Competitive Overview

Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Competitive Overview Manufacturer Product Version Apple Operating System Final Cut Pro Platform 5 U.S MSRP / Reseller OS X Macintosh G4/G5 $ 999/ $ 899 Silver Bullets Final Cut Pro HD cannot mix resolutions in real-time Video resolutions Even though it is possible to work with multiple resolutions in any Final Cut Pro system, only one resolution can be played in real-time per timeline. Clips of any other resolution will need to be rendered before playback. This limitation is also there when using external hardware, such as the AJA Io. Avid Xpress Pro HD with Avid Mojo can mix 15:1s, DV25 (DVCAM and DVCPro), uncompressed, and HD resolutions of the same frame rate, all in real-time in one sequence, without the need for rendering. This also applies to software-only systems (1:1 only with Avid Mojo). Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD can mix even more resolutions in real-time, such as ABVB and Meridien JFIF. Final Cut Pro HD requires a lot of rendering • • • A familiar video image in Final Cut Pro HD is the blue “Unrendered” slide. Final Cut Pro sets fixed performance metrics based on Apple processor speed with no regard to critical subsystems like hard disk or shared storage bandwidth In addition, Avid Xpress Pro HD can playback more DV25 clips in real-time than Final Cut Pro HD on the same G4 laptop. Avid offers a fundamental difference in workflow. Seeing what you are editing. Even on unrendered layers, Avid lets you see any layers you can, so you and your client are always able to monitor progress. Avid’s ability to channel the horsepower of the CPU & GPU allows maximum real time effects viewing when it counts. There is no “Unrendered” slide in Avid applications. Only Avid systems dynamically measure the performance ability of each individual machine and recommend rendering sections for that particular machine if necessary. FCP only guesses and does so conservatively. This leads to even less real-time the machine may otherwise be able to handle. This problem only gets worse in HD Avid Xpress Pro HD supports real-time pulldown reinsertion over 1394, so no rendering for pulldown on the way out for DVCPRO HD. Performance • • • • Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Avid offers a better HDV solution • • With Final Cut Pro 5, Apple introduced native HDV editing. While Apple may ship this feature ahead of Avid, Avid’s solution provides a more compelling workflow Avid can mix resolutions in realtime – combining HDV and DV material in the same timeline will be a key part of HDV workflows – with FCP you need to render – not with Avid. For those effects that require processing, Avid DNxHD support means high-quality renders with plenty of real-time performance, even on a laptop. The real-time performance of Avid DNxHD in Avid Xpress Pro HD makes it an ideal companion for systems such as Avid Symphony Nitris and Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD with the Avid DNxcel board. Avid DNxHD is an excellent render codec even for productions on Avid Xpress Pro HD. HDV and DVCPro 100 are both excellent capture formats, but poor quality mastering formats. Apple can only offer uncompressed HD as a mastering quality codec, meaning huge disk arrays are required. Avid can offer DNxHD for a much more practical solution. With Avid Mojo, you can monitor HD timelines on an SD monitor, meaning no need to invest in expensive additional monitoring equipment from the start. HD Workflow • • • Final Cut Pro HD real-time performance is far from extreme • Most FCP hardware does NOT support animated alpha channels in real time. (In fact, only the discontinued, and expensive, Cinewave did.) That means that even movies created in Live Type with animated alpha channels have to be re-rendered before they can be used or output in FCP. Move it by one frame after rendering? Render again. Scale? Render again. Reposition, Render again. Avid Xpress Pro HD with Avid Mojo can output an amazing amount of DV streams at full resolution, all in real time. With Avid Mojo, you can even mix Uncompressed and DV25 streams in the timeline while outputting the result simultaneously as DV25 or uncompressed analog video. And even Avid Xpress Pro HD software alone supports animated alpha channels just fine, thank you – move them anywhere, even add real-time effects such as scale and position, with NO rendering. Real Time • Avid offers better color correction and stabilization • Avid’s automatic color correction delivers impeccable results with a single click – the same cannot be said for Apple. In addition, Final Cut has no equivalent to Avid’s NaturalMatch color correction. Avid’s stabilize tool works – the same cannot be said for Apple. In addition, Avid offers autozoom with its stabilize tool, an essential requirement to ensure that black bands don’t appear outside the picture area. These two features alone account for many of the effects the average editor will do in their daily work that are a baseline requirement for a clean output – not jazzy effects – and Final Cut simply can’t offer these FX • • Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Final Cut Pro HD + AJA Io is only a one-directional I/O box • AJA Io can only be used to either digitize audio/video OR play it back. AJA Io can not be used eg. to record voiceovers while watching video. Final Cut Pro HD currently only supports 2 inputs of the 8 available on Io. Aja Io has no 1394 I/O! If you want to use 1394, you have to disconnect Io first. Avid Mojo and Avid Adrenaline DNA both have full bi-directional I/O capabilities, using Avid’s patentpending audio/video synchronisation over 1394. This capability allows for live recording of voiceovers to picture which are fully in sync with the simultaneous video playback. This is impossible with Final Cut Pro and AJA. Avid Mojo and Avid Adrenaline both offer 1394 Io. Avid systems can digitize up to 8 simultaneous audio channels. I/O facilities • • • • • Final Cut Pro HD is not a multi-user application Multiple Users • While it’s true that creating a separate OSX login will get a different group of user settings, this is not really practical for many situations. A single user frequently will use different settings for different types of jobs. Ie. Film, video, 16X9, etc. FCP is not designed to handle multiple users and their settings per OS login. There are no site settings in FCP. • • • There is no easy way to import user settings from other machines and readily switch between them. Avid systems are designed for multi user environments. Each user either can create, import, and switch between unlimited customized user settings. Media management is the Achilles heel of Final Cut Pro HD • In Final Cut Pro HD, you must be careful where media is stored, as moving the media inadvertently or on purpose can cause all the media to become unlinked. Naming is also critical as no two QuickTime files can have the same name without risk of losing the links. Words like “nightmare” are frequently associated with media management in Final Cut Pro HD. Final Cut Pro HD certified trainers recommend recording entire tapes as opposed to logging footage because of these nightmares when managing multiple clips. With the advent of Tiger, Apple may try to position the generic OS search service “Spotlight” as a media management tool. That’s kinda like using Google Desktop to manage your material. Match frame in FCP recalls the sequence instead of the original clip which is critical to basic editing workflow. Drop in a shot from a previous sequence in FCP, and it doesn’t use the clip names, but the sequence names. Very confusing to editors There are no “user” settings in FCP, so you can’t set preferences for different users. It’s easy to delete large amounts of data. If you are highlighting regions in one part of the timeline, but mark in and outs in another area, the highlighted area can be deleted and editors don’t know it, as the timeline doesn’t go to the deleted area. Thankfully, Avid software suffers none of these issues. Avid lets you spend more time editing, and less time looking for & ”rediscovering” your footage. Media Management • • • • • Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Company Profile: Apple has proven that it’s serious about the post production space by continuing to invest in Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio. The primary goals of the company are obviously to sell hardware, and to that end, one strategy is to provide cheap and easy to use software that seemingly “does it all”. By removing complexity, Apple believes it can wean users away from PC based systems. Apple wants to expand its market share in post production by eliminating or buying competition and reducing its dependencies on 3rd party software. Apple seeks to own an end to end content creation pipeline. Hence the strong move into storage and networking. Product Profile: Final Cut Pro HD is the only “pro” editing product Apple has. Therefore it is positioned to do anything from wedding videos, to primetime television, broadcast news, and film. The main Apple marketing messages revolve around simplicity, scalability, and low cost. Real time effects ability is also strongly messaged in parallel to the latest Apple G5 processors. This product has a strong following for Mac OS lovers and has become strong competitor to Avid in the budget TV market as well as others. Apple has developed several companion applications to bolster Final Cut Pro’s abilities; namely LiveType and Motion for titles and motion graphics, Soundtrack for creating music tracks, and DVD Studio Pro for DVD Authoring. It also has a direct tie to Apple QuickTime. As the QuickTime format inherits codecs, so does the editing application giving the perception that Final Cut Pro HD can handle any format available. Complementary Products (workflow specific): Hardware: Aja Io – SD FireWire breakout box supporting digital and analog I/O Io LA – SD FireWire breakout box supporting analog I/O only Io LD – SD FireWire breakout box supporting digital I/O only KONA 2 PCI card- dual link HD/SD card supporting analog and digital video I/O and digital audio I/O Kona LS PCI card – SD card supporting SDI, Component, composite, SVHS, and 2 channels of audio I/O (digital or