danny d
Carbonite Member
So just to let you know, I am no professional editor.
I first learnt to edit on an upright 16mm single head Moviola. I later upgraded to a Steenbeck dual head, dual monitor flatbed. this was around 1995. Everything was real time albeit offline since we worked with positive prints. Once all footage was organized/hung in bins an a shot list was hand written, an EDL of sorts was also written from the dailys which you could project real easily.
In 1996 I was introduced to D vision a non linear editor running on a PC. The learning curve to use the interface and understand what the computer was doing was way too overwhelming. There were Beta SP Decks, graphics cards, digitizing etc etc etc. I am from Africa, my familiarity with computers at the time was limited to word processing.
Despite the promise of automation and an easier workflow, editing that could be done in a week, was now taking two to three plus rendering time and an output of over processed footage.
Well that same year I was introduced to the Avid media composer. Though the interface and workflow was not as intuitive as the D vision system coupled with having to learn a whole new OS and hardware the MAC, this system rocked. I mean you could offline all your edits in faster than real time, create multiple edits and sequences, reconfigure to higher res online, press a button, walk away comeback in two days and voila the job is done. A few years later I took out a loan from the bank and bought a PC version. Well at that time everyone stayed as far away from Macs as possible. PC's have way better backwards OS support than Macs have ever had or will ever have.
For ten years since then I had heard of so many other NLE's but nothing ever swayed or enticed me to move from Avid except Smoke an NLE made by the makers of Dvision. Well in 2007 I bought a book "the DV Rebels Guide" written by some self confessed accidental motion picture special efx technocrat (no offence) named Stu Maschwitz on using Adobe products new dynamic link to offline online your work. Yep I recommend this book as a companion to all digital filmmakers. Well I downloaded trial versions of the apps like them and bought the production suite CS2. Well the workflow was great. I bought a windows XP Pro system running on an AMD 3500 with 4GB RAM. I have an HVX so proxy editing using Raylight and onlining with after effects was great. the premiere pro interface is so easy to use and has been pretty darn stable.
I never took the time to upgrade my intel Xeon based Avid and sold the system off to a very excited and happy customer. I know the new Avid MC works well with the HVX, but I am now sold to premiere pro. I have not shot anything on film for a while so I don't miss the Avid. I cannot delve deep into PPro because I have only used it for a year.
Well you may be wondering where all this is heading to considering the the topic heading.--------- Here goes
Adobe recently released PPro CS3.1 an update that works with mxf files directly without third party support. I tried using it but my system was too slow to run it.
I had grown to love using intels Xeon processors and thier ability to use advanced sse commands to speed up everything media based. They are not cheap. the cheapest configuration out the box is on the MAC Pros. I found a guy on craigslist selling his system complete with final cut studio and Adobe's master suite on the base model quad 2.66 ghz xeons. Two days after I bought the system Apple came out with the new Octo core Macs, for about the same price. I reformatted, resold and bought the new model 8 core but kept the software. Heres the fun part I installed final cut studio did all upgrades tried to import some p2 footage to try out, ugh ugh ugh ugh, what a dissapointment. I know a zillion people editing everyday on final cut pro, they do wonders with that thing. they even have user groups etc. My best friend has been editing on final cut for lord knows how long, the darn thing does not even use the multicores on the mac. Well maybe it was just me. So I booted up ppro 3.1 imported my p2 footage like you would import a text file into your word processor. I mean what is this Log and transfer deal in fcp, and how come it tries to render any and everything on the time line I thought it was real time. Well my best friend came over to configure Final cut pro for me, well really to prove that i was actually dumb. When he saw ppro actually recognize all the 8 cores he was stunned, then he saw the interface, the structural work flow, then i show him dynamic link to aftereffects, then photoshop and back all without a single render and each program allocating itself 2.8 gigs of my 16gbs of ram, he was amazed.
This is it for me from 12 years of editing this is the best its gotten for a home computer. now enough about PPro this and that. . To all final cut pro users, you have proven its the editor not the machine that does the work. in adobe ppro I finally have a machine that can do the work that I want to do. its easy to use fast, powerful and scaleable.
