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When I first wrote this article back in August 2002 a debate was raging; was Final Cut Pro viable as a professional post-production tool? At that point I had been working on Final Cut for 9 months and had owned my own SDI- FCP-based edit suite for 3 months. I decided to share my insights and write an article. The response to that article has been overwhelmingly positive. 4 years later I'm still collecting emails from producers and editors who find the article instructive. Of course, after every new release of Final Cut they generally ask the same question, "That was then, how about now?"

This article is my answer, now in its 3rd edition, updated for Final Cut Pro version 5.

Special Thanks to the following people for their invaluable contributions to this article: Mark Raudonis, George Creedle, Oliver Peters, Terence Curren, Frank Capria, and Martin Baker. Any inaccuracies in this piece are my fault alone.

Summary

This article is for producers and editors. It answers the question, what situations would force an editor or producer to choose to work on an Avid instead of Final Cut Pro?

Originally written in 2002, it has been entirely rewritten to reflect where we stand today, the start of 2006. You can find the 2004 and 2002 versions of this article here and here. Enjoy!

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Question: What is the difference between Apple's Final Cut Pro and Avid's Media Composer?

Answer: None.

Not when it comes to creating first-class, professional results in a timely manner. They both get the job done on-budget and on-time.

But when it comes to how we approach our projects or how we interact with the software itself, there are some meaningful differences. I generally classify these differences into two types:

• Big Picture differences are those which will actually impact our choice of software; when is it smarter to do a job in Avid rather than Final Cut Pro? These Big Picture differences are few, but should definitely be heeded. For Final Cut users, they might be show-stoppers.



• Smaller Stuff differences are differences that may impact workflow but shouldn't have much impact on our ability to produce a professional product in a time- or cost-effective manner. These Smaller Stuff differences, if discovered mid-project, may cause headaches - but rarely will they bring a project to a grinding halt. But being prepared up-front should help you avoid overages.

As for my credentials... well, I've edited Avid (starting in 1992) and Final Cut (starting in 2001), and many others. While I've decided to build my edit suite around Final Cut Pro, I consider it my job to understand its relative weaknesses. Nor am I unduly critical of Avid, having made a career of it in the past. In fact, if you were to ask me to name the best non-linear editor on the market, without hesitation I'd answer Discreet Logic's Smoke - if it were about $120,000 cheaper. But it's not. So instead (and because this topic is more interesting to me) I'll evaluate the merits of Final Cut Pro in relation to Avid. What follows is my contribution to this ongoing discussion.

The Big Picture

1. Networked Editorial Pipeline: Solved! Do you need to share footage among dozens and dozens of editors? Control who has access to footage while throttling the bandwidth to certain users to ensure the finishing room won't drop frames while producers down the hall are watching a rough cut? Do you need 24/7 uptime reliability, confident that a hard drive failure doesn't impact any of your end-users? What if you also need to dynamically expand or remove the amount of storage allocated to any given shared storage space? Do you also need to lock down specific media volumes so that your Pepsi clients never ever see the footage from that new Coke commercial? In the 2004 edition of this article the only system capable of this kind of hard-core capability was Avid, via their Unity product line. In years past Unity was proof of Avid's industrial grade quality and was at the top of everyone's list of what separated Avid from Final Cut. And so this issue stays at the top of the list this year, but with a twist...
   
   

   In 2006 there's another player on the scene. It's shipping and it's called Xsan. It's made by Apple and it's being used with Final Cut Pro. In researching this article I was blind-sided by its capabilities. It blew through my prejudice that Unity was the only solution for the type of large scaled networked editorial installations I just described. And like its Unity competitor the architecture is redundant, scalable, and is best implemented if you bring a "high-end" attitude to building one of these systems. Cut corners, and it'll bite you (no, it's not a good idea to use your Mac mini as a metadata controller). But if you surround it with a capable IT staff and follow Apple's guidelines you can do what Unity does, and do it with Final Cut Pro. Built upon Xserve Raids and Xserve G5s, here's a small sampling of Xsans feature set:

   
   
   • Mix and match Raid 0 and Raid 5 stripes. XSan calls it Affinities. Use Raid 5 where data protection is paramount and Raid 0 where throughput is a priority (like High-Def finishing).
   
   
   • Security and permissions can be as tight or as loose as you want. As we expect when working at this level of shared resources, read/write access can be restricted based on a mixture of permissions settings, completely locking different projects out from each other and allowing specific users or class of users (logger, editors, producers) to read-only some files while writing to others. These Unix-style premissions can also be applied at the file, folder, user, or volume level.
   
   

   If you're considering a large networked editorial pipeline, Avid is no longer the only kid on the block. XSan is a serious solution for a complex problem. And since it's up to 40% less expensive for a comparable Unity install you can spend that savings to triple your storage capacity (eliminating the need to constantly wipe media off your drives to make room for new media) and double the number of Final Cut seats (so everyone from the Script Department to Production Assistants to Post Audio to the Executive Producer can have Final Cut on their iMac - ready to approve an edit moments after it's ready). This is a big change since the 2004 version of this article and eliminates one major reason for choosing Avid over Final Cut. On this item Apple has achieved parity and can now play with the big boys.





