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I'm not sure what your wife's definition of "Barely" is; but I don't have ANY kind of experience that I would call "barely working".

The brokenness of multi-display support in the last two releases of macOS her her biggest issue. It's a battle to get her late 2015 5k iMac to wake her 2nd display after the machine sleeps, which has only been an (widely reported, mind you) issue since Sierra. It's not the Mac, either; nor is it the display. Every Mac we have with Sierra or newer (2 personal laptops, 1 business laptop and the iMac) exhibits this issue when this, or any other display is connected. These are Macs and displays which worked together just fine prior to Sierra.

Milti-display support isn't a niche feature; it's integral to the workflow of many a graphic designer -- drawing tablets with built-in displays are quite popular among that crowd -- and the vast majority of professional users who actually have a desk to work at. It's quite a major issue for them to seemingly be ignoring; it's the kind of thing you'd expect they'd have addressed in an early point release of Sierra, not something they'd let linger nearly half a year into the following release (and still not have fixed).

That's just one of many issues she's encountered in the past handful of years; to someone who remembers Macs "Just Working" since the mid 1980's, though, that's a world-breaking issue.

There is an industry software that gets used a lot called iNews. There's a reddit thread with comments from people who work at news orgs. Vox Media (The Verge, SBNation, Curbed, Polygon) built its own CMS called Chorus. The NYTimes uses WordPress for some of its blogs. And I assume the Washington Post built their own since, well, Bezos.

What do you mean? We are all avid users

Pro tools. It's not cheap, but it'll work on Microsoft or Apple OS. http://www.avid.com/US/product...

The professional video and TV editing biz got shafted by Apple during the great Final Cut Pro disaster a couple of years back and a lot of them have shifted to Avid and other non-proprietary OS-hardware-locked video solutions. They should have seen it coming after Xserve and Xsan got the bullet though.

Alongside the post-production tools, Avid has been making some inroads to the broadcast arena too, for example with their iNEWS product range.

It hasn't shifted away from Apple hardware and OS.

Here's a nive video about J.J. Abrahms Bad Robot production company, and it has Apple hardware everywhere in it:

http://apps.avid.com/2012-Webcast/Bad-Robot-archive/

So, basically Alias, the last two Start Trek movies, Super 8, and so on. Thanks, I'll stick to Mac OS X, like the pros do.

Average kids pool in Denver:

http://community.avid.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.04.28.10/red-square.png

Hiding behind "you're doing it wrong; the software is right, change your habits" may work sometimes; just because everyone else got away with it doesn't mean you're in the same boat.

Users, particularly professional users over the age of 40, ask for stupid things and complain mightily about everything. When the Montage editing system came out, it used a computer and a dozen videotape machines to edit film, and the editors would complain about the slowness of work, and they'd demand a system that supported TWO dozen videotape decks. So, when the first Media 100 and Lightworks machines came out, editing was MUCH faster, but the editors complained and managed to force the original software vendors to make the computer systems act like videotape editors -- the original Avid software woudn't even allow you to insert a clip inbetween two others in one step, because this was impossible with a three-point videtape editor.

Picture editors are clever people but they have impenetrable smugness when it comes to the gear and what they feel they need to learn in order to use it; they also hate software that is "easy," because it devalues their technical chops and makes it easier for the director or producer to push the buttons without them, they also tend to hate anything that makes them buy new gear, though they'll generally find some other way to rationalize this.

FD. I'm a sound editor and am exactly the same way about Pro Tools; OTOH I wish Pro Tools had something magnetic timeline and coalesced clips, but Avid is stupidly conservative where Apple is stupidly tweak-happy.

If you intend to edit the HD content, you might like it to be more than 100Mbps. For example, the default settings for ProRes HQ 50i content results in variable bitrate files up to 185Mbps and DNxHD 50i is 184Mbps. (60i content differs, with DNxHD at 220Mbps). AVC-Ultra (and AVC-Intra derivative) is up to 200Mbps.

There are other sub-100Mbps options, such as XDCAM HD422 @ 50Mbps, but it really depends on your productions - high-end natural history and drama, then I'd want as much more than 100Mbps as my systems could handle. Factual, comedy and news/current affairs would most likely be fine at the lower bitrates. HD content is broadcast at atrociously low bitrates anyway. However, from an archival point of view, I'd like to see higher bitrates used.

HDCamSR is only compressed at 440Mbps.

Seriously, can't people who write software choose meaningful, easy-to-remember names for their programs?

How the hell is 'rosegarden' supposed to make me think about editing audio files? And that 'SpiderOak' name is a joke, right?

Y'mean like Acid, or Abelton or Pinacle or Pro Tools?

Tell me that someone new to the field would have any clue what type of software those names represent?

Seriously, can't people who write software choose meaningful, easy-to-remember names for their programs?

How the hell is 'rosegarden' supposed to make me think about editing audio files? And that 'SpiderOak' name is a joke, right?

Y'mean like Acid, or Abelton or Pinacle or Pro Tools?

Tell me that someone new to the field would have any clue what type of software those names represent?

