why buy Avid?
 

Hi,

I've used Premiere for to many years (most recently with a DVStorm card), as well as bouts with SpeedRazor. I tried the 30 day demo of Vegas, and have spent enough time on Edition DV.

Why Avid Xpress DV? For DV25 res work, it's as stable and solid cutter as they come. It's built upon 11 or 13 years of code. It's editing and trim tools are top notch and precise. It's media management is robust and makes dealing with huge amount of material a breeze (the best project I did on XDV had 36 source tapes). Going to online Avids for finishing is simple as opening the project up and redigitizing. Take audio to a ProTools Neuendo station for audio work is a simple export as .omf. Most of it's area's of weakness are made up for by 3rd party plugins (compositing and titler). I've cut 33% off of my time on my bread and butter clients.

Yes it has faults - name something that doesn't (anything!). Is this stuff important for the casual user or hobbiest? No, but if you make a living editing, then these are some seious considerations. I've done a couple onlines on MC's due to my learning XDV. Nice skillset to have.

What else?

I guess to bring this full circle, I've tried several realtime cards over the past couple of months, and always felt less than satisfied. The problem really isn't the cards so much, although they all carry varying amounts of problems to offset their capabilities. The largest liability, however, is that I really DON'T like Premiere. I just wish the only real alternative didn't cost $1200, and could work with something other than 2 GB OMF. There's nothing quite like being smacked with the cold splash of reality when, after sitting through an import on a 2.1 GB AVI file, the error message that pops up points its finger at QT import.

Everything sucks. Nobody "loves" Premiere, but it gets the job done. Other tools do, too.

"I read in Videomaker Magazine, that VV's "realtime preview" is about 12 frames per second. Kind of slow compared to Avids, which is... well 30 fps. (WARNING "realtime" has specific connotations to different manufacturers. Basically though, can you layer on a couple of transitions and see them immediately at speed without rendering. I am prety sure if you match up VV with an accelerator, it will do better than that. But of course, then you are turning it into a more expensive system.)"


Actually, VV's "realtime preview" is ------ 29.97 fps! On any reasonably fast computer, VV can display a couple of transitions and preview them in real time - not only on the computer screen but ALSO on an external monitor via firewire (something I've read that Avid DOESN'T do). You cannot match VV with an accelerator - it is a software only solution.

Huh, Guess the Magazine review was wrong about VV then.
I have an NTSC monitor hooked up, and watch my footage on that. AVID has a "green dot" preview mode that allows you to watch the real time previews on your computer monitor. (About a hundred effects I think) NTSC monitor can come off a dual head card or via a transcoder.

<<<-- Originally posted by BillAngstrom : Huh, Guess the Magazine review was wrong about VV then.
I have an NTSC monitor hooked up, and watch my footage on that. AVID has a "green dot" preview mode that allows you to watch the real time previews on your computer monitor. (About a hundred effects I think) NTSC monitor can come off a dual head card or via a transcoder. -->>>

Yes, Vegas will preview on an external monitor via firewire. It will preview ALL effects and will simply lower the framerate when the CPU cannot keep up with the quantity of effects added. However, at the speed of today's computers, general editing should not slow it down below 29.97 very often - all fades and dissolves should remain at 29.97 but if you have several compositing tracks it will reduce the framerate.

Edward,

Thanks for the VV explanaition.

As I said in my original response.. "Real time" means different things to different systems. They all have different work-arounds. With a paraheillia card, you can run two editing monitors AND real time client monitor at speed with avid. The client monitor is single -field however. But it doesn't 'slow down"

Always a trade-off somewhere, unless you bite the bullet and buy the high-end AVID systems. The advantages to software only systems like Avid, FCP and VV is that they get faster if you upgrade the cpu.

I understand that Premiere 6.5 is now more "like" a software only system, but really runs best with an accellerator card? (I learned premiere when it was 5.1)

Happy holidays.

Bill

<<<-- Originally posted by BillAngstrom : Edward,

I understand that Premiere 6.5 is now more "like" a software only system, but really runs best with an accellerator card? (I learned premiere when it was 5.1)
Bill -->>>

Was that a question? Yes; realtime P6.5 runs at least as well as Vegas or Avid Xpress. It really romps with a good accelerator.

Bill,

When you say the NTSC monitor can connect to a dualhead
card. How does this work? In my understanding of dualhead
cards you have the second output running at 1024x768 and
indicate that it has a TV attached. Doesn't this mean that it
will reduce that 1024x768 to 720x480 (for NTSC) which might
mean a color/quality loss? (just wondering)

Will this still be a good setup to use for a broadcast monitor
to judge the image?