Avid:  Editor or Database?

I’ll admit it, as I have before:  I’m not an Avid guy.  Of course, that doesn’t stop my employer from being an Avid house.  We are currently installing an Interplay system, which centralizes all our assets, and allows many different people throughout the plant to preview the video, audio, graphics and such.  As a part of the installation process, all of us who have to edit must get an Interplay tutorial.  I sat through mine this morning, and for four hours I was reminded of a statement I have heard again and again:

“Final Cut and Premiere Pro are great editors with crappy databases.  Avid is a crappy editor in front of a GREAT database.”

Interplay drives that message home - with a sledgehammer.

There are at least three (and maybe more - I’m not sure) ways to tiptoe through the Interplay database.  The one that looks the most useful to me is the Interplay window that lives inside the Media Composer editor.  This window seems to hold the promise of wiping away all of the various bins (except the bin with the sequence in it.)  Big step forward, IMHO.  Next is Assist, which is a standalone app that can offer logging on a desktop, which of course requires database access.  And speaking of access, then there is Access (wasn’t Microsoft using that name just a minute ago?), which is the heavy-duty search monster, with Boolean searches that can drill through your pile of video like an Exxon oil rig through the Gulf of Mexico.  Not to mention the several administrator tools, which I will never hold permissions for (and rightfully so.)

And I wonder…three (or more) applications?  Wouldn’t one be enough?

I suppose that an argument can be made for each, but really - how complicated do we have to make our systems?

Of course, I probably wouldn’t mind half as much if I could just graft the Premiere Pro interface onto it.  Is that too much to ask?

Tomorrow Is The Day

I’m sure all the PVC faithful have gotten pretty tired of my rants about digital TV and how it will warp your mind, curve your spine and lost the war for the Allies.  Well, good for you folks, because tomorrow - June 12 - is the day.

Of course, there are a lot of people still worried about the end of analog TV.  Here’s a pretty good article from Wired on the subject.  If you get some frantic phone calls from your less-technical family and neighbors on Saturday AM, don’t be surprised.  And visit www.antennaweb.org to figure out where to point that spindly pile ‘o metal rods you’ll be installing on Sunday morning!

Hey Editors!  Did You Know You Are Making Six Figures?

This article from Forbes offers up the surprising (to me, at least) fact that film and video editors are part of that rare strata of American workers that makes….

....drum roll, please…

...a SIX-FIGURE salary!  Really! Over a hundred grand a year!

Of course, it also claims that there are only about 18,000 of us in the USA.  I gotta tell ya, if the salaries of all my editing buddies are any indication, there are two or three editors out there making over a BILLION dollars a year, and in doing so “destroy the curve” for the rest of us.

Six figures!  Yeah, right.  Are you making six figures?  Tell me about it.

Solid State Recording For The Masses!

Y’know, I’m getting very quickly sold on using flash memory for a recording medium.  My experiences testing the Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras have really made me a believer.  Problem is, I already have a raft of cameras (Canon XL-series, mostly) that I still love and still make great pictures.  And in the current economy, pouring over $12K into an EX3 and wide angle lens just isn’t going to happen too soon.  What to do?

Focus Enhancements has been hitting the ball out of the park with hard drive recorders for several years now, and the big brains there have just made another leap.  Enter the FS-H200, which at first glance looks like an FS-5 hard disc recorder.  However, when you turn it on it’s side, you will find a Compact Flash slot instead of an internal hard drive.  Using HV and HDV’s 13-gigs-per-hour data rate, it’s an easy calculation that a 16Gb compact flash card will record over an hour of footage, and a 32Gb over 2 hours.  (Of course, CF cards are still much more expensive than an equivalent DV/HDV tape, but if you have ever had a tape dropout spoil your edit, you can easily see that double-recording with CF and tape is a very inexpensive insurance policy, and one that can drastically speed up your workflow to boot.)

Other features of the FS-H200 include silent operation (no moving parts!), a long-lasting removable internal battery, and native recording in many codecs and wrappers including AVI type 1 and 2, Quicktime, RawDV, M2T, and the Canopus and Matrox AVI formats.  And while the FS-H200 looks a lot like the FS-5, it doesn’t share some of the FS-5’s coolest features, like video on the monitor screen or remote logging via WiFi (with an iPod Touch or a laptop.)  Still, at a list price of $1195, it is a good bit less expensive than the FS-5.  (I recently upgraded my FS-5 to the new 2.0 software - watch for a review of that soon.)

I hope to have an FS-H200 in hand to test soon.  The units should be shipping this month, so check out www.focusinfo.com and watch your favorite retailer for the chance to bring your trusty old tape-based camcorders into the brave new world of solid-state recording!

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