Edius NX Express VS Avid Express Pro with MOJO

[manbart]

I've just been looking at Avid Express Pro with Mojo. Obviously the Avid editor is in a different class than Edius, but it looks like with the NX and daughter card you have as good or perhaps better functionality than Avid with the Mojo. With the Mojo you don't get HD overlay. I think you get real-time SD display of downconverted HD. You also don't get the ADVC technology for filtering and noise reduction of analog input, which can be nice if your using some old analog video that might need to be cleaned up. I don't really know but I don't think you get exceleration of MPEG time line export with Avid Mojo.

Also from what I can see Avid only recommends Open GL Quadro workstation type video cards. If you use a more mainstream Direct Draw gaming type card, it's a crap shoot as to if it will work. Also generally it appears that the Avid Express Mojo system is not without a number of compatibility issues. It also will set you back about $2100, almost twice the cost of the Edius NX Express. So unless you just have the yen to become an "Avid editor", or need or just want all that editing prowess, I think Edius NX Express is the better value.

[STORMDAVE]

Are you going to go from Avid stations to Avid stations?
What do you plan to do?
I think that's the most important thing that you need to ask youself before investing in a new system.

Download the Edius demo if you haven't to see if it fits you.

[mattmatt]

I came from Avid, now use Edius all the way. It is better value (for realtime and functionallity) but I found avid to be more precise - Avid's compositing and keyframing is way better too.

There are some things I miss about avid, but all in all, for value and functionallity, read my siginature :)

Dave is right though - if you are working with other avid editors or changing suites, that would be an issue.

[manbart]

No, I have no need to work with anyone else in Avid. I really have no need to use it specifically. I haven't used Avid but I've spent a bit of time with Boris FX which seems to be the basis of their Aivd FX. It's an extremely capable program, just a bit tedious to use, but you can do almost anything with it. I don't think there's any doubt that the Avid software is first rate.

Most of the serious stuff that I've done is documentation of my historical and genealogical research in Eastern Europe. I have the Edius trial version, and Edius is quite adequate for that. I do really like a nice titling program, and Edius comes with Title Motion Pro which pretty much fits the bill. What I'm really into most is functionality and stability. You can really do alot with all the major editors these days. I've looked at possiblity of Premiere with the Matrox RT x2 card, but that scares me. My experience with Premiere over the years isn't great in terms of stability. I have Premeire CS3 and it still occasionally crashes for me. Also the RT x2 card appears to have pretty frequent issues. So that whole system scares me, though it potentially does a lot includng greatly excelerating rendering. My impression of the Edius NX Express is that if you get it installed and it's compatibe and works right on your system, you'll likely have few if any problems. The Liquid Edition Pro package that I have now is really pretty good. It's extremely stable. It's almost never crashed for me in several years of use. I can barely remember it ever crashing, that's how infrequent it's been. I think the software is also a little better than Edius. I'll probably leave it installed and may use it some. The bigest issue is that with Liquid edition you can't have anything but SD to an external monitor, and with Edius you have SD and HD, and I think you may have better real time. In Liquid you have what they call background rendering, which from my experience works nicely, but overall I think the Edius package is nicer for HD in particular. So I think Edius it will be once I get my computer outfitted with a new motherboard, processor, and ram.