Perrone Ford
Forum Replies Created
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Sounds like a “least amount of work for us” delivery spec. Though I suspect if you’re delivering at that level, it couldn’t hurt to have an older Mac laying around with an older copy of FCP on it for just this kind of thing.
XDCam Disc is even more silly. XDCam Disk versus a harddrive with XDCam files would SAVE them a step. See if they’ll take that.
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Mike,
I am really wondering if you’ve been watching Avid closely for the past year or two. I sure have. Things Avid have done in the past year or two that have impressed the HECK out of me are:
1. Getting rid of the Dongle.
2. Not only promising to support other hardware, but actually DOING it.
3. Certifiying FCP to run on Unity networks
4. Allowing drag and drop editing in the timeline
5. Allowing NATIVE quicktime editing in the MC timeline (including reading ProRes!)
6. Alowing NATIVE RED support in the MC timeline
7. Supporting ArriRAW and CineformRaw
8. Bolstering Metafuze (free) to assist with ingest and outgo of film.
9. Improving and promising to do more with Scriptsync
10. Allowing a 30 day free product trial
11. Allowing RTAS on the timeline so that you can finally do more with audio on the timeline.
12. AUTOSAVE!
13. Working diligently to reduce cost and barriers to entry to get into the product.All these things have led me to buy the product for use not only in my corporate/govt work, but my creative indie film work as well. There must be 50 things I can do in Avid that Vegas is just incapable of. But more than anything else, what blew me away during my trial of Avid was the ability to lay my DNxHD, XDCamEX, and other files on the Avid timeline, and watch them move. In real time. And cut them while I was watching. You just cannot cut the same way in Vegas. You’ll pre-render, and make changes, and pre-render, ad-infinitum to do the same thing. It’s so slow it’s painful. And God help you if you want to do 4-5 layers of HD video and watch it actually play back.
Honestly, check out what’s new in MC5 here:
https://www.avid.com/US/products/Media-Composer-Software/features
And watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKoLOf9uFSUYou can see MC5 in use at NAB running off a Mac laptop and monitoring in HD.
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I have to admit, I was REALLY hoping you were going to chime in here. I am incredibly curious about why you chose to take the opposite path that I have. And frankly, I think you are in for something of a very rude awakening. I’ve already noticed that you’ve run into an issue with dissolves. Something which Avid makes trivial simply doesn’t exist inside Vegas.
I’ll take your points in turn:
“I am in the opposite position – I have used AVID for 15 years, and am now moving to Vegas. The main reason? HD.”
This is very curious to me, because I have edited HD on both Vegas and MC4. I have NOT monitored HD on MC but that is because my machine has no HD monitoring ability at all. This is changing.
“With my AVID machine, I can’t preview HD. Regular Media Composer (not Adrenaline) cannot monitor HD natively. Many people don’t realize this. Media Composer cannot output HD to a monitor. Stop to think about that.”
What version of MC do you have? As I hope you are aware, MC5 will allow for HD monitoring from media composer. I have just bought the Matrox MX02 mini which allows for this in Media Composer 5.
I’ll let you stop to think about this: Sony Vegas in most instances cannot play HD in real time from the timeline.
“Although I’ve only used Vegas for about a week, I can firmly tell you that it is a much more mature, comptetent platform for modern editing (again, not including Adrenaline which costs much, much more).”
I’ve used Vegas for 7 years. And I can tell you without question, it is nowhere NEAR as mature a platform as Avid. I am not sure what you mean by “modern” editing, but if that means drag and drop editing, then yes, Vegas is more flexible that way. The problem is that flexibility can hand you a TON of rope to hang yourself. And hang you it will. I disagree somewhat that Avid is trying to sell you Adrenaline. Avid has several products aimed at different things (MC, Adrenaline, DS, etc.). And yes it’s more expensive than competitors for some things. However, MC5 is ground breaking for several reasons. I really think you’re making a mistake by jumping out right now. But that’s just my view.
