this is in response to shane ross, who if you don't know, is a leader for FCP users here and several other major websites. he posted in my previous blog
I agree that FCP can work very very well but let me ask you the following questions:
Do your computer run on more than a gig of ram, a lot of the ones I work on at the computer labs I work at do not which is a problem.
Are your computers built and run to just do that kind of work, or do you have people doing flash, photo editing, scanning, script writing, fcp editing, dvd creation, etc on them?
I also wrote this a bit bitter about a lot of my day so it's pretty negative. And i'd be lieing if i said I didn't love it many times. but there are so many odd quirks and things that it's just hard to deal with some times.
Digg it
Yes, my computer runs on
Yes, my computer runs on more than one GB of RAM. Both my edit machines have 4GB. 1GB is minimum to run the OS and a few smaller applications. 2GB minimum if you want to run FCP, and 4GB if you want it to run comfortably. Your school machines need more RAM. Curcial sells it for not too much.
My computers are set up to run FCS primarily, yes. But I also use Photoshop, I also reip DVDs for my ipod, and do all sorts of things. The issue you have is that you are in a school lab where 50 people touch the computer, and who knows what they are doing on it, who knows if things were installed properly, what people moved where, installed, uninstalled...whathaveyou. That and not enough RAM...yeah, it can be maddening. You cannot base your opinion of a product when you are dealing with the situation you are. OF COURSE it will have problems. 50 people learning FCP are bound to mess things up, they are learning. I messed up things when I was learning, that is part of learning. Messing up is one of the best ways to learn. "Man, I'll never do THAT again."
When I was in school, we had one Avid...and that Avid had issues because, well, 15 students were learning on it (and it was a very early version, 5.5). It crashed a lot. When I got to my first real world gig where there were three Avids all set up and maintained professionally, I was amazed at how stable it was.
FCP is very stable, and is very professional. And when installed and maintained properly it is golden. I am working with FCP at a place that was ALL Avid. Convincing them to go FCP was a task-and-a-half. But now that they see it, and experience it...they are amazed at how easy and fluid and cool it is.
I wish we had 1 AVID in school
Alas, we had 1 Paltex Abner for all 15 Seniors to toil over. Can anyone empathize?
Later in the year we got a Grass Valley CMX style editor (Sony 9000-like) and a GPI controllable audio mixer - still not an AVID however, but a little closer. This was 1993 if anyone is interested.
Computer Editors
In 1990 I had to use a CMX Edge. Promotion editor for a FOX affiliate doing movie promos and tagging episodic spots. That particular CMX was parallel interface only and really didn't like having to control Betacam decks. I think it much would have rather been working with the BVU-200 decks it was designed for.
The station got a Paltex Europa after I left.
1995
We got the Avid in 1995. Before that it was 1/2" offlines...tape to tape. And the Avid was an offline machine only. AVR25 was there, but didn't look too good. We onlined in a Linear bay on a Grass Valley system.
yea, we use faronics Deep
yea, we use faronics Deep freeze to keep the computers in a state of perpetual freshness.
btw Shane we currently have 1 ppc avid from about 1996 unhooked in our protools surround bay. and 19 licenses of composer on imacs...with no external monitors, decks, just the smallest intel imac (previous gen)
I can't imagine what problems we will have with that.
i just got finished trying to strip data off another avid from 96. Booted it up, and entered the date and got the following response "06 is not an acceptable number for year"