2. Multicam: Solved! A long-time deficiency in Final Cut Pro was multicamera timelines. Like Unity, the lack of multicam was considered another missing link that defined Final Cut as a "poor-man's Avid". Avid has a great multicamera editing workflow. It's fast. It's efficient. It's easy to use. But Final Cut Pro has introduced its own multicam workflow. I can't say if it's on par with Avid's (I haven't worked with it yet). But it's there, it's working, and I've spoken with a few experienced editors who really like it. For a quick overview check out this article and this multimedia overview on Apple's website.





3. Media Management: In previous editions of this article this item used to be in the Smaller Stuff section. No longer. The Media Manager hasn't had a serious update in 4 years. It still does a terrible job handling time remaps and Final Cut gets flakey on clips with no reel numbers (like After Effects renders). Final Cut's Media Manager requires much more hand holding than it should, especially for a Version 5 product. To be fair, the various public forums and mailing lists have noticeably fewer editors ranting about Media Management. Improvements have been made. But when it comes to media management there's no such thing as a small bug. It's time for Apple's Final Cut team to abandon its current practice of incrementally fixing the Media Manager, leaving its users in doubt as to its status and never knowing when it's going to bite us. Editors need confidence in their tools. The Final Cut team needs to stop giving editors a strong valid reason to prefer Avid over Final Cut.





4. Color Correction Toolset: In years past I've been reluctant to consider the Final Cut color corrector for inclusion in this article. Why? The Final Cut color correction tools are good. They get the job done, and done well, in 95% of the situations. But Avid has migrated some of the Symphony color corrector down its product line while the Final Cut color corrector hasn't been touched. Today, the Avid color correction workflow remains the better of the two; enough to give many talented editors a continued reason to avoid Final Cut.

   
   

   On Avid Symphony's color corrector you can apply corrections across an entire show based on "Master Clip," "Source Clip Name" or "Tape name". And corrections can be removed just as easily. Useful functionality, unless you spend most of your time finishing "reality-style" productions. With their frequent changes in color temperature, iris, and locations it can be a fool's quest to apply one correction to a single clip, much less an entire tape (trust me, I know). For my money, where Avid has the upper-hand is its Photoshop-style curves editor, available across Avid's product line. Curves give a finisher tremendous power over the image. Final Cut, lacking a curves editor, leaves us at the mercy of the "Blacks, "Mids", "Whites" controls. Changes to the Whites values can creep all the way down into the Blacks. Mids spread out to the Blacks and Whites while changes to the Blacks can infect the brightest Whites. But with a curves editor you can restrict your corrections to a very defined section of the image (and restrict it even further to just the Red, Green, or Blue channel), leaving the rest of the image untouched. For the serious finisher it's a compelling reason to choose Avid over Final Cut.

   
   

   Apple needs only look at Color Finesse to understand what kind of color controls its power users crave to be integrated into Final Cut. Detracting from Avid is the fact they cripple the color corrector in the same way they stratify their product line (more on that in moments). "Non-Symphony" Avids are deprived of curves control on channels as well as a host of other powerful Symphony color correction features. Yet let me be clear, from the perspective of a Final Cut finisher, Final Cut's color correction deficiencies slow me down, they don't knock me out of the game - but I'd sure appreciate a boost.

   
   
   

5. Stratified Product Line: Another big difference between the software platforms are, well, the platforms. With Avid there are a half-dozen different flavors of Avid. Some Avids have more features than other Avids. Some even have completely different interfaces. And moving up the Avid hierarchy means buying a whole new system. So as a Producer or Editor you have to know exactly what you want out of your Avid before you book (or buy) the Avid. All of this makes purchasing or booking an Avid needlessly complex, adding fuel to Final Cut Pro's fire.

   
   

   Final Cut, by contrast, is Final Cut. Whether you're working in DV or HD the interface is the same, the projects are the same - which means they are 100% interchangeable. The only difference between any two Final Cut systems is the hardware that pulls in and spits out the video (allowing you, for instance, to digitize Digital Betacam or output High Definition). And unlike Avid, if you want to upgrade your hardware, it's just a matter of adding a few boards - there's no new software to learn. On Avid, the worst case scenario requires you to not only buy an entirely new computer rig, but to also learn an entirely new program; perfect examples are the stars of the Avid High-Definition solutions Symphony Nitris and DS Nitris.

   
   

   On Final Cut. the interface stays the same.

   
   

   Note: Most Final Cut systems are custom setups. Producers might have to hunt around for a system that meets their exact needs. Of course, the same is essentially true for Avid (Avid's product line being insanely stratified) - so on this point there is parity. But from an Editor's point of view, you can walk into any Final Cut Pro suite in the world and know exactly how to run the software, no matter the hardware hanging off it.

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