McFly
09-11-2003, 04:26 PM
Hello folks.
I'm trying to do some research to find solid video & editing equipment.
What I'm primarily interested in shooting are dance recitals for our family business. She (the wife) teaches the kids dance, I'll do the video for the recitals and other video jobs as needed.
I'm curious about Final Cut Pro 4. I'd like to do NL editing... dissolves, wipes, titles, etc. I'd also like to be able to burn everything to a DVD rather than VHS as well.
What will give me the most bang for my buck?
What is the most user friendly?
If you had 3-5k to spend, where would it go?
Thanks in advance!
<Grip>
09-11-2003, 07:08 PM
Avid express Pro comes out in about a week. I would go that direction. It has a lot of the same features you would find on Avid Newscutter. It will work with a PC and a Mac. If you go with final cut pro, you have to rely on Apple. I would be a little scared to invest in a company that only has a %2 market share.
Other than that, they are both good, it really comes down to what OS you want to work around. Everybody is going to have their own opinion,
http://b-roll.net/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004125
http://b-roll.net/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003044
It took me a while to learn, but I highly suggest just keeping it as a NLE workstation, and that is all. Don't even put any other crap on the system besides Boris or AE.
vdoguy
09-12-2003, 04:10 PM
I have Final Cut and Avid Xpress on my G4 powerbook. They both will do the job. I've edited network packages overnight on Final Cut at some major events and it did just fine and it would probably be more appropriate for what you want to use it for.
That being said, if you can afford it, I'd suggest going Avid. I don't say that because Avid is more stable or because it's a better system. I say that because if you know how to edit on Avid, that makes you more valuable when you're applying for another job. If you can edit on an Avid, you can edit on anything else. It's more complex and will take more time to learn, but it's well worth it.
Wolfgang Achtner
09-12-2003, 04:41 PM
Hello McFly,
You asked: What will give me the most bang for my buck? What is the most user friendly?
If you had 3-5k to spend, where would it go?"
I would strongly suggest Final Cut Pro 4. It is extremely reliable, it will give you more bang for your buck and, espcially if you're interested in producing your own DVDs, DVD Studio Pro (now in version 2.0) was purpose-made to integrate FCP.
FCP has a whole lot of effects, in case you ever need more, you can add Photoshop and Boris' After Effects.
I've used used Apple's FCP in my videojournalism workshops and I can assure you that, when properly taught, the leaning curve is particularly easy. Within a matter of hours, the particpants of my courses - and these include people who've never worked in tv - manage to edit first rate stories using video shot by themselves.
If you decide to purchase FCP, make sure that you buy Lisa Brenneis' tutorial book, published by Peachpit Press. It's a must-have.
By the way, I've edited several documentaries on FCP, so I can assure you that if it works for me, it'll work for you. Also, CNN's international crews travel with Apple laptops and use FCP to edit their stories; they feed them straight off the laptops, as an FTP package, to the satellite.
If you go to www.apple.com (http://www.apple.com) and click "store" you'll be able to check out all their models. The top of the line laptops now include the Superdrive that allows you to make your own DVDs.
newsshooter
09-15-2003, 11:44 PM
I just got into the home editing business trying to get my own off the ground. I had the money to buy a Mac. A few friends bought PC's. The difference is the speed in editing and rendering. If you don't have a lot of money look into building a PC and running vegas video editing software. If you have $4,000 buy the Mac, wait on buying editing software and check out i-movie and i-dvd. I might get bashed on this, but I didn't have the money to get final cut ($1,000) and I had a few home movies of the kids I needed to make something of so I used i-movie. It works great. It comes with the mac and is very easy to use. You can do 20 different dissolves, wipes, some cheezy effects...a few cool ones, you can title...and zooming on still pictures is much easier than playing with keyframes on final cut. If your a corporate video guy and your doing high end stuff for tv and broadcast final 4 or 3 I finally bought on ebay for $250.00 would be it. For dance recitals check out i-movie and i-dvd. You will impress all your friends and neighbors.
Sycophant
09-16-2003, 07:19 PM
I find Premiere very cumbersome, and slow to work with - especially once you get used to driving an Avid or FCP quickly with a keyboard.