analog) Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro PCI card- HD/SD dual link card supporting Digital video and audio I/O Decklink SP, Pro, Extreme, HD, Plus are variations of the card Software: Apple Motion – Real time motion graphics package that integrates with Final Cut Pro HD Apple LiveType – Title tool for creating advanced animating titles Apple Soundtrack – Sound looping application to create music from library loops as well as clip -based sample accurate editng. Apple Logic – Professional audio application for advanced audio/music editing Apple DVD Studio Pro – Advanced DVD authoring program Apple CinemaTools – film management and 2:3 rendered file support for native 24 frame editing. Apple Shake – 2D compositing Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Targeted Markets and Solutions (as defined by Avid): Targeted Markets • Mainstream Post • Budget TV • Education • Film Competitive Avid Products: o Avid Xpress DV o Avid Avid Xpress Pro HD o Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD (when FCP is combined with 3rfd party hardware) o Avid Xpress Studio HD (Pro Tools audio, 2D and 3D compositing, title animation, DVD authoring) o Avid Studio Toolkit HD (2D and 3D compositing, title animation, DVD authoring) What are they saying and doing to sell against Avid?: Real-time effects in software THEIR CLAIM HDV workflow OUR ANSWER Apple is now offering a native HDV workflow. However, it has a number of significant weaknesses. It doesn’t support 24p, you can’t mix DV with HDV in a timeline meaning lots of rendering is required for even basic projects. It also doesn’t have a high quality rendering codec outside of uncompressed HD. Avid offers DNxHD for this purpose, providing mastering quality but at SD disk bandwidths meaning editing can be done on a laptop or network. Real-time effects in software THEIR CLAIM RT Extreme effects for HD gives real time playback similar to SD OUR ANSWER HD Real-time Effects in Final Cut Pro and Avid Avid Xpress Pro HD are preview only in software at lower resolution and must be rendered before final output. RT Extreme effects scale quality down rapidly in order to play in real time Most finished quality effects for output to a SD DV device must still be rendered even with thirdparty hardware. Customizing an effect in Final Cut Pro can cause it to either lose the ability to play in real time or cause it to play a proxy as opposed to the effect as designed. Eg. Soft edge borders, drop shadows. Avid Xpress Pro HD has higher real-time performance on both platforms. The new dynamic RT helps preview, but does not solve the basic performance problem. Real-time effects in software THEIR CLAIM HD Over FireWire - Final Cut Pro changes the rules for high-definition production OUR ANSWER Apple makes it sound like they’re the only folks who capture DVCPro HD over 1394? Avid can do this as well. The real difference is what happens when you have Sony HDCAM as a source? Or D5? Taking any format that walks in the door is important. Apple plus a third party card will allow this to be captured as uncompressed HD only. You get native DVCPro HD or Uncompressed. With the Avid DNxcel board and Avid DNxHD, Avid allows any format to be captured to a MASTERING quality codec that takes up the same space as uncompressed SD. That’s changing the rules! Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Real-time effects in software THEIR CLAIM Final Cut Pro has the power to scale from DV to SD, HD and Film OUR ANSWER Avid Xpress Pro HD does this too, but it does more – allows all of these formats to be mixed for editing and playback on the same timeline without rendering. That’s what an editor needs to get the job done. Committed to open standards THEIR CLAIM Using XML interchange format, you can seamlessly share project, bin, sequence, clip and media data generated by Final Cut Pro HD with any other application or system that supports XML.” OUR ANSWER Clearly you can’t open an XML file created by FCP in any other XML application just because it’s XML. All Apple has done here is dump FCP’s internal data model into a XML formatted text file. That doesn’t mean that the data is meaningful to other applications. FCP’s XML format is not an open standard, it is fully proprietary. Apple can change the format at any time. And to use the data, developers need to build customized data mapping applications. The approach Apple has taken may excite small developers who want to sell widgets to the FCP installed base, but it is proof that they do not want to be open. If Apple wanted to be meaningfully open, they would have implemented an actual industry standard like AAF which is not controlled by any one vendor and does not require customized data mapping code. Avid already uses XML technology to store data in many Avid products such as Media Composer and Alienbrain. But for compositional interchange, Avid is fully committed to AAF because it has a far richer data model that is significantly more powerful than FCP’s internal data model. For example, FCP’s internal data model is not UMID-based and is therefore relatively fragile in network-based environments. During the