It's not 1995, I do agree, totally: look back and think of what You were getting with Avid at the time and what You get today, and the price as well; back in '95 many features like uncompressed video, ultimatte, more than 2 audio channels, 24 fps, 3D effects were optional, and expensive, while advanced titles, RT effects, spectramatte, timewarp, scriptsync, Avid FX/Avid DVD/BCC/Squeeze were not even available, and this is just to mention a bunch of features that come to mind at first...

"find folder" as "find bin"

yes very useful

Why does everything stop when you touch the audiotool it´s still not 1995 how can you mix audio when it´s not playing?

I can't understand this, too.

 Why are audiosuite plug ins not in realtime?

"find folder... find bin"

Why not a "Find Clip" tool too.

This would stop me having to go into Media Tool every time I have to find a missing Clip or Effect from my project.

There must be a simple way to do all this.

conleec:

PS: Having recently used FCP for a film doctor job, I had exactly the opposite reaction. I felt I had to click three times to get anything done, because I'm so keyboard-centric with my Avid setup.

FCP has nearly every function mappable to the keyboard. It also lets you use every key combo (alt, cmd, ctl) to avid's "shift"

It even lets you map any command to the keypad.

conleec:

When you say you were 'forced back' to Avid it makes it hard to take your criticisms too seriously. Obviously you found FCP to be superior so stay with it. Otherwise, relearn Avid and you'll soon remember why you used it back in 1995.

In fact some of us freelancers cannot chose our platform and are forced to use avid. If Avid, like you,  doesn't take this seriously then it's shutting out many of its users. The only reason anyone used Avid in 1995 is because it was the best one at that time. Since then FC has improved its editing interface vastly and Avid has barely touched theirs.

That's true. Many Avid user are forced to use avid like me. Only for free projects I can choose the software. I know already 5 friends who changed to FCP.

Postmark,

I'm not taking the statements less than seriously when I say stick with the application you like best. I too am sometimes forced to use FCP, and I really don't like it, so I feel your pain. I do understand having to use an application that you don't like. But the point is, why do we want all applications to look and act exactly the same way? Especially since ovbiously there are editors who have different thoughts on what works for them?

While I agree 100% about some of the criticisms leveled against Avid's audio features, etc, I find their editing interface to be absolutely the most transparent, stable, and yes creative for my needs, ie. feature film editing.

Yes I know that FCP has a very mappable keyboard -- mine is quite customized. But that sort of suports my ascertion. I don't need the option and control keys to be mappable in Avid, because for me the features it does offer are much more efficient: in, out, trim to head and tail, and extend edit, do 90% of what I need.  I leave my left hand on the keyboard at all times for play and trim functions, and my right hand runs the mouse for everything else, primarily clip and track selection.

My advice is that when you are 'forced' to use Avid, you simply try to appreciate it's way of doing things, and throw out your prejudices. I attempt to do that when using FCP. Then be happy when your job is done and you get to use your prefered application again.

Improve the features, yes, but my vote is for leaving the interface alone. Basically the world is a better place for having multiple options, in my humble opinion.

Chris

postmark:

Since then FC has improved its editing interface vastly and Avid has barely touched theirs.

I'm always confused and intriqued by this penchant for having the Avid interface "improved/updated".  I'm constantly trying to discern what exactly that entails.  The interface functionality?  appearance?  icons? 

Kenton.VanNatten:

postmark:

Since then FC has improved its editing interface vastly and Avid has barely touched theirs.

I'm always confused and intriqued by this penchant for having the Avid interface "improved/updated".  I'm constantly trying to discern what exactly that entails.  The interface functionality?  appearance?  icons? 

No! The actual Editing (cut and paste) interface of Avid is something I really would not like to see change.

This is the main reason I prefer Avid over the all encompassing FCP.

I think we all agree there Jake. I really think that the two main interfaces to which we are referring are problably the Audio and Effects ones, as a start.

Kenton.VanNatten:

postmark:

Since then FC has improved its editing interface vastly and Avid has barely touched theirs.

I'm always confused and intriqued by this penchant for having the Avid interface "improved/updated".  I'm constantly trying to discern what exactly that entails.  The interface functionality?  appearance?  icons? 

conleec:

My advice is that when you are 'forced' to use Avid, you simply try to appreciate it's way of doing things, and throw out your prejudices. I attempt to do that when using FCP. Then be happy when your job is done and you get to use your prefered application again.

