NEWS
Final Cut Pro 5 Gets Avid's Adrenaline Running
story and photos by Bill Stetz
As
a much-anticipated event, "A Side-by-Side Comparison of Avid Adrenaline
and Apple's Final Cut Pro: No Hype, No Spin—You Be the Judge,"
came off a little less contentious than it sounds. This seminar for
Editors Guild members took place at the Directors Guild of America's
Theatre 2 in late September.
The players came together just prior to the event to establish a few ground rules that weren't really adhered to when the evening became a mix of questions from the audience, suggestions by judges and a little bit of a clumsy switching-from-system-to-system problem. The seminar did make a few points obvious about the differences between the two software approaches to the same tasks. Both systems used a Mac platform running Tiger, although for unexplained reasons and to inconsequential effect, the Avid operated on a dual 2.5gHtz system while the Apple software ran on a dual 2.7gHtz box. Michael DeMucci of Imaginary Forces coordinated the equipment delivery needed to make this presentation viable. The other sponsors—Keycode Media, Aarmadillo, Westwind Media, Electric Picture Solutions and AJA—supplied the hardware/software setups which, besides the Apple platforms, included AJA Kona cards, hard drives and projection equipment.
Mike Cavanagh, president of Keycode Media and the evening's Master of Ceremonies, began by laying out the rules and introducing the players. Michael Klein would operate the Avid Adrenaline system while Sharon Franklin would handle the Apple Final Cut Pro 5 (FCP5). Two judges sat on the floor near each editor. The judges were Steven J. Cohen and Billy Fox. Apple sales representative Doug Cunningham, Avid product designer Michael Phillips and AJA's Ted Schilowitz were the manufacturer representatives present.
The program was supposed to cover five principal areas of the editing process; 1) input, (introducing the file assets into the system), 2) project set-up, file organization and management, 3) editing techniques, 4) handling effects and 5) output of projects. However, only the first half of the items were addressed in the three-hour seminar. The interest being high, the audience stayed, for the most part, until the conclusion and was helpful in offering suggestions for work-arounds and approaches to technique.
Klein
began with the Avid, starting with the set-up of projects, and explained
the bin structure of the Adrenaline software. He impressively demonstrated
how the Avid software digitized clips through import and how easily
bin clips could be organized, sorted, notated or color coded at the
editor's whim for clip searches and insertion into the edit timeline.
Klein explained that file management was a strength of the Avid workflow—and
made it look so. Avid clips can also be tied to up to four alternate
timecodes per clip. Just about any type of material, (video, audio,
mp3) is easily dragged and dropped into the timeline. Also, the bin
clips may be viewed as screen icons, previewed in the bin window and
even set for in and out frames (while still in the bin) before the
clip is dropped into the preview window or timeline.
A very convenient feature of Avid Adrenaline is its ability to display a text version of a project script onscreen. Selected clips can be viewed in screen icons that preview the scene or angles of that very line of text next to the line in the actual script. Then it was time for FCP and Franklin to show her stuff. The clumsy changeover to the FCP5 screen display was a little annoying, as one system needed unplugging and the other needed connection. This really needed to be worked out ahead of time.
Franklin demonstrated the ease of loading clip material into the FCP5 project, also rearranging clips in various sort orders, color coding like the Avid, and viewing clips as screen icons (although clips in this view may not be previewed with FCP5 as they can with Adrenaline). But as an interesting twist, clips in the bin in FCP5 may be ordered and/or selected and dropped or loaded into the FCP5 timeline in the same order chosen, thereby instantly creating a sequence that just requires trimming and cutting for pace. Loading multiple shots all at once in a chosen order makes life a little easier when working at a pace that requires shortcuts.
Custom bin views in FCP5 may be toggled from one to the other with simple keystrokes, too. And the order of clip information in a bin list may be reorderd simply by dragging a column of information from one place in the view to another. If you want the timecode next to the clip name or the duration at the end of the screen view, you may simply drag that column where you want it.
Franklin went on to explain how FCP5 excelled in its ability to remap the keyboard as control buttons to any extent the operator may like. All keys, all option-keystrokes, all control-keystrokes, etc., may be defined for any function the editor feels comfortable with in speeding up workflow. This was the Final Cut high definition package's elegant approach to speeding workflow.
Both
systems similarly can detect and display when duplicate frames are
reused in a project sequence. A red line above the duplicate frames
in the timeline denotes that the marked frames are used earlier or
later again in the sequence. The difference between systems here is
that the Avid detects duplicate frames in one track only while FCP5
will detect if the duplicate footage appears in any of its video tracks,
per sequence. Audio duplicate frames are not labeled in either system.
At this point in the program, it became a matter of "I can do that," and "This will do that too"—although the challenge became just that for FCP5 when the question of trimming "L" cuts came up on the Avid system and Franklin tried to duplicate the move on FCP5. Consensus was with the support of judge Cohen that FCP5 could do it but this claim was never established on stage. The audience participation made for a lively demonstration of the two systems and while the Avid appeared more than up to snuff on the project set-up and asset management areas, the real comparisons didn't prove too startling in the editing areas based on the small number of examples that the seminar had the time to share.
Following the seminar section, Apple gave an impressive demonstration of its Motion software. Motion, poised as the competitor to Adobe's After Effects, was handily put through its, paces constructing a ready-for-primetime effect in a matter of minutes using the particle effects portion of the software's tools.
Avid's Phillips closed the evening with his demonstration of new features that upcoming Avid systems are working on and answering more questions from the audience.
The evening was worthwhile time spent comparing some features of both systems (albeit fewer than planned) and the demonstrations afterward rounded out the evening by creating some stimulation and anticipation toward getting down to the keyboard and testing some of these techniques oneself. Additional seminars on these themes and formats would be welcomed—minus the little technical difficulties that marred the inaugural session.
Bill Stetz is art director of the Editors Guild Magazine. He's taught Motion Graphics at the Art Institute of California in Santa Monica, CA. He may be reached at design@clik.net.
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