questions for the editors

[PJoseph]

I'm not sure what other systems he was referring to. Like I said, there are a lot of systems that edit. I just only use AVID and FCP - and it's how I make part of my living and I've never used a different system, so from someone who is in the trenches, that's what we use. pJ

[Danny]

'twas just the first lesson though during an intro so i didnt expect it to hold much sway, just a tidbit of info.

[DjfunkmasterG]

Personally I found AVID to be complicated. When I first started editing I used pinnacle software, but when I did Deadlands I did a demo of Sony Vegas... after being able to breeze through learning it in 15 minutes I was instantly sold. As soon as I had the cash I bought Vegas 6.0, I am now at version 7.0, and did pay for the upgrade to 8.0, but found it to be buggy. For Avid, I was watching a friend who edits for the SPeedWeek TV show. We worked together on a short film and he was using AVID. When I watched the interface I was sitting there with a look of disbelief on my face because what takes one or two mouse click in Vegas took 5-6 in Avid. My thing is... If I can't figure it out by just looking at it, then I know I won't like it. Now I have only played with FCP once or twice at most, but like Vegas I was able to figure it out in 15 minutes. So if I ever get another editing program, I am going to buy a new mac and go FCP.

[Mutineer]

I agree with DJ 100% THe same can be said for FCP in regards to the Vegas intuitiveness. Give it a spin with the free Demo and if you're a student, they have awesome discounts. Vegas just makes sense.

[PJoseph]

What functions specifically are you talking about in AVID? It's a very easy piece of software to use. As is FCP. pJ

[SymphonicX]

AVID is very unintuitive and manual, but that's what makes it great really -it makes you think about things and doesn't assume...I kinda like it but sometimes I wish it was a little clearer on how it functions. The avid systems they have here will blow your mind... HD Adrenaline/Symphony/DS Nitris hardware coupled with Dual Quad core processor PCs - (that's 8x processors!) and 1.5 gb Nvidia graphics card....stunning. Some of them are painfully slow however, lol. When I'm editing TV shows, we generally use Avids (MAC) for offline and Symphony (PC) for online. This is because ease of use between systems and editors - we all share the media from one source, so we are all connected - and sharing projects back and forth is litterally a drag and drop process. pJ You use Unity ISIS systems? Media Manager and all that? Or interplay? Getting interplay here soon and I can't wait, MM is a joke...!!

[PJoseph]

I've worked on several diffferent systems because I've worked for a bunch of different companies - I'm a freelance producer. Every place is set up for their needs. Some places still run Meridian because it makes no sense to tear it down. pJ

[DjfunkmasterG]

What functions specifically are you talking about in AVID? It's a very easy piece of software to use. As is FCP. pJ Just adding video to the timeline was a pain in the ass. With Vegas you just drop it on and you can cut on the timeline, with AVID it wasn't so easy to import and drop video on the time line.

[C5NOTLD]

One of the important considerations when you are on a limited budget is support. Avid's support is going to cost A LOT more money than other systems - some of which are free.

[PJoseph]

Adding video to the timeline? There are several ways to do it, but in AVID you can just drag the clip from your bin and drag it to the record window and there it is in your timeline - and you can cut on the timeline in AVID - you can just slice it up, drag it around, slip it around... pJ

[SymphonicX]

Adding video to the timeline? There are several ways to do it, but in AVID you can just drag the clip from your bin and drag it to the record window and there it is in your timeline - and you can cut on the timeline in AVID - you can just slice it up, drag it around, slip it around... pJ Erm...yeah its a piece of p*ss to add stuff to the timeline....double click the clip so it loads into the source monitor, mark your in, mark your out, and press the splice in button or "B" - all you've got to remember is to disable the audio tracks that you don't want on there (or video track if you're just taking audio) and that's it... Now where I find it really gets annoying is effects editing, and general audio editing - for instance dipping audio for voice over, you have to make an edit in your audio on the timeline and do a transition between the two edits - but there is a way to literally drag and dip your audio on the timeline but I find it a bit annoying and over complicated - I much prefer highlighting a section of audio manually and adding a dip to my own spec...but doing that on a timeline is a pain, marking in to out, then disabling the tracks you don't want to edit and blah blah blah....a much simpler interface with lassoing would be much better.

[PJoseph]

"Erm...yeah its a piece of p*ss to add stuff to the timeline....double click the clip so it loads into the source monitor, mark your in, mark your out, and press the splice in button or "B" - all you've got to remember is to disable the audio tracks that you don't want on there (or video track if you're just taking audio) and that's it..." - You can also just drag it and it puts it into the timeline. And you can just drag around in the timeline. Regarding the audio, I was pretty sure you can dip in the timeline, but I never do it - I will check on it when I get in today. Again, it's not a good function for AVID users as we are constantly working with more audio and need to have absolute control over the tracks. However, my issue with the easier software is that I'm doing much more complicated work than what you are describing above - (working with 10 -12 layers of video and 12 - 20 layers of audio) - you need to have specific functionality in order to work with that much content. When I cut film packages for shows, I need to be able to take in specific tracks because the studios provide multilayered version of the films, so just dragging and dropping an entire clip to a timeline, while I can do exactly what you have said above, is a way that wouldn't benefit my editing. And, in those other pieces of software - if I direct a 6 camera shoot, can I mulitcam and just grab shots in a source monitor? pJ

