Which is more used in Post PCs or Macs???

[Thomas W. Bethe]

One of my current interns says that no big studio is using PCs any more and that everything is done on FCP on a Mac. Any feelings about this or any personal experience? I did some web surfing and it seems to me that AVID still has a large share of the marketplace but that Macs are gaining.

Thanks in advance!

[FullFrequency]

The place I'm in at the moment has Avid on PC and a few Mac with FCP. the Pro Tools rigs are on PC too, all hooked up to Unity. All the audio guys here hate the pcs, including myself. They're not that old, yet so unstable. I don't get these "qualified" HP Workstations. Everywhere I've seen them in seems to have untold reliability problems with them :(

FF

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

One of my current interns says that no big studio is using PCs any more and that everything is done on FCP on a Mac. Any feelings about this or any personal experience? I did some web surfing and it seems to me that AVID still has a large share of the marketplace but that Macs are gaining.

Thanks in advance!

For picture editing I'd say Avid is far more common around Hollywood, although I know a reality TV post executive who has invested heavily in FCP. I used to hear a lot of picture editors mocking FCP as being semi-pro, but I don't hear that as much any more. Still, I get the feeling that most prefer Avid. In terms of Pro Tools systems, I'd say that 90% are Mac based.

[D'Animation]

I work inhouse with an animation studio - we do all our editing from animatic to offline in FCP on macs - then it goes to an Autodesk Smoke for onlining running off its own linux server (i think? but since NAB it can now run off a high specced MacPro too). FCP, with a proper network storage set-up, has become real stable handling HD etc but can't do the heavy lifting/fx your dedicated Smoke/Flame system can do (or Avids I guess but our post supervisor hates them so we've never had one)

All audio is on macs.

They're not that old, yet so unstable. I don't get these "qualified" HP Workstations. Everywhere I've seen them in seems to have untold reliability problems with them :(

Interesting, everyone outside of post ie. on the animation floor is on PCs and we just got a load of HP workstations - turns out they specced bad graphics cards in all of them. They make nice monitors mind you...

[Fajita]

12 Media Composers, 10 SD 2 HD all on Mac. Avid DS/HD on PC, 6 Pro Tools HD2 on Mac, 1 Pro Tools LE on Mac, 4 FCP on Mac.

We are pretty Mac-Centric here. Not including the graphics department, they're all mac using Cinema4D, After Effects, Motion, and FCP.

[JSt0rm]

We are all mac here but one of the animation houses I work with is all pc.

[vudoo]

ProTools - 2 PT HD on Macs ( MacPro ), 3 PT HD on PC ( HP )

2 x Avid - All PC

2 x FCP - Macpro

Bluray Authoring - All PC


Both platforms work great and stable. Still prefer the '' sexiness '' Macs but when it boils down to getting the job done, performance and reliability, they are both the same.

[insomaniac]

We've got a few PC workstations, one running a dual boot DS/Symphony Nitris, but everything else is on Mac, with 2 FCPs and 3 Avid MCs (with CS5 apps on some), plus 2 HD systems on MacPros (just got the dub stage off of the old G5).

[Rick Sanchez]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

One of my current interns says that no big studio is using PCs any more and that everything is done on FCP on a Mac. Any feelings about this or any personal experience? I did some web surfing and it seems to me that AVID still has a large share of the marketplace but that Macs are gaining.

Thanks in advance!

Tell your intern that he/she may need to stay an intern for a while if that's what they've learned so far.

Avid runs on both Mac and PC as does ProTools. Generally I'd say more Avids are being run on the PC platform and ProTools on MAC. Avid on PC is still VERY much alive in the film and television world. In smaller markets and the ad world, Final Cut has made more of a footprint.

Final Cut is a very good product for it's price range. Your intern is correct that it did make some big strides a few years ago in grabbing market share from Avid, however a large portion of television and major theatrical releases are still cut on Avids. Final Cut dropped the ball in their last couple of releases when it comes to fixing some very practical workflow problems.

FCP has always been plagued by audio sync issues that you can work around, but you should not need to. It can also be a lot slower than an Avid in regards to real time effect handling. Networking and media management are also issues that come up often with editors who are well versed on both platforms.

There are some things about FCP that I love, I'm a Mac guy and despite all of their own marketing hype, Avid customer support still sucks. That said, if I were opening a facility where mid to large scale networking was needed and there were critical deadlines to be met, I'd be a fool not to seriously consider Avid on HP as an option.

[eoats]

I have 3 MACs here at home to work from.
There are 50+ ProTools DAWs at one of the places I work; all MACs

[SurveillanceP]

Yet to see a PC run pro tools 8+ stabely. (yet to see a godamn mac do it come to think of that )

All the Avids I've seen are PC. Not making a call, just saying.

Our machine room assistant said to me the other day that Final Cut Pro stores ALL its metadata in .FCP files, as opposed to the bin/project structure of Avid. No problemo, but then he told me that once a .FCP file exceeds 20Mb it falls over and sometime corrupts. I chuckled, but then he made a good point I think.

