EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? at DVinfo.net

Brian Bang Jensen · May 27th, 2011, 08:51 AM

I am currently editing in EDIUS 5.5 and was initially set for upgrading to EDIUS 6.
In the meantime I have been looking at AVID 5.5. I have downloaded the trial at had a look at the tutorial.
As I see it there are weary little differences between AVID 5.5 and EDIUS 6, when it comes to workflow and editing techniques!
From an economic viewpoint EDIUS is far the cheapest. I can buy more than 3 versions of EDIUS for the price of one AVID license.

So the big question is what am I going to get for the extra money, if I chose AVID?

My primary editing system is running on a Supermicro machine with a dual Xenon motherboard, 8 cores, with 12gig of memory and a 1gig Nvidia 9800 series graphic card. Os is win7 64bit.

I edit many sorts of material mainly XDCAM HD and AVCHD but sometimes I have to use graphics from Photoshop, still pictures and even takes from cell phones had been used. EDIUS eats it all! Output is for the most part to DVD (SD), windows media (HD) and mpeg (HD) and Blu-Ray. Some is for clients to show on trade fairs and some is going to be projected on the big screen in the local theater.

IF I am going for AVID (taking the huge price difference in consideration) there has to be some major advantages in either the quality of the tools in the standard package or an increase in the quality of the finished project!!

Anyone has some knowledge to share?

PLEASE don´t make this into a war between the two. Just some facts and not what someone prefers and thinks what’s best!!!

Arnie Schlissel · May 27th, 2011, 10:30 AM

Avid is an industry standard, Edius is a niche player. There are many more freelance and staff Avid jobs out there than Edius jobs.

Which has nothing to do with the merits of either package, but it means that knowing Avid will more likely wind up getting you a paying job.

Jay West · May 28th, 2011, 01:04 AM

Brian: have you seen this white paper put out by Grass Valley?

http://www.grassvalley.com/docs/Appl...Editors_AN.pdf

Jay West · May 29th, 2011, 01:33 AM

That link does not work. Do a google search on "Edius 6 for Avid Editors" and you can connect to the page from there.

Richard Alvarez · June 3rd, 2011, 09:58 AM

Brian if you're happy with Edius - stay with it. AVID is an industry standard. The workflow is copied by lots of NLEs. There are lots of third party apps available for AVID that may or may not be available for Edius.

The reason to make the jump is because you want to become proficient on AVID - in terms of marketing your skills. Or you need to interact with an AVID workflow - that is you are likely to be exchanging projects with someone else who works on AVID - or perhaps finishing a feature film on AVID. (Conforming negative - cutters love and trust AVID cutlists)

Yeah, I cut on AVID.

Jay West · June 3rd, 2011, 12:10 PM

Brian:

Following up (and echoing) what Richard just said, Avid MC 5.5 may not have any major advantages for YOU over Edius 6. It could be different for others and the difference is all in the situation.

As is said, your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does.

It happens that I have both Avid MC5 and Adobe CS5. I got the Avid program in an inexpensive upgrade offer last year. At the time, I thought Avid offered some major advantages in some situations. What I have found is that I need Avid's strengths far less than I thought I might. I do some work similar to what you described, but mainly work with multi-cam event shoots and video for lawyers.

With that background, I think the points made by Richard and Arnie are valid, but these do not much matter for my work. My perspective is that of a one-man band who has never needed to work collaboratively over a network with other editors (let alone Avid-based editors), who has no interest becoming someone's employee, and who has no plans for working on any feature films or in a broadcast environment.

Third party plug-ins were mentioned. Edius works with "only" a comparatively limited number of third party plug-ins --- limited, that is, compared the range available to Adobe and Avid. I personally find little need for them. In my case, even though my Adobe software can work with a bazillion different plug-ins, I've only worked with three: Plural Eyes (for aiding in syncing up multi-cam edits, which also works with Edius); Cineform's Neo and First Light software; and Neat Video's "denoiser" (which I think comes with Edius 6). So, if you do not want or need a lot of plug-ins, the greater availability will not affect your choosing between Edius 6 and Avid.

When I took Avid up on last year's inexpensive upgrade offer, I thought that Avid offered me three important things. Here is my current take on those thoughts.

(a) Very robust color correction/grading/matching tools. These seemed useful for my multicam work. However, since I got Avid, I've mainly worked with very similar cameras and so found much less need for this capability. Also, I've found that Cineform's First Light pretty much takes care of my needs on the projects I do. Let me emphasize that this is a reflection of my limited needs and not a denigration of Avid's more capable tools. I have not done much work that has been projected onto large screens, but one of them was project that I did run through Avid for color matching and correction. In that case, I thought Avid's tools definitely gave me a better result than I was getting with the tools in PPro CS5 and First Light. That said, I probably could have done similar things in Adobe After Effects. I've never worked with the color tools in Edius and cannot say how they compare with Avid's.

(b) the ability to work with my Matrox MXO-2 Mini. I prefer to work with a three screen editing set-up, especially with multi-cam projects. The Matrox's calibration of tv sets gives me color as accurate as I need for my work --- which obviously would not be sufficient for feature film work but is significantly better than the computer monitors I would otherwise use. It works with both Avid and Adobe. If you do not use a third screen in editing, or if you already have a Grass valley/Canopus card for this, or if you already have professional broadcast monitors, this will not matter to you.

(c) the ability to handle and display more than Adobe's limit of four multi-cam streams at one time. Seems that this would be of no concern to you because Edius does not have the four-track limit that Adobe does.

