[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m using a mid 2013 11″ MBA w 4 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD with FCP X 10.1.1 on OSX 10.9.3. I use it to do quick edits from a P&S Canon .mov files. The files import fine on FCP X and overall timeline performance is surprisingly fluid. Haven’t done long or complex edits yet but it works admirably well.

Same MBA also has PrCC and Avid MC 7 mostly for trouble-shooting others’ projects and doing simple hacks in Avid MC to arrive at source names or relinks, and making AAFs/EDLs. And it hold up well.

Resolve, as another poster commented, doesn’t work as the interface doesn’t scale usably. But when connected to an Apple Cinema, Resolve actually runs, but any kind of even simple grading is near impossible.

Interestingly, I’m doing a bit of Blu-ray work on the same MBA. I use an external Blu-ray writer to write and a Matrox MXO2 mini with Max to encode at nearly real time speeds. Compressor doesn’t do too well, but Adobe Media Encoder and Sorensen Squeeze work quite well for MPEG-2 encodes.

Battery life is great too, and I’m often away from home/office all day without a charger.

Sorry for the long account, Oliver, but I had to gush as I didn’t expect this (for mail and browsing only) system to work so well that I use my 15″ MBP or 27″ iMac only for tasks that this thing simply crawls at.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I used Neat video in FCP 7 on an old (film-based) feature 3 hrs long. There was a lot of grain in the telecine which we couldn’t redo as the neg wasn’t accessible. Neat video took about 26 hrs to render the 3 hr long timeline in FCP 7.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I did this using my own formulae, but then gave up further development. For two reasons. There’s now an App called ‘Resolve Collect’ which does exactly this, and I bought and used it for an entire feature. And two, Resolve 10 or maybe 11 can do the same thing too,

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Michael,

Thanks for ‘getting’ it. Are you going to NAB? I’ll be there and it would be wonderful to exchange notes on trends in the ‘rest of the world’ of digital post.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I find this really quaint, when people on this forum discuss what happens in the UK and US as something that’s universal. Do you guys have any idea how small, even minuscule, your numbers are? The whole of the USA is a small fraction of the world, in terms of population. And the UK is even smaller.

For instance, here in India, over a thousand feature films get released. Most are very trashy, but they still need editing systems (and editors) to edit them, since it doesn’t quite come out the cameras ready for theatres.

Then there’s TV. Even trashier, almost nauseating. But over 300 TV channels sending out 24 hour programming in over 25 different languages. Lots of editing systems needed there too.

Through the 00’s Apple India ran many a program to ensure that Avid almost got wiped out. When X was introduced 2 years ago, Apple India dithered around and did nearly nothing to promote it.

Adobe India thought if they got the top broadcasters here to adopt Premiere, the rest will follow. Just like Avid smugly did in the 00’s. We know how that went. Let’s see how this goes.

Meanwhile, more and more individuals – people who make movies for the ‘net and for TV, are adopting FCPX. it supports most cameras natively, any newbie can edit with it. Young people just take to X, if only to rebel against us old foggies who swear by Avid. And admittedly, once they get hooked to FCP X, its hard to tell a 20 something gal/guy that Avid is a superior system. Heck, its hard to even explain how Avid works.

And we have a neighbouring country called China. They have even more people and hence (probably) more editors. Someone at Discreet told me a long time ago that there were more Smokes in China than the rest of the world put together.

So guys, sure, go ahead and report what’s happening on your island, but don’t make it sound like the world is your island.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

So, while all the Oscar 2014 nominee movies were cut on Avid, and probably all the top 20 features might have also been cut on Avid. Why, even a majority of the 100+ feature films made in the USA were probably cut on Avid.
Add to that, hundreds of TV shows get cut on Avid too.

Sadly though, that’s probably about all that Avid is being used for. There’s a huge universe outside of feature film and prime time TV in the USA. And, of course, there are a few countries and quite a few people living outside the USA.

In that larger universe, Avid is a sort of a minority, niche platform.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Actually after working in FCP X, when one has to go to Avid MC (even ver 7)… That feels really sluggish.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

For dailies, I’ve used SGamut-SLog2 in the Camera raw settings and then the Sony LUT which I downloaded, as the output LUT. I’ve found that in some clips, the Color temp needs to be set to the ‘As shot’ setting to get the right colours.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

[Neil Smith] “What I’m ideally looking for is a way to color correct in the PABLO RIO PC world and then render out directly to ProRes Quicktimes in the Mac world without having to copy the DPX files over to the Apple RAIDs.”

But there’s no way – on a Win PC – to render out as ProRes from within any app, like Rio, for instance. You could probably export as SStP and then use Resolve on Mac to convert to ProRes.

Or, consider exporting to DPX on Rio and then GlueTools to use DPX sequences directly inside FCP. With the kind of bandwidth you have from the Promise or Areca over TBolt 2, you’ll be able to play back Hd or 2k res DPX-QTs in real time.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

One aside.

How come you have a Quantel colourist panel working with FCP? Or is it just incidentally there?

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India