Thinking about going AVID

[chulo]

IN RESPONSE TO CHULO:

Wow, that's the most uninformed and biased opinion I've read in a while. So what you're saying is, because you're struggling to learn Avid, it's crap software and will disappear from the face of the earth?

Have you had an Avid editor sit down to show you the ropes? Have you bought any books that teach Avid? I suggest anything by Jamie Fowler, Steve Hullfish, or Steve Julin, for a start. Also, go to the Avid website and look for ALEX, their online tutorials and classes. They offer many for free now, and if you're serious about wanting to learn this "crap" software you can always buy the entire course.

Otherwise, have you asked for help? The Avid interface is not intuitive (a word I detest, by the way), but if you know the theory behind it you'll find it's hands down the fastest editor on the planet. You just have to learn to use it like it's meant to be used, and not try to use it like it's a FCP, Premiere, Media 100, Edius, Vegas, etc...NLE.

Furthermore, you suggest the poster take 2 months to learn After Effects, Photoshop, or Illustrator. Are you serious? 2 months to learn any one of those programs is hardly enough time to unlock their potential. Especially After Effects. You're looking at 1 year minimum and working with it daily in addition to watching/reading as many tutorials as you can to get close to understanding just how powerful that app is.

Before you give up on some software, find some resources to teach you the right way to use it. Avid is unbelievably powerful and more than competant for editing. You just have to know how to use it.

That said, is there something you're struggling with that you need to know how to do? Just ask. We'll help if possible.

Michael.

The honest truth is that I am having no problem's learning avid (lets not kid ourselves NLE's are not that complicate), and i work with professional editors every day (on Avid). The program is just outdated. Something that takes 2 or 3 key strokes in an other nle can take as much as 10 in avid. Sure maybe i am being a little harsh, and avid does have its benifits, but the software needs updated. Here are some of my major issues.

1. burried menu's.....its as if they tried to hide everything

2. Blank space on the timeline should be treated as nothing.....not black video

3. I dont need these modes....they are unneccesary

4. Compositing...very week, just use AE

5. copy a piece of a sequence to another... avid cant seem to figure out, AHHH i have extra tracks lets just go ahead and add those

6. Importing anything is a pain, After effect... PSD whatever

7. I like to have control of my media....I don't need Big brother (THE AVID) controlling every little element i bring in

8. Sure media management is good.....but what happens when the avid gets corrupted.....Big pain

I could go on.

From my experience most avid editors know little to nothing about After effect, almost nothing about photoshop. They stay locked in on avid for everything and get confused when you talk about things like deinterlaced versus progressive.

 

[SeanEmer]

I don't think you're talking to very compitent editors if they don't know the difference between interlaced and progressive.

It seems to me that you are labeling Avid as outdated garbage because it takes a couple extra seconds to do some things in the program than it does in other programs.

1. burried menu's.....its as if they tried to hide everything

Avid has a lot of features. If they put everything upfront you would be complaining about the confusing interface instead.

2. Blank space on the timeline should be treated as nothing.....not black video

I've always liked this feature. What do you find wrong with it? Would you rather Avid yell at you and refuse to show video in blank spaces until you edit in pre-recorded black?

3. I dont need these modes....they are unneccesary

You mean like, overwrite mode and trim mode, or the toolsets? I enjoy having overwrite and trim modes. It keeps me from accidentally making changes when I have no interest in using those tools. If you're talking about toolsets, then just open the tools you need and save that as your toolset... ?

4. Compositing...very week, just use AE

Since when was Avid a compositing program? It is a video editor, not an effects program. Should I get mad at AfterEffects when I can't play back in realtime?

5. copy a piece of a sequence to another... avid cant seem to figure out, AHHH i have extra tracks lets just go ahead and add those

If I read your sentence correctly you're complaining that Avid doesn't automatically create extra tracks when writing one sequence into another. How on earth does this mean that Avid is a bad program? Just add the tracks yourself. Yeah you lost a couple seconds in your life, but whos counting?

6. Importing anything is a pain, After effect... PSD whatever

It's not hard at all. Avid gives you options to better control how your import is meshed with your existing footage, which in my book is an advantage. Chances are if you can't import something its not Avid that is messing up.

7. I like to have control of my media....I don't need Big brother (THE AVID) controlling every little element i bring in

If I import a client's footage, photographs, music, etc. I can give them their harddrive or disc back without having to make another folder on my own drive and hope I won't forget where I store it. Avid takes care of it all, making it all a uniform filetype. I like that kind of organization, as it takes a lot of pressure off of me.

