What Now?

askclifford

askclifford

Member
Hi, I couldn't find the appropriate non-bias thread to post this in, so I thought I'd post it here. I am 14 years old, and want to edit film when I get older. I worked with FCP5 for three years, and then FCPX came out rendering previous liked versions obsolete. I want to edit on the same platform they will teach me in college and use in the workforce, and have been in the market to upgrade for a little while.

I own a Canon EOS 550d DSLR and a 2008 Imac with a 3.06ghz Core 2 Duo and a Macbook Graphics Card (9400m) with 4gigs ram. It worked fine with Final Cut Pro 5 and render speeds were great.

I will be buying student editions, all competitively priced. I need to buy soon. Here are my options...

-Final Cut Pro X
Highly Criticized, looks cool, but lots of people feel ripped off. I can't wait for a Apple Update.

-Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium CS5.5
Excellent Suite of Products, Highly used...but the physical editor. Although I've never actually edited anything in it, I downloaded the previous CS5 trial and just looking at it I don't know how I could express myself creatively in that interface. It also isn't widely used, and I'm afraid my knowledge will go nowhere four years from now.

-Avid Media Composer
Well, it looks intimidating, and for the same price as the others I'd feel like I'm being ripped off. No suite of programs, or cool effect features. You have to use After Effects for that. ): And I'm not sure if it will be the "Industry Standard" in a few years. I wish you could mix and match your own suites!

What should I do?
 
You really need to learn all of them. I would suggest Avid because it has the biggest learning curve and in learning the program it forces you to pick up some good editing habits such as organizing clean bins and really thinking about each edit. Avid will still be a standard in a few years, it is that embedded in the industry.

FCP and Premiere are pretty similar (at least FCP7 was) and you could pick both of them up in a few days just with a few video tutorials. Adobe isn't going anywhere, and hopefully FCPX will mature in the next few years to make up for what was removed. If you can pickup a copy of FCP 7 or at least checkout training like Lynda for it. I have a feeling people won't be dropping it that soon and jobs will still be cut on it for another few years.

Overall video training these days is so cheap to find that it will take very little time to get comfortable and pushing buttons. Also, with academic discounts you can pickup versions of all three for cheap.
 
I second issacs statement. Learn avid. Its the industry standard for a reason. Eveyone respects avd.
 
The question I have to ask is do you have to upgrade right now? If what you currently have works for you, then you might just be able to hold off for awhile and see how FCPX develops. I am going to wait, because right now FCPX won't do everything I need, but I also don't feel like jumping back to Premiere or... "gasp"... a PC just yet. If FCPX improves and evolves over the next six months or so, then it will probably be the most cost effective solution.

That is unless you also need After Effects, Photoshop, etc... all those goodies that are bundled in Adobe's Creative Suite.

Another thing to think about is that if you can score a copy of FCP 7 for a decent price, then go for if you still think you will prefer editing with the pre-FCPX interface.

The new iMac models also have that Thunderbolt connection. I think that Thunderbolt equipped iMacs will probably figure into the future of FCPX in terms of robust ingesting and external monitoring options at a reasonable price. I suspect that over the next year or two, Apple is going to try to convince us not-super-loaded-with-cash film/video people that an iMac w/Thunderbolt + FCPX is the way to go versus building a high end PC for editing and post production.
 
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