Switcher Stories: Sean Lander

I first began editing on Avid at the beginning of 1992 and found it to be one of the most liberating experiences I have ever had as an editor. Several years later I found myself running a facility comprising of three Avid Media Composers. Because of the length of my experience I was the official Avid trainer for my region of Australia. The company was doing mainly television and corporate work but by 2001 we were beginning to find that more and more our work was being done for internet delivery or multimedia presentations. Using an Avid Media Composer to do this work seemed a bit like using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut. At this stage I had already played with Apple’s Final Cut Pro and was suitably impressed.

The Switch

We bought a system and began using it for all of our multimedia work. To get myself up to speed really didn’t take any time at all. Just doing the tutorial that came with FCP was enough information for me to understand the differences. Very quickly I began to fall in love with the way FCP did things.

The Transition

As an Avid editor of nearly 10 years by this stage there were some things that I was going to find difficult using FCP. The main one is the difference in the Timeline. The Avid approach is very much that the Timeline is mainly a visual representation of the edit and if you want to change things using the timeline only, then you will need to jump through some hoops first. Apple’s approach is almost the opposite, in that they allow you to modify any element in the Timeline just by clicking on it. At first I found this a little frustrating but with more use I began to see the light. I had much more control over my sequences than before. Cut, copy and paste are also used a lot in FCP whereas the Avid was much more hit and miss.

On the other hand, I understood the differences in compositing straight away. Media Composer has never been a great compositor and many an Avid editor has had to learn After Effects to compensate. FCP follows very closely the AE paradigm so it made sense to me immediately. The ease of working with Photoshop images was another thing that just blew me away. Maintaining all layers and transparencies was saving me hours and hours of manual labour.

Media management is another area where a few people have struggled. There are some peculiarities with FCP that still need to be sorted out. Whereas with the Avid you mostly always felt confident to delete things you knew were no longer needed, most FCP editors would never dare do this until the job is safely out of the edit bay to hardcopy. Yet some things that FCP does are fantastic and I couldn’t imagine going without them. Firstly, the way that FCP keeps all clips in one searchable project is great. Finding clips is so much easier. Secondly, creating hierarchical structures using multiple bins is much easier as you can place bins inside bins inside bins.

Of course in the early days there were many shortcomings in FCP compared to Avid but with each software update they decreased. Audio mix tools that you can keyframe, multicam features, dynamic trim mode, more and more realtime effects. The wish list for the Avid way gets shorter and shorter. I imagine that by the time v6.0 is released my wish list will be gone.

Goodbye Avid

It was in late 2001 when I sold the last of our Avids. I knew they were going to start dropping in value as soon as other editors discovered how good FCP really was. I was right. When faced with the costly expense of upgrading an Avid people began wondering if it was money well spent when for the same price they could get two or three FCP rigs. These days it’s pretty rare for me to cut on Avid. There are still some of the larger production houses that use them but virtually all of the small to medium facilities in my city have switched. Cost being the driving factor at first but then the amazing toolset convincing them that they made the right decision. Last year I cut two feature films and one adventure travel series on Final Cut Pro and I wouldn’t have it any other way.