Re: [Avid-L2] Re: Why isn't Avid marketing all over this story?

While I fully agree that the nesting in FCP is an unreasonable beast,
I'd also like to point out that having 7 consecutive editors work on
the project, probably in the absence of any one person - like a good
assistant editor - shepherding the project all the way from start to
finish, has most likely contributed to your troubles just as much.
Yes, I do know that FCP has a lot more cracks things can and will fall
through than the Avid, but that doesn't mean that Avid workflows are
crack-free.

Rainer Standke
XMiL Workflow Tools
http://www.xmil.biz

On Oct 4, 2009, at 4:40 , chlowden wrote:

> Just to explain my comments a little more .
> Firstly, I am personally finishing a P2 film that cost me 17000
> euros using both FCP and MC. I also have worked on 70 million dollar
> features for hollywood. The only the thing, from an edit point of
> view, that both projects have in common is the length of the
> finished product: 90 mins.
>
> So I have a reasonable understanding of what tools are best for what
> workflow. There is no way that I would recommend, for a Vin Deisel
> movie shot on 2 to 5 35mm cameras, a FCP workflow. The cutlist for
> neg pulls are not reliable, particularly in 2 perf. It is not
> impossible. The Coen brothers seem do it, but you need to have very
> competent people working the system to make it work reliably. I
> repeat, reliably because that is what this is all about. A bad neg
> pull can have terribly expensive consequences for the production.
>
> I have worked on 5 features mixing RED, P2 and even 35mm stills
> cameras. Nobody is going to seriously tell me that working in RED
> native with 100 hours of rushes is practical. You have to do an
> offline copy of the project and then conform it. As soon as you are
> in this logic, the workflow for FCP or Avid is the same.
>
> I understand why FCP is so attractive to people who want to finalise
> the film on the same machine. I do it myself all the time ... but
> that is why I appreciate that there are 2 distinct products on the
> market. I do not believe that Avid is really interested in home made
> movies and cheap TV. They want to install enormous ISIS systems into
> TV stations. They make far more money from maintenance contracts
> than they do coming out with MC updates. Apple knows this and is
> trying to get into that domain as well. I often see the sales guys .
>
> Concerning cutting between sequences. Yes, there is a hidden button
> in the FCP keyboard menus that lets you cut between sequences
> without it all becoming nested. You can bounce between sequences in
> the timeline too ... but it is not very practical for a simple
> reason. You can have one sequence in the viewer and another in the
> time line and before you know it, you are putting in-out points into
> the wrong timeline and editing the wrong sequence. That is very
> tedious when you are making fine cuts in a 90 min film. This would
> not be an issue with the restricted Avid workflow.
>
> I have been playing with the Avid MC4 multi frame rate timeline. I
> have a commercial that was on RED at 25fps and Nikon 30fps. GREAT!
> Except that when it came to the conform, the exports were not in
> native, the post house had alot of trouble recreating the avid
> dropfame effect on the original Nikon files. If I was to do it
> again, I would cut the 2 frame rates seperately. But FCP is no
> better because the logic is that once you have multi frame rate
> source, you don't go back to the rushes. Here again, it just
> confirms my thinking that for those who wish or have to finalise in
> the desktop environment, all is well. But as soon as you have to
> start working with other facilities, the difference between the
> products really shows. So you shout, export QTs and all is well. I
> say, the rushes are the only gold standard and everything must go
> back to them.
>
> And finally, here is food for thought on FCP and conforms and why it
> is not very well designed (for the moment. I hope Apple is reading
> this). I conformed a feature doco called Babies (coming out at xmas
> in the US) on FCP. It had been 4 years in the making and I was the
> 7th editor. Naturally, the project was not very clean. After doing
> some final fiddling, I was obliged to decompose the sequences to
> conform the HDCAM elements in the film for a TK. Many of the
> previous editors (I presume they were Avid editors) had been editing
> between nested sequences, some as many as 20 sequences deep per
> shot. In FCP, when you decompose a sequence with nested sequences
> inside, it not only pulls put the rushes in the upper layer but all
> the rushes of all the nested sequences. In some cases, just about
> pulled all the rushes were pulled up. Some idiot assistant had
> decided to digitize the cassettes as a whole and break them up into
> shots. It seems that FCP has alot of trouble consolidating nested
> rushes and has a tendency to just pull up the whole rush. The only
> solution I found was to open all the 20 sequences to extract the few
> seconds of rushes. It took me 3 days night and day to extract the
> bits. (neither XMLs or EDLs exports could solve this problems) On an
> Avid, this would not have been an issue. But then again, for this
> project, I feel that FCP was not the best choice. The reason why it
> was not Avid was because Avid was behind in accepting the P2 at the
> time.
>
> Must leave ... I have 3 Avid with recurring bus errors (please avid
> sort this out once and for all) and a FCP Server that has crashed
> because of an editor has imported mp3 files from a screwy usb device
> (boy, don't I love cheap usb keys). All this excitement keeps my son
> fed and clothed though.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Search the offical complete Avid-L archives at:
>
> http://archives.bengrosser.com/avid/
>
> Avid L2, Where the Answers are.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

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