “off-line to online” candidate.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

I’m a happy user of BWF2XML. We’ve done several show with dual system audio. Using BWF2XML has
enabled us to smooth out the workflow and eliminate much of the “guessing” as to what’s going on.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Rene,

You have a GREAT website! I enjoyed viewing your work. “Stampede” was particularly interesting.

It would take a lot of time and space to answer all your questions in great detail, so here’s a quick overview. If you want more info, you can contact me off-list.

We shoot primarily on the XDCAM disc format (35 MbsVBR), but we also have a fair amount of media created on the EX-1. Our post is all done with Final Cut Pro attached to an Apple X-SAN shared storage setup. For XDCAM disc material, the disc itself is the final, archive media, so no back ups are made. For the EX-1 media, we copy it onto an XDCAM disc as a “data file” only, and back it up that way.

Not sure what you mean by “synchoronize stuff”. We currently take the ful rez material and transcode it to Off-line RT using compressor. We’re able to take advantage of distributed rendering and use a cluster of approx 35 computers to do this… it goes fast. We edit, lock picture, then conform the final.

Audio for some shows is recorded “dual system” to either a DA-98 or a file based recorder like the Fostex PD-6 or the Zaxcom DEVA. That audio is then imported and “synced” to the video clips.
(There’s different workflows for single cam vers multicam shoots). Off-line editors usually edit with no more than 12 trks. Final conform and mix is done with Protools.

All picture editing is done with FCP. If it’s a multicam shoot, we create “multiclips” and work with them. HOpe this answers your questions.

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Don,

Believe it or not, there are some projects where the huge amount of media dictates the classic “off-line to on-line” workflow. I work in reality TV. One show of ours can generate approximately 4,500 HOURS of media. Do the math. You want to buy a SAN that big? We often have six shows of that size in house simultaneously. Therefore, staying “full rez” all the time is NOT an option… despite the lower cost of storage.

“No useful purpose!” Puhleeze.

It’s pretty myopic to dismiss something as unnecessary without direct knowledge of the situation. You say the only “viable” codec is DV… well we’ve been using “off-line RT” for years now. Do I like it? No.
Does it fulfill our need for “low bandwidth/low storage”? Yes. For us, the cost/benefit equation works.

My criticism of the “workflow document” is that it simply does NOT address this “off-line” workflow. The Sony “proxie” concept is brilliant… in theory. In practice, there are MANY issues that hamper it’s usefulness with FCP.

mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Craig,

Thanks for posting this. Very good information.

I was disappointed however, that nowhere in this entire document is any reference to the
classic “Off-line to online” workflow.

Mark