Yeah, only amateurs use Windows software like this for multimedia.

This is old technology. If I recall correctly, Avid Technology has been using it for years to prevent people from pirating their overpriced software.

P.S. Does anybody know where I can get a pirated copy of Avid? It's really cool!

In the broadcast engineering space, we see a lot of this kind of thing...

Avid Unity ISIS
Omneon MediaGrid
DataDirect S2A

In our ideal World, Apple has lots of machines having freely installed (donated by vendor) Adobe, AVID, Cleaner stuff and they also have couple of top downloaded freeware/shareware. When they package new final build update, they are testing it against those very critical apps which is the core pro business of Apple to see if any obvious horrible failure happens. If it happens, they call/mail their internal contact from respective company to release a fix or help diagnosing issue.

Are we really making this up? Or is it "If it compiles, ship it" ?

I better tell again for Video pros: You should be using a secured (firewall, _offline_ virus scan,local network connected only) Apple machine with ONLY recommended, tested OS X build by your vendor. You aren't a iPhone or Apple TV user to jump to all updates. For example if you are a AVID professional user, you should check this page: http://www.avid.com/onlinesupport/supportcontent.asp?productID=97&contentID=9941&browse= .
See, they say:
Avid Xpress Pro 5.7.2 (Jun 07) OS 10.4.9 QuickTime 7.1.6

Television shows aren't much better. I have a friend who does TV editing - a major complaint he has is that there is dozens of hours of footage for hour long TV shows now - movies are worse. Major motion pictures can have over 200+ hours of footage for a 2 hour movie. Here a few cites I could find with a quick google on "feet of film" (the industry standard):
Titanic - 1.3 million feet of film (about 240 hours of footage) - http://www.northern.edu/wild/th100/flmprod.htm/
Dukes of Hazzard - 620,000 feet of film (120 hours of footage) - http://www.avid.com/profiles/080805_dukes_filmcomposer.asp?featureID=910&marketID=/
Knocked up - over 1 million feet of film (180 hours of footage) - http://www.orange.co.uk/entertainment/film/19332.htm?linkfrom=%3C!--linkfromvariable--%3E&link=link_1&article=filminterviewknockedupsethrogenpart1/

first off, what "Avid" are you refering 2?
Avid Media Composer? Symphony Nitris? DS-Nitris? Digidesign? M-Audio? XSI SoftImage? Pinnacle? Sibelius?

When you say its cheaper? Are you comparing it to Avid Express? Avid Liquid? Or are you comparing it to a Symphony Nitris system, which surely costs more than FCP since it comes with Video Hardware.

Does Final Cut Pro come with any Video Hardware with the price? Does it support Real Time multi-cam, something I am sure most broadcasters and prime-time TV production folks appreciate. Does it support Multiple Streams in Real Time w/o any additional Hardware? Or does it use a Digital Proxy like FCP does and need to render for additional streams of video? Does Software Only Media Composer use a Digital proxy? Does FCP run on anything except the Apple OS?

2 put it plainly, Avid, like Apple, is more than an Editing company. It is the Sum of all its Parts, something which you and perhaps pro-sumers and consumers tend to lose sight of.

How about don't trust me, Lets just look at the 2007 Academy Awards. ALL of the nominated and award winning films in the Best Motion Picture, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Documentary Feature, and Animated Feature categories were created with at least one Avid, Digidesign, or Softimage system. Nearly two-thirds of these nominees employed workflows consisting of multiple Avid systems, and for the seventh-consecutive year, every nominee for a Sound Editing Oscar used the Digidesign Pro Tools system. http://www.avid.com/community/hollywood/AWARD_2007 list.pdf [avid.com]

Do I agree FCP is cheaper in most cases w/o additional hardware, yes I do, but does that mean it is a better product or solution?

My wife and a few friends work in television. Avid is on the way out, everyone in the field is now switching to Final Cut Pro. For one thing, it's much more stable. But it's sooo much cheaper.

first off, what "Avid" are you refering 2?
Avid Media Composer? Symphony Nitris? DS-Nitris? Digidesign? M-Audio? XSI SoftImage? Pinnacle? Sibelius?

When you say its cheaper? Are you comparing it to Avid Express? Avid Liquid? Or are you comparing it to a Symphony Nitris system, which surely costs more than FCP since it comes with Video Hardware.

Does Final Cut Pro come with any Video Hardware with the price? Does it support Real Time multi-cam, something I am sure most broadcasters and prime-time TV production folks appreciate. Does it support Multiple Streams in Real Time w/o any additional Hardware? Or does it use a Digital Proxy like FCP does and need to render for additional streams of video? Does Software Only Media Composer use a Digital proxy? Does FCP run on anything except the Apple OS?

2 put it plainly, Avid, like Apple, is more than an Editing company. It is the Sum of all its Parts, something which you and perhaps pro-sumers and consumers tend to lose sight of.

