Sunday, November 15, 2009

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: And Now a Word About Online Finishing

I agree with a lot of this. The latest Media Composer hassle for me
was trying to do moves on a bunch of hi-res stills for a recent
freelance gig. HORRIBLE! The producer - to my horror - said "This is
so easy to do in FCP." I had to agree! It's sad. Pan and Scan is a
total joke. I understand that the architecture of the Avid won't
support the same functionality as FCP in terms of using hi-res
sources, but at least have a work around that EVENTUALLY looks good. I
had to take all of the moves (hundreds of them) into After Effects and
then export and import them. THey ended up looking great, but at a
price tag in a LOT of wasted time.


Really? I would kill for Pan and Zoom about now, despite the fact that I agree it's a total joke. At least the keyframes scale through dissolves, I can copy paste keyframes, I can trim keyframes with a key, and I can enable a keyframe but park and look somewhere else along the effects timeline. Not to mention that the parameter buffers stay highlighted, so I can keep entering new values without having to constantly swipe them to re-enable. I actually spent some money to get trained with an FCP expert so I could be sure that I was doing things as efficiently as possible. I learned a couple of things, but not enough to make this bearable. On the other hand, I can whip out basic two point moves with Pan and Zoom on an Avid in my sleep.
As always, whenever I say to myself "This must be me. This really CAN'T be this stupid" about some workflow in FCP, I find out I'm wrong - it really IS that stupid.
Shirley

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Hullfish <steve4lists@veralith.com>
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, Nov 15, 2009 10:26 am
Subject: Re: [Avid-L2] Re: And Now a Word About Online Finishing


Chris is PREACHING NOW BABY. Great couple of recent posts, Chris. Well
thought out. I hope someone at Avid is listening, because you've
summarized what they need to accomplish to remain relevant.

I agree with a lot of this. The latest Media Composer hassle for me
was trying to do moves on a bunch of hi-res stills for a recent
freelance gig. HORRIBLE! The producer - to my horror - said "This is
so easy to do in FCP." I had to agree! It's sad. Pan and Scan is a
total joke. I understand that the architecture of the Avid won't
support the same functionality as FCP in terms of using hi-res
sources, but at least have a work around that EVENTUALLY looks good. I
had to take all of the moves (hundreds of them) into After Effects and
then export and import them. THey ended up looking great, but at a
price tag in a LOT of wasted time.

You are correct in that many of Avid's tools are OK, but not good
enough for a real on-line finish. Color Correction is definitely
showing its age. No decent secondary color correction. Horrible DVE.
Mediocre CG or a move to Marquee which looks good, but nobody seems to
want to use. FCP in this category is actually far worse than Avid. But
Premiere is actually miles BETTER.

Recent changes in getting multi-frame-rate source material into Avid
sequences is a GREAT step in the right direction, but so much of the
effects portion, beyond simple editing (which is obviously rock solid
on an Avid) is truly bad.

The funny post about "if an integrated environment is so important,
then why isn't everyone using Adobe? With Terry's answer of
"Premiere." Maybe Adobe should buy Avid and solve two problems with
one merger. Adobe would own a good, recognized editing solution and
Avid would learn how to be integrated and effects-friendly. Plus, I'm
sure all of those Tewksburians would love to move to sunny San Jose.


On Nov 15, 2009, at 12:01 PM, chris magid wrote:

> A few points.
> 1-Thrid party plug-ins do not play nice with native effects in many
> cases.
> 2-Third party plug-ins are available across many different systems
> and therefore do not give any editor that relies on them a
> competitive advantage. Especially an editor which has such a heavy
> reliance on them.
> 3-Managing stacks of third party of plug-ins is cumbersome in Avid's
> current nesting architecture. A real bitch with imported alpha
> material or combinations which must be repetitively applied.
> 4-Composer's track to track alpha behavior and handling of alpha
> material in general curtails the effectiveness of plug-ins as
> compared to their use on other systems.
>
> 5-The use of third party plug ins with items such as titles requires
> the destruction of the ability to revise those titles easily.
> 6-It is really a poor excuse when you have to say things like "sure
> the Avid has a DVE built in, but I wouldn't use it for anything
> really important". Why are the tools there if they don't work well
> or are feature poor in their original 1995 to 1999 iterations?
> Doesn't this reflect on the poorly on the entire Composer experience
> and Avid as a company. Crap. Only half of the things on the feature
> sheet can be used acceptably in most professional situations. Even a
> soft edged wipe or vignette can be problematic. I want to be able to
> move a static graphic around without issue. I want a soft shadow or
> color correction on my key. IS THAT SO WRONG?
> 7-Performance. The much touted realtime advantages of Symphony/
> Composer DX degrades almost completely when using 3rd party plug ins
> or helper applications.
> 8-Control and quality. Some plug ins are better than
> others...sapphire and BCC look good. But not all plug ins are 10 or
> 16 bit. And all plug ins operate differently in image handling.
> Bouncing your picture around different bit depths, color conversions
> and processing certainly can't help.
> I want to do SIMPLE THINGS in the Avid environment with the tools
> Avid provided which claim to perform those specific functions. I
> also would like a couple steps forward just a little more towards
> the features and functions which have become commonplace in modern
> post production.
> Generally, if the button is there you should be able to push it and
> have good things happen. If not, you have built a Kia instead of a
> Cadillac...umm make that instead of a Lexus.
> Chris MagidRTVF
>
> --- On Sat, 11/14/09, johnrobmoore <bigfish@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> From: johnrobmoore <bigfish@pacbell.net>
> Subject: [Avid-L2] Re: And Now a Word About Online Finishing
> To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, November 14, 2009, 11:41 PM
>
>
>
> When I started linear editing everything I did went straight to air.
> 3/4 to 1 inch and then 1 inch to 1 inch show composite. There was
> clean and trace but that didn't fall into play on most magazine
> television and documentary work that I worked on. So saying there is
> no more online is really nothing new to me. Back in those days your
> effects choices were dictated by which switcher and what DVE you
> had. So in essence you had to learn a new device or piece of
> software/hardware all the time. Having to go to AE from Avid is very
> similar although the complexity of the software today makes it
> harder to master than the crop of DVE's we dealt with back in the day.
>
> Curious how many of the short commings you have with Avid's effects
> are available in BCC which comes bundled? Do you find things like
> Avid FX and BCC also suffer from poor image quality etc...?
>
> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups .com, chris magid <chris_rtvf@ ...> wrote:
>
> >
>
> THERE IS NO MORE ONLINE...THERE IS NO MORE OFFLINE for most projects.
>
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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