[SymphonicX]

"Erm...yeah its a piece of p*ss to add stuff to the timeline....double click the clip so it loads into the source monitor, mark your in, mark your out, and press the splice in button or "B" - all you've got to remember is to disable the audio tracks that you don't want on there (or video track if you're just taking audio) and that's it..." - You can also just drag it and it puts it into the timeline. And you can just drag around in the timeline. Regarding the audio, I was pretty sure you can dip in the timeline, but I never do it - I will check on it when I get in today. Again, it's not a good function for AVID users as we are constantly working with more audio and need to have absolute control over the tracks. However, my issue with the easier software is that I'm doing much more complicated work than what you are describing above - (working with 10 -12 layers of video and 12 - 20 layers of audio) - you need to have specific functionality in order to work with that much content. When I cut film packages for shows, I need to be able to take in specific tracks because the studios provide multilayered version of the films, so just dragging and dropping an entire clip to a timeline, while I can do exactly what you have said above, is a way that wouldn't benefit my editing. And, in those other pieces of software - if I direct a 6 camera shoot, can I mulitcam and just grab shots in a source monitor? pJ ISO cam-ing is great....avid adrenaline is very good with that, you basically make live studio cuts and its all in sync, no fiddly editing... 20 layers of video is VERY heavy, I haven't personally done something that complicated but I'm still in my infancy in terms of editing, generally everything done here requires no more than 5 layers of video, usually a couple of colour grades, name straps etc etc..but we did do a computer gaming championships programme recently, it was ALL ISO cams and literally did have about 15 layers of effects, graphics and whatnot....but get this, timecode breaks all over the tapes....unbelievable....timecode breaks are avid's worst nightmare....I swear it was ridiculous, they'd make the timecode ToD (time of day) and would then stop the machines running to save maybe 20 seconds of tape, then restart the record meaning and then stop it again, meaning whatever was inbetween those useless timecode breaks couldn't be captured 'cos it can't pre-roll....stupidity and a complete lack of professionalism - trouble with TV is that studio's don't care about editing. Anyway I kinda prefer to collapse my layers down so it never looks like I've got that many layers of tracks down on the timeline....it just gets ugly...

[PJoseph]

Yes - timecode breaks will kill you, but how the f*** did a live shoot have timecode breaks? The timecode should have been generated and being pumped out to the cameras - even if the camera ops started and stopped, time of day should have been running - in which case even with a timecode break, when you were recording program, the ISO's should have matched up. Oh well - in that case, you have to eye match it - unless the cameras never stopped, in which case you can dub them to blacked tapes... I liked having all the layers up and running - I put stuff all over the place so I can pick and chose shots. Many of my layers are graphics and text as well...like in last night's show, we had all sorts of transition elememnts and movie IDs. BTW, you can make drag points on your AUDIO timeline in AVID and pump the gain up and down - took me five minutes to figure out how to do it and once I did it, it's just as east as FCP. pJ

[SymphonicX]

Yes - timecode breaks will kill you, but how the f*** did a live shoot have timecode breaks? The timecode should have been generated and being pumped out to the cameras - even if the camera ops started and stopped, time of day should have been running - in which case even with a timecode break, when you were recording program, the ISO's should have matched up. Oh well - in that case, you have to eye match it - unless the cameras never stopped, in which case you can dub them to blacked tapes... I liked having all the layers up and running - I put stuff all over the place so I can pick and chose shots. Many of my layers are graphics and text as well...like in last night's show, we had all sorts of transition elememnts and movie IDs. BTW, you can make drag points on your AUDIO timeline in AVID and pump the gain up and down - took me five minutes to figure out how to do it and once I did it, it's just as east as FCP. pJ yeah I learnt the drag points but have forgotten - I know some professionals won't abide add edits and quick tranisitons but it really does do the same job at the end of the day! As for the timecode breaks, they were recorded in a studio so it was the VTR ops who put the breaks in there, knocking all of the machines off one after the other (you can tell cos each tape has slightly longer on the shot in question than the previous tape) it wasn't live btw, it was a pre-record "as live" and edited in a suite to stick it all together - that show would never have worked live haha...it was so shambolic. So annoying when you leave it capturing, only to come back and find its captured the same clips 30 or 40 times because some numptie has stopped the tape for 30 seconds. Also we use a capture/record device made by Avid called AIRSPEED...this is quite a cool little bit of kit but its terrible with timecode...if you dont' manually overpatch it, it'll spit out time of day - great for live sporting events (which is what we mainly record) but capturing a tape will require overpatching, but even then if the tape has a break like the one's aforementioned, it'll simply take the last known good timecode and spit that out sequentially over the rest, making ISO cam stuff absolutely impossible.... The way its set up here is pretty cool, we capture or record through airspeed and it goes onto a Unity ISIS server, this then dsitributes the media across huge raid disks and then becomes available to any edit suite on the floor up here, there are six of them so potentially you can have six people working on the same media, great for tight turnaround stuff...