FCP vs. Avid vs. Vegas - Anyone????

In the late-lamented "Corrado" thread here, Adam C was kicking himself around the block nine ways to Tuesday for using Vegas (which he had previously defended quite staunchly) when he found out (way too late) that the audio couldn't be exported in any convenient way to Pro Tools for a professional sound guy to do the post mix. It was eventually resolved, but at great cost of time and suffering. Buyer beware...
 
Exactly Ted, I spoke with Adam all through his process. It was hell for him and his sound mixer. That's why I say only "Islands" should use editing programs other than AVID and FCS. You have to use industry standard tools if you are in the industry. If you are an event or wedding person and shoot, edit and output everything, do all of your audio and graphics yourself, go for whatever you want to use. But how many pros are true islands and never will interact with other content creators? Some but not many these days.

I should know, when I owned an audio post facility, we decided to be iconoclasts and bought a PC-based DAW called Soundscape. Excellent product, engineered in Belgium of all places. Really great features and we were located about 15 minutes from the U.S. distributor so we had good support. Problem was, everyone is the audio post market would always ask us "why don't you have ProTools?" After several years of trying to champion Soundscape, we gave up and went with ProTools. You can stand against the tide in the pro world but it gets really tiring and it will eventually wash over you.

Up until a few years ago, it was the same with FCS and AVID. It used to be that you weren't a pro unless you edited with AVID. Now, FCS is almost as accepted but it depends on which market you are working in.

Fighting the tide using a "non-standard" application sucks, I will never do it again. Big life lesson that it took me years to learn.

Best,

Dan
 
airforceguy said:
What is the diffence between the standard version and the student version of AVID? What is left out?
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Nothing. Just priced to get students hooked on the application. Hee...to give students the ability to buy the application. Wish that was an option when I was in college. But avid was just coming out then...very new.
 
airforceguy said:
What is the diffence between the standard version and the student version of AVID? What is left out?
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I don't know for sure but usually student versions are the same as the pro versions. The major difference is usually student versions are not eligible for upgrades and updates.

Perhaps an AVID owner will chime in? I used to have one but sold it off a long time ago so I am out of the AVID loop.

Dan
 
Shane Ross said:
Nothing. Just priced to get students hooked on the application. Hee...to give students the ability to buy the application. Wish that was an option when I was in college. But avid was just coming out then...very new.
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The educational version now includes Sorenson Squeeze and the other support programs that come with the full blown version for $300?

Wow!

SeaMonkey, just an FYI if you are a student FCP also has the same offering for students.
 
No...the support applications aren't there. AHhh...that is the difference. The actual MEDIA COMPOSER application is the same in every way...but you don't get the supplimental disks...no.
 
Ted Spencer said:
In the late-lamented "Corrado" thread here, Adam C was kicking himself around the block nine ways to Tuesday for using Vegas (which he had previously defended quite staunchly) when he found out (way too late) that the audio couldn't be exported in any convenient way to Pro Tools for a professional sound guy to do the post mix. It was eventually resolved, but at great cost of time and suffering. Buyer beware...
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Ted, I missed quite a bit of that thread, though I did follow the story in HD Magazine. What did ProTools need that Vegas could not provide? I am assuming it was a 5.1 mix?

I guess I don't understand the audio workflow well enough since I've just always done everything inside the application, and I don't work with outside tools (especially on a Mac) for audio.

If someone could give me the quick Cliff-notes version it would be appreciate.

Thanks.
 
Hey Perrone,

The format Vegas exported the audio tracks in wasn't compatible with the industry standard audio programs that all the movie, tv, post production houses use.

If I remember it was a pretty big problem for Adam, I don't know much about vegas except not to use it if you want to conform to 98% of the movie / tv production post houses.
 
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ChipG said:
Hey Perrone,

The format Vegas exported the audio tracks in wasn't compatible with the industry standard audio programs that all the movie, tv, post production houses use.

If I remember it was a pretty big problem for Adam, I don't know much about vegas except not to use it if you want to conform to 98% of the movie / tv production post houses.
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Well, I tend not to take blanket statements like this well, no offense. So I went to try to track down the issue. And I see what the issue was and how that could be quite frustrating to someone working on a movie.

Here's the thing, and I've read this since I first migrated to Vegas. It is intended as an end-to-end tool. Or alternately as a finishing tool. It is NOT designed as a part of a collaborative whole. The workflow is completely different.

The industry standard is to cut in an NLE like FCP or Premiere, then jump out to colorista or whatever to grade, then jump out to protools to sweeten, then jump out to compressor to render, etc. Rather than try to do everything in one app, you use a bunch of different apps and share a common file structure between them. It's a different way of working. And based on Hollywood, or the film industry in general, it works well. Because the editor is not the person timing the film. And that person is different than the person mixing the film. And then there is a whole other house to telecine. And a different house to compress for distribution.

On set, the camera guys don't touch the lights, and the grips don't touch the mics, and the sound guys don't bring the food. This segmented and disjoint method of working is unionized and protected. And the posting tools follow much the same mantra.

However calling this a problem with Vegas is something of a misnomer. It was never intended to work this way, and it doesn't. Hard to fault it for that. Or maybe it's not.
 
