Final Cut Pro vs. Avid – An Ode to the Moviola.
Posted on: September 24, 200821 comments so far (is that a lot?)
By Lawrence Jordan
After many years of working on the Avid Media Composer, and several years of working professionally in Final Cut Pro, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Media Composer is the digital equivalent of the Moviola, the primary tool of professional editors for generations. Final Cut Pro can’t make this claim and here I’ll explain one of the reasons why.
Invented in 1924, the Moviola was an editing device used to cut celluloid film. It was originally designed to be a home movie projector, but when sales didn’t take off, it was redesigned specifically to edit motion pictures. You threaded the film on the big, black (and later green) machine and you could run shots and sequences back and forth, pretty much until the sprockets wore out (and they did). The Moviola was a clackety, loud apparatus and if you weren’t careful, you could catch your finger in the threading mechanism. Having done this personally on several occasions I can assure you it wasn’t pleasant. My point being that editing on a Moviola was a much more physical experience than editing on a computer. This, of course, is true of so many of the work tasks digital technologies have replaced.
The physicality of cutting on a Moviola was also demonstrated by the fact that many editors stood at their Moviola. While reviewing the film, shot or sequence, the editor would mark the film with a grease pencil (a thick, greased-based marker, which you could wipe off the film) take it out of the threading mechanism and physically make your cut. This technique worked well and the modest machine was the de facto standard of the editing craft for many, many years.
However, the real magic of working on the Moviola was finding your cut point. Equipped with an actual hand-brake, it enabled you to find your cut point, and stop the machine on the exact frame you desired. This was (and still is) critically important. As an editor you become physically as well as mentally immersed in the material. Filmmakers talk about “feeling” the cut and I’ve known many editors who would sway with the rhythms of the action or dialog while cutting. It is almost like a dance, the film being your partner and when you were really in sync with your partners rhythms, you were really in the zone.
I know many readers are saying, so what does this have to do with Avid vs. Final Cut Pro?
Cut Point: The Moviola's Trusty Handbrake
Final Cut Pro has always suffered from something called “latency”. Latency in digital editing simply means that when you attempt to mark or stop on a specific frame (i.e. Moviola’s hand-brake) the software takes a moment to respond. It can also be observed when you play something in the timeline and it runs out of sync. This is especially true with some of the newer compressed HD formats hitting the market and is a complete deal breaker for almost all professional editors. The worst part about latency is that it tends to break the flow or, once again, the rhythm of the work.
This is one of several reasons that 99% of all major motion pictures continue to be cut on the Avid. You can stop and mark on a dime with no latency. This is true when working in a cut sequence or simply trimming a clip. Avid editors have the added ability to mark in or out continuously, in rapid-fire succession if they choose without the software exhibiting as much as a flinch. This has held true since the first day I worked on the Avid in 1992. Many FCP stalwarts argue that latency isn’t a problem. I don’t want to burst their bubble, but I’ve been working in the trenches with the software for the last several years and it just ain’t so. These folks have either never cut anything rhythmically or don’t understand what it is.
Final Cut Pro is a terrific product, I particularly admire the fact that it has enabled so many to gain a deeper understanding of the editing craft. However, if it ever is going to grab a larger share of the studio filmmaking pie, it will have to address the latency issue as well as several other non-intuitive functions that hinder its adoption by the majority of professional editors.
In the next installment of this series, I’ll discuss another of Final Cut Pro’s Achilles heels…Trimming
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September 24th, 2008 at 11:05 am
So true… once you experience the butter smoothness of avid timeline, the end…
married for life
September 24th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
For those of us that have edited on tape (like I did for 15 years) latency was always a matter of how much and not if. I’ve never edited film so the latency in FCP is what I’ve always known.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Market-wise, I see AVID as the stalwart defending it’s position. True to form it has the high-end and broadcast market nailed, but its user base is older than younger…
The point here is Apple has won the hearts and minds of a youthful generation, even those in the video editing sphere.
Those rising up on FCP won’t know what latency is, or the lack thereof because they are simply use to FCP. Trimming may be another issue FCP users are ignorant about as well.