“Current AVID management has made decisions which are ruining this once-great company. I will now re-learn editing from scratch after 15 years with AVID. And I’m happy to do it. And I am not alone. AVID is dead. Don’t waste your time with them.”
I am most curious about THIS statement. Everything I’ve seen from current management has been exceptionally positive. The cost reductions, the open timelines, AMA, the native support of RED and quicktime, opening up to 3rd party hardware, the purchase of Euphonix, etc. All seems positive to me. If you could, would you share a few of your thoughts on which decisions you feel Avid has made recently that are ruining the company?
I would also easily argue that Avid is long from dead. They seem to be riding a wave of resurgence with the release of MC4 and MC5. And I am happy to do so.
I do not know what kind of editing you do. So perhaps these things will not matter to you. But I can tell you some VERY specific reasons why I left Vegas for Avid.
1. I work primarily in Govt. Video. Therefore I must caption every video that I make. Vegas had no provision for that. It simply did not exist in the product. That was just a showstopper for me. A do-not-pass-go, must vacate the editor issue.
2. Vegas is unable to leverage video cards and GPUs. This means that unless your CPU can handle it, no effects are real time. NONE. There is no acceleration available ever. When working in SD, this wasn’t much of a problem. But when working in HD, it means that if you add effects (including basic dissolves), you will likely lose real-time playback.
3. Vegas does not have an accelerated codec. Unlike DNxHD on Avid, Vegas does not transcode into a broadcast level codec and give you the option for realtime playback. Cineform is the closest alternative, and you must purchase it seperately.
4. Vegas has no effectively titling program. The built in option makes Marqee look like Boris. It would be rudimentary in a $100 NLE. On a professional NLE it’s a sad joke.
5. Vegas will not collaborate. If you need AAF, OMF, or other exports, or you need to work with FCP, Protools, Cakewalk, or other professionals, you will be buying very expensive third party tools to do so.
6. Vegas has no provision for film-out. None.
7. Vegas has no track lock. You REALLY need to watch yourself on big projects.
8. Thankfully, with the newest iteration of Vegas, it finally supports DPX/EXR. However, unless you are in the 64bit version, you will be out of RAM before you can render any sequence using them.
Each NLE has it’s plusses and minuses. The things I absolutely need in an NLE exist in Avid, and do not exist in Vegas. If you primarily work in DV or HDV, Vegas will probably be quite good to you. But if you routinely work with professional level codecs, or you need to collaborate and round trip with others, you’re going to find this experience maddening.
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I just priced a Mac Pro tower at Best Buy here:
So $2500 with no monitor. Add $1000 for FCP and we’re at $3500. Add a single 24″ monitor and we’re at $4k.
The least expensive desktop that Avid certifies on the PC side is the Dell 3400 (sold now as the 3500). I was able to spec a model similar to the Mac Pro for about $1500. Add Media Composer from Videoguys for $2399 for $3899. The Mac would still need a quadro card, whereas that comes standard in the Dell.
So all in all, I’d say the PC comes in just a few hundred cheaper than the Mac option. If you add a Matrox MX02 to the Dell that’s an additional $450. So that is essentially a wash.
Going Avid or going FCP on pro level hardware costs about the same money. For us it was cheaper because we already have a very powerful (and Avid certified) PC so that wasn’t an expenditure we needed to make.
For someone just starting out, the costs are essentially the same to go either way.
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Actually, I beg to differ.
Vegas claims that it works with AVCHD. Yet unless you have an 8-core machine, it will not play back even a single stream of AVCHD in real time. Vegas claims it supports RED. But even on my 8-core, doing 2k timelines is difficult, and 4k is absolutely painful. Vegas claims wide compatibility, but it is unable to output a single EDL or other file on it’s own that is compatible with other NLEs.
As for Avid’s creative marketing, I downloaded the trial to “check out their claims”. I am happy to report that my editing experience in MC4.04 was EXACTLY as described in the marketing literature. Timeline performance was faster than anything I’d ever seen. And that includes FCP, Vegas, and Premiere. AMA worked as advertised. Sucking in my 16GB XDCam EX clips in under 4 seconds and showing them to me complete with metadata. I don’t deal in hype. I deal in performance. And I test things on my own.