He he he, nle's are like our kids because we have so much time invested in them. No disrespect was ment, heck I use Edius mainly for the speed with P2 but have to fire up my avid almost every day to get the high quality effects, titles and other features that it has (which are the best in the world).

It is kind of a fixed standard that forces people to use it if they do stuff on a large scale and deal with the movie, tv industry.

I'm sure by now SeaMonkey is more confused than ever :) Sorry about that SeaMonkey.
 
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In the case of Corrado, I edited using Sony Vegas. It outputs video ten thousand different ways. Audio...not so good.

We needed to try and export an audio timeline with handles, a compilation of all the cuts I made. An .OMF file would've been perfect!!!!! In that case, Sony Vegas was unable to:

1) export the timecode embedded in the clip; it reassigned it's own
2) export a .aaf file that could actually be opened by another app besides sony Vegas (!!!)
3) export an .edl file through scripting that could actually be opened by another app and supply useful info to that app.
4) export an .omf (obviously)

In the end many hours were required for a guy to manually input audio into a program called EDL convert which took a .txt file (generated by Vegas) and spat out a pro tool session and an .omf with 120 frame handles.

The audio job took a little over a month of timee and cost probably ten grand. Never use Vegas for audio that does not intend to stay in Vegas!!!
 
Be wary of Avid.. it's cripple-ware ... meaning that the top end has all the goodies and things get disabled as you go down the chain...

I have both FCP and Avid and have not fired up the Avid for 2 years... admittedly I was only on Xpro which has been taken over by their media composer software...

I had no end of issues with Avid and all their updates... I'm still not sure you can output with effects and titles etc without the dreaded 1 pixel green line at the top....

I do miss the Colour Correcting in Avid and the slow motion VTR was nice... but the package for FCP is just amazing... Colour/Soundtrack Pro/ Compressor/DVD Studio pro etc etc...

Just my 2 cents...

Cheers

www.les.herstik.com
 
I'm pretty sure everyone here has been referring to Avid Media Composer and not Avid Xpress.

Xpress sucks, Avid sh*t canned it.
 
Lez said:
Be wary of Avid.. it's cripple-ware ... meaning that the top end has all the goodies and things get disabled as you go down the chain...

I have both FCP and Avid and have not fired up the Avid for 2 years... admittedly I was only on Xpro which has been taken over by their media composer software...

I had no end of issues with Avid and all their updates... I'm still not sure you can output with effects and titles etc without the dreaded 1 pixel green line at the top....

I do miss the Colour Correcting in Avid and the slow motion VTR was nice... but the package for FCP is just amazing... Colour/Soundtrack Pro/ Compressor/DVD Studio pro etc etc...

Just my 2 cents...

Cheers

www.les.herstik.com
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Hi Lez:

All of my Avid friends are thrilled with the new MC software. Many of them had Express DV and now with a Media Composer, they are happy campers.

I am with you, I am much happier on FCS, but AVID still retains a hold with a lot of the best editors. Our on-line editor has a Nitris Symphony and when I bring him FCP projects, he begrudgingly turns on the Kona on the Mac Pro and on-lines the project but he bitches all of the way, he HATES FCP. Based upon the FCP issues that I have seen him have, he needs to do a re-install, he does have some weird issues with renders, like his old renders "stick" even after he re-renders them with changes or corrections. I showed him some tricks with taking clips off-line, then re-linking to force a new render and it does clear the old renders.

I have been on FCP since 1.0 so I know a lot of it's quirks and tricks. It's so funny though, all of the off-line in-house editors and the on-line guy all HATE FCP, but the freelancers who have been cutting some of my shows at home on their FCP systems LOVE it.

Different strokes!

Dan
 
I agree Dan.. Avid has a very strong user base and it's hard for them to move to something different...

I can't stand linking and un-linking of Audio tracks on Avid... just a whole bunch of extra steps that are mostly not necessary... and although the Media Management Tool is probably the best in the business.. I hate having all my media in OMF Folders... if I've got 15 projects going I find it hard to manage them all... FCP allows me to keep all my media in folders specific to the project...

I think for projects where you have different departments contributing to the project on a large scale like a Blockbuster the Symphony would rock...

For me the package from FCP is a better deal... but I've always got a copy of Avid just in case the client requests it.... I'm just not sure it's worth me to up-grade to Composer... probably would prefer to buy some plugins instead...

Just my 2 cents...

PS.. have they fixed the export bugs???
 
Lez said:
I agree Dan.. Avid has a very strong user base and it's hard for them to move to something different...

I can't stand linking and un-linking of Audio tracks on Avid... just a whole bunch of extra steps that are mostly not necessary... and although the Media Management Tool is probably the best in the business.. I hate having all my media in OMF Folders... if I've got 15 projects going I find it hard to manage them all... FCP allows me to keep all my media in folders specific to the project...

I think for projects where you have different departments contributing to the project on a large scale like a Blockbuster the Symphony would rock...

For me the package from FCP is a better deal... but I've always got a copy of Avid just in case the client requests it.... I'm just not sure it's worth me to up-grade to Composer... probably would prefer to buy some plugins instead...

Just my 2 cents...

PS.. have they fixed the export bugs???
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Lez,

If you do ever have the need to upgrade to Composer Avid has an upgrade deal for $500 for Xpress users.
 
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