|
|
Avid training for an FCP user?
Hi all, i'm looking to train-up in Avid and was wondering if anyone new of a training dvd for those specifically coming from an FCP perspective? how different are the two really?
I've never sat in front of an Avid and have been using FCP full time since version three.
Regards
Bluey,
This has been around for ever. Not sure how current it is, but it's free.
[ learn.avid.com]
nice one andy . . . very helpful
> also are there any other editors here who have been required to or have chosen to widen their edit-knowledge to the Avid?
Bluey,
it's a bit crazy, but i haven't been on an avid for about 10 years.
last time i really cut something on an avid, as we were actually playing a CD to Betacam tape so we could capture it,
i turned to my director, who, like me had FCP, and asked "Why are we here?"
and we haven't been back since.
i've been fairly lucky in that i've been able to specify what platform i edit on
but yes, i've been thinking i should get back into avid, especially now i can pick up MC5.5 for a grand.
nick
and here's another if you prefer a DVD
Avid for FCP Training DVD
I've worked both - prefer FCP but have clients that want me to deliver an AVID timeline to post into their shows - so I use Automatic Duck and conform in AVID to make sure it all carries over (not as painless as it should be and a lot of Texas two step dancing to get files to reconnect - and not really Auto Duck's fault - Avid's new system isn't particularly intuitive in reconnecting )
This is also a great resource:
[ community.avid.com]
When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.
Avid took its cue from tape and film editing. FCP took much of its cues from Avid and some from Premiere (premiere was written largely as a one man team who eventually left and joined the FCP team).
In Avid, you have a source monitor and a record monitor. They are like the equivalent of the tape to tape editing systems before it. And you have to patch to the track, before you can splice it in. So in record mode, your focus is in "cueing" (or scrubbing) to the right points and spilling in new shots...
In segment mode, you trim and make edits. The cue here comes from film editing and splicing shots together...
In FCP, these options are sort of combined, and splicing isn't a mode. And you can click and drag your clips around by simply clicking on them. This is more akin to the computer generation, as opposed to the traditional film editing world.
The default title tool sucks if you're used to working with layers in Photoshop. Marquee is better, although I have come across font issues (certain PC ttf/otf fonts have problems being recognized in avid).
That said, it really isn't a bad system and it has good media management tools (minus the search tool. Haven't tried 5.5), and some swear by it. Pros and cons in both systems. I've just gotten used to FCP over the years.
www.strypesinpost.com
I started editing on Avid for a year or so and then moved on to FCP for the last 5 years.
I've contemplated re-learning AVID but everytime I do try I can't get over the fact that AVID doesn't let you customize the keyboard like FCP do. You can customize, but it's pretty limited.
And my editing speed relies on so many shortcuts....
So my advice is to study the Avid keyboard shortcuts and transfer them to FCP and not the other way around
Just bought the Kevin McAulliffe Tutorial here:
Avid for Final Cut Webinar
It is OUTSTANDING -- the best explanation I've seen on how to transfer what you know in Final Cut to Avid -- he flips back and forth between the two programs -- "See you import this way in FCP -- and FLIP - this is how you do AMA File linking in AVID" "you map your keys in FCP like this -- FLIP - and here's how Avid does it." Brilliant teaching method - have tried and failed to get proficient in AVID for a while because I needed to be with a few clients - this makes you expert in minutes. Highly recommended and for 15 dollars - the class is a steal! Great Work Kevin.
loads of decent replies, much help indeed nice one guys . .
Bluey,
@Bluey:
I really think the very best way to learn Avid is to go through the entire manual page by page while sitting in front of the Avid. That's how I did it back in the day and when new versions come out you just need to read the "what's new" document. It's a grind and extremely boring because it's written by engineers but I find that allot of other instructional books do leave most everything out and only touch on the basics. I can assure you that there is allot in the manual that you only find in the manual. At least if you do make it through all 1400 pages you will know everything there is to know. There is allot of stuff that Avid does that FCP doesn't and vice versa and that's the stuff you want to tap into and I find that any kind of "Avid for FCP users" or "FCP for Avid users" tend to focus on things that are similar or translatable so you will never really tap into what's actually unique to that system.
