CompuServe Thread

Chris, I think many have misunderstood me and it's days that I try to make myself clear. It all set off from me saying that I would not favour Avid on Windows, to the point of refusing to work on any such machine. Ok, strong views but I was just voicing my thoughts (and fears). Instead, a couple of people took to my remarks in a an even stronger manner, with words like "Mac bubble", "dude", "head in the sand" and so on. That really set me off. having said that, it is only a pleasure to motivate my choices and respond to your questions in a way that can maybe help some of the forum members. >>>"I got nothing against Mac. No one here does, and I'm not sure why you think people do."<<< Some people do not consider them serious enough, or fast enough or widespread or whatever. Anyway, certainly, some people in this forum did not take to my statements with the same diplomacy you show. >>>>"In the field that I work in — MOW's — there is no such thing as NL on-line. We do all of our on-line's in post houses because no NL editing machine, on either platform, is up to our standards for NTSC Broadcast video yet"<<<< The Avid I work on, the NewsCutter, IS non-linear On-Line, and the quality should be up to standard since we use it in our national Newsprogramme. I don't know what you mean by MOW's. >>>>"In a few years — in this country — no matter how good your NTSC output is, you'll have an off-line setup again. I also like the on-line \ off-line set-up; even if it were a little cheeper to do it all on my desk, there are production quality factors that are more suited to a team than an individual."<<< That's another statement to which I will reply as I did at the beginning of the thread: I hate editing on video and I would refuse to work on VCR's. I was trained on Film and only NL editing can surpass it in terms of flexibility. As for the quality, I am not alone in thinking that Video still has a very long way to go before it can reach the textureness and the colour reproduction of film. That takes us onto your questions. Having being trained on Film, it is obvious I snapped to NL very easily. Having myself a Mac at home, it was also easy to get onto Avid. Maybe I am biased on that…OK, I am biased, but no more than those the other side of the river. So obviously what I like about Avid is the interface, which I know inside out, and the fact that it was designed keeping in mind the most important aspect: the guy who uses it. It was designed with editors in mind, many of which don't even want to know about computers. It was designed to let the editor do the things he's used to through an interface that was as transparent as possible, thanks to the Mac OS. Which means I don't have to fight with drivers, .bat and .exe files, criptic seven-letter file names, conflicts between application, drivers, system files, cards, peripherals etc. I can manage my files like they were phisycally on the desk, I can plug things in and out, I can customise at the click of the mouse, I can juggle with applications that take as low as 128K of RAM and even less on the hard disk, and still have a full GUI in front of me. Basically, I feel like I'm in control of the computer rather than the other way around. I know Windows is becoming more and more like that, but there is still Ms-Dos under the hood and I can hear it humming whenever I fiddle with a PC. As for Avid itself, I obviously like it because it means a continuation of my home computer environment at work, something that is proved by the fact that I am writing this letter from work (whilst waiting on a journalist). I also like it because I could transpose most of what I learned from film editing into NL editing, with very little compromise. The interface is a cross-mix between Media composer and Media Suite Pro. The difference is that NewsCutter has been designed for quick, simple cutting yet with all the basic tools you need. When you cut film on a Steenbeck, all you have is a speed lever, sprockets, Volume, the splicer and the chinagraph. You don't need much more. In fact, anything more than that gets in the way of editing. That's why I frown at programs like Premiere: damn it, I've been editing in TV for 10 years, I cut on Avid Broadcast systems, yet I still can't work out this irksome and messy program, which is rated the best by magazines. Mah! As for Avid vs other systems, fine, I can mention Media 100 from Data Translation as a very good one with outstanding picture quality. But that's Mac based. The problem is not Avid vs Media 100, the problem is that I don't like PCs and I don't want to get near them. Can I say that? And I'll stand by my original statement: if one day there will be no other choice than DOS/Windows-based editing, I will ask them to find another editor, even if that means going to work as a binman. Can I say that or not? Earlier in this thread someone described my attitude as "putting your head in the sand and not be open to change". I think it's very superficial to say that to a film editor who was among the first in the UK to get near DTV/Multimedia, which had many of its roots in Macintosh environment, and who is the very first in the whole of Italy to use a Non-Linear On-Line computer system to cut the news. The fact is that I would consider a Windows-based system as a regression from what I am used to. The majority of Macusers would say likewise. For saying this, I got 'flamed'. Alberto