Remember, Redmond didn’t need to be “better” to win, they just needed to be “good enough” at a solid price point. They’ve won the day for the past 15 years, and the next 15.
For AVID, Apple’s FCP may not be as elegant, but it surely good enough, and have many features and workflow within OS X that make it a lower-cost, “good enough” solution for the masses.
QUESTION: This leads me to wonder whether or not Apple will get around to nagging “not like AVID” issues, or if they feel the beat of their own drum will be the rule of today – and tomorrow?… Perhaps Apple just buys AVID, but that seems unlikely due to AVID’s lack of financial performance and lack of any large growth opportunities in the near or long-term future.
September 26th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
final cut finish to destroy a work, editor, where the technical side is the less important. People work alone, without learning editing, learning just a keyboard and a place of memory… it’s so easy to cut, but not easy to learn editing ! i learned in 35mm, after in avid, now with everything but i constat that the reel editor are less and less each day, remplaced by butchers who knows evrthing of the technical virtual machines, not of the relation complex, with a director…
September 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I find that many of the things I found to be the most compelling in Media Composer are completely alien to FCP editors (certainly the ‘natives’). Things I value so highly in Avid, like media management, trimming, latency, realtime performance… Raising the issues with FCP user just garners blank looks a lot of time time.
While I really value the lack of latency in MC (although the fact that the audio can continue a frame or two after the point can be offputting) I find that, because of my online editing experience I am more concerned with the media management issues in FCP, things like the inability to link a sequence against existing media by timecode and tape.
I am hoping to arrange a head-to-head evaluation of FCP and MC in the near future – a range of common scenarios (for our broadcast work) with the intention of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I love Larry but have to disagree. I alternate almost daily between Avid, which I have been working on since 1990- system id #6, and FCP. I have never experienced a latency “problem” with FCP. Yes sometimes, playback may go out of sync, but you stop momentarily and hit play again and you are back in sync. It is a VERY rare issue. I have not had a chance to cut on the new Avid 3.0, but Adrenaline is sloppy when it comes to stopping on an exact frame. In my experience you usually end up about 4 frames off. I personally find FCP to be more accurate. Not to mention the flexibility of the timeline and the system in general allows me to work much faster and be more creative. I have cut many music videos and music driven commercials on FCP and find it a much better editing tool.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:27 am
I agree totally with Ronsuss, latency is a very rare problem with FCP which I have been editing on paralell to avid the past 2 years. I have been editing on Avid for 10 years prior and to me the constant AVID crashing on every version and platform I have used is much more irritating than a FCP lagging now and then but hardly ever crashing…
… but trimming and media management would be nice…
September 30th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Meh. I’ve been editing commercials and promos on both Avid systems and FCP for almost 10 years. I have never experienced that FCP goes out of sync, and the UI feels snappier and more responsive than all Avid systems I have used. I work much faster on FCP, and I don’t have to learn new ways to work when moving from the low end DV-editing machines to the high end HD-systems.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I haven’t used Final Cut Studio 2 much yet, but I currently use Avid Media Composer 3. I used to use Final Cut 4.5 for a while, but I learned editing on Avid MCXpress in about 1997. When I first switched to Final Cut, I hated it. Then I fell in love. When I switched back to Avid, I hated it. Now I’m back to a decent liking of Avid.
We’ve got these camps, just like Coke/Pepsi and Chevy/Ford, but what it boils down to is what you are used to… and what does the job.
My only real complaint about Avid is how far from user friendly it is. All their errors are some abstract code reference without anything in English telling you what’s really the problem. You can’t upgrade A until they patch B. C and D can never run on the same system. E and F will work together if you install them in the right order and power down G first. All the rules… if you’re talking about interrupting your creative flow when you’re really in the zone, well…
October 11th, 2008 at 9:36 am
argue to be continued.its just like.. egg comes first or bird ? personaly i think its depend on whom more comfotable on which machine.. i love avid because i learnd editing from it. after 4 year working in FCP still i prefer avid most. we cant specifi which is best or not. two three more machine were came (premiere, DPS velocity, edit)n gone, still avid stand on there place.. for me all machine is good what will come to me. because as an editor its also my job to control production cost.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I am toying with the idea of editing my next film on a avid. I have edited two shorts with final cut at uni and my editor swares by them. I am not a pro editor by no means, should myself and my editor turn to avid?
