This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] AMA Frustration

Friday, August 9, 2013

[Avid-L2] AMA Frustration

Hello everyone.

After many years in the land of FCP I am trying to decide where to go from here.

I have a new 27" iMac with 32GB of Ram, a 3.4Ghz i7 processor and a Nvidia GeForce 680MX graphics card. I use an AJA T-Tap for monitoring.

Here are a few complaints/frustrations that I have encountered that I hope someone has some answers and/or work arounds to help me move on.

First of all, Thunderbolt is cool, but there are never enough ports. I have used them all up with my simple rig and it seems that no one makes a Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt hub. It is a good thing that they included USB3 or it would be a real pain to get large amounts of data on and off the system.

One of the first things I noticed is that using the same media, same drives, same everything, FCP7 and MC7 are the only two that will play back instantly at full res and full frame rate. Premiere has to process some stuff first and FCPX will play the footage, but not at full res and full frame rate, Huh?

My first test has been to take old FCP7 sequences and try to bring them into their new home for revisions.

FCP to Premiere via XML is pretty seamless and easy. Although weirdly enough, FCP's normal habit of marking 10 seconds of a still image in the middle of a clip seems to confuse Premiere. Also titles and effects have to be re-done.

FCP7 to FCPX via 7toX software works pretty well. Although titles lose their formatting at least you can modify them instead of having to start from scratch. And some chromakeys lose their video and/or audio. Weird.

FCP to Avid MC7 using Automatic Duck or Boris AAF has been a non-starter. I have watched the tutorials. I have AMA linked until I am blue in the face and I simply cannot get the footage to re-link to their clips. Frustrating. Very frustrating.

Truthfully, Premiere Pro was going to be my first choice, but I their subscription model is not for me. It appears to be the closest to FCP7 when it comes to editing, but there are also many gotchas there too. Maybe I will coast along on CS6 and see how it all shakes out. Their Ultra keyer is also the best I have found so far.

FCPX was not really on my radar, although after having played with it for a bit I think it could grow on me. it is very nimble and fast if you can get into it. Unfortunately, the monitoring sucks. I cannot get full res playback with audio sync no matter what I have tried. And if the background tasks are working they cause a performance hit on the system. There is no way that I can work with my clients if they can't see the program the way it is really going to look. Their basic keyer also works very well.

Avid is also high on my list, however I feel constricted when using it. I can't explain it, but everything seems harder than it needs to be here. This makes me sad because I really like so many things about MC.

Thanks.

Benny Christensen
Producers Playhouse
Oklahoma City
405-858-0700

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." - Sir Winston Churchill