8. Sure media management is good.....but what happens when the avid gets corrupted.....Big pain

Thats when you bring in your redundant backup. Or, you just figure out what you did wrong and correct it. I've lost footage on Avid, deleted a database file, let Avid resort itself, and gotten back to editing in 5 minutes. The same thing could happen in another NLE. Avid isn't the only program that has glitches.


Forgive any typos, I need to get back to my college paper. Also, please don't take any of that as an offensive remark, I don't mean to insult anybody. I'm just defending the software I love.

 

[USLatin]

Yea, but it is FAAAAAST, and it never crashes.. it optimizes your hardware to the point to where 480 cuts on on my laptop when I use Vegas but AVID cuts 720 automatically and displays full screen...

Don't get me wrong I LOVE Vegas, but AVID is completely matured... AVID will work on getting the GUI tweaked and Vegas needs to get a bunch of other stuff.... I mean it is all different... they all work, just differently... I don't love that I have to learn how my media is being handled but it is a small price to pay, cause one thing you can't argue though is that AVID is established and that's still where the work is at. FCP may be gaining because they are better, but there is NO way that the giant AVID will let this just happen under it's nose...

I love Vegas... I want that to be my interface, with AVID's power, reliability and $$$ potential...

Hopefully AVID will make some radical changes with that extra cash?!?
:thumbsup:

oh oh! and I love the cutting shortcuts and stuff on AVID... it is hard to get used to them! but I can see how AVID cutters must FLY
well Vegas can do that too... only you don't get the thumbnail that turns into a preview in the explorer window like AVID does on the bins


CRAPO!!! I am doing it!!! I must shut up and walk away... I am getting all caught up on this... but with a positive attitude I swearz!

 

[chulo]

I dont have to change your mind on this...the industry will do that for us, and believe me AVID will not be around in 10 years if they dont get some shiot together.

Did how overpriced avid systems are.

 

[Butcher]

Chulo...

Chulo...

1. burried menu's.....its as if they tried to hide everything.

??? You're going to need to be a little more specific. Every editor has a bunch of menus--at least the good ones do, because there's so much they can do.

2. Blank space on the timeline should be treated as nothing.....not black video

You'll need to explain this one, too, because blank space is completely transparent but carries the general properties of a clip--you can add effects to filler and affect everything below them. You can't do that in other NLEs, and that means more button pushing.

3. I dont need these modes....they are unneccesary.

I've never used an NLE that didn't have modes. Some just hide it better than others. Me, I prefer the modes because it gives me more freedom to navigate the timeline without having to worry about moving clips, and it's easy to focus on just effects or trimming or color correction. Other people don't like having to hit one button on their keyboard to enter these "modes". Teach each his own.

4. Compositing...very week, just use AE.

You already said it. Use AE, or Shake, or another compositing app. Again, Avid is an editor, not compositor.

5. copy a piece of a sequence to another... avid cant seem to figure out, AHHH i have extra tracks lets just go ahead and add those

That's because it's up to the editor to decide what comes over and what doesn't. If you patch your tracks properly you'll take what you want and you'll leave what you want. With Avid I can copy an entire sequence and repatch it in a completely different order if necessary. That's power--sure it's a few more clicks sometimes, but the added power more than makes up for it. Sure better than copy, paste, grab clip, move up, grab clip and move it down, move that one out of the way to put this one there, put that one back, etc... Just patch, cut, move on.

6. Importing anything is a pain, After effect... PSD whatever.

What's a pain about it? PSDs take about a half a second to import, and then I can delete the original if I want. Or make a change to it and not worry about it reflecting everything in my timeline unless I want it to. I guess I just don't understand this one at all. At least Avid can import directly off of CD.

7. I like to have control of my media....I don't need Big brother (THE AVID) controlling every little element i bring in.

Then Avid obviously isn't for you. I prefer to spend my time cutting, not managing media. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

8. Sure media management is good.....but what happens when the avid gets corrupted.....Big pain.

When Avid gets corrupted you fix it, just like any other program. What happens when an NLE loses several hours of renders? You rerender. Big pain. I've had only a few instances of corrupt media in Avid and I just deleted the corrupt clip and either reimported it or recaptured it. Really wasn't an issue.

I could go on.

