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Posted by Luis Ortega on 04/13/07 21:28
Thanks, guys.
I will wait until after NAB to see what they come up with. I am currently
using Premier Pro 2 and want to see what PProCS3 has to offer along with
their production suite.
As a teacher, I can get a good deal on this.
One reason I have for wanting to go to FCP is that at my school I will
inherit a dozen G5s next term for my art studio and I need to be able to use
it well. They are currently running FCP 4 but the school may upgrade to
studio 5. Right now my lab has PPro 1 as the editor the kids use.
At home I use PPro 2 mostly. I haven't upgraded to Avid beyond version 5.2
of Xpress DV Pro HD because it seems to have outgrown my hardware specs and
has become more finicky. Also, for my interest in doing stop motion
animation, PPro seems to be a lot better to manipulate motion and layers.
What I always liked best about Avid was its great control in basic cutting
and trimming. I was equally impressed by what I saw FCP do in that area. In
my brief experience with it, it looked like it had the best features of PPro
and Avid plus a few other very attractive things. I never did get a chance
to explore the other apps in the FCP studio.
"Spex" <No.spam@ta.com> wrote in message
news:461f2a62$0$8741$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
> Since we are top posting....
>
> FCP Studio is really looking its age compared to other offerings such as
> Adobe's suite of applications. But, you'd have to be living up your own
> ass if you weren't aware that Apple are making a big announcement at NAB
> just a few days away now. If you are interested in FCP wait until Apple
> have done one of "their look at us aren't we great" presentations at NAB
> then make a decision.
>
> It has been heavily rumoured that FCP has been given a drastic rewrite to
> make use of GPU and multi-core processors along with QT itself. The new 8
> core Mac Pro is showing little or no improvement in speed over the 4 core
> Mac Pro in FCP so if Apple want to keep selling its Mac Pros for editing
> they had better have got FCP multi threading like crazy.
>
> You might just get a free grading system thrown in too. Apple bought
> Final Touch so that might end up in the FCS box.
>
> Other applications in FCP Studio, IMO, are excellent. Motion and DVD
> STudio Pro are the two apps I bought FCS for. Motion is not an after
> effects and it is not meant to be. It is much more useful than Smarty
> indicates. I use it for pre-viz, DVD menus, 2d animation and IMO it is
> almost superb. It lacks some features that prevent me using it more e.g.
> a tracker.
>
> FCP - Showing its age.
> Motion - Good start but lacks some really useful features like a tracker
> and 3d! Still work in progress.
> Soundtrack - Looks nice but fails to deliver and feels like a beta
> release. Logic Pro is well worth the money though.
> DVD Studio Pro - IMO still second best to Scenarist.
>
> Luis,
>
> My advice would be to look at PremPro2 and its productions suite,
> certainly have a _serious_ look at Edius and its HD accelerator boards
> which are superb.
>
> Vegas has a very poor GUI. Ideal for educators...
>
> Wait 'til NAB before jumping.
>
> Smarty wrote:
>> Luis,
>>
>> I have the same opinion as nappy. Using the very latest version of FCP
>> Studio HD on the very latest / fastest Apple Desktop workstation (Xeon
>> Quad MacPro 3.0GHz) I have found the rendering and previewing of content
>> to take far longer than the PCs I use here which are much less expensive
>> and have much less expensive software. I am seriously considering dumping
>> the entire system in fact, although there are situations where this Apple
>> solution does make a lot of sense, namely, if you are in an already
>> established Apple environment, or if you do mostly multiple camera NLE.
>> The program called Motion is a lot like After Effects but to me is less
>> appealing. The Compressor software in Final Cut is terribly slow. Most
>> irritating to me is the Apple pre-occupation with their Quicktime formats
>> and the lack of support for mpeg2.
>>
>> I use the Vegas / DVD Architect suite, Premiere, and several other PC
>> tools which get the job done very efficiently, and I almost never turn
>> the MacPro on. I think a laptop running this suite would be even more
>> disappointing in terms of performance to say nothing of the screen space
>> limitations unless you also add a big monitor. Even if you did, Motion
>> and other Apple software uses the graphics processor card(s) for
>> rendering, and even the extra cost very high performance $450 card I
>> added to this MacPro is still marginal.....and I hate to imagine how a
>> laptop's graphics card would waste a lot of waiting time.
>>
>> I hate to get into this Apple versus PC discussion at all, because it
>> sparks a lot of discussion with a lot of heat and smoke, but very little
>> "light". I would only caution you before spending many thousands of
>> dollars as I did for FCP Suite HD and Apple hardware to get a lot of
>> opinions before taking the plunge.
>>
>> If this is Apple bashing, so be it...but I readily admit that I have
>> owned many Macs starting with the 512K machine over 20 years ago, have
>> owned Apple stock, etc......but I just do not think FCP and the hardware
>> to support it make the most sense for many if not most users.
>>
>> Smarty
>>
>>
>> "nappy" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
>> news:atzTh.23$Yo2.2@newssvr19.news.prodigy.net...
>>> "Luis Ortega" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
>>> news:eTyTh.499$633.495@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
>>>> I value the advice that I have been given here on many occasions. I
>>>> recently took a course on Final Cut Pro 5 and I was very impressed by
>>>> what I saw.
>>>> The studio version includes a music creation program and a special
>>>> effects program that some say is comparable to After Effects, plus a
>>>> dvd creation program and some sort of file format converter, which I
>>>> think is called Compressor..
>>>> My current software is Avid Xpress DV HD and Premiere Pro 2 on Windows.
>>>> FCP seems to have all of the features of Avid and Premiere Pro plus a
>>>> few more very interesting workflow features.
>>>> My question is what people who are really familiar with these programs
>>>> think about the idea of getting a macbook pro and FCP studio 5 as
>>>> opposed to continuing with the Windows series of programs that I
>>>> already own.
>>>> I didn't have enough time to really get into all of the programs of
>>>> FCP, and I am not that familiar with how stable Apples and FCP are.
>>> Don't be swayed by the hype PPro2 is vastly capable. As is the AVID
>>> offering. You would be wasting money. IMHO.
>>> Get After Effects.
>>> I never saw any realy use in the music portion of the Soundtrack Pro
>>> tool. Others have. But as a composer.. it was useless to me.
>>>
>>> YOU would be spending a great deal of money for hardware and software
>>> for minimal benefit.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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