Selecting an editing suite

ATL Media Group said:
Check out http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/ and click the see how it was made clip and select the one in the middle. Very very cool!

They didn't cut the entire film (Avatar) with Premiere but they do say that they used Premiere for some of it.
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I think this goes to my point. At least with current software. The producer notes that they used Premiere for the internal visual effects group. But even in what was to be an Adobe promo piece, they still had to say Avid in the middle of it. LOL!

Very cool little piece though. and you KNOW this is going to be the BluRay of the decade. Probably one of those 4-disc collectors items or steel books.

Anyway, let's see what Adobe comes up with in CS5.
 
mcgeedigital said:
You'll have to be a bit more specific.

FCPro on my Macbook Pro plays back P2 1080P files real time on the timeline no problem.
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Native P2 or ProRes?

And are you talking about 1 track or 2, or more? Any effects? Titles?

What I would like to see, on modern hardware, is the ability to scrub and play at least 3 tracks of full res HD in the native format, with color grading, titles, and sound. In real time.

I would also like to see it be able to take native AVCHD files in 2 tracks with no effects and scrub and playback in real time.

I don't know if there is anything out there that can do the second part of that. FCP wants everything in ProRes, Edius wants things in CanopusHQ, Avid wants things in DNxHD, and poor Vegas really needs Cineform, but doesn't bundle it any more.
 
PerroneFord said:
Native P2 or ProRes?


I would also like to see it be able to take native AVCHD files in 2 tracks with no effects and scrub and playback in real time.

I don't know if there is anything out there that can do the second part of that. FCP wants everything in ProRes, Edius wants things in CanopusHQ, Avid wants things in DNxHD, and poor Vegas really needs Cineform, but doesn't bundle it any more.
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Hmm.. Doesn't the new Edius Neo 2.5 (booster) do just that? Native AVCHD in 3 tracks scrub/playback in RT?

Also to say "wants" is one thing... "needs" should have been used in some cases. Example... Edius will edit natively just about anything you throw at it, while EVERYTHING needs to be transcoded to ProRes if you want to use FCP.
FCP = NEED
Edius = WANT because it does work better with Canopus HQ but doesn't "require" it.
 
ATL Media Group said:
Hmm.. Doesn't the new Edius Neo 2.5 (booster) do just that? Native AVCHD in 3 tracks scrub/playback in RT?

Also to say "wants" is one thing... "needs" should have been used in some cases. Example... Edius will edit natively just about anything you throw at it, while EVERYTHING needs to be transcoded to ProRes if you want to use FCP.
FCP = NEED
Edius = WANT because it does work better with Canopus HQ but doesn't "require" it.
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Well ya know... now that you mention it..

I spent half an hour on the Edius site. I went to the Edius page, and they had a video there on the Edius page. And the entire video talked about broadcast, news cameras, switchers, etc. They never even SHOWED the Edius suite.

Then I went to the Neoscene area, and that redirected me to a page with a bunch of PDFs and 2 videos. The Neoscene video is a promo piece that talks about the workflow. Never even showed the app. The other one talks about AVCCam workflow. This one showed 2 stills of the timeline in the middle of a animated demo.

How the heck does that help me make a decision? And in the animated demo, they put the AVCCam data into the editor by transcoding it first. And they pointed out that the Firecoder Blue or whatever could accellerate that transcode.

I have YET to see any video of 2-3 layers of AVCHD on an Edius timeline getting scrubbed or played back in real time.
 
PerroneFord said:
Well ya know... now that you mention it..

I spent half an hour on the Edius site. I went to the Edius page, and they had a video there on the Edius page. And the entire video talked about broadcast, news cameras, switchers, etc. They never even SHOWED the Edius suite.

Then I went to the Neoscene area, and that redirected me to a page with a bunch of PDFs and 2 videos. The Neoscene video is a promo piece that talks about the workflow. Never even showed the app. The other one talks about AVCCam workflow. This one showed 2 stills of the timeline in the middle of a animated demo.

How the heck does that help me make a decision? And in the animated demo, they put the AVCCam data into the editor by transcoding it first. And they pointed out that the Firecoder Blue or whatever could accellerate that transcode.