October 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I have edited in linear systems, VPE131, in all Avid’s flavours and in FCP 5.0.
In my own experience, I could affirm that FCP has latency. If you come playing the sequence an mark an edit point or stop with space bar, the application will mark or stop around 4 frames after, and it’s true that you’ll never see audio sync in an external monitor.
But for me the biggest problems of FCP are the need to render, and render, and render… the lack of a audio master in the mixer, his terrible variable speed, and the absence of his own hardware… people! it is impossible to work seriously without hardware! and it’s also impossible for me let third party companies develope it, while Apple improoves IPhones… there you know how they care about the media businesses…
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
For me it comes down to the fact that FCS is a mass-market product made by a mass-market company, who can’t decide what it wants to be. Apple makes changes in QuickTime to accommodate the consumer-driven app iTunes, and it breaks FinalCut. They’re focused on selling music and iPhones, which are making them a boatload of money, while ProApps have little if any profit and make money only when the user is forced into buying Apple hardware.
Not that Avid has been particularly good at deciding who they are until only recently, but they at least know themselves as a maker of niche products for a specific industry (notwithstanding the Pinnacle acquisition). They don’t have to append their product names with “Pro” because people know they’re professional. Yes, they fell into that trap with ExpressPro, but humor me anyway.
Let us and Avid not be so elitist that we ignore the FCP juggernaut – there’s always the possibility that Mr. Jobs secretly loves FinalCut and the kinks will be worked out. And other systems have figured (out or will) that playing nice with FCP XMLs is a good thing. Avid still has their marketing work cut out for them. Buzz isn’t always easy to generate. But success isn’t always about buzz, either.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I have been editing in Avid & FCP and my experience is that what Apple has done with FCP is that they have unmystified quite a few editing routines which would have been more difficult to do with Avid (or I do not know how to use that software…) but there is one thing which makes me return to Avid. I have been running Avid 2 months non stop editing a big factual series without a single crash while FCP has crashed one a day. For me these are two very different workhorses. If I would cut a documentary or feature film I would choose avid but for promos or music videos it would be FCP because of the suitability of the UI of those softwares for those tasks in my opinion.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
FCP is a joke! It was terrible at launch v1 it isn’t any better now. I for one have had my bumps with Avid, but it is the real deal a workhorse, which will not let you down. I’m currently cutting on the Quantel system and I’ll just say I miss my Avid.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Haven’t used FCP but have been using the Adobe suite of products now for over 12 years. Started with my present position about 3 years ago. They had an AVID Adrenaline. Took a course on it and, the more I learned about it, the less I liked it. Way too cumbersome to use as compared to PremierePro. Wanna drag a clip on the timeline? One mouse click in Premiere as compared to several in Avid. Effects? drop’em on the clip, no ’step in – step out’. Finally got rid of the Avid and for the price of four years of AVID maintenance contracts, built two excellent workstations with Adobe Production bundles.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Vince…I totally agree with you.
I´m also doing some editing in a Quantel EQ, and boy,
is Avid the supreme deal.
As for other opinions, I must say, I´ve edited in both systems, I still prefer Avid.
They have opposite backgrounds, Apple ascending to the big league, Avid stepping down from it´s High-End pedestal.
This is just my view, but I feel a much closer
connection to my work using avid, is much more stable,
organized and powerful, and gives you intense proximity with what you are doing.
I can admit though, that for some it may have a steep learning curve, because it has some major differences
from other pro-sumer NLE´s like Premiere, Vegas, Edius or FCP, that have similar workflows.
But once you get to it, there´s no turning back.
Other strong issue about Avid is it´s network capabilities…there is nothing like a unity storage
for capture and managing media, fast and easy.
Forget that Xsan horror movie…
I understand that for some users, FCP may be the choice, its more visually appealing,”ready to go”,with on sight tools. It also has to do with generational issues, all Apple products are an object of desire, cleverly marketed, and as for FCP, it comes with that marketing attached to it, and it also comes as a whole package.
