FCP Certification

kkolbo wrote on 10/7/2008, 11:47 AM

I am currently taking the Final Cut Pro Certification Training. (Two weeks of cramming)

FCP has a lot going for it. It is an excellent tool with some great internal processes. What I find though is how much of Vegas I have taken for granted.

In Vegas we see the audio waveform with the picture. That makes it easier to accurately trim.

In Vegas we overlap clips to create transitions. We can easily slide the events around to change the overlap and more accurately control our edits.

We have have great access to commmands like swap and insert with events.

We can right click and access many useful properties and commands on events and media. FCP has right click menus that are helpful, but they have much fewer timesavers than Vegas.

We have great audio control right on the timeline.

We have easy access to properties of transitions and effects.

Vegas is hands down more stable.
Last night in class, in a class of 18, two machines had to be rebooted because of lock-ups. I have 14 stations of Vegas in my classroom and I have NEVER had a lock up on a student. The teacher at the FCP class has Apples in constant rotation for service. I have had two machines have any hardware failure in four years. (BTW, I have locked up Vegas, but that has always been working with exotic media trying to find methods of working with the strange media.)

I love FCP's handling of HDV and overall it is a professional tool. I just have to admit that the user interface of Vegas is a smarter paradigm and much faster to work with.

KK

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Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 10/9/2008, 3:38 PM

Well, there is Media Composer software version, and there is a plethora of highly priced hardware interfaces from Avid, some of which have had (rare) interface problems.

Looking into these, they seem to always involve a non-standard configuration (one not fully supported by Avid).

Contrary to popular belief, Avid will support users on just about any machine (even non-recommended ones), but of course they only do their testing and support on the variety of supported configurations.

blink3times wrote on 10/9/2008, 4:49 PM

Course:

While I completely agree with your idea that system types and recommendations should become the norm, you seem to think Avid systems are stable, and without issue. Not only is that not the case, but MC for example is built to do only to do certain things. Of the things it was built to do, it does them well.... but programs like Vegas are built to cover ground on a much wider scale. You don't for example (and probably never will) see avchd editing in MC.

This sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of people comparing Vegas 4 to 8 and saying that Vegas USED to be highly stable. Well of course, Vegas 8 is twice as complicated as 4 was. There have got to be at least 100 more ways to crash Vegas 8 than there EVER were Vegas 4.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Vegas is more complicated than MC is.... what I am simply saying is that MC doesn't have to operate with the kind of wide variables that Vegas does.

I'm sure your right in that hardware recommendations would go a fair distance in cleaning up some of the problems we see on the board... but what would REALLY do the job is if we got rid of avchd edit, and direct M2t edit, and cineform recognition and, and, and...... but then it really wouldn't be Vegas anymore.... would it.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/9/2008, 7:07 PM

Blink,

I find myself agreeing with you 100%.

Help help help! Gotta call my doctor, wha' happened!?!

8O[#]

Avid Adrenaline was named after the #1 hormone generated by its users. Not from excitement, but from the surprise and anger at finding themselves having written a check for the buggiest product in Avid's history.

When you include all the Boris functionality (RED & BCC) that's well integrated into Media Composer, MC 3.0 really has more functionality than Vegas 8 overall. And Avid doesn't have to worry about debugging all that immense functionality, they can focus on the "elbow editing."

I'm concerned that the problem with Vegas right now is with its internal architecture, where it is seriously hampered by Ye Olde Video for Windows (VfW) infrastructure.

VfW served Madison well for a decade, but today it is a dead end that is beginning to seriously crimp Vegas.

Xander wrote on 10/9/2008, 7:48 PM

Getting back to the original topic, I am PC and doubt I will ever change - have too much invested in PC to change. I also have Adobe CS3 Master Collection.

I have not figured out why, but for the life of me, I cannot color correct as well in Vegas as what I can do in After Effects. The work flow between the two sucks though - maybe I am just used to Vegas's right click and edit in SoundForge function for audio.

A tutorial on awesome Color Correction in Vegas would be great.

Guess my above is a little off topic, but it sure beats the last few posts.

blink3times wrote on 10/9/2008, 8:19 PM

"VfW served Madison well for a decade, but today it is a dead end that is beginning to seriously crimp Vegas."