I have YET to see any video of 2-3 layers of AVCHD on an Edius timeline getting scrubbed or played back in real time.
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They (GV) need better advertising apparently. I go to the forums to find out how it's working:
Form posts below:

"This is a low end system with an i5 750 CPU at 2.67Ghz with 8GB DDR3 dual channel 1333MHz memory and an Nvidia GT-220 PCIe graphics card w/1GB, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. The media drive is a single external 1.5TB eSATA-300 drive. System has HD Spark and FireCoder Blu w/Neo 2.5.

It will play two 1440x1080 AVC/H.264 files that I created with FCB from a native HDV timeline. The buffer will stay at 164 all day long. As soon as I add a third layer of the same spec video it will empty the buffer in about 30 seconds.

So I am giving you the low end results and Mark gave us those great high end results. This is great news for all those AVCHD users that want to have an affordable and efficient workflow. Canopus does it again! O-o-ps..I mean GV! "

And:
"Without Booster AVCHD files - Buffered realtime last only 15 seconds on one track (no filters)

WITH BOOSTER and AVCHD files - All day - Three tracks, 2 with PIP, Background track with Monotone filter, One other track with old movie filter + 3D transitions on two layers simultaneously + 3 title tracks.

BLOODY AMAZING especially when you consider I ran this test with the video on my C drive... and only set to 32 frame buffer!!!!

Configuration. Core i7 2,67 overclocked at 3.33 GHZ, 6GB 1600Mhz Corsair Dominator GT, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. "
 
That is pretty good. If their official pages SHOWED anything like that, maybe someone might pay attention.

How does it hand .R3D files?
 
PerroneFord said:
That is pretty good. If their official pages SHOWED anything like that, maybe someone might pay attention.

How does it hand .R3D files?
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I hear that it's in the works. Right now it's not possible as it's 8bit. Word is they are working on 10bit and .r3d support for the next release (which will probably have AVCHD booster built in as well).
 
What I would like to see, on modern hardware, is the ability to scrub and play at least 3 tracks of full res HD in the native format, with color grading, titles, and sound. In real time.
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That's been possible for at least 5 years, at least for 2 streams in uncompressed HD, color corrected, titles, and sound. VelocityHD.

But you paid for it back in the day.
 
Good point, though one didn't have to worry about different codecs back then because everything was tape, so it simply converted to it's format during the capture process.

If all the camera designers would stop using shi*ty codecs for their cameras, edit suites wouldn't have to cater to so many different codecs. Using a codec that can't play back in real time in 95% of todays modern computers is completely unacceptable in my book to design a camera around.
 
Maybe so... but I remember buying hardware assist for DV (Canopus) and REALLY being thankful for it's speedup to Mpeg2. And then HDV slaughtered machines much like AVCHD is doing now... It'll get there. It's just slow.
 
A lot of it will have to do with the work you do and your style. I've used FCP and FCE and didnt' find them as friendly as an editing solution. Avid is hands down the best editor I've used because I think the way it operates. It just made the most sense to me.

Premiere - I like it, but I've not used it extensively. I prefer rock solid media management and require it for my workflow. The integration with After Effects and Photoshop and the rest of the suite it great, but not enough to make me want to use it for my primary editor.

Edius - I used it before I left news. The realtime performance was awesome and it was a capable editor, but when you got into really heavy editing and needed fine control I found it lacking. But that was a few version ago, so I don't know how well it's improved.

FCP - awesome value for the money, but again the media management isn't there. I don't want to think about my media - I should be thinking about my story, not where I'm storing my media.

Avid - best trim tools I've ever used, solid media management. Very, very easy to archive projects and bring them back to life. I work on commercials and corporate video and often need to bring back projects that are several years old. In Avid I can typically have the project live within a matter of minutes with all audio, video, and render files in place. The realtime performance is incredible. The drawback is that you will take a hit up front if you're importing a lot of graphics (they all have to be converted to Avid media). The benefit is that you can playback at full broadcast quality when you're done without having to render your entire timeline (usually - depends on the effects you use).

