Avid Xpress DV 3.5 vs. FCP3

[sb]

You don't say if you have to interface with other production facilities. I'm
going to assume that you are a small individual "project" studio, or a
serious hobbiest.

The Avid DVXpress is a very good system, but one of it's major strong points
is its compatibility with the higher end Avids. A project that was done on
AvidXpress can be opened and worked on with most any other Avid, which is a
big plus if you send your stuff to a production house that uses Avids - and
many many do. You get real time built in without the purchase of an
additional board.

FCP, OTOH, you can start with just a computer and the software and work in
DV quite well. You don't need to buy any additional hardware for capture
unless you work with one of the non-DV higher end formats, (betacam,
digibeta) and if you do, then you are used to buying more expensive stuff
anyway. (The low end betacam decks cost about $6,000).

As for Premiere, it too is excellent software, but right now, Version 6.5 is
the last one for the Mac. They have not made a decision yet to commit to any
more Mac development.

I use FCP for all my work now, though I also own Premiere 6.5, and Media
100, and have several capture cards which I use with FCP. I prefer the
Aurora Igniter for FCP capture, since we still work with betacam quite
often, as well as DVCam.
For miniDV material, we use any computer we want, including my traveling
iBook.

my .02

sb 

On 11/27/02 6:47 AM, "J T Shrigley" <jts at arcomgraphics.com> wrote:

> Lootking for opinions...  Which NLE to go for, as an upgrade from iMovie?
> Besides Avid Xpress and Final Cut Pro, i suppose I should also consider
> Premier.  Macintosh-based.