A tough Question

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hello Friends,

I consider myself a newbie in the world of threading esp in the professional video department.

However, I'm an intermediate non-linear editor and the great thing is I'm working for a company that deals with Edius 5 and at the same time can procure all important editing software's such as FCP, AVID, premiere pro. Its been three weeks and the walls know how crazy it is here. why? Lets see why. yes? hehe

Being a company that deals in all important editing software, the customers keep asking me one grail of a holy question. which editing systems is better. FCP, AVID OR EDIUS, premiere. How would you guys deal with it?

I tackle this question by first asking how much their budget is, what cameras they're working on, their environment, their I/O requirements and so on. FCP is more expensive than EDIUS turnkey systems. And avid is even more expensive.

But really, how would you guys choose? And why did you guys choose edius anyway? What advantage does it has over FCP, PREMIERE AND AVID? I would love to hear what you have to say on this. I know what my colleagues say but I want your POV.

By the way, I'm working in an environment where I'm surrounded by the latest professional sony cameras. such as z5, z7, EX3, fx1000, beta-cam sx with wireless transmitter and even Silicon imaging SI-2K! The red cam still eludes me :) I even got the entire playbox system at my disposal as well. So if anyone one of you needs any pro sony cam testing done with the edius 5 Nx express, do request and I'll try to experiment when time has mercy on me. Learnt here in 3 weeks what would normally take 6 months to learn in school. No jest! :)

Thank you all for your time and attention.

[tingsern]

My eyes explode with envy - face turn green :-). How nice to be able to work in that department of your company. Wow !!!

My opinion here - (and only mine) ...

Avid used to rule the roast - used to be the king of video editing. They sat on their throne for too long. And got dethroned. Nobody I know of uses Avid anymore.

FCP - if you like Apple stuff, you got it with FCP. Software - very powerful. And easy to use as well - but, you have to stick to Apple once you get FCP in. Of course, Apple and Quicktime are like husband and wife.

Premiere - terrible stuff - talks only ONE language. Everything else must render ... not flexible enough. Unless you are bedfellows with Adobe - choose ....

EDIUS - just as powerful as FCP. Equally flexible to mixed medium. My only concern is the stability of the software - it takes a while for them to get it bug free.

Of course, I didn't answer your question directly ...

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hey tingsern,

Your comp specs is mind blowing! Just imagine a guy whos been using edius 3 for a while comes to you and also imagine you have all editing systems within your reach. The guy says "TINGSERN SUP! Look man I need an awesome new editing system, I'm into producing advertisment and I'm thinking FCP OR EDIUS MAN. looK I want you to tell me what NLE to get down with man. I got the bucks but you do the choosing my man"

How would you respond? :)

[SRsupport]

Be honest. Explain the pros and cons of each app.
That is the best way. You don't want to force feed a user/customer an app that does not suits his/her needs.
Once you have to explained it the customer will make the choice not you. :)

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hey Steve,

Thats the issue. what are the pros and cons of each editing system. any insights on this?

[Rusty]

Xylikiticatacoltyx, welcome to the Forum.
For a first post, you ask one of the most vexing questions on the internet. Every app has it's strengths and weaknesses, so for fear of bias, you may get a better response to ask pros and cons of particular editing systems on their own forums.

I personally like the no-nonsense approach of E5 and the very flexible I/O.

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hey Rusty,

Thanks. You're right. I should have been more subtle about it. A good lesson learnt. So apart from the no nonsense approach, what else do you like and don't like about edius and their systems?

Like the word use "vexing". reminds me of robinhood prince of thieves, the witch mother of sheriff of nottingham when she says "something vexes thee??" My fav dialogue of all time however by alan rickman as the sheriff of notingham when he comments "loxley! I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!" lol

[ExFool]

Pros & Cons

With all respect Tingsern - I know you from other fora as well, you're a good guy, a knowledgeable editor - Avid is anything BUT dead. It may be out of your area of interest, but that doesn't mean it's finished. They no longer cater, nor want to cater to the small guy - they go after the big bucks! Hollywood, baby! You rarely see a movie cut on something else - it's all Avid. Pros: the best multi-computer networking. Again, this stuff is for big productions, where 20-30... how knows how many editors work all at the same time. Each of them checks out a small portion of a movie, maybe a few clips, each of them works on that, when they all finish, it's all in one place, well organized. Try doing that with... say Vegas. Cons: expensive, hardware dependent, extremely steep learning curve, time consuming as you have to wait until it will transcode everything into one format before you can even begin editing.

Edius is for the flexible editor. You have source material in a zillion different formats - no problem. Dump them on the timeline and get to edit RIGHT AWAY. No transcoding, works with virtually any video format, their video codec is one of the best in the industry.. Other pros: extremely easy to learn, pretty much hardware independent, very stable, can output to any format needed right from within. Cons: weak on the titling, audio, and special effects side, but there are a ton of plugins to compensate for that.