How about don't trust me, Lets just look at the 2007 Academy Awards. ALL of the nominated and award winning films in the Best Motion Picture, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Documentary Feature, and Animated Feature categories were created with at least one Avid, Digidesign, or Softimage system. Nearly two-thirds of these nominees employed workflows consisting of multiple Avid systems, and for the seventh-consecutive year, every nominee for a Sound Editing Oscar used the Digidesign Pro Tools system. http://www.avid.com/community/hollywood/AWARD_2007 list.pdf

Do I agree FCP is cheaper, yes I do, but does that mean it is a better product or solution?

This is good. One of the major problems with graphic design systems, both CAD and animation, is that it's only possible to select one thing at a time. Many operations involve two objects, and you're forced to some sequential select-and-manipulate interface. This gets you past that.

Many high-end animation systems will accept multiple input devices, from MIDI keyboards to knob boxes to articulated skeletons. At the low end, we have the scroll wheel, which was a big improvement. Finally, you could do two things at once without shifting modes. This is a further step in that direction.

Video editors on deadline are going to want this thing. The obvious application is a replacement for the Avid NewsCutter, which sells into an environment which is not very price-sensitive.

I agree. With one caveat. There are FreeBSD based systems, Avid Airspeed for instance. Is a splendid, very powerful playback to air device. You would be better off spending your budget on something like this, with a support contract, backed by a company that knows what they are doing. Run Linux for everything else. If you are a 'real' tv station, then you cannont contemplate failure in the last hurdle. Try to bear in mind that running a TV station is not an IT job. It is a broadcast engineering job.

As a law enforcement officer working in a forensic audio/video lab, I have to give my "why analog is greatly preferred over digital recordings" speech five times a day. In a nutshell, almost all digital recording schemes use lossy compression. I know this discussion is about recordings like interviews where identification is not an issue, but we still prefer the trusty VHS format anyway. Have you ever tried importing digital video (especially DVDs) into an Avid system http://www.avid.com/forensic? On analog recordings, we can use tools like frame averaging to bring out detail, whereas digital video simply is what it is. Granted, it is just a matter of time before surveillance video is captured full-frame 1280x720 uncompressed, but in the mean time we are dealing with at least a thousand different DVR systems from mom-and-pop establishments that use different (often proprietary) codecs and compression schemes. We used to complain about the Stop-n-Robs that used the same VHS continuously for two years and expected the video to be perfect evidence. But now, based on my real-world experience, we wish the DVR stuff was half as good as the old tape/time lapsed/multiplexed analog video.

I do recommend you use pro gear regardless of which route you take. And always use a backup/redundant recorder (maybe even one analog and one digital). And ALWAYS test your equipment prior to use. About once a week I receive a request for audio enhancement on a video made at a Children's Assessment Center because the child cannot be heard. Did the system installer not realize that an abused kid might just whisper/mumble with their head down when having to talk about what happened to them?!?! Of course the adult can be heard just fine, but come on!

Japan. You really work in video business? Since even end user , consumer nowadays knows editing and fixing is never done on exact output resolutions intended. E.g. if you intend to air max 1080p, you work higher resolution, apply needed effects , cuts, downsample to HDTV resolution.

No, Japan does not broadcast 1080p. It (NHK)has demonstrated the possibility, and has broadcast cameras that can give a 1080p feed, but it's not put out OTA. An uncompressed 1080p stream is around 3Gbps. Compressed with all sorts of lovely codecs, you could probably get it down around 36Mbps. Not exactly ideal for wholesale air transmission. Cable at some point, perhaps. Also note that HDTV standard is only MPEG 2, MPEG4 and H.264 would be proprietary implementations. While your point is accurate, again you say "if you intend to air max 1080p"

AVID doesn't run on G5? Or you just checked their never updating site? I have no clue how you got your AVID but normally they offer turnkey based solutions via some distributor/importer with extensive support agreement. AVID does run with G5 based solutions just people like you can't afford them nor AVID or any professional video company really, really care about people browsing on web for AVID shopping.

You might want to re-read a bit more closely. Express Pro, Mojo and all manner of systems from Avid run on G5s. The NITRIS suite is Windows only . Although they have updated it now to let you run it on Opteron, not Xeon CPUs. Then check out the specs on systems like Xpress Pro - whilst Avid is bad at updating their site, I think they'd not neglect a minor detail like "that six digit product works on Mac, too!". "People like you can't afford them" - because you know all about me. Clue: Express Pro, Mojo, all those entry level Avid systems run around US$10,000-$US20,000 (give or take). A DS Nitris suite starts at US$150,000 and by the time you add in HD preview monitors and such, forgetting for a moment a fully fledged tape bank, storage network, etc, you're not going to get much change out of a half-mil.

I can even use old good Amiga 4000 with Genlock in such a critical situation. In fact, did once. For titles.

I will grant you, the Amiga was a gorgeous system, especially with the Video Toaster and Scala. Shame it died :(

Protein Folding is a TOY Application?

Again, read it again, more closely this time. Protein folding is not a toy application. Folding @ Home however, is, in the sense that it's a community thing. The results generated by your PC have to be checked and verified and such for use - although I will clarify that it's not as bad as SETI@home, where effectively people were just rechecking data that had already been processed.

