[MacDV] Avid Xpress DV 3.5 vs. FCP3

[Richard Brown]

After looking at the ascent of Avid for the last decade, I personally 
could not recommend its product line, as it appears both stalled and 
stagnant, and far too smug in its increasingly faltering dominance in 
the NLE market.  Premiere is a hobbyist at best solution, not to be 
considered with Final Cut or Avid in terms of usability.

Final Cut is definitely the way to go. Even today, Final Cut is 
replacing Avid systems at the broadcast level, being chosen instead of 
Avid on new installations at the broadcast level, and making its first 
inroads into supplanting Avid at the feature film level. The beauty of 
the system is that you do not have to be a feature filmmaker or a 
broadcast television producer to be able to afford the system. This is 
not to say Avid Xpress is price prohibitive, but Avid Xpress is a closed 
ended solution, not intended to step on the toes of "professional" Avid 
systems.  Final Cut directly competes not with the whole of the Avid 
line. With Avid Xpress, you must "move up" to vastly more expensive 
systems if you want more than Xpress can offer. Final Cut places no such 
limitation. Just add an uncompressed HD capture card, a RAID array, and, 
unlike Avid Xpress, you are doing ONLINE HD post, tens of thousands of 
dollars less than any competing Avid solution.

Final Cut is moving aggressively to become the NLE of choice at every 
level of production, and finding more creative and empowering means to 
get there. My opinion would be the smart bet definitely lies with Final 
Cut today. We use it extensively, and find it has replaced the $600 per 
hour online suite while offering greater creative flexibility. As Final 
Cut goes through a few more upgrades and iterations of hardware support, 
I would be increasingly concerned were I an owner of Avid stock.

Richard Brown