Selecting an editing suite

I don't expect RED or AVC-I to be regular pieces of my workflow, but I don't want to back myself in a corner where I *CAN'T* work with them. I am thinking of joining a production in the spring that is shooting RED. I may do some post for them.

My most common formats are:

XDCamEX
The stuff that comes off the Nano as I hope to have one in June)
AVCHD off the 5D/7D (hope to have one this summer)
P2 from the local PBS station

Anything else will be file transfer stuff like RED, AVC-I, etc.

I didn't realize Edius was 8-bit only. That explains the speed to a some degree. That would never work for grading purposes. I haven't seen anyone talk about DPX around Edius either, and that is certainly a consideration. That is kind of my 'If you absolutely, positively, HAVE to be able to read it and grade it" fall back.
 
ATL Media Group said:
Oh man.. I remember those days with my DVStorm2! Remember that little extremely fast and stable editor included with the Storm? "StormEdit"? Well... that grew up and is now "Edius".
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Ah ok. I just used Premiere! I had forgotten about StormEdit. I still have the box and software. I thing the card is in there too, or still in my old computer. I had to install the software recently because I ran into an old canopus AVI file that was in my archives that I failed to convert years ago. I couldn't believe I still had one of those files all these years later.

That's why I archive to Jpeg2K now. No more proprietary formats for me.
 
EdcamEx, P2 and AVCHD work really well with Edius, throw anything at it in any frame rate and format, it's my editor of choice for fast simple mixed format 'cutting', I rarely use any of it's low quality effects or titles (they are ok but much better in avid) then I'll cc/finish/apply effects in Avid, send it to pro tools for the audio etc. Avid owns protools so it's integration will only get better (and it's good now).

If your boss' will pay for Avid I'd jump all over the opportunity to work with it, every now and then you'll see Avid Media Composer software for sale on eBay for about $1k from a guy who won it in a film fest (complete license unoppened box) make sure it's not the eduactional version that they sell for $249.
 
When I told my big boss today that I needed to move up to a pro grade editor because of our discontinued contract with the local TV station, he said how much. I said $2300. He said, "Oh ok, well if that's all, just put it on the list. How much is yearly maintenance, about $400?" I told him I'd find out.

Because we are Govt, I can't do the Ebay thing. And I have to buy from a State approved vendor. Usually we use B&H for most purchases. You should have seen 2008.. I had about a dozen B&H boxes coming in! Camera, C-Stands, lights, mics, you name it... We decided to go from SD to HD in one shot. This year was a new PC. Next year hopefully, an editor and the Nanoflash. And then I can relax for a while... :)
 
Yearly maintenance? You mean the 24/7 tech support? I think (not sure here) it's around $1200 a year, I have never needed or used it but if your an editor working on American Idol or major movies it's good insurance to have if something goes wrong at 3:00am.
 
Ohh, there is a guy who works for the governement pentagon channel on the avid forums, he has over 50 avid suites in his building.
 
We are an IT shop. We are used to yearly update costs! Like every new version of Vegas is $199 or whatever. I am sure I won't need that 24/7 support. I am not doing much that is time critical.

If Edius is 8-bit only that pulls it off the table for now. So it's just down to Avid and Premiere.
 
I think the avid upgrades have all been priced around $500. The minor ones are free, you only pay when the next big update comes out.

You'd be surprised how many editors I know that are on the old version 2.8 media composer software.
 
If you get the Avid support contract all upgrades (major or minor) are free while under the support contract. They way they've been releasing major updates, the cost of the contract is basically paying for all the upgrades in a year - the support, you could say, is thrown in for free.
 
I wouldn't be surprised at all. I had a good laugh reading about the folks on the Ellen show cutting on Meridians! AVID people seem to be the type to "leave well enough alone." I am totally on board with that. But MC4 is what's available now, and it supports the XDCamEX stuff that I have. So that's a no brainer for me.

I am somewhat curious now about what Premiere is going to be like.
 
Mike Harvey said:
And there's the rub. I've got a Q6600 Core 2. While not the latest and greatest, that's not exactly the slowest machine on earth. Not even close. And I would wager that the bulk of users are closer to my set up than yours.
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A Q6600 is quite fast and like you say, not the slowest machine on earth, heck, i was editing on a Pentium 4 prior to the upgrade 3 months ago when we go our new cameras.

The Intel i7 are AMAZING. You'd just think it was another quad core right? Well let me say, it is much more than that, the faster triple channel ram helps with rendering and so does the extra 4 threads. If you get a quadro card with cuda, i hear you get amazing speads but i can't afford any more upgrades yet.

A quick search on the internet will give you lots of comparisons. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-255349_10_0.html

And boy, arnt you lot busy XD
 
The i7 really is something new, from taking 2 hours to render a video in a quad core now takes (for the same video) half an hour.... When I saw that I couldn't believe it. What a good investment. (and I'm talking about the i7 920 without overclocking it)
 
Though it's clear I'm in the minority as a Premiere user/supporter I would agree that an Avid system
is the best choice for Mr. Ford. There are two reasons for this. Perhaps the only ones that matter.

#1 If budget is not a concern, why not go with the industry standard? There's no question Avid is
a very reliable, powerful piece of software, used by professionals around the world. And if you can
afford to also purchase products like After Effects, Photoshop, Sound Forge, etc - it's a no brainer.

#2 If, God forbid, you ever lose your job, you'll have very marketable skills that can be
immediately transferred to another company. This is not the case if you edit with Premiere.
Learning Avid future-proofs your skills and your employability.

For me, I may eventually have to switch to Avid (or FCP if my freelance students have their way)
but for now I'm very happy with Premiere for my business.

Keep up the posts. I'm learning a lot!

Peter
 
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