Poll: Avid or Final Cut

Poll: Avid or Final Cut

  • Avid

    Votes: 39 15.9%

  • Final Cut

    Votes: 173 70.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 43 17.5%
  • Total voters
    246
Chimpan-A said:
To me the question is a little odd. You ask what system will we finish on then go own to list FCP and Avid, which too me are offline options.

Now I know that the Avid DS Nitris can handle 4K, but it is by no means a big player in the 4K conforming and online world, nor even in the 2K world.

To me the question would be better split into two:

1. What system will you Offline in:
Avid Media Composer, Avid Xpress Pro, FCP or Other

2. What system will you do a 4K Online in:
Discreet Lustre, Discreet Fire, Baselight, Quantel IQ/Pablo, FCP (if it can handle it by then), Avid DS Nitris or Other

As a side note I feel a little bad refering to finishing as a 4K Online because 'online' is a video term, and when you get to 4K you are really in the world of Digital Cinema where they are refered to as D.I.s (Digital Intermediates). Obviously this is a very minor issue, but sometimes people from Feature Film backgrounds do get a little confused by the term 'Online'... maybe we should use the term 'Conform' as a way of refering to both video and film finishes...
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Right now, nobody is a "big player in the 4k world" because only a very very small handful of films have even been finished in 4k. So by that guage, no Nitris isn't a big player.

You aren't going to use Lustre to do an offline to online conform, it's just plain not good at it. If anything goes wrong in the EDL import you're screwed. Ditto on baselight and the rest of the grading applications on that list. I would also wager that there are far far more Nitris systems than Lustre suites.

And using the term "Digital Intermediate" to refer to something shot digitally, is equally confusing. Offline/Online is a well accepted term to apply to any project in which you want to differentiate between a proxy and full data set. If someone asked you if you were working in SD or 4k, and you replied "I'm working on the DI" the expression on their face wouldn't be favorable to their opinions of you.

You can have an offline and an online DI. In fact, almost all DIs follow an offline/online conform cycle. The terms are not interchangeable.

And finally "Avid" is a perfectly acceptable response to 'which system do you want to finish on.' You can take your OMFs straight from one of their products to another with hardly a hiccup... so go ahead and edit on one avid and render 4k on the other. Or you could use Premiere.

However since the moment I need a 4k master is the moment I can afford it, I don't see a problem with the poll.
 
VEGAS VEGAS VEGAS!!!

Once vegas is capable of working at higher color bit depths, it will be the ultimate editing machine. ;D
 
Premiere Pro 2, Cineform and After Effects with Synthetic Aperature Color Finesse at the moment..... would take something pretty big to change
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Right now, nobody is a "big player in the 4k world" because only a very very small handful of films have even been finished in 4k. So by that guage, no Nitris isn't a big player.

You aren't going to use Lustre to do an offline to online conform, it's just plain not good at it. If anything goes wrong in the EDL import you're screwed. Ditto on baselight and the rest of the grading applications on that list. I would also wager that there are far far more Nitris systems than Lustre suites.

And using the term "Digital Intermediate" to refer to something shot digitally, is equally confusing. Offline/Online is a well accepted term to apply to any project in which you want to differentiate between a proxy and full data set. If someone asked you if you were working in SD or 4k, and you replied "I'm working on the DI" the expression on their face wouldn't be favorable to their opinions of you.

You can have an offline and an online DI. In fact, almost all DIs follow an offline/online conform cycle. The terms are not interchangeable.

And finally "Avid" is a perfectly acceptable response to 'which system do you want to finish on.' You can take your OMFs straight from one of their products to another with hardly a hiccup... so go ahead and edit on one avid and render 4k on the other. Or you could use Premiere.

However since the moment I need a 4k master is the moment I can afford it, I don't see a problem with the poll.
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Well ok so nobody's a big player in the 4K world, since as you say only a few films have been finished in 4k, but lots have been finished in 2K and the DS Nitris is not a big player in 2K film finishing. In fact how many feature films have been finished on a Nitris? I would think very few. It gets used for a lot of video onlines, including HD, but for actual 2K finishes to be recorded back to film it is generally limited to shorter projects like film trailers.

So my point was just that currently most 4K or 2K finishing is done on neither FCP nor Avid. 'Avid' maybe a perfectly acceptable response to 'which system do you want to finish on' but when it comes to 2K or better finishing, its not a common response. In fact the advantages to finishing on an Avid only really exist for video onlines, because if you are doing a 2K DPX Data 'online' on a DS Nitris (when you have offlined on a Media Composer) you have to use EDLs to conform from. If you are doing an online from video tapes you can export your sequence from a Media Composer to a DS Nitris as an AFE (Avid File Eschange) file - but it doesn't work when 'onlining' from 2K data files, you have to use EDLs. The 'hardly a hiccup' onlining you speak of only works up to 1080p. Sad but true.