last year, the AAF Association has been developing an XML encoding for AAF, so that AAF can be embraced by the growing community of XML developers. Avid fully supports this standards-based approach to XML interchange and is contributing to the development effort. Award-winning software THEIR CLAIM “Emmy Awardwinning FCP.” “Shake…the choice of Oscarwinning effects artists.” OUR ANSWER Actually, Apple has only won one Emmy to Avid’s six. Avid has won Grammy Awards and Oscar awards too, neither of which Apple has won. Avid’s technology is quite simply the most highly acclaimed in the industries it supports, as evidenced by the number of times and ways that the governing bodies of those industries have chosen to say “thank you” to Avid for the technologies we create. Although Shake was used by each of the last 7 effects Oscar winners, Apple has only owned Shake for the last two Oscar seasons. All seven winners have one thing in common – they used Shake on the Unix platform, which Apple no longer develops for. Apart from these non-Apple Shake customers, there’s hardly a single award that Apple software customers have won. Compare this to the Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview way that Avid customers dominate the Emmy (the winners in every single major category, most of the minor ones, and indeed nearly all the nominees, used Avid products) and Oscar awards (ditto), year after year. The day may well come when an FCP customer somewhere wins a major award for something. In the meantime, Avid customers will continue to rack up award after award in a running demonstration of the true choices made by award-winning artists. Customer Comments: “Our Final Cut Pro HD issues existed in HD@23.98 outputs, we could not get an output that matched the timeline, or any two outputs that matched each other, frames dropped, frames duplicated.... at the 5 min mark - out by 4 frames at the 10 min mark - out by 3 frames at the 20 min mark - out by 5 frames at the 30 min mark - out by 4 frames again on and on..We found over 100 places that did not sync, a frame was either duplicated, or dropped, these results on multiple playouts & on different shows. The system was set up by a certified re-seller, all mod cons SPG installed and working correctly with good Final Cut Pro HD experienced on-site tech support, (X-Granada with a load of Final Cut Pro HD experience) "expert" level users (one is a teacher @ VFS) no dropped frames reported by Final Cut Pro HD. The workflow that we had hoped for was Dvcpro HD into Final Cut Pro HD for easy, output to DS for color timing and titling We tried everything one could imagine, compressed, uncompressed, FireWire, HDSDI, - you name it we have tried it - we spent weeks trying everything, we made it a full time job to sort it for one lucky editor. Reseller came in and could not get it to playout accurately, Apple came in and also had no luck... at this point they could not give me the name of anyone who has used Final Cut Pro HD @ HD rez to deliver a primetime show for the USA - so we could ask them how they got it to work.....” “Never, ever try to move an FCP project from one machine to another unless you have a lot of time. The relinking is a nightmare. Very unpredictable, and you must manually find files if you can find them at all! Definitely have the original project and machine close. Rendering is terrible in an Uncompressed 8 bit project. With AJA Io, our timeline showing a render necessary on a single stream of media at one position in the timeline, while the same exact media plays in real time on another area of the timeline. The settings are very scary. If you start off with one sequence playback setting and then switch to another, the timeline does not change it’s playback characteristics!! Kiss any RT you had goodbye! Finally, we had a music track sent to us as an MP3. It plays just fine in iTunes. Bringing it over to FCP meant that we could not play it at all until we rendered the entire file (presumably because it was 44.1K and our project was 48K). After the render, the music clicked and skipped beats and generally sounded terrible. This is VERY, VERY frustrating and we just don’t have time for this. Can I have my Avid back please?” Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Selling Strategy Summary: Customers should be encouraged to look beyond the standalone application and really look at all the dynamics that are at play in completing a project. Most users will agree that working with Final Cut Pro is like walking on ice – meaning they never know when they will fall through. This in itself points to the limits of the system and even more worrisome is the fact that you cannot easily tell when and where it will fail. There is a false reliance that the system can do it all, but with any type of collaborative production (which most “productions” are), the system cannot hold up to the level of an Avid solution. All productions need to have “peace of mind” and know that their editing system will take them to completion despite any changes that may occur in the workflow. It’s not just depth of toolset, but interaction with downstream processes, or