If you buy FCP, it only supports Mac O.S, and it comes with a bundle of additional software.
It doesnt mean its necessarily great software, but the point is : you get all you need from one provider,
the O.S, the editing, audio, color correction,effects
software, and that has an incredible market value.
Avid has recently changed that, by selling the best
software for editing with accessible price I´ve ever known (media composer 3.0) with an amazing software package. Dont think Avid equals perfection…
It has some unbelievable flaws…like it´s limited
range of formats for import (which I think is related with copyright and legal issues, and connections to film industry) when playing, you can´t do anything else, or it stops, and sometimes it crashes very often, but I know for sure, that these crashes are more related to windows than Avid itself.
With recent price dropping from AVID, competition will gain some life, but as John said, avid has some marketing homework to do.
This is a never ending and even passionate discussion, but as an editor who works with about 5 or 6 different systems, I can tell you, its not the tool that makes the editor. I you feel FCP is better for you, and meets your requirements, than it´s the right tool for you. I can only tell you that when I work with AVID, there is no tool…just the story being cut.
Greetings to all.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I guess I,m the first Malaysian to used the Avid since 1991.I’ve used most of Avid editing products even the Avid Media Suite Pro. As a film editor I’m so used with the Steinbeck where you use your marker to mark your cutting points, splicer to cut and your splicing tape to joint.Then when I read about the Avid NLE in a magazine and a company in Singapore offers a 3 day short course, I say to myself why don’t I give it a try. At that time I have zero knowledge about computers, I was quite worried, after using it I found that it’s the best editing tool, it’s easy, user friendly, all the footages/clips are well organized in the bins and many other features. In 1994 I was offered to edit a movie using Media Composer 5.0. from that day on there is no turning back now I’m using the Avid Adrenaline.FCP is not a bad tool it’s quite easy to handle, for me FCP is more of a Prosumer product it doesn’t have the flexibility and luxury of an Avid. For example to search a clip from the timeline and it’s where about in the bin is simple in Avid, in FCP you can get to the clip but the where it is situated, you’ve got to look for it by yourself. Even to create a simple title is difficult. For story teller, there are no other tool just AVID.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Just like what the last User, Said….
FCP is more of a Prosumer product it doesn’t have the flexibility and luxury of an Avid. For example to search a clip from the timeline and it’s where about in the bin is simple in Avid, in FCP you can get to the clip but the where it is situated, you’ve got to look for it by yourself. Even to create a simple title is difficult. For story teller, there are no other tool just AVID.
Avid is for the real prof, I mean truly professional. A lots of FCP don’t realy have time to adapt to new leaning curves so they just by-pass the good stuff avid truly offer…
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:36 am
Final Cut Pro can never and will never AVID’s capabilites. I’ve used AVID since 1994 and Final Cut Pro since 2000. Avid’s useablilty blows the doors off Final Cut pro, Avid is a workhorse and FCP is a workaround. I blame this on the fact that AVID holds all the patents on user interface and functionality that apple cannot copy. FCP is clunky and non intuitive in dealing with timeline patching, and slipping and sliding audio and video independantly, pure hell having to lock tracks to make an overlap edit. AVID i can roll 6 clips or more simulatneously in the trim tool left or right and be done with it and maintain the effects, the same move in FCP is and hour process with redoing all my keyframes.
When you have all the patents you win. FCP is works for cutting straight up non effect driven series. AVID rises to the challenge and the integration of Sapphire and Boris plugins is 200% better with the AVX versions than the apple versions… i could go on with why AVID is better. but the truth is dunderhead executives only see the price of the FCP system up front, they don’t see the cost of slow and labored production down the road.
AVID worked hard in the early days to build the best editor around and to win the game, to put in tons of features that eveyone needed. FCP bought out radius edit and changed very little of the interface and instead of innovation they went after the low end of the market, and stole customers by providing easily copyable software without dongles. Which AVID is now discovering as a way to spread illegal copies to the youth and get them hooked.
I would rather professionally work on AVID when i have to get Series work done, FCP is good for the odd freelance project at home for the odd corporate client.
just my 2 cents.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
@Musa
Park the playhead on a clip in FCP. Hit Shift+F and it finds it in the bin.