Yup. That and things like hardware acceleration. To be honest I can't help but feel a bit disappointed wit 8.1 It's a good program and it seems to be faster, but I feel they just didn't go far enough. There was a real opportunity here to change Vegas under the hood and they missed it. They could have gotten rid of VFW, added hardware acceleration...etc, etc.

Vegas NEEDS to start taking advantage of today's cheap (and much more advanced) hardware..... This is where the others are headed.

Now... back on topic.... which was Vegas color correction.... right ;)

GlennChan wrote on 10/9/2008, 8:46 PM

I have not figured out why, but for the life of me, I cannot color correct as well in Vegas as what I can do in After Effects.
What kind of things are you looking to do? Vegas is better at some color correction tasks (e.g. secondary CC) while after effects is better at others.

I also have some articles on my website
http://www.glennchan.info/articles/articles.html

Editguy43 wrote on 10/9/2008, 8:57 PM

Ok this is WAY OT but it is buggin the heck out of me, GlennChan how the heck do you and others get the hyperlink in your post's where you can just click it and go to that page. o have tried different things and can never get it PPPPPPPPPPPPPPlease tell me your secret, ( i really am smart ) :-)

Paul B

Xander wrote on 10/9/2008, 9:36 PM

Thanks Glenn, will definitely look at your info in more detail. I typically do color matching between clips and a bit of clean up. It probably helps that I have tools like Colorista, etc, in AE.

farss wrote on 10/9/2008, 9:40 PM

There's a sticky at the top of the page that shows you how to embed a hyperlink.

Bob.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/9/2008, 9:40 PM

How do you and others get the hyperlink in your posts where you can just click it and go to that page?

See Topic #2 (sticky) in this Forum.

Editguy43 wrote on 10/9/2008, 9:49 PM

Thanks Guys, I have wondered how to do that for a long time should have asked earlier. But now I know.

Paul B

GlennChan wrote on 10/10/2008, 12:02 AM

For color matching, use the... clipboard and the video preview half-moon icon features as a still store (the split screen preview... access that stuff by right clicking the half moon icon in the video preview window).

Some information on camera matching here:
http://www.glennchan.info/matching/matching.htm

I hope that helps.

TimTyler wrote on 10/14/2008, 11:37 AM

> When you include all the Boris functionality (RED & BCC) that's well integrated
> into Media Composer, MC 3.0 really has more functionality than Vegas 8 overall.

Have you (or anybody here) worked with Media Composer 3?

I'm toying with giving it a try, mostly so i can name-drop "Avid" if I think "Sony Vegas" might be a deal-breaker for a potential client.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/14/2008, 12:31 PM

I have MC3 and I'm learning it with the help of the excellent Avid Editing by Sam Kauffmann, and The Avid Handbook (5th Ed.) by Greg Staten and Steve Bayes, while doing other work in Vegas and FCP.

"Avid Editing" is the best to start with for a beginner, and it comes with a media DVD with two projects to work on.

Btw, Avid MC3 comes with a bunch of fairly classy-looking sticky "Avid" badges to put on your monitors, perhaps this can help further your goal also.

With an Avid badge on each LCD, you could show your customers' footage in Vegas and nobody would be the wiser :O).

For raw editing, I think Avid is unsurpassed for speed.

Many new users who come from other NLEs complain about the modal interface, but it actually is part of what makes it so fast.

Just give up past editing habits, carefully follow Avid's instructions, and you'll soon find yourself flying through your footage.

Many "bi" editors (those proficient in both FCP and Avid) say they can edit twice as fast in Avid.

Based on my own admittedly limited experience so far, I'm already tempted to believe this.

But there are other things to appreciate in FCP (actually FCS, Final Cut Studio), which provides a great mix of tools for broadcast work.

And FCS is about half the cost of MC3. Of course it needs a Mac also, so if you don't have that already (which I would recommend anyway :O), add $2,000+ for a Mac Pro or $1,250-$2,000 for a MacBook Pro.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 10/14/2008, 12:55 PM

I've heard it said that the MAC is the world largest Dongle for FCS - LOL

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog

Coursedesign wrote on 10/14/2008, 2:43 PM

Not a bad way of looking at it.

Makes for a more reliable NLE (goes for any NLE).

(Entered on my iPhone while waiting for the (traffic-)light to turn green.

:o) Really.