FCP vs. Other Editing Systems...

[Boyd Ostroff]

Tip, William, Tim and others: what a terrific perspective on how we got to where we are today. Thanks for sharing those stories. The breadth and depth of experience amongst our DVinfo members never ceases to amaze me. :-)

[Brian Luce]

If you're short on cash, get Sony Vegas 6 from B&H for 99 bucks. Unbeatable bang for the buck. And let's face it, at this level of production, it's all about bang for the buck. This is not the Viper forum. If we could have everything we wanted, we'd probably be shooting with something other than an HD100--Vegas 6, like the HD100 offers much punch per peso than any other camera in it's class.

[Hayes Roberts]

The comments and views expressed here are certainly helpful and insightful. It is great to hear some of you take a "trip down memory lane".
It is quite obvious that you folks are dedicated and enthusiastic about your chosen field of endeavor. I wish good luck to every one of you; all I can say is WOW.

[Nate Weaver]

Sorry guys, it was that sorta time to move this into where it belongs, which is the Mac editing forum.

Besides, the great discussion deserves a larger audience, no?

[Joe Carney]

As a happy Vegas user, it's nice to see the Mac folks talking and behaving like adults. One of the reasons I haven't considered Macs in the past was the childish us vs them mentality, and to be truthful, Vegas is very good at what it does and very stable. And if you shoot with the new XDCAM HDs I don't think even FCP will be able to do what V7 will do...But.......
Depending on what is announced tomorrow my attitude may change. I'm moving into things that will require 10bit support (CGI stuff) and for what I can afford that's either Premier or FCP.

That isn't a knock on Sony, just a facing of facts. Now that FCP is finally delivering support for JVCs' 24p format, it's time to re-evaluate my choices. The real issue for me is cost. I'll be upgrading my hardware/software this winter, which means all new everything to handle a heavier workload. My existing systems will stay in use for lots of things including using Vegas 6 for audio mixing and even recording. And Vegas supports Quicktime.

The fact that Macs are now Intel based along with the statments made by Nate, Paolo and Tim make for a compelling argument.

btw, do Apples have/support GigEthernet?

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

btw, do Apples have/support GigEthernet?

They've had it built in since some of the first G4s in 2000.

The newest G5s and Mac Pros have two independent GigE ports built in.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

As a happy Vegas user, it's nice to see the Mac folks talking and behaving like adults. One of the reasons I haven't considered Macs in the past was the childish us vs them mentality, and to be truthful, Vegas is very good at what it does and very stable. And if you shoot with the new XDCAM HDs I don't think even FCP will be able to do what V7 will do...But.......

Now, now..... let's keep this discussion above water.

Mr. Weaver, do you think this discussion might be better residing in the FCP HDV forum?

[Joe Carney]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

They've had it built in since some of the first G4s in 2000.

The newest G5s and Mac Pros have two independent GigE ports built in.

Thanks, I'm pretty much a total noob on Macs. Only things I know are what I read about around here.
After the post I got from jon m stein over at the socal vegas users group on yahoo... If and a big IF at that...I upgrade, this will be the last time for Vegas. Time to move on. No hard feelings, it's been a great run.
ACID on the other hand still has interesting possibilities for me and even my increasingly dated hardware is more than enough for High Quality multichannel audio reocording and mixing.

[Joe Carney]

[double post]

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

You mentioned Avid's "open timeline" as an advantage over FCP, but you should understand that FCP has always had an "open timeline." You can mix anything that can be played by Quicktime in a timeline and FCP will render it to the timeline's frame rate, codec and resolution.

I'd say that FCP has a relatively closed timeline, because having to render footage to match the project settings is a nuisance. By comparison, Edius can take just about any combination of footage from SD or HD cameras and mix it all on one timeline without any rendering required. And you can even change the project setting at will without having to do anything to the clips to have them work at the new settings. As others have noted, no one NLE is best at every task, because if there was one such perfect program we'd all be using it for everything.

[Cole McDonald]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

ACID on the other hand still has interesting possibilities for me and even my increasingly dated hardware is more than enough for High Quality multichannel audio reocording and mixing.

If you end up on the mac with FCP Studio, it comes with an audio package - Soundtrack Pro. This does a good job of recording audio and has a timeline that is quite easy to get hold of mentally. If you've ever gotten to play with garage band (the application - you can see it at an apple store near you), you will "get" the main interface of soundtrack pro. I find it much more intuitive than protools or reason for handling audio clips...I haven't had much of a chance to use it for much multitrack recording yet though. I'll have to get the band together and see how well it operates in that capacity.

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

It took a few versions of Final Cut before I finally moved the Media100 work over to FCP. I still miss the Media100 interface. Anybody want a Media100 FireWire board?.

