You're right that in the UK, at least, FCP is growing in the industry - though i'm sure the BBC's move to FCP early had more to do with native HDV ability at that time and £££ than anything else - BBC post seems to be a mess to me. And anyway, you don't know what will occur in the future once all those G5s start looking dated!! I'm pretty used to FCP and Premiere Pro but dont see either removing Avid. IMHO you should know Avid, and if you do you can adopt another NLE witout too much heartache - stepping the other way can be harder.
N.B Have a look for 'Total Training DVDs' for FCP - its not treachery, its survival!!
The world is just a cesspool...but all my skies are blue
HiThe pig of it is I'm on a PC so trial versions of FCP are a no go so I have to find someone kind enough to let me play with one if I want to get my head around it, feeling confident to try and get work with it is another matter.Found a good looking book though.... Final Cut Pro for Avid Editors: A Guide for Editors Making the Switch by Diana Weynand ....will probably give it a try and then look for some where to try the program out.Technology eh!CheersIan
Hi,
I don't think you can judge the number of Avid jobs vs. FCP jobs based on online job postings, because in my experience, the vast majority of jobs - good, high-paying broadcast and corporate jobs - aren't posted on websites to begin with.
Just taking a quick look on www.mandy.com and craigslist's film/tv/radio and crew jobs listed in New York City, there seem to be a lot more FCP jobs than Avid jobs, but if you look at the posts, there are a lot of FCP jobs that say something like "pay will be a percentage of the profit" or "no pay for this job, but could lead to paying jobs in the future" and that kind of crap.
In my experience, high end broadcast and corporate shops use Avid because 1) they know it works, and 2) the pool of experienced, talented freelance and staff people is larger with Avid than with FCP.
good luck,Carl
There is no such thing as a video emergency.
Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK
Nomad Media Solutions - Post | Production | Training - London, UK
I've been discussing the same issue with a freelance editor and animator. He has exclusively used Avid and Maya in high end environments, but recently was told by "The Weather Channel" that they are only considering FCP editors (in spite of the fact that he has extensive experience at Crawford Post, CNN and other top end facilities). He is convinced that the job market has changed and the FCP editors are in the greatest demand. Personally, I think that there are a lot of ill-informed people out there who, unfortunately, buy into all the Mac Myth Hype and are making decisions to switch major media operations from Avid's to FCP's. I can only hope and pray that Avid Marketing is acutely aware of this trend and will not make the mistakes of other big company's who have failed to adapt to competition...and let go of their protectionism policy and hone in on competing directly against FCP in the lower end price point....which is, of course, the future of editing.
Personally, based on my experience, I would consider an editor without Avid experience to be a "low end" editor...perception wise. If I were a freelance editor though, I would probably be learning both FCP and Avid. Marketing is largely about perceptions...and Apple has always been acutely aware of this in their advertising. They started out by convincing the entire creative community that you had to have a Mac to use a mouse....lol...and these perceptions (Mac myths) continue to this day.
[When my freelancer tells me that the Weather Channel has switched from Avid to FCP though, I can't help but think that the decisionmakers there are quite ill-informed...if not totally nuts. ]
Robert Davis President/Creative Director
Davis Advertising, Inc.
Visit my latest blog, "Concept to Creation" on the Avid Community site
So my new wife asks me about my "Avid Forever" tattoo... I told her she's an old girlfriend who was always coming up with new things for me to try...
Back in the early days...I was working at an advertising agency. Prior to that I have managed a large graphic department with a zillion dollar typesetting machine called a Compugraphic Advantage Page Makeup System. It had could have several Compugraphic typesetting terminals networked to it. You had to enter codes in the computers to specify typesetting features such as fonts, leading, kerning, point size, etc. Then the Advantage system (huge (and hugely expensive) computer with color coded keyboard and "graphics tablet like" drawing surface allowed the operator to outline artwork and position the type around it. You would then print type "galleys" on a phototypesetting processor, which had to be kept in an airconditioned room and the chemicals had to be changed each day, etc.
Back to the ad agency...I was studying marketing and computer science at GA State University, while employed there. I was also put in charge of purchasing a computer for media analysis for the agency. This system was an IBM PC with two floppy drives and a color monitor. It was around $30,000 including the software for analysis of Arbitron and Media ratings. So this was the agency's only computer and I was the only one who knew anything about how to use it. (everyone else was afraid of it lol). It also had Lotus 123, Dbase II and Multimate word processing.
During this time, I was on the lookout for a way to do typesetting on a PC. The first effort in this regard, to my knowledge, was a company in Alexandria, VA that would allow you to send, via modem, your word processing files containing codes for font, leading, kerning, etc., which was very similar to what I was accustomed to. They would send back phototype galleys...for pasteups. It was cheap and high quality and gave you more control than the current workflow of spec'ing type and sending out to the local type shop.
Then Pagemaker came out...and Ventura Publisher. Ventura on the PC and Pagemaker on the Mac (and then Windows version 1.) At the time, there were two GUI's competing for the PC market...Gem and Windows. Gem was faster but was monochrome. The colorful, but IMHO clumsy and archaic Windows won out. So I had both Windows and Gem on my computer...since Ventura Publisher would only run on Gem. As a professional typesetter and graphic artist, I much preferred Ventura Publisher as it had much better professional typesetting control (including tracking and kerning) than Pagemaker did.
At the time, the business market was saturated with PC's equipped with the big three programs of the day...Lotus 123, dBase III and Word Perfect. But the creative community was not really being served...it was sort of the "last frontier" so to speak. Enter Apple and the Mac. The Mac shipped with a mouse. PC's DOS environment had not needed a mouse. In short, Apple developed a marketing campaign to target the creative community (which was not being served at all basically) directly and precisely. [The PC side did not have a "single entity" to pool its resources to do target marketing in this fashion really as the open architecture created a market of dozens of suppliers of PC hardware and software.]
Apple exploited the creative community with the Mac and positioned it as the computer for the creatives...largely convincing the entire creative community that if you wanted to do "desktop publishing" (a term I have always hated) you had to have a Mac. Many people believed that Mac invented the mouse and of course, a mouse was required to use the Mac's new graphical interface. So, Apple's advertising targeted the creative community directly. Type houses went out of business and/or converted to "service bureaus" for printing out type on Linotronic phototype machines...from files submitted via Pagemaker or Ventura Publisher. The lion's share of these service bureau's were "Mac only." They were also courted by Apple and targed directly. Apple in short order, had exploited a previously untapped market and convinced the entire creative community (which typically knew nothing about computers in the first place) that the Mac was the only solution. This was hammered home and the brain washing was complete. Brilliant marketing. They also exploited a loophole in the architecture of the PC...the 256k internal memory limitation...later addressed by "extended memory." [the original PC developers didn't dream that there would be a need for more than 256k of memory in a personal computer.)
I personally stuck with the PC. I liked Ventura Publisher much better than Pagemaker...even though it was more difficult to find a service bureau that would accept PC files. Then CorelDRAW came out...it included a large collection of free fonts, which at the time had to be purchased individually. It also had very powerful controls in terms of typesetting.
Anyway...got to go to a meeting...in short...the Mac had brainwashed the creative community and this incredibly successful marketing campaign(s) (the computer for the rest of us) is still apparent in today's market...especially in the creative community.
...to be continued.
"We do not wash our pits in the sacred pool of tears..." - Master Shifu
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