I haven't used premiere extensively for a good few years now, but a short corporate video I tried to cut on a very well spec'd Premiere system a few months ago just had me cursing Adobe over and over again.
I understand it requires a lot more renderig time and so on to achieve similar things.
Personally, I'd go with Avid Xpress DV (or Xpress Pro real soon) as my first choice, on a PC - I just find PCs a little easier to deal with overall. A lot more room for upgrading.
However I like FCP, and could be happy with it too.
I can't imagine any circumstance when I might put Premiere on any hardware I want to do real work on :)
Wolfgang Achtner
09-16-2003, 09:02 PM
McFly,
This article may help you figure out what is best for you. Even though it's two years old, the gist of it remains valid.
It's also worth bearing in mind that since then, in order to compete on a value for money basis with FCP, AVID has slashed the price of its low-end version.
As the article points out, one of the primary advantages of FCP is that it is "far more adaptable" since "it lets editors easily drop in images from QuickTime, Adobe PhotoShop and other software, and third-party developers have already started expanding the product's reach."
Salon.com
Apple's moviemaking revolution
Its cheap, fast Final Cut Pro software makes film editing affordable – and threatens industry leader Avid.
By Damien Cave
June 5, 2001 | Charles Wachter spent last summer looking for one thing: the cheapest, quickest possible way to edit his fourth film. "Broken Ocean," a 10-minute short about a skeleton crew trapped on an abandoned oil rig in the North Atlantic, had already run over its $20,000 budget. Wachter's professors at New York University's graduate film school wanted a final version pronto, but Wachter couldn't get Adobe's Premiere editing software to stop adding white pixels to every scene. Even worse, he wasn't sure that borrowed footage of a French oil rig would mesh with the scenes he shot on 16 mm film in an old ship near Hudson Bay.
Desperate, he turned to his classmate, Savvas Paritsis, who agreed to help by cutting the film with Apple's Final Cut Pro. The program had only been out for a year, but it already had a reputation for being far more stable than Premiere and other PC-based systems. And unlike Avid, the gold standard of editing suites in cost and capability, Final Cut was cheap. Free, pirated versions could be found relatively easily online, while with student discounts, the program could be bought for about $250. That's one-seventh the price of Avid's low-end XPress DV and about 300 times cheaper than a standard Hollywood workstation like Media Composer, which retails for about $80,000 and combines hardware and software in a single unit. "I believe that Final Cut is going to rival Avid in a serious way in the next 10 years," says Wachter. "It has everything that's needed to slay the giant: cheapness, affordability and power."
Apple vs. Avid: The battle lines for the future of digital film editing have been drawn. Hollywood, a town not known for its geek quotient, now finds itself in the throes of a passionate technology debate, a discussion about interface design, processing speed, price points and upgrade flexibility. For now, Apple seems to have the low-end momentum while Avid, which pioneered nonlinear, cut-and-paste editing more than a decade ago, maintains a loyal following among high-end commercial and feature
film editors, who say that it does a better job than Final Cut with raw film and with file storage.
But it's not just market share that matters. With its laptop-ready software, low prices and fervent following, Final Cut Pro has reignited the dream of filmmaking for the masses. First, digital video and inexpensive cameras made it possible to shoot a professional feature for a fraction of what Hollywood considers standard operating procedure. Then the Internet made distribution easier than ever, and now, many Final Cut fans are saying that Apple has upended the film's final high-cost component: editing.
"One person can take a show from idea to shoot, to cutting, to color-correcting, all the way through production," says Evan Shechtman, president of Outpost Digital, a post-production house that beta-tested Final Cut and now uses it to edit several projects, including "The Life," a 32-episode series for ESPN. "You don't have to be a super-editing scientist to complete a feature."
"Cheap editing is key for young filmmakers," says Wachter. "Broken Ocean" will be completed within weeks and "if it weren't for Savvas' [Apple] G4 and Final Cut, there is no way I could have pulled off a movie set in the North Atlantic, but shot on the Hudson," he says. "Final Cut is the last component needed to fully democratize film."
