Larry Rubin:

Avid reps need to meet one on one with educational administrators who approve and authorize funding levels

They had a guy out here for a few minutes several years back when Tim Wilson was still at Avid. He works for Apple now.

They may have someone still out here, but I haven't heard of him.

"... $249 is a pretty good price for MC for a student. FCP is $699 ..."

Agreed (if a student actually pays for their FCP).  Meanwhile, Avid has a lot of catching up to do.

Avid products have lost a tremendous amount of market share in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live and work, and I've thought long and hard about what it will take to restore some balance. I agree with other users that persuading young people to work with Avid is key, but I also think there are some important feature enhancements to the product line that could help.

An amazing number of FCP users are finishing small, independent projects out of their homes, in some cases using FCP's native color filters for their correction process, in others using Color, a separate and very sophisticated color application that comes bundled with Final Cut Studio. Both of these scenarios leave a lot to be desired; FCPs integrated color filters are pretty limited, and Color mandates an impractical workflow outside of the editing environment. Avid could start competing directly in both these areas by porting Symphony's color tools to the entire product line, allowing users to work with a pretty strong set of tools without leaving the environment of the NLE. Many users have said the Symphony's color set is old and in real need of some feature innovations, and I think this is true, but it's still remarkably effective in a market focused on documentary and independent feature, and democratizing access to it would make Media Composer products much more attractive in this region.

I would also add that one of FCP's key advantage is its ability to work directly with third party graphics in their original file form. I don't care to contemplate how much of my life I've spent waiting for graphics to import into whatever Avid system I was working on, often discovering that something about the import options was set incorrectly and that it would all have to be done again. The FCP model represents a huge time advantage in this area, and it's hard to persuade FCP users that MC would be a good choice for them when you have to apologize for the hours of importing time that will necessarily result if they choose Avid. The time for Avid to respond to this important FCP advantage is now.

Lastly, I agree that the cost of the software only license must fall in order for Avid to be competitive. The longer Avid takes to do this, the more new users they lose.

Shirley Gutierrez:

I would also add that one of FCP's key advantage is its ability to work directly with third party graphics in their original file form. I don't care to contemplate how much of my life I've spent waiting for graphics to import into whatever Avid system I was working on

I've just been on an animation project on FCP.  This ease of import was the primary reason advanced for buying FCP.  What it bought in its train was the need to continually render whenever we made changes.  We could often live with realtime effects at the animatic stage, but we definitiely couldn't at the finish.  I would assess that we lost nearly a working day out of every working week to renders.

We also farmed out some work to an external contractor.  She had an earlier version of FCP, and couldn't import our projects.  We paid for an upgrade to her system, and then found that the upgrade was one point release higher than ours, so next we upgraded our system so that we could load her projects.

Whenever projects came back to us using Apple's "media management" - really nothing of the sort - there was invariably media missing.  Usually half a day was lost each time resolving this issue.

So on the above issues alone we lost roughly a day and a half out of each working week.  Despite all of that the ease of import was still advanced as the major superiority that FCP had over Avid.

As it develops AMA will probably mean that this issue can be worked around, but trust me: ease of import isn't the whole issue.

Not to jump on this bandwagon but it was one of my biggest pet peeves when I ran both FCP and Avid in the same facility. I often quote here just how much higher my non-billable time was with FCP and jwrl gives some perfect examples of what caused the discrepancies. Yes the FCP suites were a low cost buy-in but they cost me much more than Avid ever did in the long run.

"... the FCP suites were a low cost buy-in ..."

Unfortunately, in some facilities, the Bean-Counters have too much say in the purchasing decision.

BTW .... what happened to Text in Color?  Lately my "blue" highlighted text is only showing up as black.

I couldn't agree more that the FCP choice often comes with hidden costs; exactly how deep those costs are is going to vary from project to project, and they would depend on many factors including the power of the platform, the resolutions and types of the files, etc. I don't know the specifics of your situation, nor do I know what your workflow would have been in an Avid environment, so it's hard for me to know what caused you to have such a tough time with these files.

I just tested this on a my own system, a 3.0 Ghz.iMac running FCP 6.0.5, and I was able to rapidly import an approximately 6000 x 3000 pixel photo tiff and construct a basic real time zoom on it in moments. Bearing in mind that this is a very simple task, I know what I would have had to do on MC. First there would have been the actual import time (negligible in this case), then the application of the pan and zoom effect, and assuming MC didn't barf on file this size (which happens often), then the attempt to preview it using Avid's real time filter, which looks like total hell. After crossing my fingers that I wouldn't ultimately dislike some aspect of the move, I would then initiate a pretty time consuming render. Do I like FCP's motion capabilities? Hell no! But I don't like Avid's either. They're both appallingly crude, but for fast and dirty offline style preview of basic moves on photos, FCP is currently winning. It sounds to me like your job was an entirely different sort of task, so in the end we're not really comparing apples to apples here. It's probably true that both products suck as far as delivering ultimate animation quality, and that's why most of my clients prefer to animate in real animation software.

For the record, I far prefer Avid's basic editorial model, and of course, its media management. And I think it's true that the decision to chose FCP often isn't based on the big picture of what sorts of problems a project is likely to encounter. I'm sorry you had to go through this!