Also I think that trying to translate FCP skills to Avid or the other way around is a grave mistake. You can't make one system behave like another and you have to approach Avid on it's own terms forgetting what you know about FCP and thinking anew while learning it. FCP will always be better at behaving like FCP than Avid will. But if you make Avid behave like Avid then you may be better off than you ever where on FCP but it may take years. I see this all the time on Avid jobs, people who have learned on FCP and have found themselves on an Avid job, trying to translate their FCP skills to Avid, trying to make Avid speak another language. It always leads to frustration and they are never as fast or as efficient as the other Avid editors on the project and usually get canned. The FCP translation will never be as fast as the way that is unique to Avid. Meaning what's familiar to you on Avid will never be as fast as what's scary and new on Avid if you learn it.
For just one instance, in FCP you cannot make a ripple delete ( I could be wrong though, not an expert in FCP like I know Avid ) after marking an in or out without selecting all tracks that have material on it without getting an operation not allowed error when all you want is the material to be gone and it's a bit of a drag to have to make the extra step to select the tracks so some editors just drag the pointer over the area and hit delete and close gap. But in Avid you only need one track selected no matter what tracks you have material on to make what is called in Avid an extraction because the Avid knows that gone means gone and it would be impossible to extract one track without another without knocking everything out of sync so in a way the Avid is thinking ahead. You don't have to work the track panel so making an extraction is a three step process ( mark in, mark out, extract ) and there is no need to select the segment, hit delete and close gap. Well if you didn't know this you may try to do it the FCP way. Well there is no close gap function in Avid and this will frustrate you but in Avid you NEVER need the close gap function and you need to find out WHY you never need it if you want to be fast. If you find yourself wanting that function than you are not deleting or moving clips around the fastest way Avid can in the Avid language. If you find yourself needing the all tracks forward button you haven't learned how to best use the trimming functions or clipboard monitor, if you find yourself nesting allot you haven't learned how to deal with effects the way Avid deals with effects etc ... So if you find yourself looking for things you used to lay back on in FCP you could be heading in the wrong direction. There are hundreds of examples I could lay out but I just used one to try to get the point across.
One advantage to Avid is that it's more kinetic in terms of actually being able to see and hear what you are trimming and slipping while you are trimming and slipping ie: dual image play over multiple tracks, jkl slipping audio and picture at the same time in the timeline with a four up display so you can see the outside shots you are slipping against. Transition corner display so you can see all six sides of your dissolve handles at once. There are allot of things in Avid you wouldn't expect to see in FCP until like 2030 and if you are in a shared media/shared project situation than the Avid Unity is pretty amazing compared to anything out there in the FCP world. This stuff will at least get you excited to learn more. At some point you will get to the point where you don't have to think about the tool to work. Just takes awhile.
Oh and always work with your sync locks on and always work with playlength toggle on in render heavy sequences.
I wish you the best of luck.
@Strypes
In response:
"In Avid, you have a source monitor and a record monitor. They are like the equivalent of the tape to tape editing systems before it. And you have to patch to the track, before you can splice it in. So in record mode, your focus is in "cueing" (or scrubbing) to the right points and spilling in new shots"
You can drag and drop in MC5 without patching. Also try using auto patching, it's faster. Another cool thing is that you can add and delete at the same time, for instance let's say you have a clip with four audio tracks in the timeline on A1-4 and you patch A1-4 on the record side of the track panel and you have a clip with four audio tracks in the source monitor but on the source side of the track panel you deselect A3-4 then you will cut in A1-2 and cut in "nothing" to tracks A3-4 resulting in adding to A1-2 and deleting what is on A3-4 if you are overwriting with the red arrow. Many ways to manipulate the track panel to do several things at once.
