This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Re: Resolve update from Editor's Lounge event

Monday, May 2, 2016

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: Resolve update from Editor's Lounge event

I agree with everything you say but there's another spin to it too.

Avid still does some things very uniquely well. If you have 4 guys cutting a show, track laying, selecting, turning vfx shots over and back you better hope you're on an Avid.

But if anything i think the biggest issue Avid has is that it's seen as your dad's editor. When iphones started being used by grandparents kids moved on to Android. Where Nike and Adidas was once cool the kids moved on to Globe. Its almost a fashion thing, and that's hard in a professional product.

FCPX looks like christmas to me its so shiny, I love that the brightest thing on my Avid, my Flame and Nuke is the image I'm working with. That's what the pros like. Its not what the kids like, just look at a car radio in the average BMW - those things not only have leds than a 56 track SSL they animate as well...

However there is a middle ground. Function over form, performance over flash. The way to win the kids is bragging rights. 5 keyers, 1000 plugins, 100,000 presets and all the unique features you can patent. Script based editing does nothing for the kids, they're shooting without scripts or boards, or location managers or UPMs but that's another story.

When I keep hearing how great FCPX is now I ask questions, and every single editor refers to processing power, core animation and the multithreaded gui. No mention really of the actual functionality of editorial - its the multitasking aspect they love. And that was my experience with fusion and resolve compared to flame. Loop play while tweaking saves time, grade a still frame an be surprised how the shot evolves, grade a looped playback and find the ideal average grade without resorting to the faux exposure change of a dynamic grade.

When you talk to long time colorists they are stunned by the performance of software resolve compared to the old hardware based systems. Yes that power is in no small part down to the extra 10,000 cuda cores but shouldn't every software be using all the cores all the time? With so much ram on a GPU these days why aren't our edit systems pre-loading playback frames into GPU ram 36GB of ram (3x sli) is a lot of UHD frames. True scalability and GPU abstraction is the challenge for all video software manufacturers going forwards. Resolves insistence on real time all the time has taken a bit of a hit with high frame rate and 4k but the GPUs are catching up - Resolves ability to shovel data to and from them is already in place. As I said in my last post, I don't want to see a render button anywhere any more. Smart caching, smart background rendering, distributed rendering whatever I don't care just don't make me think about rendering.

Starting to ramble, I'm old. The older I get the less time I want to waste moving my head close to read tiny icons or text, the less time I want to wait for rendering, for ingesting for exporting - lets GPU the exports. Speed kills the competition, bragging rights - it will get the kids.

Mike

On 5/2/16 7:46 PM, switthaus@mac.com [Avid-L2] wrote:

There are several reasons I no longer have work on Avid. I have MC 8.x (thanks) but I can't find a place I can use it. MC suites have almost disappeared from our region. I really don't know of one post-house I can go to to four-wall an Avid suite anymore. Most FCP7 shops have moved over to Adobe CC or FCPX....the majority being Adobe. Resolve has taken over the color correction....and it's editor is getting better (very much like FCPX).

Second is that I feel Avid has so focused on it's present-day core users (and of course, they need to do that, but not to the point of blinders) that they have lost the vision of what excites those new users. Things mentioned above in Mike's post highlight that. In FCPX it is really nice to be able to adjust audio levels, move titles around, trim clips etc while the playing the sequence. The title tool is much better than MC or Premiere and color correction, while different, allows me to most of it right in the box. If not, FCPX works very nicely with Resolve.

Motion is certainly not AE but it's just a click away if you want to adjust parameters on any FCPX effect or do some cool title work. Automatic Duck announced that it has developed a plug-in that willow you to export an FPX sequence to Motion.

Finally is the learning curve. I have seen my students pick up FCPX faster than any previous versions of FCP and Premiere. I have students now switching from Premiere back to FCPX. In making the gigantic leap to FCPX from FCP7 (and taking the risk that pissing off the current user base will be ok in the long run), Apple did something very right. Also, Apple gives away iMovie on it's computers. Guess what, you can do some cutting in iMovie and then export that project with a click to FCPX. Nice training ground. Avid has promised MC|First for months now and even Avid folks don't know where the product stands right now.

Avid is a great tool but it can no longer rely on the "if you want to cut movies you have to work on Avid" marketing plan anymore. There are now several other very good tools.