He said that its aimed at a different end of the market. if you're making a reality show every single day and there are days and days of footage, Final Cut would be suicicde. But if you're making a film clip or a short film it rules, plus its nice and cheap.

One of these days Final Cut might come out with a comprehensive hardware media storage solution +support and development. I could totally see Avid picking up their game then. I kind of hope it happens really, competition is good. I'd like to see Final Cut weighing into the heavyweight end of town. Its got some agonising flaws, but overall its a really good program and I'd like to see more of it.

[Fajita]

Media Management in FCP is a nightmare... if you don't do it, try and move a project from one machine to another, all kinds of missing files. Avid copies to one centralized location, making a project move very simple.

Maybe FCP will have a "collect media" feature soon.

[denniskersten]

we work on Pyramix so it's all pc's here

[Bill@AudioVision]

All WinDoze machines here, 'cause I build'em... except for the Fairlights.

[AudioWonderland]

Originally Posted by FullFrequency

The place I'm in at the moment has Avid on PC and a few Mac with FCP. the Pro Tools rigs are on PC too, all hooked up to Unity. All the audio guys here hate the pcs, including myself. They're not that old, yet so unstable. I don't get these "qualified" HP Workstations. Everywhere I've seen them in seems to have untold reliability problems with them :(

FF

A little knowledge goes a long way. There is nothing inherently unstable about the PC platform. I avoid prebuilt machines because they load up a bunch of crap software and inevitably cut corners on components somewhere.

Usually instability can be tracked to 1)bad/incorrect spec ram 2) Excess heat or 3) undergunned power supplies.

[Whitecat]

From my experience, it tends to be Avid for long-form stuff and FCP for short-form stuff nowadays - the delineation has occurred over the past 5 years or so, partly in response to the fact that FCP just isn't very good at longer edits - all sorts of flaky behaviour, weird bugs, etc. Avid is far more stable when things get into the 42 minutes-and-up length.

That said, there are exceptions to that all the time. The odd Hollywood feature (or pseudo-Hollywood, in the case of Tetro, for example) is cut on FCP (and boy does Apple ever shout from the mountains when that happens - see Eat Pray Love press as an example...)

Of course lots of commercials and music promos are still done on Avid as well... but whereas 5 years ago there was some degree of embarrassment in only running FCP, it's definitely not looked down upon, especially if you're a very small operation. You're no longer expected to have Avid - if you can cut with Avid you can get work in big rooms with Symphony systems. If you are a whiz with FCP you can cut music videos and virals on your own rig... at least that's how it kind of works in London. I often get commissioned by small boutique productions companies to do various levels of things and more and more they are *expecting* me to have FCP because that's what they've got, and in two years' time when they need to repurpose something they want to be able to open the project. In cases where I offer edit as well as audio post, they generally do not care what I use for audio post, whereas they make a sticky point of making sure that our edit software is the same (FCP!)

[Jfriah]

My experience is that AVID/FC (I still refuse to use the P word, but most things I've experienced have been user error) delineation stems more from budget than anything.

That, too, can also go along with 'Hollywood' being AVID for the most part. And also the fact that editors use what they're used to. Final Cut is sure making inroads, though.

But that's not "PC vs Mac" as the OP was asking--

Everyone I know locally that uses Final Cut is on Mac (and vice versa, every editor that I know locally owns a mac and uses Final Cut...). All of our post audio computers are Mac (and who keeps saying PT 8 isn't stable? Don't use PT 8...haha...it is too new!). I only know of one facility (Vancouver) that uses pretty much exclusively PCs now to run their PT rigs on. Not 100% positive but believe most of Toronto is Mac also.

"just the way it is"--why change things that work (/why spend more money)--seems to apply many times.

Jeff

[Frank S.]

5 Avids - all on PC
1 FCP - on Mac
3 Fairlights - all PC
Autodesk Smoke - linux (I think)
DVD/Blu Ray authoring - PC

We only have 2 Macs in our entire building. (Not counting personal laptops.)

[Airon]

Most of the shows I work on are Protools-Mac and Avid-PC.

Then again, I use a carefully controlled custom hardware profile in an XP SP3 partition on my i7 PC for editing and premixing in my home room.

PC may be more fiddly, but it also nets you more performance if you're banking towards native. There are quite a few professional outfits that build and support PC based rigs as well.

People wanting to save money may go for the DUC-based PC rigs that are carefully tested, judging by the results more so than those POS machines by HP that I see having a lot of problems in the mixing rooms I encouter them in.

"Oh no, our dual-Xeon HP Protools HD PC with a Unity connection burns and crashes if you add half a dozen tracks with EQ7 to our standard session on 'em." **** that.

But it is possible to get good PC rigs rolling. There're just more variables to consider. Like staying the **** away from Unity video in Protools on the PC.