Re: Avid and FCP

I'd say yes, definitely Avid is a lot better at just working.

However, for someone with an FCP background that's probably going to be a false economy at first, as while you might be able to spend more time just editing, there is going to be a fair bit of adjusting to do, which will slow you down (although once you get used to it, I'm certainly you'd be faster).

It will also depend on what you're doing. FCP is probably better suited to some types of work. Personally I feel confident that I can do just about anything I want in Avid, but I've been using it for years and learned a huge amount, and a lot of things may be more intuitive in FCP.

For my money, FCP doesn't come close to Avid in terms of pure efficiency for cutting footage. Just editing. It is also much better tuned for offline/online workflow, with really powerful media management and good batch capture tools. But outside this paradigm things can sometime be a little tricky. While Avid is getting better, FCP still has some advantages in some file-based workflows.

What Avid lacks that FCP offers is format flexibility. With a Decklink HD Extreme card we are able to capture uncompressed HD into our FCP suite, something we can't do in any of our Avid suites (and won't be able to do until we get a Mojo DX at a significantly higher price than the BM card).