If Apple buys Avid I’ll drop it like a hot potato. And Avid has no business thinking about buying FCP. Those two should stay far, far away from each other financially.
My clients don’t care what kind of “house” we have. They care about their final product. And going Avid is about half the price of going FCP for us. So to each their own.
It’s a brave new world out there man. You should check it out.
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There are a GREAT many reasons for a move to Avid. Not the least of which is that you can actually preview your timeline properly with HD video on it. Even with effects applied.
I’ve been on Vegas since 2003. Avid MC4 trial blew me away. I was able to do things with ease that Vegas 9 was choking on. MC5 looks like it’s going to add even more to the equation.
Is Avid a panacea? No. Does Vegas make doing some things easier than Avid? Yes.
If I had to deliver a real product for money in 30 days and it was HD, which would I pick. Avid all day, every day. That’s my opinion and everyone has one.
I suggest the OP download a trial and give it a shot. Or if he can wait, download a trial of MC5 and try that since AMA will support his 5D then. AMA support for my XDCam stuff was worth the price of admission alone.
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“Obviously we all use Vegas”
Yes.
“and consider it the best”
No.
“that’s why we are on this Forum isnt it?”
No.
“My comment clearly said that other programs were “catching up …perhaps no where near in the same race as Vegas but it is always interesting to keep and eye on what others are doing .
I frequently dowload the free trials of programs to see how they are going .”Well, I’m not sure how you define “catching up” but I certainly don’t see Vegas being ahead of several other NLEs. Perhaps in some areas Vegas does things easier, or better, but in the places that matter to *me*, Vegas has a LOT of work to do. Areas like stability, titling, accepting and working with professional formats, rendering speed, real-time performance, collaboration, etc.
Vegas has issues that are really only going to be solved with a ground-up re-think. Such as the refusal to support GPU processing. Long-GOP codecs are here to stay. DV is essentially dead. The days are gone when we could simply rely on the CPU to do the heavy lifting and get real-time performance. Yes, in 2-3 years the CPUs alone will be fast enough to handle AVCHD, and maybe even the stuff coming off the current iteration of the Canon cameras. But by then, the market will have moved on.
So SCS can either continue to work behind the curve, or jump on it or in front of it. Their competitors have ALL made significant strides in recent years in collaboration, stability, timeline performance, etc. Vegas’s stability is worse, collaboration still suffers horribly, and timeline performance with most HD formats is woeful.
Vegas 10 may address these issues. I have no idea. But I will say this. Adobe and Avid got my attention last year. This year, Avid got my money. I suspect in 2010 CS5 and Media Composer 5 will get the money of a LOT of professional editors.
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Thank you,
I was able to find how to export AVI, and unfortunately, Sorenson does not pick up the VFW AVI options. So I won’t be able to use it to meet my needs.
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Oddly enough, I sit here archiving my projects from the past 8 years onto BluRays. The 25GB ones are about $6 a disk on the spindles and the 50GB ones are still clocking in north of $30.
To my mind, you really have two options for archiving.
1. Tape (LTO, DLT)
2. Optical (Blu-Ray)If you go the Blu-Ray route, the hardware can be repurposed to create disks for clients or for yourself. You can even get a portable one like I did so you can burn and watch Blu-Ray on the road. If you go the LTO route, you can backup MUCH faster, but it’s a non-portable solution, and you’d need access to another LTO machine if anything ever happened to your own.
I chose the Blu-Ray route for any number of reasons, and am VERY glad I did. What I cannot understand is why your media is so large! I transcode to DNxHD and it’s about 18GB per hour. So 1hr of footage runs about the same cost as an HDV tape. That’s pretty fair in my view, and the prices are continuing to fall.
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We’ve used the MS Streaming server for years and been very pleased with it. I am looking at moving to their newer edition on win2008 this year. Our userbase is nearly exclusively PC, and the windows media codec plays well, and scales well. I am even looking to do some native HD streaming tests in coming weeks.