@Real World Editing: From Avid to FCP and Back Again

I haven't tried FCP X yet, but that tekserve video did open my eyes to some of the potential benefits. Overall I feel like both the "Trust in the ghost of Steve Jobs" crowd and the "Apple has forsaken us crowd" are probably overstating their cases. I use both FCP 7 and Avid at work but on my personal projects where I am generally kind of a one man band I have started using more and more Premiere because of its easy integration with After Effects.

I think its important to keep in mind that whereas the head of a production company or a post house might have to decide to commit thousands in technology from one company or another. As individual artisans/artists it is probably wisest to be familiar with a variety of different tools and not rely too heavily on a single skill set that can suddenly be phased out as a matter of corporate strategy or the result of a bend in the path of technological progress. Most of us don't run 50 or 100 seat editing houses and in a world where the majority of us are independent freelance operators or short term contract employees with little job security, the ideal situation is one in which there are a plurality of platforms that all have incentive to be cross-compatible. All of the large software companies should have to compete for our business and none of them should have what amounts to intellectual property rights to our technical skills.

I think Adobe, out of necessity, has been a lot more flexible and egalitarian than either Apple or Avid. But it is silly to anthropomorphize a corporation and become emotional either pro or con a tool. Despite what the supreme court may rule, they are not people and words like 'betrayal' and 'loyalty' have little place in the conversation.

I thought this was a very interesting article but what works best for cutting "Keeping up with the Kardashians" May have little relevance to my workflow because I am not cutting "Keeping up with the Kardashians". One tool might be best for a factory and another for a workshop and another for a different workshop or a different job at the same shop.

My point is we have to make sure we can freely define our tool set and don't become defined by our tools.