Absolutely. I'm one who will wait, given that the upgrade has no cut off point. I'll wait until I need something in Media Composer that I don't have in Xpress Pro. At least I might be able to skip a major release or two that I would have to pay for in addition.

I agree with learning FCP as well, Richard. It's just obvious that it's necessary in today's market if you want to get freelance editing work.

I'd be careful about waiting too long... Remember Avid is discontinuing selling Xpress Pro soon (June 30, 2008) and a paid update to Media Composer is due soon (the last download version from 2.x to 2.7 was $295 the full update was $995), so there is nothing that says Avid can't discontinue the upgrade offer, I would say definitely by the cut off of when they will discontinue support of Xpress Pro (2013) and possibly by the next full release of Media Composer.

An important note, according to the Avid store website, you can purchase the download version of the upgrade for $395. That doesn't include Boris Continuum, Sorensen Squeeze, SonicFire, or Avid DVD from Sonic. I think not as good of a deal as the physical shipment for $495. Also note that right now the Avid store site is saying 2 weeks to get the physical documents and discs.

Last year when Apple upgraded to Final Cut Studio 2 they originally said that you needed to be at the Universal version (I believe it was V1.2) to get the upgrade price ($499) which didn't make any sense since the Universal upgrade price was $20 and from V1.0 (and from Pro and Production Suite) the price was $699! Apple abandoned that quickly and made it from V1.0 for the upgrade.

I've found that a combination of FCP and Media Composer is a great thing. Giving a director a choice of editing package brings alot more business in and gives them more confidence in you if they don't know you already.

I'm not sure the upgrade deal is permanment or not. I know the the next big release version. v. 3.0, will be for both Leopard and Vista and the upgrade deal could stop there. So, Avid is hoping to get everyone migrated to Media Composer now making the transition to v. 3 easier for everyone later.

My 2 cents.

From the Media Composer upgrade FAQ:

http://www.avid.com/products/media-c...CSavingFAQ.pdf

"Q: I would like to upgrade my Avid Xpress Pro software to Avid Media Composer later, when Avid has a Leopard- or Vista-suppported version Will the upgrade still be available?

A: Yes, the upgrade will continue to be available through the planned Leopard and Vista releases. We are not making any futher announcements at the moment about the availability dates for these releases."

So it seems safe to wait for at least the next major update.

Thanks Vito. Then it will be interesting to see if they charge current Media Composer 2.8 to move to Leopard/Vista versions. With that possible, but in no way confirmed scenario, I might wait to upgrade my own stuff and go ahead and buy a Quad Core Vista machine soon. I saw an HP with 4 Gb of memory for under $1,000. Use my current setup on Xpress and then get the upgrade at v.3 when it comes out.

Meanwhile, my largest client, who just purchased Xpress one month ago, has agreed to upgrade to Media Composer. It's running Xpresss on an octo MAC with 8 GB ram. Media Composer should run very well.

Yeah, I'm dying to get the new Mac Pro 8 core. I'll continue to run Xpress Pro on my PC and get the upgrade to install Media Composer on Leopard when the new version comes out. I'll be able to buy FCP as well and learn that.