Japan. You really work in video business? Since even end user , consumer nowadays knows editing and fixing is never done on exact output resolutions intended. E.g. if you intend to air max 1080p, you work higher resolution, apply needed effects , cuts, downsample to HDTV resolution.

No, Japan does not broadcast 1080p. It (NHK)has demonstrated the possibility, and has broadcast cameras that can give a 1080p feed, but it's not put out OTA. An uncompressed 1080p stream is around 3Gbps. Compressed with all sorts of lovely codecs, you could probably get it down around 36Mbps. Not exactly ideal for wholesale air transmission. Cable at some point, perhaps. Also note that HDTV standard is only MPEG 2, MPEG4 and H.264 would be proprietary implementations. While your point is accurate, again you say "if you intend to air max 1080p"

AVID doesn't run on G5? Or you just checked their never updating site? I have no clue how you got your AVID but normally they offer turnkey based solutions via some distributor/importer with extensive support agreement. AVID does run with G5 based solutions just people like you can't afford them nor AVID or any professional video company really, really care about people browsing on web for AVID shopping.

You might want to re-read a bit more closely. Express Pro, Mojo and all manner of systems from Avid run on G5s. The NITRIS suite is Windows only . Although they have updated it now to let you run it on Opteron, not Xeon CPUs. Then check out the specs on systems like Xpress Pro - whilst Avid is bad at updating their site, I think they'd not neglect a minor detail like "that six digit product works on Mac, too!". "People like you can't afford them" - because you know all about me. Clue: Express Pro, Mojo, all those entry level Avid systems run around US$10,000-$US20,000 (give or take). A DS Nitris suite starts at US$150,000 and by the time you add in HD preview monitors and such, forgetting for a moment a fully fledged tape bank, storage network, etc, you're not going to get much change out of a half-mil.

I can even use old good Amiga 4000 with Genlock in such a critical situation. In fact, did once. For titles.

I will grant you, the Amiga was a gorgeous system, especially with the Video Toaster and Scala. Shame it died :(

Protein Folding is a TOY Application?

Again, read it again, more closely this time. Protein folding is not a toy application. Folding @ Home however, is, in the sense that it's a community thing. The results generated by your PC have to be checked and verified and such for use - although I will clarify that it's not as bad as SETI@home, where effectively people were just rechecking data that had already been processed.

No they didn't. And, really truly it doesn't matter. The price drop here is to try to attract users of other software, like Autodesk Discreet Flame or the Avid DS-Nitris. The former runs about $80,000 for a full workstation and the latter is $125,000.

Apple here is unbundling render farm licenses and providing potential users with a look-see that is designed to sell Macintosh computers. The Mac version works better with Apple's Motion, so you can see that this is being marketed at the hobbyist and the very small studio with lots of time to render (on one machine, rather than a farm).

The high end motion picture and feature people who are working at film resolution totally don't care about a relatively minor price drop like this. They're willing to pay what they're willing to pay to get their job done. Is it cheaper than film processing? Yes? OK, let's invest. They don't care if it's cheaper now, they care that their visual effects artist knows the application. And they'll be buying whatever their VFX artist knows (and recommends).

So you can see this in two ways:
Apple is selling hardware by reducing the Mac-only cost.
Apple is trying to seed more people who know the application into the stream of up-and-coming VFX artists

Either way looks good for Apple.

Disclosure: I use Avid's DS-Nitris for compositing for a national television network in the United States.

If you can afford the 50-inch plasma, the 7.2 surround sound system, and appropriate high quality inputs, you might as well have a rack of G5 servers rendering your own customized movies too. Forget DVR, think the moral equivalent of Avid Nitris.

I note a whole lot of comments about how Apple "ought to do clones so that I could homebuild my own Mac," and Apple sux or Apple rox or whatever.

The real interest in this article is that Apple is moving forward to increase its market share. They're a hardware company and they also write software that makes their hardware really sparkle, though I have read a number of articles that suggest that their OS software created so much overhead that it's not a great server for a back-office application

But from the user's perspective -- a GUI tool to partition a hard drive, imagine that! Easy installation that starts out with a simple GUI, gosh, that's neat! -- Apple's operating system generates a user experience that sets it above many others. Apple has "done design" on its hardware and they have also "done design" on their software.

A great follow-on article to this would be a research project to teach 10 students to use Windows, 10 to use Apple's OS X, 10 to use a popular and easy-to-use distro of Linux, 10 to use BSD, etc. Then submit a survey to them after they're up and running on their computers and try to elicit how each user feels about the experience of using the operating system and the applications they would use to do regular work, like write term papers, do finances, research things on the Internet and so on.

From my own experience of having used Windows and Apple's System 7, 8 and 9 as well as OS X, I'd say my personal experience on a Mac is an easier one. I think I am more relaxed on it. I think less about computer problems than I used to and now think only in terms of getting the sork accomplished.

Apple won't allow clones because when they had clones, it almost took down the company. They need the high income stream to continue to innovate. Sorry about all of you homebrew computer enthusiasts out there who want to build your own Mac but this cannot be helped.