"In segment mode, you trim and make edits. The cue here comes from film editing and splicing shots together"
Segment mode is only for moving segments and the fastest way to get into it is to lasso the selection and not use the red arrow. But trimming is done in trim mode not segment mode. But you can work non modally in the timeline even without the newly added smart tool. You don't need to go into the trim window to trim. You can roll the roller in the time line with your mouse by using the go to transition button and when the roller appears grab it with the mouse. Or you can control lasso the transition to expose the roller and then use your mouse, very similar to FCP's "G" edit selection.
"In FCP, these options are sort of combined, and splicing isn't a mode"
Splicing is not a mode in Avid.
"And you can click and drag your clips around by simply clicking on them"
Avid is the same but it's a lasso and not a click. But it's so clunky compared to FCP because it doesn't treat empty space the same way. Sometimes it pulls the empty space between clips with it and accidentally overwrites material with black. Super annoying to people who don't even know FCP. FCP is obviously always in segment mode and what Avid calls segment mode just isn't as refined and will drive any FCP user crazy.
"The default title tool sucks if you're used to working with layers in Photoshop. Marquee is better, although I have come across font issues (certain PC ttf/otf fonts have problems being recognized in avid)"
You are correct but even better than marquee is Avid FX which is like having after effects in your timeline. It's part of the Avid production suite.
All in all I think the worst part of moving to Avid is moving to PC. It just doesn't run right on Mac these days and if you try it you will have a very unstable system. Almost no Avid post houses run mac anymore and the ones who do are fraught with problems at least in my experience. It does run fine locally though but there are always OS conflicts and it's always good to be on the OS that was out when your version of Avid was released meaning don't upgrade your OS without upgrading Avid first.
> It just doesn't run right on Mac these days and if you try it you will have a very
>unstable system.
That kinda sucks. I found Avid to be a little finicky (crashy), but I dunno. Could be user error. I hope they port a stable build to Linux.
www.strypesinpost.com
@Strypes.
I mean someone may respond and say they have nothing but success on Avid with mac. But that isn't really what I have experienced or heard from others. Most of the issues are in shared media/shared project situations. Things go better when running local.
User error could be an issue. I find that Avid people say FCP crashes too much and FCP people say Avid crashes too much so maybe subtle contempt for the software could maybe prevent one from learning how to set it up properly? I don't know. You always know less about the one you like the least. But I think it really is a Mac/PC issue. Booting up a PC every day just feels so wrong but when you are inside the application it's like a rock. I am at a place running Avid on PC and haven't crashed once in 7 months and that's usually the case. I may have crashed maybe three times in five years on a PC but on macs I have have actually had to take entire days off while they tinkered with it.
Oh and Avid software has allot of really cool features that are only available on PC, like sciptsync, wordfind, the Avid production suite ( kinda like FCS with all of that extra stuff ) ... If you go to the Avid site and look at "features" all of the cool stuff says "PC only" next to it. Kinda blows.
But on another topic; is all of this talk about FCP being EOL really for real? I mean don't ya think they will snap out of it and come back with something that is like FCP7 with actual advancements or do you think this is a permanent back turn on the professional side. I have always been more of an Avid person with the occasional FCP job and I never really learned FCP fully and was thinking about getting around to it, like locking myself in a room for a month and really digging in but I don't even want to invest the time now so I am hoping that in a year all of this FCPX will just feel like a weird fluke.
"don't ya think they will snap out of it and come back with something that is like FCP7"
definitely not.
FCP X is the future as far as Apple are concerned
"do you think this is a permanent back turn on the professional side"
no.
they, or 3rd parties, WILL build on FCPX, adding more of the features pros need,
but it will be built on "X", not "Classic" FCP
that's the way the wind is blowing, i reckon.
nick
>Oh and Avid software has allot of really cool features that are only available on PC,
>like sciptsync, wordfind, the Avid production suite ( kinda like FCS with all of that
>extra stuff )
Yea, what happened to script sync? It used to come in a bundle, now I heard it's sold as standalone, and now you're saying it's only for PC?
www.strypesinpost.com
|
|
All the news now and in your digital future
