Guys, I have been a long-time FCP user and need to migrate to Media Composer at my new job.  While I'm trying to buy some training/tutorial books on amazon and barnes n noble sites, it surprises me that there's not that many recent publications on avid, especially so when you compare that with the abundance of books on FCP. Is it sort of an indicator of the popularity of the two systems? Can someone educate me on the top reasons for an FCP user to migrate to MC? Interestingly enough, I found a book dedicated to Avid users migrating to FCP.

I'll start - media management...and every place round here that acutally pays you to edit uses Avid.

Why do you need a reason beyond your new job requires it?

If you can use FCP then MC shouldn't be difficult. Read the manual,l use the help files as they are quite clearly written and you'll be fine.

Good luck in the new job

Remember, Avid came first and has been the standard until FCP arrived, so the older editors evolved with MC.  The biggest advantage FCP had over MC was $$$$ - a fully functional, professional level app at a fraction of the cost.  If your setting up a new business, or a film department at your school, it makes more sense and less cents to go FCP.  My guess is that the majority of editors coming out of the film schools will be FCP trained so over time the percentage of working editors will swing towards FCP.

As far as training material for AVID, each new system comes with HUGE manuals.  Or you can - if you have enough printing paper and ink - download the PDFs.

Alan Morris:

If your setting up a new business, or a film department at your school, it makes more sense and less cents to go FCP.

That, IMHO, is penny wise and pound foolish. The time you save using Avid over FCP pays for the price discrepancy many many times over. There's a site called FCP2Avid that's designed to help people make the switch. A couple of the moderators on these forums are very active on it, and I'm sure they'll be happy to help you out. I believe you can find a link to the site on any post by BLKDOG.

The battle over new and future editors is far from over.

Peace,

 Here's a link I think you'll find useful.

 Yeah I'd take MCA over FCP ANYDAY. FCP does some neat stuff, but slo-motion is a pain, rendering everything is a pain, it's a slower renderer than MCA - even on the new 8-core Mac, and when you deselect a video layer above another video layer, you have to rerender everything, other than it's dirt cheap I don't get the love for FCP, at all. I've been using MCA for 18 months coming from Discreet and it took me a while to get up to speed on MCA, but once you get your head around it, it's pretty cool and powerful.

Stephen Bays has a decent book, and there are a few others out there and this forum is awesome. If you're familiar with Boris, I highly recommend Red for a Titler and DVE, it's awesome. Good luck.