I first learnt to edit on an upright 16mm single head Moviola. I later upgraded to a Steenbeck dual head, dual monitor flatbed. this was around 1995. Everything was real time albeit offline since we worked with positive prints. Once all footage was organized/hung in bins an a shot list was hand written, an EDL of sorts was also written from the dailys which you could project real easily.
In 1996 I was introduced to D vision a non linear editor running on a PC. The learning curve to use the interface and understand what the computer was doing was way too overwhelming. There were Beta SP Decks, graphics cards, digitizing etc etc etc. I am from Africa, my familiarity with computers at the time was limited to word processing.
Despite the promise of automation and an easier workflow, editing that could be done in a week, was now taking two to three plus rendering time and an output of over processed footage.
Well that same year I was introduced to the Avid media composer. Though the interface and workflow was not as intuitive as the D vision system coupled with having to learn a whole new OS and hardware the MAC, this system rocked. I mean you could offline all your edits in faster than real time, create multiple edits and sequences, reconfigure to higher res online, press a button, walk away comeback in two days and voila the job is done. A few years later I took out a loan from the bank and bought a PC version. Well at that time everyone stayed as far away from Macs as possible. PC's have way better backwards OS support than Macs have ever had or will ever have.
For ten years since then I had heard of so many other NLE's but nothing ever swayed or enticed me to move from Avid except Smoke an NLE made by the makers of Dvision. Well in 2007 I bought a book "the DV Rebels Guide" written by some self confessed accidental motion picture special efx technocrat (no offence) named Stu Maschwitz on using Adobe products new dynamic link to offline online your work. Yep I recommend this book as a companion to all digital filmmakers. Well I downloaded trial versions of the apps like them and bought the production suite CS2. Well the workflow was great. I bought a windows XP Pro system running on an AMD 3500 with 4GB RAM. I have an HVX so proxy editing using Raylight and onlining with after effects was great. the premiere pro interface is so easy to use and has been pretty darn stable.
I never took the time to upgrade my intel Xeon based Avid and sold the system off to a very excited and happy customer. I know the new Avid MC works well with the HVX, but I am now sold to premiere pro. I have not shot anything on film for a while so I don't miss the Avid. I cannot delve deep into PPro because I have only used it for a year.
Well you may be wondering where all this is heading to considering the the topic heading.--------- Here goes
Adobe recently released PPro CS3.1 an update that works with mxf files directly without third party support. I tried using it but my system was too slow to run it.
I had grown to love using intels Xeon processors and thier ability to use advanced sse commands to speed up everything media based. They are not cheap. the cheapest configuration out the box is on the MAC Pros. I found a guy on craigslist selling his system complete with final cut studio and Adobe's master suite on the base model quad 2.66 ghz xeons. Two days after I bought the system Apple came out with the new Octo core Macs, for about the same price. I reformatted, resold and bought the new model 8 core but kept the software. Heres the fun part I installed final cut studio did all upgrades tried to import some p2 footage to try out, ugh ugh ugh ugh, what a dissapointment. I know a zillion people editing everyday on final cut pro, they do wonders with that thing. they even have user groups etc. My best friend has been editing on final cut for lord knows how long, the darn thing does not even use the multicores on the mac. Well maybe it was just me. So I booted up ppro 3.1 imported my p2 footage like you would import a text file into your word processor. I mean what is this Log and transfer deal in fcp, and how come it tries to render any and everything on the time line I thought it was real time. Well my best friend came over to configure Final cut pro for me, well really to prove that i was actually dumb. When he saw ppro actually recognize all the 8 cores he was stunned, then he saw the interface, the structural work flow, then i show him dynamic link to aftereffects, then photoshop and back all without a single render and each program allocating itself 2.8 gigs of my 16gbs of ram, he was amazed.
This is it for me from 12 years of editing this is the best its gotten for a home computer. now enough about PPro this and that. . To all final cut pro users, you have proven its the editor not the machine that does the work. in adobe ppro I finally have a machine that can do the work that I want to do. its easy to use fast, powerful and scaleable.