simultaneous processes like FX, graphics, and sound. Final Cut Pro HD can be made to work, but is the amount of effort needs to be part of any consideration and ROI calculation. Systems are frequently cobbled together to meet a certain production’s needs. Not by Apple, but by vendors that want to make a sale, and have little to no support when things go wrong. At a recent panel with Academy Award winning editors, it was commented by one of the editors that they would consider using Final Cut Pro, but that it would require the addition of 4 or more editors. This further illustrates the hidden costs of production when trying to use Final Cut Pro. Avid products are superior because we focus on solving customer problems in a total workflow solution that can scale from a single client to large enterprise connected collaborative environments. We know that editors encounter multiple formats, so we let them mix them in real time. We know color correction and matching skin tones are important, so we invented NaturalMatch™. Time is money, so we make sure editors can accomplish a task with the minimum of keystrokes. If you’re working in HD, then it IS about quality and that’s why Avid invented DNxHD. The goal is to help editors finish jobs quicker while maintaining the highest quality. Avid DNxHD also allows true real-time collaboration across media networks. And not just a big bucket of media for editors to copy individual files back and forth, and be locked out of a volume while another user is accessing it. Avid offers the unique advantage of multiple customers working with the same files at the same time – including as many 15 full-quality dual-stream clients with mastering quality Avid DNxHD! Nobody in the market offers anything resembling this – certainly not FCP. So, while the feature sets between Final Cut Pro and Avid products may appear similar, it’s the focus behind the features, how they work in practice, every day on the job, that keeps Avid the choice of professionals. Apple Final Cut Pro HD – Competitive Overview Major Feature Comparisons: Feature Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 Avid Xpress Pro HD Media Composer Adrenaline HD Yes 9 way – 99 clips Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes EDITORIAL Advanced Trimming UI Multi clip grouping –multicam Industry standard UI Script based editing Capture w/o dropping frames View source in timeline Saved timeline views Real time audio sample rate conversion More than 2 Audio track I/O MEDIA MANAGEMENT Relink by resolution Media Tool – search across drives Decompose Rename clips Central Media database AutoSync Integrated KeyKode and film Archive to tape Find bin command WORKFLOW Total Conform RT Mixed Resolutions Total system HW integration Automated “Send to” PT/3D Audio controller HW support Compression Suite included Included Windows Media 9 export Cross Platform Mac/PC Expert Render mode EFFECTS / COMPOSITE Auto Color Correct/NaturalMatch RT motion alpha HQ Pan and Zoom w/RT preview Image stabilization w/ auto zoom RT effects No No No No Proxies - no dropshadows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Full No No No No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 4 way 4 clips Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Final Cut Pro HD / CinemaTools – Competitive Overview Competitive Overview for Film Manufacturer Product Version Apple Operating System Final Cut Pro HD CinemaTools Platform 4.5 2.1 U.S MSRP / Reseller OS X Macintosh G4/G5 $ 999/ $ Silver Bullets Final Cut Pro HD cannot capture NORMAL pulldown in real time Final Cut Pro HD cannot capture NORMAL pulldown in real-time over FireWire. NORMAL pulldown is the result of ALL film to tape transfers as well as HD down converts. Final Cut Pro HD only supports ADVANCED pulldown on capture as found with Panasonic DVX100 and SDX900 cameras. Final Cut Pro HD forces you to capture NORMAL pulldown material as 30i and post process in CinemaTools as a render to create native 24 frame material with NORMAL pulldown. This requires twice the time and twice the disk space. o Does not allow for rebatch capture of lost files. Once rendered as 24fps, user loses all reference to the 30 frame timecode Final Cut Pro HD cannot track more that one timecode. o For PAL. It cannot slow down just picture from a 24 frame transfer to 25 in a 24 frame environment. Avid Xpress Pro HD can capture NORMAL pulldown directly over FireWire in real-time allowing the user to work immediately in a native 24 frame project from film and HD sources. In addition, Avid Xpress Pro HD can compensate for video delays inherent with HD downconverts in real-time during the capture. Avid Xpress Pro HD works with a variety of PAL 24p workflows including slow down of picture, or picture and sound. Capture/Output Final Cut Pro HD is not consistent on output from 23.976 project with real-time effects Final Cut Pro HD does allow for the user to select the type of monitoring they can do in real time over FireWire. The user can select; 2:3:2:3 (NORMAL), 2:3:3:2 (ADVANCED) and 4+1. NORMAL is what would be used for broadcast but is the hardest to perform processing wise. When using this