Do you do a lot of short pieces that require very fast turnaround? If so, you may like FCP and it's more open timeline better. Do you do scripted work? Then Avid's ScriptSync will change your life, and MC4.0's ability to mix frame rates properly and in realtime is great. Do you share projects with editors? What system are they on? If it's FCP, look more into that. If it's Avid or Edius or Premiere, add a point to those columns. Do you need to output to tape? Avid's hardware is grossly overpriced, but hopefully they'll fix that. Otherwise, the other NLEs offer much more affordable solutions if you're on a budget.

Download the trial of Premiere CS4 and try it. Find someone with FCP and try it. Download the 30 day trial of Media Composer 4.x and try it. Let us know your thoughts as you try each one and give us some more detail about your workflow. They are all tools, but some are better suited for specific workflows than others.

Michael
 
It's interesting to me that one of the biggest pluses for Avid users is the "media management".
I believe its been mentioned at least a few times on this thread, as well as others.

Avid's media management is what I liked least about it. And one of the main reason I stuck with
Premiere. I just couldn't wrap my head around all media going to one bin and having an
incomprehensible file name. I like to separate my raw video into bins depending on the project
as well as label them something I can recognize - like christmas_tree_wide.

Now, this was a few years ago, and things may have changed. If not, perhaps someone could
explain why this system is better? I just can't figure it out.

Peter
Avid Premiere Pro user
 
Not sure how long ago you used the product, but in going through the newest version (and using a tutorial that is a couple years old) I can name the bins anything I want, and I can have numerous bins open at the same time. So I have one for graphics, one for Video, one for audio, one for foley sound, etc.

I really like that. Vegas just dumps all your project media into one place.



Me Myself & I said:
Avid's media management is what I liked least about it. And one of the main reason I stuck with
Premiere. I just couldn't wrap my head around all media going to one bin and having an
incomprehensible file name. I like to separate my raw video into bins depending on the project
as well as label them something I can recognize - like christmas_tree_wide.

Now, this was a few years ago, and things may have changed. If not, perhaps someone could
explain why this system is better? I just can't figure it out.

Peter
Avid Premiere Pro user
Click to expand...
 
For me the big thing was everything needed to be transcoded. This was coming from an Edius user who could put anything on the timeline and Edius would play it in RT.

I do miss the wonderful search function in Edius since switching to Premiere CS4. In Edius you could search for files of type, and it would make a sub folder, then search that folder for used/unused clips and it would make another folder that dynamically updated based on use. Very slick.

Avid was anything but "easy to grasp" for me.
 
PerroneFord said:
Not sure how long ago you used the product, but in going through the newest version (and using a tutorial that is a couple years old) I can name the bins anything I want, and I can have numerous bins open at the same time. So I have one for graphics, one for Video, one for audio, one for foley sound, etc.

I really like that. Vegas just dumps all your project media into one place.
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Good to know about naming the bins. At least I can separate the raw video from different
projects into different bins. But can I name the individual files?

Peter
 
Me Myself & I said:
Good to know about naming the bins. At least I can separate the raw video from different
projects into different bins. But can I name the individual files?

Peter
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Like I said, I am in day 1 of the free trial. I haven't gotten that far yet! ;)

[edit]

I am watching the files it's creating, and it's taking the actual name of the source file as the prefix. So while not perfect, it's at least using my names as a reference for the import. So if your personal media management is good, this should be fine. I'll try some XDCamEX stuff later today or tomorrow.
 
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ATL Media Group said:
For me the big thing was everything needed to be transcoded. This was coming from an Edius user who could put anything on the timeline and Edius would play it in RT.
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Well, I don't know that that is true any more in MC4. However, I don't mind the transcode too much. I'll GLADLY pay that price to have multi-layer, real time performance with all the other things Avid brings to the table. What stunned me was watching people transcode in FCP, and then STILL having to render to see effects and stuff. That would just piss me off.

At least with Vegas, you can see the effects once you have applied them. Most run in real time or near real time except for the Magic Bullet stuff.
 
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