[Pristine Pictures]

I have had to deal with this issue, and chose the Final Cut route… But, I would not advise you to do the same, nor would I do it again myself…

One of the hidden costs, is productivity… My experience is that FCP is 30 percent slower on average than an Avid. Final Cut is just not as mature a product as an Avid.

Another hidden cost is maintenance… I had so many problems with vendors I don’t know where to begin- all saying the problems were caused by the other guys stuff… I would not rely on Avid for support directly, but there are good Avid engineers out there that can solve issues faster, than trying to deal with the multiple vendor FCP route…

The image you present to the client does matter. When I say Final Cut, clients think that they could have their Uncle Bob do it… or I’m working out of my garage… or, well, you get the picture… It takes awhile to educate the client, and I don’t have the time and resources to convince clients everything will be fine with their project.

It was my experience that the level of editors on Final Cut was no where near the level of editors you find on Avid. I had one guy that I paid MORE than a top Avid editor to work on my Final Cut project and his work was B level at best- and I was told he was a HOT FCP editor. No thanks! I dumped my system the following week and started hiring better Avid editors to work on an Avid at a lot less money.

It is harder to get money out of clients to work on Final Cut. Educated clients expect a different rate when working on Final Cut. With an Avid, I can get $175-$250 an hour. With Final Cut, $50-$100 an hour. Expect to deal with that.

Alot of this will also come down to market positioning. If you’re competing against top houses, you don’t want Final Cut. If you have Final Cut, you’re competing with Uncle Bob and the basement based “post houses” out there.

There is one caveat… HD. Final Cut can give you some leverage against high end post houses here. But the window of opportunity is closing here… Avid will catch up shortly, but I think Final Cut has an advantage in the short term, for cost effective HD finishing.

Hope this helps! I have an HD Final Cut I’m selling… Meeting with the Avid rep tomorrow…

[Pristine Pictures]

I am a recovering Final Cut user. I left at version 4.5. I use Avid regularly- daily and also consider myself a fluent Final Cut user. I originally began using Final Cut as an inexpensive way to get HD projects done.

On a professional level, I would not consider Final Cut, unless I have an extremely low budget and lots of free time. Final Cut is typically more frustrating than Avid (it’s just not as mature a product as Avid) and from editors I speak with, Final Cut is typically 30% slower on a project, than an Avid.

The major hangup… Final cut needs to render everything… shift something in the timeline-render; move something a frame and put it back-render, add a key-render, add a dissolve-render… you grow old waiting for the software to keep up with you…

I’d be happy to go on, but it appears you’ve made your choice… I just had to vent a bit… No, I don’t believe for a moment that you will be disappointed with Xpress Pro. If you tolerated Final Cut, you’ll enjoy Avid…

[Pristine Pictures]

Where do you enter the registration code to make the wipes active?

[Pristine Pictures]

Where do you enter the registration code to make the wipes active?

[Pristine Pictures]

Ans 3. white data usually means a mis-matched audio sample rate… i.e. your project is set for 48k, but the music sample is 44k.. In settings, audio, you can choose to convert on the fly for listening and mixing. That is what is occuring…

Ans 4. to view source waveforms, toggle between source and master workspace. Then you will see the source waveforms in a timeline fashion. To make things handy, I usually go to the command palette, and map the source/record toggle button to the escape key. It’s easy to go to source, mark the in or out on the waveform, and pop back to the master timeline…

Ans 5. hold down “alt” button while dragging effects on top of each other. You will then need to drill down to the effect that you want to work on… or add the effect, adjust, “alt” next effect, adjust, “alt” next effect, adjust and so on…

Ans 6. go to the project that you want to work in. File, “open bin” and select the bin that holds the sequence you want. Copy or drag the sequence from the bin into your current project.