This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] list of Avid stuff you miss in FCP?

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Re: [Avid-L2] list of Avid stuff you miss in FCP?

To your list I would add:

1) The Avid trim tools, including the four frame display in slip/slide, JKL slip/slid, trimming on the fly, isolating sides easily with a key command (i.e., playing up the cut and stopping, or playing from the cut forward), being able to SEE when you trim shots on different tracks (imagine that!)
2) Workspaces!
3) Phantom marks, but also the ability just to align to the fourth mark of a three mark edit by using a "go to in/out" key, even when phantom marks are not enabled, as in MC
4) Avid's monitoring flexibility. Yes, I know you can turn of playback for individual clips in FCP, but this is pain in the ass. And what about soloing?
5) Selective sync locking of tracks, without constantly having to work around this unbelievably stupid, Draconinan, PITA global sync lock that FCP stuffs down your gagging throat whether you like it or not.
7) Track auto patching that actually works.
8) Locators that actually work, including MC's powerful locator window. The only locators you can actually see in FCP without double clicking to open up segments are timeline locators, but they don't stay in sync, so they're absolutely useless. I've heard this has changed in 7, but come on, why did it take ten years?
10) One version of any given clip extant in the NLE. Let's say I have a clip which I've edited from in a few places, and later when I have time, I go back and place a bunch of markers. When I match back to that clip from one of the early, pre-markers timeline instances of that clip, it takes me back to some forever young version of that media that doesn't show all the markers I have since painstakingly added.
11) Generally speaking, MC's beautiful, simple, enablement based edit paradigm. I've always said that in MC in order to do all the stuff I do all day, splice overwrite, lift, extract, match frame, stay in sync, etc., I manage two states, track enablement, and track patching. In FCP I manage six states: track enablement, track patching, track linkage, track locking, the auto select, and snapping. Whenever I go to do anything, one of those states is wrong, and I must change it. This is one of the main reason, several years and thousands of hours of FCP experience later, that I just never feel fast on it.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now. BTW, this is cathartic of course (a good FCP rant always is), but what's the use? Will anyone at Apple ever see our comments? And do they even care? Most of their user base is kids who don't have any basis of comparison. Why should they care about what a 30 year veteran thinks?

Shirley

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Hullfish <steve4lists@veralith.com>
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, Jun 5, 2010 11:32 am
Subject: [Avid-L2] list of Avid stuff you miss in FCP?

I just saw the start of an interesting ad hoc list of things that Avid

editors miss when they go to FCP. Obviously this is a list that could

easily go both ways, but for those of us that move back and forth

between Avid and FCP, what are some of the things that you really miss

about Avid when you are cutting on FCP? I am not trying to be a troll

here. Just truly curious. Obviously there's some stuff coming in v5

that will add to this list once people start using it.

My partial list so far, in no particular order:

expandable audio waveforms inside the track (FCP can expand track

size, but not waveform size within the track)

Show Marked Waveforms only

Phantom Marks