HD For Indies

Updated Thursday, July 1st 9:15am CST - see bottom of article for reader comments/feedback

I was cruising over in the 2-pop FCP HD forums and somebody presently in school is learning Avid XPress, but as a G5 DP 2.0 at home and wanted to know which was "better" - Avid or Final Cut Pro. Egads. A bit of a Ford vs. Chevy issue. Or more accurately, maybe Acura vs. Mercedes. Here's what I had to say:

---------------

I would say it depends on your goals and your market. If you want to be able to do your OWN projects, the scalability and DIY aspects of FCP HD are excellent. If you want to get work in the professional market...it depends. Smaller jobs are increasingly FCP jobs. Bigger more serious projects are often Avid jobs. If you're just starting out, are you going to have access to those projects? Probably not.

Learning both would be best, obviously. The beauty of the Avid lineup is that the tools are pretty much the same across the product line, except that the higher end setups have more of them. Some features aren't present on XPress, but many are. So learning Xpress lets you grow into the bigger stuff, or at least give you a path.

Some markets vary - Dallas apparently is a big Avid market, Austin is more of an FCP market.

True story: my editing buddy that used to own his own facility in the Bay Area ran into unfortunate timing when he tried to expand into Austin during the dotcom boom/bust cycle. So he had to sell his stake in the company and take a job as the inhouse Avid editor at an agency. All Avid gear, what he'd been working on for years, he totally knows his s**t, no problem.

But that agency folded earlier this year. Now, as an editor with 20 years experience but only knowing Avid, he's having problems finding freelance jobs (the kind of stuff you're likely to pick up as a starter) because everybody wants Final Cut Pro, and maybe even After Effects knowledge to go with it. So he missed out on a lot of projects and badly wants to learn FCP now.

My gut says that FCP is going to dominate the market for not-super-highend stuff. It's too good, too cheap, too scalable, too affordable and accessible. Avid makes some very, very good products. Side by side, the Avid does more. You can quibble about the UI of FCP is better and more fluid, and I'd agree with you. But in terms of power & features, Avid kicks ass.

The dilemna is that Avid costs a bazillion more dollars. For roughly comparable systems, you can get into an FCP rig for a fraction of the cost once you move into uncompressed SD and HD (compressed or not) systems.

Is Avid more powerful? Yes. Is it 3 to 5 times better, in line with the cost difference? I would argue no. If I can get into an FCP system with 80% of the features for 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 of the price, that just makes too much business sense.

The QUALITY is the same in the argument I'm making here - nobody's saying (that I've heard) that Avid 4:2:2 uncompressed looks better than FCP's. Or that the quality of the results of the color corrector looks better in Avid. I hear arguments that the tools are better, but not the results.

So from a straight business decision perspective, it's hard to cost justify Avid for the next few years.

Avid is getting much more aggressive about bringing their costs down, and the DNxHD stuff looks promising, both in terms of power, quality, and price.

And the better tools let you work faster, which saves money. The crucial question is this: does the increase in productivity offset the increased dollar outlay? It depends on the cost of your editor & facilities, and the amount of money the project brings in. In high end facilities doing top notch commercial work, where the speed of turning over a project is crucial in a multi-hundred dollar an hour billing situation, Avid can cost justify and be the smart choice handily. In smaller, less costly situations, especially for independent film editing, it has a harder time justifying it's costs.


But at the moment, I think the momentum is with FCP and will be in the future. Apple DOESN'T CARE about how much FCP costs, they just want to sell boxes. That's their market. Avid ONLY sells editing stuff, and depends on that for their future and profit. Apple has an edge there.

There are strong legacy arguments to be made that Avid is perceived as superior in the market, especially among established film & advertising clients; and that the best/established editors work on Avid. But for MOST of the jobs being done out there (corporate & commercial), FCP makes too much sense.

Ultimately, the market is a BUSINESS. If an Avid can't justify it's higher cost with it's superior features and ultimately faster workflow, it won't be selected. Final Cut Pro based solutions, with lower costs, greater scalability, arguably better user interface, and still arguably quite good and sufficiently competent feature set, has a lot going for it.

But I also endorse the other guys' argument. It's the cutter, not the scissors (shooter vs. arrows). Learn your tradecraft and it will be easily applicable to whatever valid tools are out there.

-mike

UPDATE THURSDAY JULY 1ST 9:15 AM CST

Reader Jason Rodriguez wrote in:

Hey Mike,

Just read your post on the AVID vs. FCP thing. Very good, but I
thought I might add something.

You mention that AVID is much more powerful. Having used everything
from Xpress to Symphony, and having an FCP rig, I must say that
ironically when it comes to image quality, FCP has AVID beat hands
down, unless you're talking about the DS/Nitris. AVID still can't
keep up with FCP when coupled with an uncompressed 10-bit card such as
Blackmagic, Cinewave, or AJA. In addition when it comes to HD, FCP
totally smothers AVID, unless you put on some of the VERY expensive
add-ons to the adrenaline to get you uncompressed HD. But now that
Blackmagic is supporting dual-link 12-bit RGB in FCP, again, FCP has
pulled ahead in it's capability for image quality. AVID has no
capability of 32-bit floating-point processing, it's DVE is absolute
junk (unless again you're using DS), frankly the only thing it's
really good at IMHO is group editing (via Unity), and media
management. Also AVID has a nice edge over FCP with Animatte and it's
color corrector, although the latter can be fixed with Color Finesse.
Another concession I'll make to AVID is that it can mix resolutions on
the timeline, something that you need a Cinewave card for in FCP.

But frankly FCP is much more flexible when it comes to codecs,
importing and exporting files (AVID's a painful import/conversion
process), rules when it comes to image quality with it's 10-bit 4:2:2
codecs (except of course the DS/Nitris again, but that's not even
original AVID code, that's Softimage), and is catching up in the media
management department.

I know it's easy to think that AVID's much more powerful compared to
FCP because of cost, but frankly the two are pretty evenly matched.
For instance how about real-time streams? You get eight uncompressed
streams in FCP, while the fastest AVID's are getting you six-seven,
and even then it's not the "highest quality" effects, to get those you
often must render. FCP's are true full resolution when playing off
the timeline when in 8 and 10-bit mode.

At NAB this past year I was traveling around with a group from work
that were trying to configure an edit system, either with FCP/Cinewave
or AJA I/O, and the AVID. Their big selling point wasn't the capabilities
of the system, it was Unity. They were pushing that hard. And I can
see why, because frankly that's the only thing that I really feel they
have left as and edge-group workflow/editing/media management.

These are just my opinions, and I do feel that you presented a
nice argument for both platforms on your website, and like you said,
it's good to know both and be familiar with both platforms if you want
to be a working editor-and I've been following that advice myself,
again I've used everything from Xpress to Symphony, and of course
FCP-they all have their strengths and weaknesses, and I think you
addressed the issue well.

Thanks again,

Jason Rodriguez
Virginia Beach, VA