R. Hewitt
Forum Replies Created
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Professional experience with major broadcasters in Europe – BBC (UK) excepted. And all the contracts Avid are winning over this side of the pond.
As I’ve said before, don’t get me wrong, I’m a very big fan of Premier but it’s lacking features/workflow and audio handling is what’s driving potential large buyers away. And that’s not to mention the lack of a proper support for the product.
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Well that was a fun topic of conversation.
One thing is very clear from this; Europe is heading in a very different direction to the US, despite some take-up of FCP by the BBC, although this is more akin to the problems that the BBC have had with the Quantel systems they were rolling out.
It’s true that Media Management with Avid is streets ahead of PPro due in part to the rigid Project nature of PPro. Avid’s Media Manager is a fully searchable web-based system that searches across everything from clips, projects, workgroups, effects right through to audio files and anything uploaded from the users’ desktop. And they can all be dragged and dropped into any open bin. This is what the broadcasters needed and it’s Avid that provided the solution.
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Hey Ron,
I think I prefer your version. Besides, all the others have far outlived anything else, are either free or edible… well mostly!
Richard.
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I’m not sure about going between MAC and PC but OMFI files should be compatible.
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We use a professional USB device called PUC from Yellowtec. It’s not cheap but provides a broadcast grade solution with virtually no latency and provides options for several wiring looms including XLR for analogue and digital sources.
Info here.
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And pigs will fly!!
Anything to do with tape or film is becoming irrelevant
Mmm, you may be a bit premature there. It will be a very long time before anything optical or magnetic disk-based will achieve the price/ruggedness that tape has. You may get away with that in the pro-sumer market but the pros and broadcasters cannot justify the expense of disk media. Tape is so cheap that broadcasters and professionals can afford to keep the original media. To achieve the same with any disk-based media at the same quality as can be recorded on tape will require massive investment and ongoing costs.
As for film, while people still enjoy going to the cinema or watching DVDs at home, film will survive as the preferred aquisition format. The only thing challenging film is HD aka George Lucas, which is incredibly expensive to use and guess what? It is recorded to tape!
Most film material is transferred to tape for processing and editing before being printed back to film for distribution. Distribution will go down the fully electronic route eventually around the world but still the aquisition will remain on film for a very long time to come.
It’s true that broadcasters and Hollywood will hold on to their Avids way too long
When they have thousands of skilled Avid users for a very reliable platform why would they not want to hang on to them? Why would they want to change? Big money spenders like broadcasters and film production companies will always use the applications that best meet their requirements and where this is a large market of skilled staff.
Apple in particular is kicking Avid’s butt pretty bad right now.
That may be the case in the US in some areas but far from the case in Europe and many other parts of the world where Avid’s dominance is increasing massively. Europe in particular is going through an enormous equipment upgrade as they move from analogue to digital formats for aquisition and transmission and it is Avid that have dominated this upgrade process as they can provide the broadcasters with a fully proven, very cost effective end-to-end solution – not Apple and not Adobe. Avid also have the resources to fully support it. When has Adobe ever responded to the need of an individual? Why do you think that Premier Pro users are so dependent on forums such as these?
Once Apple moves over to the Intel platform, FCP will be in for a very big suprise from Avid. That is just one reason why Adobe have to make PPro 2.0 what it should have been all along. If they don’t get it right this time they may as well give up the professional market place altogether and stick with Premier Elements and the growing (and profitable) consumer market and let FCP take over from what Adobe should have been aiming for.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been a big fan of Premier and will continue to be (version 2 depending).
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While I would love to see Adobe dominate, they will never topple Avid.
Avid has a massive user base including nearly all the major broadcasters world-wide (and more are signing up), major film makers and their image processing companies, colleges (get the students early) and many thousands of TV news companies… the list goes on.
Avid have only been chasing the broadcast world for the last 5-years or so and already they dominate with a mass migration of TV stations happening right now. Avid supply a proven and complete end to end solution – Adobe don’t.
Adobe lost the chance to dominate a long time ago by aiming for the professional market that Avid had already won. Wrong market. They should have put their investment into the growing semi-pro/home market.
I’m not saying that PPro isn’t up to full professional use but rather there are serious workflow issues with the application and the audio handling is done in a way that no full time professional would ever use.
I’d be absolutely amazed if PPro 2.0 addressed all the problems with the application. I genuinely hope they do but I’ll wait and see before I part with my money again.
As for Avid systems being: top-heavy expensive infrastructure built on an antique foundation. That’s very far from the truth as any professional using the application will tell you. They’re not cheap admitedly but no decent, reliable software is.
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The following link will take you to a downloadable (or online) storage calculator for the various formats. It also gives the data rates.
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The rule of thumb is roughly 5-mins per GB for DV25 and this includes 25P. The hard drive used makes no difference except for it’s ability to sustain sufficient trabsfer rates, which almost all modern drives can easily cope with.
HDV uses the same drive space per minute as DV25, the difference being that HDV is an MPEG2 compressed signal, which enables the data rate to be reduced to that of standard DV hence the ability to record on standard DV tape.
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Sorry, that link should have been Toms Hardware.