The Verge noticed a job listing for an editor at it’s Beats Music division, but it is asking for someone with experience with AVID MEDIA COMPOSER and ADOBE PREMIERE PRO! Ha! It seems even Apple does not use Final Cut Pro X.
William Gallagher and Charles Martin have an interesting article on Apple and it’s changes to it’s video lineup. It goes into iMovie, Final Cut Pro and iDVD, and how Apple upgraded the first 2 with less features, but slowly made better versions.
My biggest complaint with the article would be on who they polled as they say that most of the people who were angry over Apple’s switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X have moved back X (with a cursory mention of Premiere Pro as an alternative).
Personally being a professional editor, I did give the initial Final Cut Pro X a try, and hated it. And got a refund and have not gone back. There are some features that I do really like in X (especially it’s handling of Meta Data), but since I edit complicated graphics heavy shows, it is the timeline that is the deal breaker for me, and it is the fundamental feature of X, so no matter how many updates they do, the timeline is too unorganized and broken for it to make sense for a 15 track highly organized video project.
And of all the editors that I know, I have only heard of one that has gone back to X and really likes it now. And while features are starting to make their move to Premiere Pro, there have only been a few instances I have heard of big houses moving to X. Most of the big houses I know that were basically all Final Cut Pro have moved to AVID at the studios insistence (kick backs?!??!), while most commercial houses have moved to Premiere Pro for it’s fidelity with graphics.
I just don’t see Final Cut Pro X as a viable solution, and with Apple’s history of dropping software, I don’t trust Apple to keep it going anyway!
It is called AVID Media Composer FIRST, and will be heavily feature limited. Including only being able to save a limited number of saves and those saves can only be made to the cloud, and you can pay for more space.
It is a good idea for AVID to do for sure, and I would like to see Adobe do it with Premiere Elements at least.
Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition has the story. 4K, resolution independence, a new compression format DNxHR, LUTs as timeline effects, and the ability export projects as DPX Also coming soon is Background Rendering, Favorite Bins and Search Across Bins for Markers.
The funny part being you need a third party video card to do 2K or 4K, since no AVID hardware can do that (and honestly they should move software only and work more with AJA, BlackMagic and Matrox)
And it is a good thing too. With Adobe offering up Updates in their Creative Cloud very quickly, and it is great to see AVID finally getting on that bandwagon, which they should since they are now subscription based as well.
AVID Blogs has the news on AVID releasing the 8.1 update to Media Composer. This is the first update since releasing their subscription model, and has come fairly quickly. Lets hope AVID keeps moving this quickly with updates. This was what I was worried about as AVID usually has a fairly slow update cycle.
This is made mainly for the subscription model that AVID has moved to, but as a bonus they are letting existing users sign up for $299 a year for the support version which includes updates, and you can sign up for a year to get the latest versions at least through 2014, then it goes up to $1299 a year for the subscription with support.
This means for $299 you can get a year of updates for your current version, and hopefully get the next version of the software as well.
Personally I have been spending a lot of time with Davinci Resolve of late. With a proper video card it is really an awesome program, and is certainly my current choice for color correction. It is fast and easy to use and does a very good job.
The other interest is SpeedGrade which I am learning, mainly because of it’s ability to roundtrip a grade to Premiere Pro and put it on clips as a single filter on each clip. A very cool feature, but the program needs some work before it can really compete with Resolve. First off it needs support for Black Magic cards instead of just AJA cards. If Premiere Pro can do it, Resolve needs to do it. And second it really does need curves. Curves are such a powerful color correction method that many have come to rely on, and not having them seems a huge failing. Other issues I have are it’s abilities with multitrack video are limited, and I have just gotten so used to nodal vs layer based correcting, though that is certainly not going to change. SpeedGrade is powerful and does work well with Premiere, but needs to get some updates to be able to really rival Davinci even with it’s ability export it’s grades as color correction filters into Premiere.
It all started with Adobe and Creative Cloud which is $49.99 a month with a yearly subscription, and $79.99 for a per month basis. And with no other versions available, it means you need it if you need the latest and greatest.
Now they have been great with rapid upgrades, and with the full suite so necessary for most video post work this is basically a necessity.
Not sure how it will work for Media Composer with the same pricing. Most places buy a version and keep them on non-upgraded machines so they can just stick with the same version. Not only that, with Creative Cloud you get the full suite of apps, including Premiere Pro, and with Media Composer you just get Media Composer. Sure you get more options, like Symphony, NewBlue Titler Pro 2, Sorenson Squeeze Lite, and Boris Continuum Complete Lite, but it is still basically just an editing and finishing system, so seems like buying it is a better idea (at least while they still offer the ability to purchase) at least unless you just need it on a month to month basis and can bill a client for it.
And now Smoke 2015 is getting it, though it is a $3500 program that is $195 a month or $1750 a year. Or $3500 every 2 years, which makes sense if they continue to do an upgrade every 2 years, which they have done once now.
Still it is depressing for us independent post guys, as more monthly expenses does not seem like a good thing overall.
Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films has an awesome article, where he goes into not only the best things about AVID and Premiere Pro, but also his first attempt at using FCP X. And his is the first article that makes me interested in taking a look again at FCP X, though maybe once they fix audio issues.
And I still say that for graphics heavy projects, even longform (at least 28:30 Direct Response), I think Premiere Pro with a proper video card can easily outdo AVID, which is still archaic in how it deals with Alphas (and importing them) even if it is the king of media management. And those same projects would be a mess in FCP X without the ability to have tracks for organization.
I mean my current sequence has 18 tracks of video going all organized into different layers.
This is so exciting as Sony has always loved their proprietary formats, even proprietary media, and for them to be opening up their amazing cameras to ProRES and DNxHD even with a paid upgrade is huge. Especially with the F55 which has a Global Electronic Shutter, which gets rid of the rolling shutter problem of CMOS image sensors!
And it has beautiful image quality.