I made a comment at this past week’s Atlanta Cutters meeting that surprised many of those in attendance. It was something along the lines of “I’m anticipating our Avid’s will be a one year solution to our editing workflow and then we’ll see where we are next year.” In other words, Avid meets our broadcast needs today so that’s the horse we’re going to ride right now for our broadcast work. For some of our non-broadcast work, we’ll go with Premiere Pro CS6. When Smoke 2013 is available, we’ll see how that fits into our workflow.
Software has gotten to the point where pretty much any NLE tool on the market is now accessible and the Return On Investment can be had in a single job. So while I wouldn’t call the software “disposable” I would certainly call it affordable and wise to load up the toolbox while the gettin’ is good.
We’re fortunate to be in a position where we’ve been able to test both Adobe and Avid products for a while now. Adobe has made tremendous strides forward with CS6 but there are still areas that we would like to see addressed, particularly under the hood and some core edit functions, so I’m looking ahead to 2013 for a potential more widespread rollout of Premiere Pro in our workflow. Of course, we had no idea Autodesk was going to drop this new, more edit friendly, version of Smoke on us and I’m already giving them feedback on where I’d like that product to go in the next 12 months. Depending on where they go, I can also see a more widespread rollout of Smoke in our workflow in 2013.
But this is 2012 and I’m not going to stand still on Final Cut Pro 7 and just wait to see where both products are next year. That’s just another year of using an old, increasingly slower edit workflow and right now, Final Cut Pro X doesn’t work for us. Right now, today, Avid works for our broadcast editorial needs and so right now, that’s the tool I invested in and our editors are quite happy with the Symphony packages that have been installed across the facility this week. At $999 each they will pay for themselves in one episode of our current series. They were supposed to be Media Composers, but I saved $2500 across the 5 licenses buying Symphonies instead with that incredible cross-grade offer. When we need more licenses of the product this year, they will be Media Composers moving forward because they won’t be cross-grades any longer.
So stop agonizing and trying to pick “that perfect NLE” that will serve you today and for the next three years because quite honestly things are changing quite rapidly. In fact you shouldn’t even have just one NLE on your system. At the very least every single editor should have Premiere Pro and Avid on your systems so you can work with anyone out there. You’re also going to find that each tool is better suited for some tasks. Premiere Pro’s core strength is the “any format native editing” and the interchange with its entire suite. Avid’s core strength is the tremendous media management for large products and fast keyboard based editing. Your skill set will translate quite nicely between Avid and Premiere Pro so you should be able to move pretty easily between the two apps. Smoke 2013 was designed to be used by Avid and Premiere Pro editors so that should be fairly easy as well.
Heck keep in mind you might not even be on the same hardware platform next year. So many traditional Apple hardware users are discovering that PC workstations are as good as and oftentimes better than their Mac counterparts.
So look at your needs today, right now. What tool(s) do you need, or want, to get your work done for the next 12 months? Plan for that. Next year if something else comes along and meets your needs better, don’t gripe that your current tool isn’t as good, hasn’t kept up, blah blah blah. Just get the new tool added to your toolbox and keep on keepin’ on.
In the long run, a suite of tools and expanding your toolset knowledge is going to benefit you better than just hanging onto something familiar because it’s something you’ve used for a year. Or longer. My two cents.
A fine strategy for individuals and small/medium post house outfits, but I’m not sure it scales well, at least not to network level. Broadcast installations need integrated solutions, where edit is just one part of a much larger workflow. You can’t chop and change systems on the whim of latest fancy in the edit world … cost of the edit software is an almost insignificant factor.
Appreciate it’s not really apropos to the the point you were making, but I think its a valid part of the wider discussion and so worth a mention.
Cheers
Andy
A buddy of mine works for a large network and as he describes it, it’s like an aircraft carrier. Takes a while to make a large turn.
For an installation like that, many many people from engineering to the editors must be part of the decision making process. But even there, a duality approach such as having Adobe and Avid available does work since the hardware supports both.
But generally when you have a network type of installation you’re right, they tend to plan in three to five year increments.
Walter, long time reader, first time posting, huge respect for what you do. I manage the post workflow at a large non-profit. We are currently still on FCP7 using Final Cut Server as our DAM. My boss was at NAB and overheard you discussing CatDV and some of its negative attributes. He wanted to follow up with you, but you know how it can be at NAB.
Anyway, we want to get away from FCP7, and to do that we need to get away from Final Cut Server. Since DAM options are so limited, I was wondering if your opinion of CatDV has changed and if it had anything to do with your recent switch to Avid? Are you still using CatDV? We are weighing our options between the heavy price tag of going all Avid (including ISIS), or going the cheaper route with CatDV/Premiere or FCPX. Are there any other DAM options out there that you would recommend?
We are still using CatDV as a cataloguing system for new footage that has come in, but still using CatDV in a limited fashion. We have a lot of issues creating proxy files with it so that kind of defeats the purpose of using it.
Prelude from Adobe shows great promise to be a cataloguing tool in the future. Right now it’s a 1.0 software and was solely designed as essentially a “Log and Transfer” tool for Premiere Pro allowing the user to conform all media to a single codec prior to the edit. But with some tweaking and re-design, it could become a full fledged cataloguing tool.
With Avid we are not going the ISIS route. Just way too expensive.
Walter, I am testing Adobe Premiere CS 6 and Avid Symphony 6. There are a couple of big issues I am running into with MC. The first is centered on the AMA linking process. AMA linking works fine at the start. I am linking Nikon D4 Media files. Bring your footage into MC6 and start editing. All good. Edit finished, now time to output to Sorenson, so I select export to Sorenson. Bang, sorry you cant export AMA linked files to a QT reference movie. WHAT? Adobe handles this just fine. MC, just chokes. So now what, convert the entire sequence to something else, then send to Sorenson to convert a second time. Yech, totally defeats one of the big reasons for AMA linking. Now I am 2 generations out before I get to screen. Am I missing something?
Avid still has a LOT of work to do supporting native workflows as we have discovered in just trying to get footage consolidated and transcoded for sending over to Resolve. Their database structure is simply way too rigid to allow great flexibility in the workflows.
On the one hand, this is awesome because no matter where you are in the process, you can always refer and find the original media in your project. On the other hand, it’s so rigid you cannot make simple modifications to your data, such as adding or changing a Tape Name, without following a very rigid workflow.
So the big disconnect for Avid right now is they are selling the “most versatile editing platform available” which is great marketing lingo, but in reality, it’s a “limited versatility”.
Thanks very helpful to know its not unique to my situation. PP6 is really looking good. Excellent upgrade from PP5.5. U.I. is intuitive and much cleaner. External monitoring finally works (As long as you have OSX 10.7.4) . Tight integration with Adobe suite and even Speedgrade color correction. It’s really become the full FCP8 suite – Deja Vu. Guess I will have to run and support both.
Walter, if a student wanted to work for you what programs should they learn to give themeselves a competitive advantage? Thanks for the blog.
I’m just starting out trying to get a job at a post-house. Here’s my reel, any feedback from someone of your stature would be a great thing.
[vimeo 1729872]
As I told a graduating student this past week, for Post, you need to learn the art of storytelling. I can teach anyone the software, but storytelling is a craft and much more difficult to teach.
Having a good base knowledge of both Premiere Pro and Avid are good tools at least have a handle on. They both operate very similarly though the media management on Avid is quite a bit different.
But I worry less about your software skills when hiring entry level folks than I do about your storytelling skills.