Thanks!
So this week at NAB Avid released details about their upgrade to the Media Composer editing system. Talk about gamechanger. Avid now allows for dragging and dropping in the timeline, native Quicktime AND RED support (and I’m not talking about Quicktime Proxies here), solo and mute buttons in the timeline, a much stronger user interface, I could go on… Hey Apple and the uninspired team at Final Cut Pro: now that Avid has co-opted all your awesome features, what about you maybe making some of your own innovations?
It’s been a long time coming for Avid. Granted, none of these improvements would have ever come had Apple not entered the market. The Cupertino computer giant does deserve that credit. But when it comes to making decisions about what software I’d use on my next job, any argument against Avid has officially been nullified for me. I used to have an expression: Final Cut Pro is a great editor on top of a crappy media manager, and Avid is a so-so editor on top of an awesome media manager. Today I officially put that to rest because Avid has proven that they are willing to change.
As for Final Cut Pro, I can’t say the same. It’s been months since I purchased my upgrade to Final Cut Pro 7, and I have to say, I’m not about to open the box and install that POS on my computer. Sure, there are quality cosmetic changes to the editing system, like the introduction of ProRes Proxy and 4444 and the colored locators that trim with your edits, but that masks the fact that Final Cut Studio 3 actually runs SLOWER than Final Cut Studio 2 [link 1] [link 2]. And Avid already has the best project-sharing functionality, so tell me what I should choose Apple next time around?
Apple entered the market strongly and has done great things to bring professional editing to the people. But the truth is Avid has responded by doing laps around Apple while Apple is distracted by their innovations at the consumer level. It’s high time that Apple either sh*t or get off the pot when it comes to Final Cut Studio. Sell it or fix it. I’m tired of dealing with this.
UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive. No sooner than I write this post do I see and article from MacSoda that quotes the almighty himself Steve Jobs as saying “The next release will be awesome.” Scanning through the comments, there’s a mixture of excitment and true disbelief as to whether that is indeed true or simply spin. Color me undecided, but at the moment, I’m still waiting for something more than Steve’s curt emails.
If you disagree with me, please comment. Check out the first comment left already by Zach Fine, who presents an excellent rebuttal about the FCS3 upgrade and makes some great points about workflows and benefits. I still disagree about the state of Final Cut Pro, but hey, he’s a smart guy and he makes some great points.
I know this has made it around the interwebs already, but here it is again: a sad but true tale of my life as an editor. I was almost brought to tears during the part where the editor calls his family.
Wow! I just installed this and have already regained 7.2 GBs and it’s not even done! And in 15 minutes!
Squeeze is a preference pane (in your System Preferences) that runs in the background and auto-compresses your files using Snow Leopard’s new compression technology to compress your files without deleting media or limiting your abilities at all. It runs in the background, using only free resources on-the-fly to keep you working. Your files work as usual, but it just shrinks their hard drive footprint. While I would advise against using this on things like your Avid and FCP projects, because you can ill afford one bit of data corruption, I’ve been using it on my FCP Documents folder, Applications, Movies folder, and am still adding other stuff too!
Usually this software is $10, but for TODAY ONLY, you can get a free license through MacHeist. Just visit the site and create an account with MacHeist. This place is awesome to begin with, but today is a extra-special day!
MacHeist via Lifehacker
Hey all. Do you use stock footage ever? Think you might want to keep some on hand, for that random occasion. If you ever need that great clip as a background or insert or establishing shot that you couldn’t go out and shoot, Artbeats is there to save the day. Well, Artbeats is now giving away one free clip of stock footage every day! And now you can start building your collection through their Daily Free Clip program. Just register for an account (also free!) and every day you can download either an HD, NTSC, or PAL quicktime for you to keep. Unfortunately, they’re not letting people download anything higher than that for free, but who’s complaining?
All of Artbeat’s material is royalty-free unlimited-use, which means that you can use it over and over again without needing to pay them anything, as long as your project isn’t made of more than 25% stock footage. Right now all the HD footage you get is Photo-JPEG, but the footage looks great and they claim there is negligible loss in quality as a result of the compression. Obviously, it’s not ideal, but hey, IT’S FREE! Check it out and get started on building your stock footage collection…
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