mode, Final Cut Pro HD must render all effects or it will drop frames. Avid Xpress Pro HD always outputs true 2:3 NORMAL pulldown while keeping real time effects. Final Cut Pro HD cannot handle capture of anything other than an “A” frame relationship Final Cut Pro HD always makes the assumption that NTSC timecode to pulldown relationships are “A” frames. “A” frames only represent 20% of all possible relationships. Material that does not preserve “A” frame relationships cannot be captured live in Final Cut Pro HD and the material must then be post processed (rendered) via CinemaTools. Pulldown cannot be logged ahead of time. Avid Xpress Pro HD allows for all timecode relationships to be captured on the fly or as a batch. Final Cut Pro HD / CinemaTools – Competitive Overview Final Cut Pro HD uses a separate database for managing film sources Final Cut Pro HD tracks all film based metadata in a separate application called CinemaTools. User can never work in an integrated environment where picture, sound, timecode and KeyKode are managed in context of the editorial. Users are forced to bounce back and forth between the two application to correct or add metadata needed in the conform. Final Cut Pro 5 does allow for viuewing of KeyKode and footage einside the editing application, but changes still need to be done in a separate database. CinemaTools does not allow the user to see video and film metadata in a single view but as a toggle page between the two. Correct cutlists are dependent on the relationship between video and KeyKode and not having a single view leads to errors. CinemaTools is dependent on an EDL for cutlist creation which is limited to cuts and dissolves with limited support for motion effects. CinemaTools does not allow for the tracking of pulldown within the database. Avid Xpress Pro’s approach is to integrate all metadata (video and film) in the editorial environment. Every frame is tagged with up to 7 timecodes, KeyKode, Ink numbers, and viewable above the source and record monitors. Since metadata is tracked on a per frame basis, cutlists can support layers, effects, without the need for an EDL. Film Management Audio Workflow Final Cut Pro HD does not handle double system workflows well Final Cut Pro HD expects video and audio to be captured at the same time- but for film and high quality audio workflows syncing picture and sound is problematic at best where the user needs to add sync timecode on a per clip basis. New clips do not retain reference to original clips for picture or sound. Avid Xpress Pro HD has full AutoSync™ capabilities with SoundTC and AuxTC tracking. User can sync automatically all clips based on a common timecode reference. Avid also supports “read audio timecode” which decodes audio timecode recorded on an audio channel allowing for automated syncing audio processes. What are they saying and doing to sell against Avid?: Film Workflow THEIR CLAIM Final Cut Pro HD is cheaper because all assistants can have the editor OUR ANSWER Avid Xpress Pro HD is roughly the same price as Final Cut Pro HD with far more capabilities from both a standalone editing application to working in a workgroup environment with higher end Avid editing applications. Assistants can each have their own copy of Avid Xpress Pro HD and work solo or with an existing Avid Film Composer using the same project/bins/ and MediaFiles. Indy Film THEIR CLAIM OUR ANSWER Final Cut Pro HD / CinemaTools – Competitive Overview Final Cut Pro HD can handle all video formats used by the indy filmmaker. Avid provides support for all the same video formats as Final Cut Pro HD and in some cases even better such as NORMAL pulldown over FireWire. Selling Strategy Summary: Avid products are superior in the film space as Avid has been delivering solutions since 1991. Avid was recognized by an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS®) for its development of a film editing product that changed the way Hollywood created motion pictures. This development continues to this day as filmmaking moves to a more file based workflow. Avid film solutions are head and shoulders above any competitor and the feature set described in the table below are features that are key to any production. Major Feature Comparisons: Feature 35mm 2 perf 35mm 3 perf 35mm 4 perf 35mm 8 perf VistaVision 65mm 5 perf 65mm 8 perf 65mm 12 perf 65mm 15 perf (IMAX) 16mm/20 16mm/40 In context KeyKode tracking In context KeyKode management Ink Number Aux Ink DPX VFX UNC LUT NORMAL capture over FireWire AutoSync AutoSequence Read audio timecode BWF direct support Script based editing Display of multiple metadata above source/record 24, 25, 30 TC tracking ¼ frame resync HTML cutlists TAB delimited file output for Final Cut Pro HD No Yes Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Avid Xpress Pro HD Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Media Composer Adrenaline HD Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Final Cut Pro HD / CinemaTools – Competitive Overview lists VFR Support Yes No No Additional competitive points for long form studio level films 1. Interchange has been a major factor for animated