Shirley Gutierrez:

First there would have been the actual import time (negligible in this case), then the application of the pan and zoom effect, and assuming MC didn't barf on file this size (which happens often), then the attempt to preview it using Avid's real time filter

There is a good tutorial on basic usage in the forums here  http://community.avid.com/forums/p/68766/384566.aspx#384566

AndrewAction:

Shirley Gutierrez:

First there would have been the actual import time (negligible in this case), then the application of the pan and zoom effect, and assuming MC didn't barf on file this size (which happens often), then the attempt to preview it using Avid's real time filter

Try BCC's P&Z  No need to import still first. Save a template of your most common initial plugin setups.  It is then very quick to setup and use for basic moves and much faster for renders than Avids P & Z (High Quality mode)

There is a good tutorial on basic usage in the forums here  http://community.avid.com/forums/p/68766/384566.aspx#384566

Thanks so much! Improved render times would be a big plus.

Shirley, we weren't animating in FCP.  We were doing a basic dialog cut, editing animatics, and later onlining the finished animation from rendered QT files from Toon Boom.  We also produced various preview copies and the leicas from that system as well.  And we did lose around a day and a half rendering and tracking media each week.

My preferred approach would have been to have two systems running.  We wouldn't have needed to farm work out then, which was inconvenient.  At any one time we had at least one freelancer working on animatics, and often two.  Nor would we have project incompatibilities to deal with.

I would have been quite comfortable with FCP for the animatic phase, since you don't really need the frame accuracy that rendering gives at that stage.  The leica exports, which took on average a day to do, would still have been frame accurate.

Subsequent work would have been more efficiently carried out on MC or better.  The only thing that we would have needed to change would have been the codec used to render the animation from Toon Boom.

Shirley Gutierrez:

I just tested this on a my own system, a 3.0 Ghz.iMac running FCP 6.0.5, and I was able to rapidly import an approximately 6000 x 3000 pixel photo tiff and construct a basic real time zoom on it in moments

Yes, but check out the quality.. it sucks. Even the most ardent FCP fans will use another program for resizing. Jump to Motion or use After Effects, etc.

Also, talking of ease of import. I challenge you to use a long TGA or TIFF sequence in FCP with a simple import. Yes it comes in fast. But every time you move around in the timeline it is slow and when you reopen the project you will sit around for many minutes. The ten minute wait times on some sequences we were handling drove us nuts.

(The solution is to convert to QT movies in QT Pro)

BenQ:

well, to be honest, me and a lot of my friends are wondering about avids european pricing policy. i dont mean that 300-euro-is-not-300-dollar-thing concerning upgrades. but i would have bought a mojo dx for 4500 bucks last year if it would've been possible. i will not buy it for 6500 euros. what can we do? is there something coming up like a simple hd-monitoring-solution? that's what independent filmmakers need. or a fair deal for a mojo dx... :)

I can't agree more than what BenQ says

Shirley Gutierrez:

... I also think there are some important feature enhancements to the product line that could help.

An amazing number of FCP users are finishing small, independent projects out of their homes, in some cases using FCP's native color filters for their correction process, in others using Color, a separate and very sophisticated color application that comes bundled with Final Cut Studio. Both of these scenarios leave a lot to be desired; FCPs integrated color filters are pretty limited, and Color mandates an impractical workflow outside of the editing environment. Avid could start competing directly in both these areas by porting Symphony's color tools to the entire product line, allowing users to work with a pretty strong set of tools without leaving the environment of the NLE. Many users have said the Symphony's color set is old and in real need of some feature innovations, and I think this is true, but it's still remarkably effective in a market focused on documentary and independent feature, and democratizing access to it would make Media Composer products much more attractive in this region.

...

TCurren:

Yes, but check out the quality.. it sucks. Even the most ardent FCP fans will use another program for resizing. Jump to Motion or use After Effects, etc.

 

Also, talking of ease of import. I challenge you to use a long TGA or TIFF sequence in FCP with a simple import. Yes it comes in fast. But every time you move around in the timeline it is slow and when you reopen the project you will sit around for many minutes. The ten minute wait times on some sequences we were handling drove us nuts.

 

(The solution is to convert to QT movies in QT Pro)

To be clear, I'm really talking offline here. I just spent a number of weeks editing a show that used lots of photos, and even getting a rudimentary idea of how groups of animated photos would work together was pretty painful in MC. As far as I'm concerned, neither MC nor FCP provides even the basic movement parameters necessary for really sophisticated motion keyframing, much less the visual quality. There's nothing to disagree with in the idea that you would need to use Motion or After Effects to really get it done. I have no experience with the TIFF sequences in FCP, and obviously no reason to doubt what you're saying, but I have to ask: once you convert those sequences to QT movies, how long does it take you to bring them in? Another big hunk of time on that weeks long MC job was devoted to waiting for animations in QT form to import, a truly painful process. It was so time consuming to get these HD movies into Adrenaline that I had to plan around doing it at night, and pray that there was no need to import a revision during the day.

The only point I'm really trying to make here is that it's time for Avid to really compete. I think it should be clear by now that MC is my first choice in NLEs, but Avid needs to look at what advantages FCP offers and learn how to incorporate those and provide even more value when they do it. If in fact now FCP spares you time on the import side but makes you pay in other ways, then Avid should see that bet and raise it. Yes, spare me the import time, AND keep giving me a more streamlined edit model, better media management, and more real time performance, not to mention the ability to solo a track (!), a sync lock I can opt to turn off, and better desktop project management to name a few key advantages. I don't think it's enough anymore to say "But this other thing about FCP really sucks!" That's not going to cut it anymore. FCP users will just turn the argument around: "Yes, MC gives you more real time performance, etc,. but man, you really pay on the import side!" Avid has to become the clear winner.

Shirley Gutierrez:

but I have to ask: once you convert those sequences to QT movies, how long does it take you to bring them in?

Nothing flash in this example.

A 180 graphic timeline, 20 minutes long (all graphics the same duration) all with BCC P&Z resize or move on them took 3 hours to make and 15 minutes to render a mixdown ready for DVD output.