Re: [FCP-L] Murch "back on Avid" for at least one film...

I won't be there, but...

The first nonlinear edit system I learned was the Avid Media Composer. I
paid big bucks and took classes at Future Media Concepts in NYC. When
Apple released Final Cut Pro (on System 8, I believe), I started
noodling around with that system and learned Final Cut.

I then took a job with a Nameless Broadcasting Company as a
"Perma-Temp." I transitioned to a Grass Valley linear editor and cut
news, which usually means no fancy effects. But, as I had come out of a
post-production environment and had effects skills, I was placed in a
"graphics production area," where we used some pretty antequated
equipment to work miracles.

Then that company decided to go digital. They bought a whole bunch of
Grass Valley's Vibrint editors
<http://www.digitalproducer.com/aHTM/Articles/03_27_00/grass_valley_to_a\
cquire_vibrint.htm> , which I told one manager was an "M-II decision."
The Vibrint (now called "NewsEdit") is certainly capable of editing news
quickly in a fast-paced environment but the version I used could not
take a hicon and make a key with it and had a really limited software
DVE. Additionally, this company would have to train each and every one
of their new hires to edit with the device, as it was not a standard
editor and the two standards at the time were made by Avid and Apple.

I notice that the Thompson-Grass Valley website
<http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/> does not list the NewsEdit in any
of their offerings today. Last article I found seemed to indicate that
the company dumped the NewsEdit system on South American broadcasters
and left them holding the bag (this happens lots to South Americans).

Apple's Final Cut Pro was a standard by virtue of their commitment to
education. College graduates have had considerable time on Final Cut
because the hardware and software are sold to educational institutions
at a heavy discount and a complete setup is much cheaper than Avid's
solution.

The Nameless Broadcasting Company let go a number of their managers who
"owned" the decision to buy the Vibrint and decided to standardize on
Avid solutions. I re-learned the Media Composer (actually the
Newscutter, which is an MC with a certain amount of goodies disabled)
and then was told, since I did News Graphics, that I would have to learn
the Avid DS in order to stay employed by the company (life as a
"Perma-Temp").

The company brought trainers in and trained everyone up on the Avid DS
<http://www.avid.com/products/DS/> , which is about as different from
the Media Composer (and Symphony) as you can get (it cannot even share
media natively with the other Avid tools). The DS is an editor that can
do compositing -- or it is a compositing application that can edit. It
works as if you had Motion and Final Cut completely merged, with no need
to export any material one to the other -- no "round trop" necessary --
all the tools for both compositing and editing are built in.

We got training and then we were given a little time to get up and
running on the Avid DS. The learning curve is a little like climbing
Mount Everest but if you understand digital compositing and you're a
very good creative editor, you can get really fast on the Avid DS in
about six months. I had about three and was a little slow off the mark
but I had some really good assistance from an outside freelance editor
the company brought in.

I am presently editing on (gasp!) Adobe's Premiere Pro, but not for the
aforementioned Nameless Broadcasting Company, which laid me off three
years ago because they wanted to bring in a team from elsewhere and
consolidate their staff. The company I am with will transition to Final
Cut Studio in January or February. I'm buisily learning Motion and
re-familiarizing myself with Final Cut Pro, which is a lot better
application under OS X and runs with considerably more stability on a
dual-quad core Mac Pro with plenty of system RAM. The biggest struggle I
had with Final Cut before is that every time Apple upgraded Quicktime,
upgraded the operating system or upgraded Final Cut, something broke.
Apple's integrated releases seem to be either better timed or more
considerate of the needs of people who use Final Cut Studio, though
there is still no 64-bit Quicktime Pro in Snow Leopard (64-bit Quicktime
is a player only).

For compositing, I'm using Adobe's After Effects, which does a pretty
good job, but cannot do some of the things I was doing with the Avid DS.
But, to be fair, I'm using some pretty old software that is working on
old hardware. I use a Dell XPS 600 with Premiere Pro 1.5 and After
Effects 6.5. These applications are really not integrated, so a "round
trip" with these applications is nowhere near as smooth as it is
presently with Final Cut Studio (and probably is with the CS4 versions
of Adobe's software).

I am definitely looking forward to getting a Mac Pro in the office.

So, as you can see, I've been editing professionally on a number of
applications. And if it edits, I can confidently say I can use it.
Transitioning from one to the other necessitates re-familiarization, but
that takes about a day or so. But since lots of Final Cut editors don't
know the Avid, it's probably a lot more scary to them.

--- In FinalCutPro-L@yahoogroups.com, Shane Ross <comeback@...> wrote:
>
> I will too! But I'm more of am opening act.
>
> Shane
>
> Scent frum my iFone.
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2009, at 6:58 PM, Jim Feeley jfeeley@... wrote:
>
> > If you care, he'll be talking about that next Weds in LA:
> >
> > ====
> > 9:00PM - 9:50PM - "What's it like going from Avid to FCP and back to
> > Avid?"
> > - Walter Murch
> >
> > legendary film and sound editor Walter Murch returns to lafcpug to
> > discuss
> > "what is it like going from the Avid to FCP and back to the Avid."
> > Walter
> > has been editing with Final Cut Pro for several years after having
> > used the
> > Avid for several years. And now he is back on the Avid editing a
> > movie here
> > in Los Angeles. Mr. Murch will bring along his assistant editors
Greg
> > Thompson and Dave Cory for an assistant editor POV. There will be
> > plenty of
> > time for questions and discussion.
> > ====
> >
> > More info here:
> >
> > http://www.lafcpug.org/user_schedule.html
> >
> > Jim
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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