So could I, but what's the point? Avid is my editor of chocie because I'm fast on it and it doesn't get in my way. It works exactly the same very time and it has the tools I need. When it doesn't, I'll find another editing system that does. Until them, I'll cut on Avid. You should cut on whatever makes you the best editor you can. If that's Avid, great. If it's not, use another system.

From my experience most avid editors know little to nothing about After effect, almost nothing about photoshop. They stay locked in on avid for everything and get confused when you talk about things like deinterlaced versus progressive.

Technically, an editor shouldn't need to know other programs, but with the cost of software and hardware dropping every other day, people are expected to know more and more programs. Unfortunately, nobody wants to pay more for all that extra knowledge. The result is a lot of people knowing a little about a lot of programs without having a real specialty in any of them. That usually means the quality of work suffers because you don't have someone who's a dedicated "editor" or "compositor" or "colorist".

It's getting harder and harder to charge a fair rate because everyone and their brother can buy a Mac or PC and some software for a few thousand bucks and call themselves an editor or compositor or graphic artist or all of the above. I envy the guys/gals that are able to only edit--for the rest of us, it's learn everything you can until you get to that point.

Michael.

 

[SeanEmer]

I dont have to change your mind on this...the industry will do that for us, and believe me AVID will not be around in 10 years if they dont get some shiot together.

Did how overpriced avid systems are.

If anything is going to hold onto Avid it's going to be the *industry*, rather than the individual. And what does "Did how overpriced" mean? If you're saying that the high-end Avid systems are expensive, then you may have forgotten that the features and capabilities of those systems literally blow away the capabilities of prosumer level stuff like Final Cut Pro. This doesn't mean that using a full blown Avid will make your movie better; it only means that it was designed with the most features and functionality and has been trusted by the professional industry for a very long time, and will continue to be.

 

[USLatin]

He did say "if they don't get their stuffs together" and I am sure that if you asked he'd say they will.

I wanna dream about a Synphony/ProTools hybrid for $10,000... then even small established studios would buy in... the big studios have to have too much cash in it to justify a switch... plus the bigger you are the slower you can move... I sure would want it for mine

 

[adkimery]

If anything is going to hold onto Avid it's going to be the *industry*, rather than the individual. And what does "Did how overpriced" mean? If you're saying that the high-end Avid systems are expensive, then you may have forgotten that the features and capabilities of those systems literally blow away the capabilities of prosumer level stuff like Final Cut Pro.

If you think FCS 2 is "prosumer level" then yer as bad as chulo just on the other side of the fence.

...trusted by the professional industry for a very long time, and will continue to be.

I agree w/the first part of the statement, but not necessarily w/the last. Avid needs to rethink how it does business otherwise it's going to go the way of the dodo. We've already seen Avid reacting to market changes the past few years w/the massive price drops, software only MC and most recently the announcement that they won't have a booth at NAB this year. Even though Avid isn't my preferred NLE typically, I hope they find their feet again because competition between companies ultimately benefits the consumer.


-A

 

[USLatin]

Yea! Competition! That's why I am glad about FCP...

Being completely new to the AVID world... how massive where the price drops? Is that something extremely likely? Would you guys say they might even get within decent range of FPC's price plus adding features and updating current ones?

Or is it more like they "might" drop prices a bit too but their main thing is likely to be a big face-lift-kidney-transplant?


I know you guys are sick of beating the dead horse of NLE comparisons and so on... but being so new to AVID it is great for me to get a bit of a feel about how things have developed in the past and how the editing community feels about the options out there... thanks for the posting... oh! and I hope we can get along :group hug: hehehe...

 

[adkimery]

Yea! Competition! That's why I am glad about FCP...

Being completely new to the AVID world... how massive where the price drops? Is that something extremely likely? Would you guys say they might even get within decent range of FPC's price plus adding features and updating current ones?

Or is it more like they "might" drop prices a bit too but their main thing is likely to be a big face-lift-kidney-transplant?

A couple of price drop examples off the top of my head are that the MC software (now $5k) used to only be available when you purchased a $25k Adrenaline and the Adrenaline, when it first came out, was around 3 times more expensive than it is now, IIRC.

I don't think we'll ever see Avid be able to go head-to-head w/Apple in terms of price/performance 'cause Avid's just not set up to do that. I mean, Final Touch HD (now Apple Color) used to be $25k and now you can get it w/Final Cut Studio 2 at no extra charge. How many companies can do that?