workflows. QuickTime and XML requires major reworking of internal systems. Avid is standardizing along with the rest of the industry on the MXF Media format and AAF interchange format. We have XML support via MetaSync™. OMF support will continue in the products indefinitely. The MXF initiatives are major in the industry, for example Avid and Panasonic are using the same MFX standards so we can now natively play each others files back without translation or transcoding. As that continues to develop in the marketplace it will create an open format, and not one that is specific to a Manufacturer (QuickTime and Apple). Metadata tracking - Avid systems and new Adrenaline systems have advanced film or VFX tracking features integrated directly into the Avid bins and timeline. FCP requires manual entry and tracking of film or shot reference numbers. New features include Shot and Effects ID columns, Server path names in the bin for DPX, Cineon, Tiff, Targa Mastering files that live on external non Avid servers. Color shifts and frame inaccuracies are being reported to me by Warner Bros Animation who has done extensive testing with Animation on FCP and the HW that can be used with FCP. Editors and Staffing - FCP has a lot of people who are familiar with how to run the application, but Avid has the largest pool of professional editors, technicians, and operators familiar with Media Composer and Avid products. No retraining editors, easy to find professional level editor and assistant talent to run Avid systems. Media Management - the media management in Apple's FCP is not based on a database or index model, it is the most basic computer management of relative path name. Basically FCP, and even when used with Apple XSAN can only track media by where it was told it was last. So if you put 20 people on a Network sharing FCP Quicktime files, if you move EVEN ONE file, you need to go to all 20 machines and update the path information f those files. Not a collaborative environment at all, and this is painfully evident in a long term / long form feature project with thousands and thousands of files online. FCP does much better in a short form (30 sec) creative situation. Shared Bins and Projects - again on collaboration - the ability to edit from Shared Bins gives editors and assistants more capabilities and ease of use regarding Version control of cuts and effects. Instead of cuts and reels living independently on each editing system, they can be shared out on Unity and accessed as a central / master project database to manage version control. This is a significant Avid advantage to any other edit systems for a collaborative workflow. 24 frame playback and Digital Cut - An animated Film studio (starts with P) reported to me that they were unable to get accurate 24 frame playback to tape from an FCP system this last December during their testing. Apple is aware and has no immediate solution they could offer to this customer. Flexibility - Avid has systems that can support any standard frame rate, as well as codec packages that include real time editing and mixing of the following formats - MJPEG, MPEG 2 , DV, IMX, ABVB, QUICKTIME, MPEG 4, XDCAM, P2, HDV and can support bit rates from a couple hundred k, to 1080i HD at 1187Mbits per sec. FCP has limited resolutions, limited frame rates, and no support for anything other then QuickTime. Support - all of these customers who tried FCP reported to me that although Apple listened to their problems and took notice of issues when they occurred at large media corporations, they took limited to no action to address them, disclose any timelines for fixing or resolving issues, and were unable to resolve the major issues (which is what prompted the return to Avid products). 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Predictability - Avid has been building editing systems for professional post production since 1987. All we do is create technology for the Post and Production process. Many other vendors have come and gone, Apple has had who knows how many different business strategies in that period of time, all of them focused on selling computers and not serving high end Post. Final Cut Pro HD / CinemaTools – Competitive Overview Here is a short list of customers who have tried or switched to Final Cut Pro, and have switched back to Avid or reported significant problems caused by the decision. Not sure this helps you but obviously ALL studios and companies have looked at this strategy and asked questions about moving to FCP, the 2 big users of FCP in town are Playboy Entertainment (DV based work) and CBO Advertising (trailer company). Based on the fact that no major studio including Pixar has switched, that has to say something. Not being arrogant and saying it can't happen, not saying it won't happen, but I am saying it will not work better - that much I am very confident saying. • • • • • • • • Disney WDFA (as you are aware, you tried this a few years ago) New Wave Entertainment (replaced 17 FCP systems for Adrenalines) Warner Bros Feature Post Warner Bros Television Animation Steven Soderbergh (director) NBC Advertising and Promotion Fox Digital / Fox Sports DreamWorks