And there are cheaper Macs out there; the Mac Mini is being sold for as little as $499, "nicely outfitted" at $998, plus the cost of a monitor. But remember, you're not buying "homebrew." You're not buying an Acer heapy-cheapy clone from some box assembler that does not innovate. Apple should be compared to HP in terms of price because HP actually does put innovation in their computers. IBM used to but they sold out to Lenovo and now they'll fast besmirch the name. So price comparisons need to take reality into consideration -- one should not rank Apple's price with a lower-tier manufacturer.

Also, the Apple computer I purchased in 1999 is still going strong and very useful. I know of no pee cees that can last that long. This probably cuts into the perceived market share for Apple computers because, if you buy a good one, it'll last longer than the equivelant pee cee. Look at the user-installed base to see Apple's true market share. I even know of people who are still using Apple's old System software and have not transitioned to OS X. One, in particular, does audio mixing with Digidesign's Pro Tools and not Avid's because the old software that ran under the old OS meets all current and future needs -- until his Mac finally bites the dust.

Intel makes processors and motherboards. Apple went with Intel, presumably because they had something more to offer than IBM.

Correct. It does not.

In fact, there's a serious lack of a decent alternative to iTunes for OS X: ie an regular good ol' winamp-like MP3 player,

"Audion 3: The ultimate Macintosh MP3 player / encoder". Probably the best of the bunch, and it was recently discontinued for OS X. Why? Various reasons, but mainly because an arguably superior product is now available for free. (Oh, us poor, poor consumers.)

and a lack of a decent alternative to Quicktime (VLC doesn't count, im talking things like Zoom Player).

Let me guess: VLC doesn't count because it's existence contradicts your argument. VLC is a fine program, with much broader format support, and terrific support for subtitles. Between that and Mplayer, I don't need to use Quicktime at all, nor do I need an [expletive] "pro" key to go full-screen.

On the Windows front, there's a whole wackload of alternatives for Windows Media Player that goes on and on and on.

Yeah, a bigger user base will do that for ya. Thanks, Captain Observo.

In that respect, there's no decent photo viewer other than iPhoto (Picasa is there for PC),

Come on, perform at least a cursory search before opening your mouth. Shoebox is an excellent program.

no decent consumer video editor other than iMovie (plenty for PC)

Depending on how you cut the difference between 'pro' and 'consumer', the numbers change. How about Hyperengine AV, and Avid Free DV? But more to the point:

and so on and so forth. No one has competed with Apple on this front. Why? Because it's their by default? Why isn't Apple getting sued?

Because, in case you're forgotten, the "sue your platform" tactic was already tried by Netscape, and THEY LOST. Even the much more sinister bundling and OEM contracts cases amounted to almost nothing in the end.

Suffice to say Microsoft is doing absolutely nothing to stop others from installing other browsers/media players or whatever people want.

I don't know about absolutely nothing, but at least they are now forbidden to enter into exclusive bundling contracts with OEMs with obvious intent to crush a competitor. That policy has changed, to eliminate the middleman. That policy now reads, "Just buy the competitor."

So Real Player has every opportunity to gather attention, and in fact their player used to be quite popular. Then it started to be spyware ridden, over-bloated interface and horribly slow player, and they lost it.

A perfect example of a media delivery middleman doing exactly the wrong thing: Making it harder for people to get what they're after, instead of easier. (That's why the Quicktime interface consists of: A row of navigation buttons, and a volume control. No hippy-dippy "skins" to apply, no grating 'bonus content' area, and the 'favorites' in a simple, detached, closable window that most people never see.)

If you're still wondering why Apple isn't being sued while Microsoft was, take note that you're comparing Apples to oranges. If you don't want iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Terminal on your machine, you can just drag them to the trash, and empty it. And third-party apps continue to work just fine. If you don't want Internet Explorer, WMP, or Outlook Express as part of Windows, you're facing a very different uphill battle. For a while, your 'best' solution was to download an

I've heard good things about Vegas, and I know people that prefer Avid Xpress over FCP, whether on Mac or PC.

If you want to recommend something to someone who wants to use a real NLE, but doesn't have the funds, have them try Avid Free DV. It requires either a 933 Mhz P3 or a 667 Mhz G4.

More Firewire DV and audio stuff:

ADS Pyro A/V Link
Avid Mojo
MOTU 896HD 196kHz Firewire audio interface

If you are want a super high-end video editing app then arguably nothing beats Avid. They have a free DV version of their software that only has minimal hinderances. Actually I find that their free version is on par with Premiere.

Check it out at http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp?dm=whatsNew

I don't think you know the difference between editing and compositing for vfx (which is what inferno does).

Avid is still the standard editor in Hollywood, although FCP has been making major inroads.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, that should be of interest to you whatever platform you're editing on: Avid has a free version. My unsolicited advice: If you learn the interface, you stand a better chance of schmoozing yourself an editing or assistant editor gig.

Best of luck!