There may be more Nitris's than Lustres, but I bet many more Lustres get used for 2K feature film finishing than Nitris's. And Lustre wasn't the only system on my list. I guarantee many, many more IQ's are used for 2K finsihes than Nitris's.

As for "You can have an offline and an online DI. In fact, almost all DIs follow an offline/online conform cycle". I'm not sure what you think I was saying, I was just trying to say that usually in the Feature Film world the term "DI" is used instead of "Online". "Online" is considered a video term. Sure you can have an offline "DI" just like you can have an offline "Online". But "DI" only refers to the Online finishing stage. Whilst doing the offline editing, the project is not a "DI".

If someone asked me if I was working in SD or 4k I might reply "we're doing the offline in SD and will be doing the DI at 4K"

anyway, I don't really care if we refer to finishing 2K or 4K data as 'onlining', I just know that some film people don't like to.

cheers

-Chimpan-A
 
In my mind, the Offline/On-line term is losing ground to Editing/Finishing.

Take today when you shoot in DVCPRO HD or IMX HD. When you edit you edit on the full res files. Then you finish in a program, maybe in an 1080p uncompressed format still based on the same files. No offline /offline involved.

So I'd say: I shoot in 4k Redcode, I edit in DVCPRO1080 in FCP, then I finish in 4k in ?

Even Lustre cannot grade realtime with >2k material.
You can grade in realtime in 2k but 4k is not.
So you need to make 2k proxies to see the grade in realtime, then replace those with the 4K's when done.

Smoke / Fire are Autodesks finishing plartforms, Lustre their dedicated grade tool. So Lustre is more like the high end FinalTouch, Smoke/Fire (the ultimate?) FCP
 
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WarrenS said:
How does the poll generate 104%? I'm confused. But I'm also a FCP user and I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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I think maybe some people voted for 2 things. Currently it says that 183 people voted, but there are 190 total votes.
 
ColinSmith said:
Premiere Pro 2, Cineform and After Effects with Synthetic Aperature Color Finesse at the moment..... would take something pretty big to change
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Brothers in 'post' arms in order to go to the 4K online editing as far as possible. My best bet is this one now.
 
Jarred Land said:
Avid's high end packages can support a 4k and beyond workflow.
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My thought is that Apple will release some f-off Quad Chip Core 2 Duo, 8 core beast of a Mac Pro combo with the chance to have 3 graphics cards or something.

The apple rumour mill has fanned ideas about a FCP extreme release too for parts of this year.

If they bring in the 'pixel-motion' stuff for slowing footage down then I would never have to use avid again.

Of course if I had a red camera shooting at 120 fps 2k, I prob wouldn't need to use a speed effect.

N
 
Sumfun said:
I think maybe some people voted for 2 things. Currently it says that 183 people voted, but there are 190 total votes.
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i voted for two, because I am an "agnostic" when it comes to the NLE vs NLE debate. i learned a long time ago, I could make more money by being a skilled editor on any platform. i know a lot of editors that have to turn down work because the project is exclusive to an NLE they aren't familiar with. And the fact that there really is only two you would need to know in this town (sorry vegas, sorry premiere), it didn't seem like much of a chore to learn how to translate my Avid experience to FCP.

and with regard to this poll, the truth is I will be using Red acquired media in both as my company owns both Avid and FCP bays.
 
Yes, freelance editors and probably editors in general should know both NLEs. And After Effects for that matter. Having those skill sets along with good storytelling can go a long way. And I think it will help quite a bit as we transition into these new workflows that are on the horizon. I think what is great about where we stand right now is that both FCP and Avid allow for keyboard customization which can be a great way to setup some of te common tasks with same keystrokes. Once you get by where things are and how effects are handled, media management, etc. you can get pretty comfortable with both.

And Vegas and Premiere users shouldn't feel left in the dark. Those programs do a great job as well. Perhaps not as common in post houses, but if they serve your purpose, then that's all that counts.

Steve
 
What I'd be interested in knowing is why people think one will be better then the other for 4K video. They're both capable NLEs I have to give Avid the edge in color grading, and the fact that I own PC's and no MAC's make it the more appealing for me. But I'm curious why other folks are leaning to one rather then the other. Especially since I have never edited 4k.

Gopher
 
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