May 27th, 2011, 08:51 AM	#1
Brian Bang Jensen Regular Crew Join Date: May 2006 Location: Denmark Posts: 79	EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? I am currently editing in EDIUS 5.5 and was initially set for upgrading to EDIUS 6. In the meantime I have been looking at AVID 5.5. I have downloaded the trial at had a look at the tutorial. As I see it there are weary little differences between AVID 5.5 and EDIUS 6, when it comes to workflow and editing techniques! From an economic viewpoint EDIUS is far the cheapest. I can buy more than 3 versions of EDIUS for the price of one AVID license. So the big question is what am I going to get for the extra money, if I chose AVID? My primary editing system is running on a Supermicro machine with a dual Xenon motherboard, 8 cores, with 12gig of memory and a 1gig Nvidia 9800 series graphic card. Os is win7 64bit. I edit many sorts of material mainly XDCAM HD and AVCHD but sometimes I have to use graphics from Photoshop, still pictures and even takes from cell phones had been used. EDIUS eats it all! Output is for the most part to DVD (SD), windows media (HD) and mpeg (HD) and Blu-Ray. Some is for clients to show on trade fairs and some is going to be projected on the big screen in the local theater. IF I am going for AVID (taking the huge price difference in consideration) there has to be some major advantages in either the quality of the tools in the standard package or an increase in the quality of the finished project!! Anyone has some knowledge to share? PLEASE don´t make this into a war between the two. Just some facts and not what someone prefers and thinks what’s best!!!

May 27th, 2011, 10:30 AM	#2
Arnie Schlissel Major Player Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: New York NY Posts: 322	Re: EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? Avid is an industry standard, Edius is a niche player. There are many more freelance and staff Avid jobs out there than Edius jobs. Which has nothing to do with the merits of either package, but it means that knowing Avid will more likely wind up getting you a paying job. __________________ Post production is not an afterthought! www.arniepix.com

May 28th, 2011, 01:04 AM	#3
Jay West Major Player Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Red Lodge, Montana Posts: 889	Re: EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? Brian: have you seen this white paper put out by Grass Valley? http://www.grassvalley.com/docs/Appl...Editors_AN.pdf

May 29th, 2011, 01:33 AM	#4
Jay West Major Player Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Red Lodge, Montana Posts: 889	Re: EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? That link does not work. Do a google search on "Edius 6 for Avid Editors" and you can connect to the page from there.

June 3rd, 2011, 09:58 AM	#5
Richard Alvarez Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: San Mateo, CA Posts: 3,840	Re: EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? Brian if you're happy with Edius - stay with it. AVID is an industry standard. The workflow is copied by lots of NLEs. There are lots of third party apps available for AVID that may or may not be available for Edius. The reason to make the jump is because you want to become proficient on AVID - in terms of marketing your skills. Or you need to interact with an AVID workflow - that is you are likely to be exchanging projects with someone else who works on AVID - or perhaps finishing a feature film on AVID. (Conforming negative - cutters love and trust AVID cutlists) Yeah, I cut on AVID.

June 3rd, 2011, 12:10 PM	#6
Jay West Major Player Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Red Lodge, Montana Posts: 889	Re: EDIUS 6 or AVID 5.5?? Brian: Following up (and echoing) what Richard just said, Avid MC 5.5 may not have any major advantages for YOU over Edius 6. It could be different for others and the difference is all in the situation. As is said, your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does. It happens that I have both Avid MC5 and Adobe CS5. I got the Avid program in an inexpensive upgrade offer last year. At the time, I thought Avid offered some major advantages in some situations. What I have found is that I need Avid's strengths far less than I thought I might. I do some work similar to what you described, but mainly work with multi-cam event shoots and video for lawyers. With that background, I think the points made by Richard and Arnie are valid, but these do not much matter for my work. My perspective is that of a one-man band who has never needed to work collaboratively over a network with other editors (let alone Avid-based editors), who has no interest becoming someone's employee, and who has no plans for working on any feature films or in a broadcast environment. Third party plug-ins were mentioned. Edius works with "only" a comparatively limited number of third party plug-ins --- limited, that is, compared the range available to Adobe and Avid. I personally find little need for them. In my case, even though my Adobe software can work with a bazillion different plug-ins, I've only worked with three: Plural Eyes (for aiding in syncing up multi-cam edits, which also works with Edius); Cineform's Neo and First Light software; and Neat Video's "denoiser" (which I think comes with Edius 6). So, if you do not want or need a lot of plug-ins, the greater availability will not affect your choosing between Edius 6 and Avid. When I took Avid up on last year's inexpensive upgrade offer, I thought that Avid offered me three important things. Here is my current take on those thoughts. (a) Very robust color correction/grading/matching tools. These seemed useful for my multicam work. However, since I got Avid, I've mainly worked with very similar cameras and so found much less need for this capability. Also, I've found that Cineform's First Light pretty much takes care of my needs on the projects I do. Let me emphasize that this is a reflection of my limited needs and not a denigration of Avid's more capable tools. I have not done much work that has been projected onto large screens, but one of them was project that I did run through Avid for color matching and correction. In that case, I thought Avid's tools definitely gave me a better result than I was getting with the tools in PPro CS5 and First Light. That said, I probably could have done similar things in Adobe After Effects. I've never worked with the color tools in Edius and cannot say how they compare with Avid's. (b) the ability to work with my Matrox MXO-2 Mini. I prefer to work with a three screen editing set-up, especially with multi-cam projects. The Matrox's calibration of tv sets gives me color as accurate as I need for my work --- which obviously would not be sufficient for feature film work but is significantly better than the computer monitors I would otherwise use. It works with both Avid and Adobe. If you do not use a third screen in editing, or if you already have a Grass valley/Canopus card for this, or if you already have professional broadcast monitors, this will not matter to you. (c) the ability to handle and display more than Adobe's limit of four multi-cam streams at one time. Seems that this would be of no concern to you because Edius does not have the four-track limit that Adobe does.