If you're doing pro video editing, you really owe it to yourself to seriously look into Mac systems. A good place to start is at Apple. Keep an eye on their Pro Day Wednesdays at the Apple retail stores (if you have one near you). Right now they seem to be pushing Motion pretty heavily, but hopefully they'll continue to offer seminars on FCP.

Final Cut Pro is not necessarily the ultimate in editing (though I prefer it). Look also at offerings from Avid, which run on both Mac and Windows PCs. Avid still owns the high end, and while FCP has made substantial inroads, more editing is still done on Avid systems.

You say you can't afford a Mac. This tells me one of two things: You're doing low end work (nothing wrong with that, per se) or you're not charging enough money for your services. Possibly both. You might also qualify for an SBA loan. Bottom line is that if better equipment will help you make more money, it's a wise investment. Keep the PC for your games and what have you, but get a mac for editing.

Avid provide a good solution but it's not free software...
It do all the real time stuff and more...
I ordered the demo cd for my bro (who is filmmaker) and it seems to be a pretty good software.
You will need probably some extra hardware and the price for avid xpress pro is ~1700$

Avid provide a good solution but it's not free software...
It do all the real time stuff and more...
I ordered the demo cd for my bro (who is filmmaker) and it seems to be a pretty good software.
You will need probably some extra hardware and the price for avid xpress pro is ~1700$

For workflow and data sharing (that would be video, audio, still images and the like) Avid came up with something they call the Avid Unity. We have seventeen Avid DS workstations and one Unity shared between three of them for two specific purposes that I shall not elaborate on.

When we do file copies through the Unity from any workstation that is in the midst of a render, Windows XP Professional crashes. Cannot hit [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[Del] and end the application. Avid tells us not to do this, they cannot solve a Microsoft problem. And, since it's someone else pulling files out of your workstation's RAID, you don't usually know what happened until after someone apologizes for taking your system down.

When we're in the middle of a long render, we cannot pop out to the desktop and do any Windows file management (organizing, cleaining up, emptying the Recycle bin, anything). Avid tells us that Windows XP multi-tasking model is not truly pre-emptively multi-tasking and that we're looking for a crash there. Generally, I've been able to [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[Del] and end the application but sometimes XP just bites the dust. This is not related to the Unity server.

I notice a lot of screen redraw problems when the system is taxed. I have never seen Apple's OS X fail to redraw a screen. Now, maybe I've been being spoiled by using Unix but I cannot imagine why updating an operator's environment should come second to some other task. This is not related to the Unity server.

We have been told never to print when doing a file copy. I don't ususlly do that bue we've been told that Windows XP Professional cannot run their printer drivers when doing that.

The Avid DS is a pretty massive application and the file transfer operations are transfering a lot of data. It is very taxing of the processor, though the Nitris breakout box does a fair amount of real-time processing. I think one of the big problems is I/O from hard drives, networks and processor-intensive work can't all happen at once. But I don't see anything here that a modern operating system ought not to be able to handle.

I suppose one could blame all of this on the Avid DS but SoftImage wrote this with partnership help from Microsoft. There is no reason why the DS software people should have not been able to deal correctly with Microsoft's APIs

Some time ago, Microsoft purchased a company called SoftImage. Turned out to be a good investment in 3D development and film compositing with a product called the DS.

Meanwhile, in Tewksbury, the Avid Media Composer which ran only on the Apple Macintosh platform was ported to Windows when Microsoft made some investments in Avid. About that time Apple (unwisely) discontinued their six PCI-Slot Macintosh..

When Avid noted that their product was dead-ended because its code basis assumed a raster that was limited to NTSC and PAL television format, they purchased SoftImage's DS in order to be able to easily produce software that will do film and high definition video.

Microsoft doesn't make investments for nothing. I believe I can do something very close to what Microsoft is doing for Mini-DV video on any format of video or film with the Avid DS -- though for a lot more money (something like $120K USD). I would not be surprised if they got the technology from that very old investment.

As a creative person though, I have to say I don't like the fact that the DS-Nitris will probably never run on a Macintosh. We have problems with ours that are related mostly to two issues: Operator screw-ups (expected) and Microsoft Windows XP Professional limitations, many of which do not exist in Apple's current versions of Unix.

Avid's Nitris hardware requires PCI-X, as will pretty much any uncompressed HD NLE solution.

Atto's UL320 is a good example of the kind of scsi adapter you'll need if you want to write that uncompressed HD video out to disk.

While the Avid HW, is fairly esoteric, the SCSI adapter is pretty mainstream. I'd choose it for driving a home media server for instance.

Apple in the movie industry? I've never seen an Apple computer in a movie...

I assume you're referring to Premiere?

In my ten years in television production, I've seen a lot of changes; high-dollar proprietary replaced by off-the-shelf PCs, linear, deck-to-deck editing replaced by non-linear on a computer.

The current golden child in the video editing industry is Final Cut Pro; it doesn't require any additional hardware cards, which means it can easily be run on a laptop as well as a PC. A faster computer means a faster editing suite, without having to fork out more cash for the software. In the Wintel world, you can get Speed Razor for the same flexibility.

