Re: Avid and FCP

Mr. Stone,

I'm sorry to hear about your FCP problems. I've personally been editing on a Mac using FCP for five years, and I have recently started using Avid at my new place of employment. And I have to say that my experience with Final Cut Pro has been far more pleasurable then Avid. To me it seems that a majority of "seasoned" editors have grown up using Avid since its "hay-day" and are simply more accustomed to how it works. It's like that old dependable truck in the drive way the old man doesn't want to get rid of. Its out dated, running on old technology, and isn't a comfortable ride. I find Avid to be less flexible, less economical, and more of a "cutting" machine, then a creative tool. Especially if you run it on a PC. I read in an earlier thread that Avid on PC has been rock solid over the past few years. That is simply not true:

-- On a PC Avid has RAM limitations because it cannot run on Microsofts's 64 bit OS.

-- PC's have a well known problem with memory leakage, which can cause your machine to freeze, or starting having seizures if your run multiple programs at once, i.e. Avid, After Effects, or Photo Shop.

--PC's are more prone to virus's, files becoming corrupted at random, and hardware failure in general

I don't know what's going between you and FCP, whether you need to upgrade your Mac, put in more RAM, or do a complete wipe of your hard drive(S) and do a clean install of FCP Studio, but I've never heard of someone having as many frequent problems as you are. I feel for you, no editor likes to hear of one of his peers struggling, but switching to Avid will no solve your problems.

Here is what problems my shop has run into after switching to Avid Media Composer Adrenaline in January of 2008.

--Random media files in projects unlinking from their clips. Avid support was UNABLE to diagnose the problem. This is not a chronic problem, but this has happened on two different machines more then once.

--While working in projects Avid will loose connection with its Dongle and shut-down. Upon reopening the project everything is fine. But its still a time killer.

-- (on PC with 4gb of RAM)If you are rendering a project in AE, or have Photoshop open for an extended period of time, plan on Avid not being able to allocate enough memory to continue to buffer video for playback.

-- Avid MC does not allow you to change project formats, or inter-mix SD, HD, 16x9, or 4x4 video in a timeline. Why is this a problem? Try explaining to client why you have to charge them more money so you can have a FCP editor do something they thought you could do.

-- Shared media: Simply put unless you have enough money to buy Unity ($40,000+), good look being able to move projects around or allow them to be accessible to more then on editor at a time. Without Unity its a long time consuming process.

As my mentor use to tell me, "Sometimes Gabe its not the computer, its the editor." And to this day that's been the best advice I've ever been given. If I had a choice between using FCP and Avid in my shop, I would go with FCP Studio. Both systems have their problems, but when it comes down to what's causing them, its usually the editor who's making innocent mistake, after innocent mistake, that begin to pile up. To me your problems really sound like a maintenance problem with your Mac. If you go Avid, go Avid on a Mac, avoid PC's. But if you really want complete creative control of your projects stick with FCP.

Good Luck.
Gabe


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