When Steve Jobs touted Apple's media software in January at San Francisco's Macworld conference, he displayed hokey home movies and quaint family photographs. But despite the down-home feel, Apple has been eyeing the professional market for years. The Cupertino, Calif., company acquired the Final Cut software and development team from Macromedia in 1998. Final Cut Pro 1.0 hit shelves in 1999 to some fanfare and minor upgrades heightened interest. From the start, Apple wooed film schools and editors, including Schectman at Outpost, and the company sees the 2.0 version as the culmination of its efforts. Released in March, the upgrade is "the cornerstone of our professional application endeavor," says Tom McDonald, a Final Cut product manager.
Version 2.0 won honors at May's National Association of Broadcasters conference and Final Cut interest is steadily rising in Hollywood and New York -- wherever production is done, says Ben Kozuch, founder and president of Future Media Concepts, a chain of editing institutes that trains editors. "The enrollment in Final Cut classes is busy and growing," he says. FMC has expanded the curriculum and added more classes to account for what Kozuch estimates is a steady 20 percent rise in demand. "Only a few months ago, you had to have Avid on your résumé. Now, you still should have Avid on the résumé, but more and more places are using Final Cut and you may be able to find work if that's all you know."
"This is a new phenomenon with Final Cut Pro," he adds. "It's only happened in the past six months."
Consider WGBH. The Boston public television station was one of the first to buy into Avid's pitch, and most of the editors and producers are still happy with the product. But as a noncommercial station, "we're cost-conscious and we're always looking for anything that's going to be cheaper for us," says David McCarn, chief technologist. So, a few months ago, WGBH bought several copies of Final Cut Pro 2.0. After using it to edit a handful of short films, ads and an episode of the American Experience documentary series "Zoot Suit Riots," producers report that the program is perfect for certain kinds of shows. Anything shot on digital video (as opposed to film), newsy segments that need to be edited quickly or in the field and projects with minimal budgets all fit under the Final Cut umbrella.
WGBH has also benefited indirectly from Final Cut. More and more young filmmakers who use the product have started knocking on the station's door, some with success. Former WGBH intern Jon Sahula persuaded the station to screen two short films edited with Final Cut Pro. "It's an economical way to welcome more storytellers into WGBH," says Lucy Sholley, the station's director of media relations. Final Cut, she says, has "helped us bring new talent along."
Some filmmakers say that Final Cut lets them quickly create what they want on a reasonable budget. "Whenever people try to do an independent project, any kind of independent project, they have to quit and work on other things that will make them enough money to survive," says Mark Foster, a director of commercials who just finished using Final Cut to edit "69 Minutes of Fame," a documentary on a punk band. "So if you need to use an Avid, it's going to take longer and cost you an arm and a leg, just to rent one. But with Final Cut, you can do it cheaper and faster on your own computer."
Apple has taken advantage of faster processing speeds and married that power to its own reputation as a friend to creativity, says Harry Marks, a veteran digital artist and editor who has consulted for ABC, NBC, Paramount and other major Hollywood players. As a result, the company has opened up the industry, and Avid may have reason to fear the competition. "Anyone can get Final Cut," he says. "It's accessible and stable. Avid's probably a little afraid because they've made [editing] such a black art. But the truth is that Final Cut Pro is incredibly powerful."
But Apple hardly deserves all the credit for crafting Final Cut Pro's appeal. The market for film and video, streaming online, in corporate training and through the expansion of cable, continues to grow. Editing opportunities abound, as do the pool and diversity of film editors. Plus, some say, Avid primed the market for its new competitor by earning a reputation for being exactly what young filmmakers don't want: static, hardware-centric and expensive.
When Avid started, the blackbox formula made sense. Knowing that Hollywood's old guard would resist anything new out of fears of unreliability, Avid focused on stability and comprehensiveness more than flexibility, says Jeremy O'Neal at the Bay Area Video Coalition, a nonprofit post-production training facility in San Francisco. With souped-up Apple and IBM units, proprietary cards and a color-coded keyboard, the company created a closed solution that could be managed easily and did everything editors wanted.
The system's speed and strength put it a step above Tektronix Lightworks and other nonlinear systems that came out around the same time. Gradually, the industry started spending millions on Avid's two main systems, Composer and Symphony, making Avid the de facto standard. This is still true today. Ninety-six percent of the shows on television are cut with an Avid, and there are more than 75,000 certified Avid editors, according to company figures.