The big boys may be running discreet and Avid systems, but they only represent a small percentage of the market (that part that has obscene amounts of money to burn.) There are a lot of botique shops out there that need a cheaper solution (something that doesn't cost more than a house to get into.)

Thankfully, video editing software and hardware are becoming just as much a commodity as many other high end applications have, and Apple is helping to drive the prices down with FCP. If you can manage to run a competitive business with off-the-shelf parts for as cheap as possible, then more power to you. Pocket the rest and call it good.

I haven't seen anyone point out yet that Avid has responded to FCP by announcing a free version of their editing software for DVD, just as they already offer a free version of ProTools.

It should be fully functional (ie, not a "demo' version) although somewhat limited in terms of number of tracks. But no watermarks or anything. More info here.

As anyone who has used both Avid and FCP can attest, Avid's GUI is far superior. Or at least was, as I haven't used FCP since 2.0.

W

That said, here's the equipment that we use to make it happen:

• 1 Canon GL2 MiniDV camera
• a bunch of Sony digital video cameras (that's not the exact model, but close to it)
• a boom mic (I have no idea what model, but it cost around $300, I think)
• a wireless clip-on mic (again, no idea what model, but it works well)
• a bunch of G4 Tower workstations with Final Cut Pro 3 (though this is mostly because we have a ton of people doing different things all at once, you don't really need more than 1)
• a dual 1Ghz G4 Tower with 1.5GB RAM on which we (I) assemble everyone's edited footage and export to video.

We use Final Cut Pro mostly because we have the luxury of a lab full of mid- to high-end Macs, but also because it is an extremely powerful software package for what you pay for it. The only thing that really compares in that price range is Avid XpressDV, which is slightly more expensive, runs on Windows and has its own unique advantages. Some people will try to tell you to use Adobe Premiere to edit your footage, as it is less expensive than either of the two suites that I just mentioned, but I wouldn't recommend it. While I have not worked with it personally, my filmmaking/broadcasting teacher worked with it at the last school he taught at, and it gave him nothing but trouble.

Any serious video editing will require some serious hardware to handle everything smoothly. Tons of RAM (on the order of 768MB or more) is a must, and it is also desireable to get a dual processor machine (dual Athlon systems are fairly inexpensive if you're working on a tight budget and choose to go with a Windows solution). Also, make sure your machine supports FireWire. On any fairly new Mac, this is a given, and support for it is built right into OS X and has worked flawlessly for me. FireWire is pretty much the only way to do video capture well, as most, if not all, DV cameras support it and it is many times faster than USB.

The editing will take much longer than shooting any of your actual footage. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.

Also, if you want to get better image quality, see if you can find a digital video camera that uses BetaSP instead of MiniDV. They may be more expensive, but they produce a much higher image quality and consequently, look much better on NTSC monitors and TVs (I'm assuming you're in the US here).

As far as distributing your footage is concerned, I know that Final Cut Pro allows you to export the movie in several different formats suitable for online distribution, as well as printing back to tape and burning to DVD. Printing to tape is how we finalize our broadcasts, as we just hook up a camcorder, record our edited footage onto it, and then hook the camcorder up to the coax broadcasting hardware with component video cables. Beyond that, I don't have any experience. For DVD authoring, I know that Apple also sells DVD Studio Pro, which I've heard is an excellent DVD authoring tool.

I've learned so much in this past year of working with digital video that I'm sure there's tons that I'm leaving out, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what is required. Please feel free to respond with any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

I'm a film student at the moment, and at this point I've used most of the options out there-- my school's friendly like that. For what it's worth, here's some opinions.

You've basically got three choices in software when it comes to editing-- Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Avid. Anybody that tells you that combining Photoshop and After Effects will suffice is apparently only interested in color correcting some darn pretty titles.

First off: Adobe Premiere. I've used it on both PCs and Macs, and it's the suite to which most "prosumers" will probably have access. Guess what? It sucks. Plain and simple. Sorry.

It will allow you to cut and paste and do your standard basic functions, but guess what: so does iMovie. It is the buggiest program that Adobe releases. It seems the only guaranteed feature of Premiere is that it will crash two minutes before it's done rendering, and corrupt your video files.

On some projects I've spent more time repeating steps due to crashes than it took to shoot the thing in the first place. Don't make the same mistake of using it.

Second: Avid. Probably out of most everybody's hands, because of cost, although it is the professional choice. Approximately 95% of television work and 80% of film features are edited on Avid, IIRC, but it's pricey to get the full hardware suite. They offer several levels of product-- Avid Xpress is the simplest, and will still run you $10,000. It's the only one I've used. It goes up to Avid Symphony, which is basically the same package, but with better hardware, more features, more possible video and audio tracks, etc.

My complaint with Avid is that it's not very user-friendly. Their dialogs tend to be tiny icons with no explanatory text. If you're going into the field, it's a system worth knowing, but the learning curve is high.

(Incidentally, Avid has just released a stand-alone software program to compete with Premiere and Final Cut, called Avid Xpress DV. Haven't used it, but it's apparently very similar to the rest of its family. So beware.)