FCP - as detailed already above, a very good overall editor, but once you have commited to it, you're married to it, almost no options to collaborate with editors on other platforms.

Adobe stuff - relatively easy to learn, except maybe After Effects. Premiere is a fairly good editor, versatile when it comes to integration - for example I love the option to right click on the audio part of my video and take it into Audition, edit there with an infinite size toolbox, then bring it right back without even leaving Premiere. Photoshop is industry standard, also nicely integrated. Flash for the web, no problem. What is a problem is the hardware dependency, software instability, weak MPEG encoding. You know the saying "jack of all trades", right? Problem is, when you do everything, chances are you don't know how to do anything properly.

Of course, all this is also very subjective, from the "just my opinion" cathegory. In the end, you need to form your own opinion. But ours may help...

Good luck,
ExFool

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hey Exfool,

Thanks for the reply.

However, an film industry insider told me about quantel. http://www.quantel.com/ the film industry actually uses this particular piece of super expensive hardware to edit. AVID, ADOBE PREMIERE, EDIUS AND FCP caters mainly to professionals in lets say documentary and independent and some television indiustry. The films are a completely different matter. This i can confirm! :)

Another good example is the professional cams that ranges from 10000 to 30000 dollars thats good for the professional industry and indies and broadcasting industry just like avid, premiere, fcp. However for films, one would need lets say an SI-2K cam, red cam or a Sony F-35 which would cost a good 150000 dollars and more and that comes with its own different bunch of capturing hardwares and what not. expensive!

[pjsssss]

I will take just a few minutes to answer a question that could easily be a few pages.

As Steve suggested there is no one NLE for all purposes, so the first question should be for what purpose. I always tell people that I will use whatever makes me the most money the easiest way possible. So far that has been Edius. I look every NAB to see if there is something out there that will suit my workflow better, but so far nothing has. I can give you my take on what is out there.

Avid...The best for media management. If you have to deal with a ton of media (and I mean a lot to keep track of) then this may be your solution. Other then that I see very few pros and many cons. We have Media Composer and it sits hardly touched most of the time.

FCP...If you are a Mac Freak, get it. You have seen several Cons here which I agree with. Get used to rendering. I do like its composing ability and titling, but it does not play well with a lot of formats and it is too sloowwwww. WE have FCP and it sometimes gets used.

Premier...Great interaction with After Effects and Photoshop (two industry standards, we have them and we use them) but I agree with the cons posted before, and again it feels "clunky" to me after Edius. We have CS4

Vegas...I haven't used it lately so I might not be qualified. Nice audio interaction but the editing part seems to be losing steam.

Edius...The best thing I can say about Edius it that it is absolutely the fastest editor to accomplish what we need to do. Very smooth, very stable, and handles whatever we throw at it. Full Frame, Full resolution on external monitor. If they would just change a FEW things it would really be awesome. Very easy to learn.

As a side note, I am training some people at a TV station in Seattle. They are switching from Quantel to Edius. I had never seen a Quantel before. All I can say is that I would shoot myself if I had to learn with that. Totally designed more for film. Contrary to any other NLE that I have ever worked with. Also, NO UNDO FEATURE.

[ExFool]

However, an film industry insider told me about quantel. http://www.quantel.com/ the film industry actually uses this particular piece of super expensive hardware to edit. AVID, ADOBE PREMIERE, EDIUS AND FCP caters mainly to professionals in lets say documentary and independent and some television indiustry. The films are a completely different matter. This i can confirm! :)

Oh no, really??? Check this out, maybe Avid knows a little more than both of us… here’s just a short, far from comprehensive list, containing only the recent releases.

http://community.avid.com/forums/t/61440.aspx?PageIndex=2

Movies
Adventures of Power
Assassination of a High School President
Atonement
Baby Mama
Cloverfield
Drillbit Taylor
Get Smart
Hancock
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Horton Hears a Who!
In Bruges
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jumper
Kung Fu Panda
Leatherheads
Over Her Dead Body
Rambo
Ratatouille
Sex and the City
Speed Racer
Stop-Loss
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Dark Knight
The Incredible Hulk
The Other Boleyn Girl
There Will Be Blood
U2 3D
Wall-E
Wanted

Other recent releases and upcoming
Balls of Fury
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Across the Universe
Enchanted
Bee Movie
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
The Edge of Love
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Quantum of Solace

TV
Grey’s Anatomy
Brothers and Sisters
The Simpsons
30 Rock
Chuck
ER
Deal or No Deal
Friday Night Lights
Heroes
Law and Order
Law and Order: SI
Law and Order: SVU
My Name is Earl
The Office
The Bachelorette
Boston Legal
Dancing With the Stars
Desperate Housewives
Dirty Sexy Money
Extreme Makeover: Home edition
Lost
Pushing Daisies
Ugly Betty
CSI
How I Met your Mother
Two and a Half Men
Without a Trace
The Price is Right
Survivor
Amazing Race
Biggest Loser
Saving Grace

Also below is a list of releases that we have done highlighting the winners of various industry awards…. ALL DONE ON AVID

Sundance
2006

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2006/060120_sundance_avid.html

2007

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2007/070119_sundance.html

2008

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2008/080117_sundance_avid.html

Emmy Awards
2006

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2006/060828_emmys_avid.html

2007

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2007/070919_emmys_avid.html

Academy Awards
2006

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2006/060303_oscars_avid.html

2007

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2007/070226_oscars_corp.html

2008

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2008/080229_awards_avid.html

A.C.E Awards
2008

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2008/080409_ACE_corp.html

[Xylikiticatacoltyx]

Hey Pjssss,

Thanks. that was informative. have you heard of the VT5? any experience with that?

