Digital Video - September 2007 - (Page 45)

NLE SUITE ALTERNATIVES AVID EDITOR EXPANDING HORIZONS Initial package/ cost Alternative Package/cost Total alternative package cost Savings (additional cost) Xpress Studio Complete $5,995 EDITOR WORKING REMOTELY Production Premium CS3 $1,699 WEB/IPTV PRODUCER Production Premium CS3 $1,699 Xpress Pro (standalone) $1,695 Production Premium CS3 $1,699 Automatic Duck Pro Importer 4.0 $495 $3,889 Final Cut Studio SyncVue (2 licenses) $1,299 $358 $1,657 Final Cut Studio $1,299 Flash Professional CS3 (standalone)$699 Photoshop CS3 (standalone) $649 $2,647 $2,106 $42 ($948) surprised. It’s an excellent NLE for all but my largest projects that require significant media management at the sequence level. It has good project-level media management that works similarly to After Effects’ project consolidation features, but I have a hard time managing large projects, with dozens of sequences needing to be consolidated to different locations while keeping the original media available. Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2 is no slouch. Even adding in an a la carte copy of Adobe Photoshop, the total cost is still within Production Premium’s price range. Though I prefer After Effects to Motion, editors new to motion graphics will do just fine with the latter—trading some power for a much more manageable learning curve. Sure, it’s Mac-only, but in my book that’s not much of a mark against it. So where does this leave the relatively expensive Avid Xpress Studio Complete? It’s not nearly as complete a package as the Apple and Adobe offerings, but for many editors, it’s sufficient. This is an NLE buyer’s guide, after all—so having the best NLE of the bunch has to count for something. Having Boris RED and ProTools LE doesn’t hurt—but at $5,995, the price premium is seriously steep. A single solution? As alluring as the prospect of a single suite of software meeting all my creative postproduction needs is, no one package above serves as a total solution. The Adobe Production Premium suite comes the closest, but Premiere Pro’s media management and limited asymmetric trimming would limit my editing productivity somewhat. I’ve considered three types of editors who may be in the market for an integrated suite for the first time: the Avid editor looking to expand his or her skills into the area of motion graphics and DVD authoring, the editor who works remotely from a home office or satellite studio, and the Web/IPTV video producer/editor. The chart shows the price breakdown of the various options. For the Avid editor in search of motion graphics and DVD authoring skills, rather than buying the Avid suite, it’s significantly less expensive to buy a standalone version of Xpress Pro and the full version of the Production Premium suite. To get tighter integration between Xpress Pro and Adobe After Effects, adding Automatic Duck’s Pro Importer 4.0 for $495 still saves a lot over the standard Avid suite. For the editor working remotely, I suggest choosing the NLE of your choice. The NLE can be any of the three, but Final Cut Pro would get my nod for its ability to work with a wide variety of formats (such as XDCAM and P2) as well as its intuitive interface gets my nod. For less than the price of Xpress Pro, you get a whole suite of software. For review and approval, SyncVue provides a superior client experience to Adobe’s Clip Notes. Two licenses, transferable among clients, will set you back $358. You come out with a superior remote client approval system for less than the cost of the Adobe suite. For the Web/IPTV producer, the inclusion of Flash CS3 Professional makes the Adobe suite the logical choice. It’s possible to work in Final Cut Studio with standalone versions of Flash and Photoshop, but the cost is nearly $1,000 more. While any of these suites will let you edit well, none do everything at the best in class level. Some mixing and matching is still suggested. ■ Frank Capria is president of Kingpin Interactive (www.kingpininteractive.com), a television postproduction and design facility in Northborough, Mass. WWW.DV.COM DV SEPTEMBER 2007 43 http://www.kingpininteractive.com http://www.kingpininteractive.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - September 2007

Contents News AG-HPX500 HD Camcorder First Look: Color V8000HD 8" LCD Monitor Shoulder Mount System Instant Expert Close-Ups Fest Cercuit Q&A Flight Plan Cutter's Way Imagination in Action Motion Graphics Production Diary

Digital Video - September 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.