And then there's Final Cut Pro. It's only available for the Mac. This is unfortunate, because IMHO, it's by far the best program out there. Easy to use, a wide array of features, moderate learning curve but decidely worth the hassle. Get yourself hooked up with a dual-1.25GHz G4 machine, and you can render scenes in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. This thing has color correction, titling, and just about anything else I've needed so far, within the framework of one program. No jumping around. Stable. Simply beautiful.

The final verdict? For the cost of the basic Avid, you could buy yourself two top-of-the-line Final Cut Mac workstations. Going from Premiere to FCP is a revelation, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the field. At home I'm a PC guy, and I've still got to say the Mac is the way to go.

Just be sure to buy yourself a two-button mouse, then you're all set. ;)

I'm a film student at the moment, and at this point I've used most of the options out there-- my school's friendly like that. For what it's worth, here's some opinions.

You've basically got three choices in software when it comes to editing-- Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Avid. Anybody that tells you that combining Photoshop and After Effects will suffice is apparently only interested in color correcting some darn pretty titles.

First off: Adobe Premiere. I've used it on both PCs and Macs, and it's the suite to which most "prosumers" will probably have access. Guess what? It sucks. Plain and simple. Sorry.

It will allow you to cut and paste and do your standard basic functions, but guess what: so does iMovie. It is the buggiest program that Adobe releases. It seems the only guaranteed feature of Premiere is that it will crash two minutes before it's done rendering, and corrupt your video files.

On some projects I've spent more time repeating steps due to crashes than it took to shoot the thing in the first place. Don't make the same mistake of using it.

Second: Avid. Probably out of most everybody's hands, because of cost, although it is the professional choice. Approximately 95% of television work and 80% of film features are edited on Avid, IIRC, but it's pricey to get the full hardware suite. They offer several levels of product-- Avid Xpress is the simplest, and will still run you $10,000. It's the only one I've used. It goes up to Avid Symphony, which is basically the same package, but with better hardware, more features, more possible video and audio tracks, etc.

My complaint with Avid is that it's not very user-friendly. Their dialogs tend to be tiny icons with no explanatory text. If you're going into the field, it's a system worth knowing, but the learning curve is high.

(Incidentally, Avid has just released a stand-alone software program to compete with Premiere and Final Cut, called Avid Xpress DV. Haven't used it, but it's apparently very similar to the rest of its family. So beware.)

And then there's Final Cut Pro. It's only available for the Mac. This is unfortunate, because IMHO, it's by far the best program out there. Easy to use, a wide array of features, moderate learning curve but decidely worth the hassle. Get yourself hooked up with a dual-1.25GHz G4 machine, and you can render scenes in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. This thing has color correction, titling, and just about anything else I've needed so far, within the framework of one program. No jumping around. Stable. Simply beautiful.

The final verdict? For the cost of the basic Avid, you could buy yourself two top-of-the-line Final Cut Mac workstations. Going from Premiere to FCP is a revelation, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the field. At home I'm a PC guy, and I've still got to say the Mac is the way to go.

Just be sure to buy yourself a two-button mouse, then you're all set. ;)

Not. He's doing offline content creation. That requires power, but not the hard real-time of broadcast.

Current AVID gear tends to be rackmount specialized hardware front-ended by Windows 2K boxes. The real-time video data isn't flowing through the Win2K boxes. But in theory, current PCs have the bandwidth to do the job. It's more of a CPU scheduling and data pipeline management problem. The problem is designing systems that never drop a frame.

Apple does well at this because they design the whole device chain to work together.

AND there are a whole host of good hardware video and audio cards coming out that enable a bunch of good realtime effects and whatnot for finalcut. Bottom line, avid is old news, and I think we'll quickly see FCP as the broadcast standard inside of 3 years.

All this is because doing things really right, with full raytracing and global illumination, is too expensive even for production off-line rendering.

Not true. Ice Age was raytraced. At the time I remember reading about how their solution was vastly more memory efficient than other movie renderers (such as Renderman) as there was no intermediate polygon stage.

I'm not sure about global illumination, but that can't be far behind.

If you're using Avid Symphony, Avid|DS, Avid|DS HD, or Avid|DS HD Editor, you are most certainly uisng a Windows box as you can't run any of this on any other system. If you are running 3D StudioMAX, once again, you are running Windows because this is all it runs on. Should I go on?

If you're using Avid Symphony, Avid|DS, Avid|DS HD, or Avid|DS HD Editor, you are most certainly uisng a Windows box as you can't run any of this on any other system. If you are running 3D StudioMAX, once again, you are running Windows because this is all it runs on. Should I go on?

The biggest mystery is the obscurity of the story until now. "It looks to me as if the whole U.S. press missed the story," says Joe Barr, a technology journalist who frequently writes for IDG's LinuxWorld.

So let me get this straight. Two weeks after Sept. 11 and in the middle of the anthrax attacksthe U.S. press missed a story about $400,000 fine issued (IN FRANCE) against Microsoft (with $40 Billion on hand) for putting unauthorized code in an obscure software package that it no longer owns (Avid). No shit. Really! They must be biased!