[tingsern]

Each of us here have expressed his own opinion of the state of the art for "affordable" NLE - not referring to AVID, Quantel, etc ... I have both EDIUS 5 and Adobe CS4 Creative Suite. There is no right or wrong tool - it depends on the situation I am in.

For example, last night, I was attempting to transcode a video in Canopus AVI into MP4 - that was recorded in 720p at 25 frames/sec (PAL). I tried ProCoder 3 - no presets exists (all of them are for NTSC - 24 frames/sec, 60 frames/sec, etc). I tried a few others I have. NO luck. I went into CS4 - while CS4 presents to me in NTSC - I am able to override that parameters to make it work in PAL. Whew ... got that working.

So - to answer your question - I would turn the question the other way round - ask your client what he wants to edit first - his preferred method of acquisition of the media (tape or SxS or P2 or whatever). Next - ask him whether he prefers APPLE or Windows. That way - you narrow his choice of NLEs down. Ask him his experiences in NLE, his comfort level in Windows software (some people like to tinkle with stuff - others adopt a hands off approach). That's one way to address this question.

Of course, there are other approaches to this tough question. You have to adopt to each of your client. Good luck.

[David Clarke]

I sell all the programs (except FCP) and get asked the same question all the time. I agree of most of what has been said above:

1. Edius - stable and fast. If you want a job done quickly then its the one for you. Missing some features - no Blu-ray, simple DVD writing and cant even keyframe some filters. But mainly you will get your job done quicker with Edius.

2. Premiere - buy it with a Matrox card and you get performance similar to Edius. Real strength is the amount of features and integration with other programs. If you have used old versions of Premiere and liked it stick with it.

3. Vegas - great sound and a good DVD/Blu-ray program. Plus is does keyframable mattes and proper 3D in the program. Its a bit like After Effects with editing. But personally it I find it a bit too different to a normal program and dont like it.

4. Media Composer - Great for huge projects and collaboration but not so intuitive. If you dont use it regularly you will be scratching your head on how to do things.

5. FCP (I dont sell this but have been using a quite a bit recently). Quite nice and intuitive and if you buy studio there is a lot in it. Just a bit slow - RT performance is bad and rendering is slow. Plus you must use a MAC, If you like macs is the obvious choice but if you know PCs you will have to waste time learning basic stuff like how to print your DVDs (for example).

The other questions is what formats do you want to edit. Media Composer wont take AVCHD for example so a really bad choice for editing that. Premiere does the best native AVCHD but this makes long rendering times, so ideally you need to change it to something else - and Edius is the one that does that the best.

There is no definitive program, I wish there was.

[Ron Evans]

Video is a serious retirement hobby for me so my views may be different than a professional business client. I have several NLE's, Edius is my main editing application because of its multicam and its speed. I use Vegas for audio and Bluray integration with DVD Architect so I output from Edius a HQ or HDV file and then carry on in Vegas. SD encoding is done from this Edius output file in TMPGenc Xpress 4. I also have Adobe CS3 but use it less and less as the combination of Edius and Vegas cover everything I now need to do. I used to use Premiere because it had the best titler but I have now got more used to Titlemotion Pro and it satisfies my needs. Vegas is odd as it is really a DAW converted to edit video as well as audio( that is how I got it as upgrade from Vegas Audio!!!)so it has an audio mindset not film/video based at all. It does have keyframe everything though, its motion controls are very good and of course the audio is great with integration with Sound Forge from within the program. Before Edius 5 I used Vegas to create a cropped SD image from the HDV source very easily.
As others have pointed out it is really dependent on the clients knowledge base and expectations. Even as a hobby I do not feel that one product is sufficient though and the combination really needs to be complementary. My complete tool kit has Edius 5, Vegas 8 and Vegas 8.1, Adobe CS3, Sound Forge 9, Sonicfire Pro, DVD Architect 5, DVDLab 2.0, TMPGenc Xpress 4, TMPGenc Authorworks 4, Nero 8, Womble, Ulead Movie factory, Photoshop, Photo-Brush, and probably a few others I can't think of right now!!
You really need to ask the client what he wants to do and suggest a tool kit rather than a single tool since I do not believe any of the products can do everything.
Ron Evans