William - I started using Media 100 about ten years ago. I too miss the interface. Interestingly, there is suppossed to be an all software version coming out soon - we'll see.

Media 100, which 'borrowed' so much from Avid in terms of its product-line, also seemed as oblivious as Avid to the coming DV/firewire revolution. By the time Media 100 could handle firewire, it was too late (and they wanted a bundle for it to boot) - FCP was worth a leap of faith. Now a days, it seems to be the editing system of choice (and it would be for me too if it could handle JVC100 24p footage naitively).

We're using Pro2, primarily because it can handle 24p and it's easy intergration w/other Adobe products. Also a big factor was cost - compared to Macs, the computer set-up was almost 4 times less than a similar model Mac. Pro 2 is still a young/immature product in many ways (particularly its interface and ease of use), but it is my hope that this will improve w/future versions.

What do you want for the board? I'm not even sure my Media 100 even works anymore (sigh). Thanks to all who've written -
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

William - I started using Media 100 about ten years ago. I too miss the interface. Interestingly, there is suppossed to be an all software version coming out soon - we'll see.

Media 100, which 'borrowed' so much from Avid in terms of its product-line, also seemed as oblivious as Avid to the coming DV/firewire revolution. By the time Media 100 could handle firewire, it was too late (and they wanted a bundle for it to boot) - FCP was worth a leap of faith. Now a days, it seems to be the editing system of choice (and it would be for me too if it could handle JVC100 24p footage naitively).

We're using Pro2, primarily because it can handle 24p and it's easy intergration w/other Adobe products. Also a big factor was cost - compared to Macs, the computer set-up was almost 4 times less than a similar model Mac. Pro 2 is still a young/immature product in many ways (particularly its interface and ease of use), but it is my hope that this will improve w/future versions.

What do you want for the board? I'm not even sure my Media 100 even works anymore (sigh). Thanks to all who've written -
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

I have no hope for the Media100. To actually convince me to try it again they would have to send me a free copy of the software only version. The last version I used still crashed if I tried to switch from Firewire capture to RGB analog, feh. Final Cut never ever did that.

4 times less? What PC are you using?

My company is in New York City and you can look up the phone number.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

I'd say that FCP has a relatively closed timeline, because having to render footage to match the project settings is a nuisance. By comparison, Edius can take just about any combination of footage from SD or HD cameras and mix it all on one timeline without any rendering required. And you can even change the project setting at will without having to do anything to the clips to have them work at the new settings

I'm glad you added your note, because after using Liquid for the last several months I understand what "open" can really mean. EDIUS, as you mention, also offers this capability.

I'm covering Liquid in HDVatWork and I've created bizzarre RT Sequences with everything from cell phone video to EVERY kind of HDV and DV. My thank's to Stephen for his cluing me into what I was missing.

My memories go back to visting Avid (about a mile from my house), teaching the Media100 (I used to work at Data Translation), and my first reviews I wrote of VideoVision Studio (bought on a CC at MacWorld), Premiere 3, and SuperMac's DigitalFilm. And, who can forget Hitchcock which Adobe bought and erased from the face of the earth. Oh, and VideoShop that was built on HyperCard.

The reality is that the biggest change has been in hard drives!

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

I'm glad you added your note, because after using Liquid for the last several months I understand what "open" can really mean. EDIUS, as you mention, also offers this capability.

I'm covering Liquid in HDVatWork and I've created bizzarre RT Sequences with everything from cell phone video to EVERY kind of HDV and DV. My thank's to Stephen for his cluing me into what I was missing.

My memories go back to visting Avid (about a mile from my house), teaching the Media100 (I used to work at Data Translation), and my first reviews I wrote of VideoVision Studio (bought on a CC at MacWorld), Premiere 3, and SuperMac's DigitalFilm. And, who can forget Hitchcock which Adobe bought and erased from the face of the earth. Oh, and VideoShop that was built on HyperCard.

The reality is that the biggest change has been in hard drives!

That's why your name was familiar, you worked at Data Translation! And those programs, yikes, forgot about all of those.

The biggest change is the hard drives, many people here didn't experience the drive issues that the early birds had to deal with. I stlli have my 8 four gig ProMax SCSI arrays in a closet. I can't give them away. The second biggest change is the hardware, we no longer need seperate video boards to compute effects and capture video. Sure there are cards for high quality work but the average production can be edited with off the shelf computers now.

Although I am a Final Cut proponent, I must agree with the assement that FCP is not a true open timeline in that it can accept and play any video file without rendering. But I must state that most people don't need a NLE that can do that. I have assisted a large number of documentaries and other projects where the real problem is getting legacy analog video formats into the timelime. That's usually solved by transfering the old tapes to DVCam or whatever. Most projects are shot in DV (or HDV) and will stay that way until the end where it's turned in MPEG2 or upconverted to DigiBeta.