I have been in Tv for like 30 years (in distribution) and now am producing and overseeing some programs.
To know a bit more and continue learning, I wish to have more hands on experience myself when talking to editors…what should I learn FCP or AVID, help! and wh one more than another

thanks

I agree with raaa…. Avid is the superior product, having had nearly 30 years of actual Editors “tweak” the program to perfection. That being said, FCP is an “OK” product, if your a computer geek, think like a computer geek and edit like a computer geek. After all FCP was de-engeneered from Avid by computer geeks, who just did not and do not really understand why Avid works the way it does.

I am now out of the business, after many years in the edit bay as a “predator,” that’s a Writer/Producer/Editor. I now teach Media Studies at a university level, and the residual effects of Avid’s worst decision ever still lingers. I hope to change this and open the eyes of administrators that insist “we don’t teach button pushing.” WRONG!

BfD

FCP is immeasurably more costly if creativity, making changes, and efficiency are your priorities. It’s for projects with with beginners doing the layout and early work — but you lose every $ you save, and worse: creativity.

So far my AVID time as a user is tiny in comparison to FCP and I have committed 100% to using it after speaking to editors in the field I’d like to work in. (AVID still rules the film orginated roost with the great metadata control … read the issues that murch had on cold mountain with syncing).

As a pro-photographer I’m in a similar position of what software and where. To be honest I have found as with any image based thing the choices are endless. Photoshop is not the be all and end all remember! You choose the one that suits. For stuff I shoot in film that is silverfast with PS as a quick retoucher and spotter. And for digital Nikon Capture with 99% of the work being done in it with no loss of time.

Looking at the two editors as a fresh user, look at it in the sense of, do you want to learn as a career, does it meet YOUR requirements and can you justify ACTUALLY buying it. (the number of pirate users who bitch about software is plain offensive) After this you learn it inside out and then as previously mentioned,, you consider yourself as a story teller over an editor. Once the technology is transparent, that is where your talent comes through. A feature can as easily be assembled on an imac with iMovie (yes it has been done) as with an AVID full on maxed out system with enough outboard gear as you can muster, but the two could be exactly the same if the editor is not creative enough to breath life into the footage.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents.

I would like to say, thanks Scott for some good insights and thanks for answering Steve’s questions. These have been invaluable to me as well.

Steven

I purchased the iMac first and added the tower when I could afford it. Guess which I use 90% of the time. The iMAC. As long as you keep the iMac cool it has more than enough power to run FCP or After Effects. The real upside to the iMac is the Monitor. for 2k you get a totally capable machine with an impressive color and Gama accurate monitor. I am guessing that you wont have a 3k broadcast HD monitor for color correction so a Spyder3 and the iMac monitor will provide wonderfully accurate results.

Bottom line is your clients will not know the difference in the end result and if digitizing is a concern pick up an AJA IO SD on ebay for like 400 bucks.. works like a charm if you are not ingesting HD plus gives you quality audio as well.

Downside is everything is on Firewire so if you do HD its only gonna be DVCPRO HD or Apple Pro Res HD and you will grow quite a collection of ext hard drives. My advice on that is back up back up back up.

I guess my point is you won’t be making a mistake with either system but you have to decide how important that extra 2 grand is to you right now. I have never used AVID on an IMAC but i am guessing its less taxing than After Effects… I will render all night long for weeks at a time on both machines and the IMAC almost always keeps up with the Pro Tower.

The Pro Tower is way faster on Adobe Media Encoder for some reason….

Just thought I would lend my two cents maybe you do have an unlimited budget if so go for the dream machine…

As for FCP’s trim …. it’s light years behind the Avid Trim Mode. But the flip side for many is how easy you can click and drag and trim directly in the FCP timeline. It’s deciding which is better for you and your work. Me? I have both and use both depending on the job.