That's exactly what I did when I was "forced" to use Final Cut. And I did have a lot of gripes about how it seemed to handle things. But I gradually figured a way to make Final Cut mimic all the things I liked about Avid. I even changed my approach to Avid when I returned. But I got to a point going back and forth where Final Cut just kept giving me more options. And it crashed way less. And it kept playing while I adjusted the volume of a clip. And it knew that when I grabbed the fader for one channel of a stereo music clip that I would want to move the other channel as well. And when I selected 2 clips and tried to move them to another track, it let me do so without demanding that I also select and move the black space in between them. And when I wanted to copy and paste a few clips it gave me the choice to insert them or overwrite them. And it didn't make me enter a special mode to do so. I just I can't find any appreciation for how Avid works in this regard. But I'd be very open to anyone who has an idea to use these aspects of Avid to their advantage.

postmark:

it crashed way less

That's subjective to your hardware setup, FCP will run just fine on some configs that Avid will have trouble with.  Best approach is the spec the system for Avid and you can bet that FCP will be fine on it.

postmark:

it kept playing while I adjusted the volume of a clip

Many of us would like to see this added to Avid

postmark:

it knew that when I grabbed the fader for one channel of a stereo music clip that I would want to move the other channel as well

But what if you didn't?  What if you wanted the level on the right to be lower?  I like the fact that they are seperate, I would however like it if Avid would remember my ganging selections the next time I visit that clip in the Source or Timeline.  

postmark:

when I selected 2 clips and tried to move them to another track, it let me do so without demanding that I also select and move the black space in between them.

That's just an inherent difference in the way the two apps work.  Avid treats Filler as a clip and you can't move two non-adjacent clips.  

postmark:

when I wanted to copy and paste a few clips it gave me the choice to insert them or overwrite them

If you use ALT/Option+C, the clip/section you're wanting to copy gets loaded to the Source window and you can then Insert or Overwrite by hitting V or B.   

postmark:

And it didn't make me enter a special mode to do so

Kenton.VanNatten:

postmark:

it knew that when I grabbed the fader for one channel of a stereo music clip that I would want to move the other channel as well

But what if you didn't?  What if you wanted the level on the right to be lower?  I like the fact that they are seperate, I would however like it if Avid would remember my ganging selections the next time I visit that clip in the Source or Timeline.

In that case I would unlink the tracks of that clip and make my adjustments. But I almost always want to do the former, and think I should be able to set that as the default.

postmark:

when I selected 2 clips and tried to move them to another track, it let me do so without demanding that I also select and move the black space in between them.

That's just an inherent difference in the way the two apps work.  Avid treats Filler as a clip and you can't move two non-adjacent clips.  

Are you saying that's a good thing? Why not change this? How is this a useful difference?

Kenton.VanNatten:

If you use ALT/Option+C, the clip/section you're wanting to copy gets loaded to the Source window and you can then Insert or Overwrite by hitting V or B.   

postmark:

And it didn't make me enter a special mode to do so

No special modes needed.  In FCP, copy and paste would require CMD+C, CMD+V, in Avid:  ALT+C and V or B. 

I'm going to play around with this, thanks for the tip. But I would rather not have to copy into the source window first, it would be nice to paste directly into the timeline.

postmark:

Are you saying that's a good thing? Why not change this? How is this a useful difference?

I'm just saying that there will be differences like this between any two similarly functioned items.  The trick is for you to figure out and accept the way that each prefers to work.  Neither way is "wrong", just different.  Such as the differences between an iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm or differences between Mac and Windows, or apples and oranges.  

postmark:

I would rather not have to copy into the source window first, it would be nice to paste directly into the timeline.

When you copy something (even in Word) it goes to the "clipboard" (a virtual place that keeps track of your copied item).  When you paste it, it moves from the clipboard to the targeted destination.  That is no different than how Avid or FCP handles it.

But, by hitting ALT+C, you can pretty much ignore the fact that it's actually moved into the Source window as that's just a visual representation of the contents of what you've selected for copy.  The advantage here is you can then choose to patch the tracks from the Source side to the Timeline if you wanted to, rearranging the original composition as it's pasted to the new location.  Also, hitting "C" will just copy the selection to the Clipboard.  You can then choose "Show Clipboard Contents" and edit the same way as if it were a Source.  Or you can do the good old fashioned CMD+C to copy, CMD+V to paste, but that will not allow you to re-map the track selections.  So, if you wanted to move something on V1 4 mins downstream to V2, you'd have an extra click or two using CMD+C.  Using ALT+C would get you exactly where you wanted.  

postmark:

I would rather not have to copy into the source window first, it would be nice to paste directly into the timeline.

You can paste directly from your bin actually.  You don't have to load it into your source monitor at all.