But at some point over the past few years, Avid users started to feel frustrated with the company's constrictions. "They've pissed a lot of people off," says Jon Ettinger, executive producer at FilmCore, a San Francisco post-production firm focusing on high-end commercials. "They announce upgrades to their system, then don't make it compatible with older versions, so what you just bought often becomes quickly obsolete. Then you have to go back and buy everything through Avid. It's quite a racket. They've know that they're the only game in town, so they take advantage of it."
To be fair, Avid does work with some other products, QuickTime, for example, and its file capacity is far greater than what most standard Apple computers can offer. Filmmakers wanting advanced special effects still require an expensive Avid workstation and many say that Avid is more reliable than the cheaper options. And regardless of Avid's steep price and inflexibility, FilmCore and other post-production companies aren't planning to abandon it. It still beats Final Cut "in terms of processing speed and other features," Ettinger says.
Yet, Avid is no longer the fastest option in every category. Final Cut is "far more adaptable," says Wachter. It lets editors easily drop in images from QuickTime, Adobe PhotoShop and other software, and third-party developers have already started expanding the product's reach. At the very least, it's an appealing alternative. Those who either can't afford an Avid or dislike Avid's "island" status, as one editor described it, now have another option.
Computer historians might find some irony in the fact that Apple is, in this battle, being praised for being open, for beating a company that's regularly denounced for creating closed "turnkey" systems, those that lock proprietary hardware and software together. After all, didn't Steve Jobs insist that proprietary systems work best, even as his computers lost market share to IBM clones?
Despite Final Cut's success, Avid argues that its products represent a better value. Though the company wouldn't comment specifically on Final Cut Pro, Charlie Russell, a product marketing manager, pointed out that Avid remains the top choice for
the vast majority of film and television projects. The company has also had to achieve "the democratization of Avid video," he says, releasing a low-end version of its product that works with digital video and competes with Final Cut. It retails for $700 more than Final Cut, but the company maintains that sales are brisk.
Which raises the question: With the film industry continuing to expand and diversify, is there room for both Avid and Apple? Perhaps. Many editors say the jury is still out on Final Cut. The next few versions will determine whether Apple beats Avid or
simply joins its market. In the meantime, though, Final Cut's rise seems poised to divide the industry. On one side are the veterans who swear by Avid. Doug Wellman, for example, the former director of "The Facts of Life" and a professor at the USC School of Cinema, which uses only Avid, argues that Avid is and will be "what the pros use."
But there's also a growing, wily contingent of filmmakers, editors and educators who are determined to topple what some call "the Avid monopoly." They're convinced that Avid won't survive the oncoming onslaught.
"None of us are using Avid unless we can get it for free," says Wachter. "As we age and move into the industry, we are going to take Final Cut Pro with us and slay the giant. Avid is dead. It's a dinosaur."
About the writer
Damien Cave is a staff writer for Salon Technology.
<Grip>
09-17-2003, 07:44 PM
"The only reason to go with Avid for personal use is if you were to going to do an uncompressed online with a higher end Syphony or something."
In about two weeks I will be able to run 4 unrendered PIPs over uncompressed component video. With Avid Express Pro.
" Apple is not going to disappear anytime soon. They are busy setting the bar higher with every innovation they come up with."
That's all fine and good, BUT the reality remains that they only have a 2% marketshare. While there are a lot of FCP users growing in numbers, that might not be enough to keep Apple competitive. The AJA Io does help though.
- 10-bit Uncompressed SDI or Analog Video
- 24-bit Digital/Optical/Analog Multi-Channel Audio
- RS-422 Machine Control
- Genlock
But anyone that has the cash for SDI would want Adrenaline anyways. So when you get right down to it, which company leads the industry? and which one will be around in ten years with out a doubt? Avid Express Pro can run on a PC, or a Mac, and is not dependent on either. Both Avid and FCP will crash on a given day, I have heard bad storys on both, and to say one is more stable than the other is a bunch of crap. I just ordered a duel Xeon workstation, and I will have Pro in a week or two. I will bet a case of beer I can pull a faster render than the G5 with FCP4. Especially if I get Avid Mojo with it. I will essentially have three processors optimized.
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