21. Someone earlier commented that FCP is not an intustry standard and Avid holds the bulk of the market..yet this is dwindling down as Avid has lost its grip on it's financial side. The next generation of college students have been raised on a OSX based visual society now. FCP in my eyes is more of a standard than anything. The only reason I see a PC now is the check things for web development reasons. I've been two two colleges, travelled to many for work, and the only time I see a PC is in public computer labs.

Posted at 1:16PM on Jun 11th 2006 by blinks

22. Film: Avid
Video: Final Cut Pro (Studio)

Avid is to the film industry what Quark is to the print industry - a dinosaur that still exists because everyone trained with it, became comfortable with it and saw everyone else using it. Avid is, without question, the film industry standard. But, if we're talking about digital video, I really do think Final Cut Pro owns that sector - every music video, digital film and small-budget feature chooses Final Cut as its NLE of choice. Television seems to be a mixed bag, but I don't know much about it.

Avid will always be around, as film makers find its little quirks necessary to their work - just like how newspapers will probably NEVER move away from Quark. Still, I think that Final Cut and InDesign will continue making their way upstream to the premium content creators. You can only pass up awesome software for so long.

Posted at 2:00PM on Jun 12th 2006 by Hypertime McMultiverse

23. Seeing a lot of comments here from people who have never actually tried to take a project from film to FCP and back to film again. There are numerous shortcomings to FCP in this workflow, not the least of which is that as a software-dependent tool FCP is not field or frame accurate thus necessitating numerous hoops and ancillary apps to just do what Avid Symphony does natively. (Like, EDLs, optical and dupe lists etc.) I do think that FCP is moving toward wider acceptance, and people have been forcing it to do what it doesn't want to (long before Cold Mountain, incidentally) mostly because of the expense. And to those kvetching about Avid products not being available on Mac platforms, the reason is simple. Every dot revision by Apple screws up something for Avid. I mean almost every one. And because Apple is so close-to-the-chest (witness the development lag for almost every major Apple software developer) it doesn't make economic sense for Avid to bend over backwards supporting the platform.

Posted at 2:18PM on Jun 12th 2006 by Mike

24. My vote is Mac all the way. But that seems like less of a debate than the age old Avid vs. FCP. As a freelance editor for 5+ years.... I use both. They are both tools. Just like choosing a Snap On wrench over a Craftsman. They are both tools that get you to an end result. For me, one tool has advantages over the other. It depends on the job and what I am doing with the edit as to what piece of software I use. And I use them both on a regular basis and can jump from one to the other with the greatest of ease. Personally, I'm glad that I have both choices and I hope that it will always be that way!

Posted at 4:33PM on Jun 12th 2006 by editblog

25. Hell, as long as it's not Quantel. [eQ anyone?] - one thing these solutions all miss, especially for short-turnaround news/sports, is the ability to edit files that are not yet closed (ie start cutting a sports highlight while the game is being recorded to disk)..

I think people should be open to whatever they're not used to using. Give it a shot. There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to each system. Unless you check it out with an open mind, you won't know what you've got or what you're missing..

Posted at 9:28PM on Jun 12th 2006 by Anonymous

26. i think this gives some insight on how the Mac OS is preferred for video editing:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=14919

Posted at 4:30PM on Jun 13th 2006 by alex

27. as a 15 year vet of highend post, the truth is a PROPERLY CONFIGURED FCP can handle much of the production work done. From theatrical features(Scary movie 4) to reality shows (Bunim/Murray), more productions are switching to FCP. Obviously Avid is a more mature product, but the reality is cost is what is driving the change. FCP is adequate in most areas and superior in others. Avid has yet to offer 4:4:4 RGB although it is coming. The HD 4:2:2 output of Decklink or Kona card is superior to Avid output (as tested side by side at a leading post house) The problem with investing in Avid, aside from the poor way you'll be treated as a customer, is it will take 2 to 3 years to pay for your investment while the same time prices are dropping drastically as performance is increasing. I can do theatrical releases on FCP (I have) or a prime time network miniseries (I have) or now 2K on a system I can pay for in 6 months. I justed priced the compents to build a 2TB RAID that will run at 600MB/s for $2500. I can name a number of high profile shows that are being edited and finished on FCP. The key to FCP is PROPER CONFIGURATION. That means avoiding XSAN and using one of the better SAN packages like from Charismac. Using Decklink or Kona, although I prefer Decklink as I think Kona is still having driver issues. For performance, don't use XRAID look at something like GRAID for SD and HUGE for HD. I mention these because I know these systems are in use in typical production environments and they work fine.

Personally for "pro" editing vegas doesn't really cut it. no pun intended. it was originally an audio mixing software, but i use it for WMV and RealPlayer encoding. Works great for that.

Premiere Pro is frustrating because it has so much potential, but it has such a crappy editing interface. The most exciting thing is the Matrox hardware available for it. 2 uncrompressed realtime 10bit HD streams with effects and graphic layers. Wish Matrox would make that for the Mac. It would put Avid out of business. ;)

FCP is far from perfect (so is Avid), but it's cheap, it can do much of the work out there, it output quailty is very good and it's easy to use. Did I mention maintitles i did in FCP for a MOW that aired on CBS?

Posted at 10:19PM on Jul 10th 2006 by tom

28. I am a hobbiest. I am graphic designer by profession. As a user of FCP on Mac and Vegas in PC, I find that file format compatabily is really poor on FCP. Many times you will need to goto external utilities like QT or MPEGStreamclip to convert footage to what FCP can use. with Vegas it is just drag and drop - just about any format, wmv,mpg, avi, qt.. all in one project. I do like smooth interface of FCP. But many task needs more mouse clicks.

If Vegas came out as cross platfrom - I doubt it will - it will be a top contender

Posted at 10:36AM on Jul 12th 2006 by Gene Johung