-A

 

[SeanEmer]

I consider Premiere, Vegas, Final Cut, and Avid Xpress Pro to be prosumer NLEs. They are programs used mainly by professionals at a lower budget level than the fancy Hollywood high budget productions. I'm not saying thats the strict rule; I'm just saying that most enty level prosumers will go for one of the programs. You don't see many high-budget productions using Final Cut. They are out there, but Avid still dominates that territory.

 

[adkimery]

I consider Premiere, Vegas, Final Cut, and Avid Xpress Pro to be prosumer NLEs. They are programs used mainly by professionals at a lower budget level than the fancy Hollywood high budget productions. I'm not saying thats the strict rule; I'm just saying that most enty level prosumers will go for one of the programs. You don't see many high-budget productions using Final Cut. They are out there, but Avid still dominates that territory.

And when people sell their "professional" quality Avids for the "prosumer" quality FCP what does that tell you about their thoughts on Avid right now? Just as a matter of perspective, back in the 90's I'm sure there were a lot of linear editors and moviola users who didn't give much thought to that prosumer Avid software that no one in Hollywood used.


-A

 

[SeanEmer]

Regardless of the people who trade in Avid for FCP (I don't see the reasoning behind that... at all), you can't deny that Avid has a tight hold on the industry, and FCP and the others are for the most part limited to the lower prosumer level of production. This is anything from corporate video to daytime TV... I guess we just have different definitions of prosumer, haha.

 

[adkimery]

Regardless of the people who trade in Avid for FCP (I don't see the reasoning behind that... at all), you can't deny that Avid has a tight hold on the industry, and FCP and the others are for the most part limited to the lower prosumer level of production. This is anything from corporate video to daytime TV... I guess we just have different definitions of prosumer, haha.

If you don't know why people would go for FCP in favor of Avid, well, like I said before, there were linear editors that couldn't see the benefits of NLEs. Horses for courses, as they say.

I agree that Avid is still the king of the hill on the high end, but they no longer have a tight hold on the industry and have been losing ground the past few years (and not just at the lower end of the market).


-A

 

[SeanEmer]

In the end I don't really think any of this matters. Editors will use what they feel enables them to get the job done. For me, Avid is the most efficient editing program on the planet, and I've never once felt that the software was slowing me down, so forgive me if I get skeptical when people complain about it.

Use whichever program allows your editing talents to shine the brightest. In the time we all spend squabbling over which program is better than the other we could have put some work into honing our skills.

 

[Take_1]

We have 2 Avid Adrenaline's (1 PC and 1 Mac) and one FCP suite. The Adrenalines on both platforms completely kick the living **** out of FCP. But what would we know, we only produce 40 - 50 television shows a year.

 

[adkimery]

In the end I don't really think any of this matters. Editors will use what they feel enables them to get the job done. For me, Avid is the most efficient editing program on the planet, and I've never once felt that the software was slowing me down, so forgive me if I get skeptical when people complain about it.

Use whichever program allows your editing talents to shine the brightest. In the time we all spend squabbling over which program is better than the other we could have put some work into honing our skills.

That's pretty much what I said back on page six. Use what suits you, and your workflow, best as both NLEs have their pro's and cons. I've used both extensively in the past 7 years or so and, in general, neither has impressed, or disappointed me significantly more than the other. Both have made me want to tear my hair out and both have features I love. So forgive me if I get skeptical when people take a hard stance that one system is better than the other.:beer:


-A

 

[milksac]

Don't bother the FCP editors, they're far too busy to have a discussion. They have a bunch of low/no/deffered pay jobs to work on. :-Laugh(DBG):

 

[adkimery]

Don't bother the FCP editors, they're far too busy to have a discussion. They have a bunch of low/no/deffered pay jobs to work on. :-Laugh(DBG):

Eh, we didn't mortgage all our worldly possessions to be able to afford our system so we can take on some avant-garde projects if we like.:-Laugh(DBG):


-A

 

[sean90291]

I'm continually amazed by the vast abilities and beautiful engineering behind Avid. This week I had to finish my first project destined for broadcast (rather than my usual web/DVD/fest output). And Avid just had everything I needed. Legalizing colors. Bars. Tones. HDV output was flawless. Capture was perfect. Color correction's really intuitive and real-time. A long list of real-time effects too. Yes, there are "political" issues that hamper software-only versions of Avid from giving us even more bells and whistles. But the features we do get are rock solid and precise (on a system with the right hardware). I'm just a fan of Avid. What can I say.