Apple acquires Proximity Corp.

Oh God.. an Avid vs. FCP argument is about as useful as Mac. vs. PC. And it has been done to *death* on various other listservs.

What it really comes down to for most facilities is...

It's 9PM on Friday. Air date is Saturday afternoon. Clients are in the room. Tension is high, but manageable.

System dies. Just up and dies. Blue Screen of Death or Spinning Wheel of Confusion... take your pick.

Who do you call?

Avid - 800.800.AVID. Avid support has gone through its ups and downs, but they have an esablished and throughly vetted system of mission critical support 24x7x365.

Apple - uh...

For a lot of projects and people - this doesn't matter. But it is the single biggest reason that at most of the major facilities in LA that I deal with on an everyday basis - they know that both Avid and FCP can get the job done. But when a system goes down, they have trusted support paths for Avid. For FCP, they're on their own unless they have a fantastic reseller.

Lucas
 
Not smoking anything. In fact like I said, I'm an Apple fan, I WANT them to succeed in creating real competition for Avid. I just don't see it yet in terms of integration, stability, and support.
 
I have both FCP and Avid systems.

I am not hopeful that an Apple asset management system is not going to be a buggy mess. FCP has alot of issues that have clung on for years and Apple ignores fixing them. FCP has been successful at developing a cult following that defends any reasonable criticism with lots of knee-jerk name-calling. And that allows Apple to ignore long running issues like "real time" that sure takes alot of rendering. The FCP team works very hard on initial releases of shiny new features that will sell product, and then lets alot of the buggy or ill thought out aspects of the new features languish while the development team focuses it's attention on the next shiny new features to sell product. I have been to public presentations with FCP reps where audience questions about fixing the problems are rudely blown off.

The complex nature of a cross-app media management tool is usually something the Apple people don't have the level of commitment to really support.

Apple, prove me wrong. Please.
 
I have edited with Avid since 1993 and through its many incarnations and am intimately familiar with its benefits and problems. On the FCP side, I purchased a Version 1.0 FCP and have paid for every upgrade since. I sold the two avid 9000s that made up a large part of my post business 3 years ago and have fully relied on FCP since then. Since I am a long time Apple user I have been able to have a fairly reliable system and my tech guy (full time) is a Mac Geek. Right now we have 4 FCP offline systems and two online systems running Decklink Multibridge extremes with the new MacPros. These systems are realtime HD and screamingly fast with any rendering when necessary. With over 10 terrabytes of fibre channel HD capable space we have made a significant investment in this setup and our clients (National Ad Agencies, record labels and several feature film production companies) have not had a problem - even at midnight friday night. I do owe a fair amount of our capabilities to good editors and a support team, but the hardware works well in a high end environment.

www.thecompany.tv
 
Oh boy, hadn't followed this thread in a while and it got rolling pretty good. I have found that both Avid and FCP rely heavily on an optimized system. When I hear from people running FCP that they have had their systems for years and have never done routine maintanance like repair permissions, or run some of the very helpful utilities out there, it often raises a flag to me that they are not running optiized systems. Same goes for Avid. You need to set these machines up with optimized settings, maintain them, keep them uncluttered, etc.

But aside from that, FCP has had its share of bugs. But calling it unprofessional is a stretch because as we all know for a fact, professionals use it everyday. And consider what you get with the $1200 bundle, really several "professional" apps.

Avid has some very mature features. The Adrenaline systems are very good. They still have their own quirks, but for the most part you do get what you pay for. Their full line of products are strong.

No need really for an Avid vs FCP battle because most informed buyers have done the research, have tried each system out and found out what works best for them, especially when you plan on dropping several thousand dollars in investment. I'm just fortunate that I get to work with them both everyday and keep up with their evolution.

Steve
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top