Steven Sanders, A Suppah Fly Editor (17/07/2006)

About a year ago, senior "Studio Amusement" Editor Steven Sanders, purchased a Final Cut Pro/Decklink solution running with 4Gbit Fiber Channel drives. Steven had no experience with FCP and was planning to edit the entire third season of "Zone Stad" on the system. One year later yell-o-snow publishes his thoughts and comments on the Avid to FCP switch. This is what the man himself had to say:

Can you introduce yourself and give us a quick overview of your carreer?

My name is Steven Sanders, I am a thirty one year old freelance video editor from West Vlaanderen. Story telling is what I dig so I edit as much fiction as I can. At this very moment, I'm finishing thirteen episodes of season 3 of “Zone Stad” (VTM). I also edited the first two "Zone Stad" series, "De Wet Volgens Milo", worked on “Spoed” and several documentaries. For years I edited on AVID systems until I decided to purchase my own editing suite and went for a Final Cut Pro systeem.

What was the decisive factor for you to switch to Final Cut pro?

Initially I was very reluctant to make the switch to another system. I mastered the AVID system to perfection and I never worked on a Mac, but at the end of the day, certain aspects of the FCP system convinced me to make the switch. One of them was the price. I didn’t want to work on DV only and HD had to be part of the story too. A similar system on AVID was simply too expensive. I read a lot of raving reviews on Final Cut Studio on the internet and so I became convinced. Another aspect was the interface. Although I wasn’t too sure about it at first, I quickly started to see the benefits of it and after a while it felt much more intuitive than the AVID interface.

Did you experience any problems switching

Switching was fine, easier that I expected. It took a few weeks to master al the functions. It didn’t take me much time to work as fast on Final Cut pro as I did on AVID.

Any remarks about the system (POSITIVE/NEGATIVE)

My findings are predominantly positive, like the Os for example. I totally dig the Mac OS. I am somebody who doesn’t want to be bothered with the technical aspect of a computer. A computer is a tool which I use to create stories and I want to spend as little time as possible on getting it to run properly. I found that Final Cut pro is a very stable application. I edited 13 episodes of Zone Stad on it, offline (DV) and Online (10Bit uncompressed SD) and not once did the systeem give up on me. This to me is the result of the application being really optimized for the OS. At the rare occasion when it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do, it turned out that I overlooked something. The Fact that Final Cut Pro is completely QuickTime based is a gaz. I can seamlessly export a reference movie from FCP to After Effects, do whatever I need to do and import the rendered movie back in FCP. The AVID system has to transform everything to OMFI and that sometimes takes a while. The audio of Zone Stad was recorded on Hard Drive in BWF format. I found a free tool on the internet called “Sebsky Tools" which enabled me to transform the BWFs effortlessly to QuickTime. After that I merged the QuickTime Clip with the original BWF using the corresponding time code by Control-Clicking in FCP and Bob’s your Uncle! For the rest I was able to do almost everything I used to do on an Avid.What I am missing is the ablility to apply multiple dissolves. In other words, it’s impossible to create a range in a timeline and to apply a disolve on every cut within that range using one simple function. What I also miss is a simple Time Code window that can be repositioned or enlarged . Some of my clients need a visible time code window. In the color corrector I am missing the curves you find on an Avid system. They allow you to sometimes save an image that looks hopeless. This won’t always work with the FCP Color Correction tool and if it does, it’s time consuming so.......get those curves in there!

Can you tell us a little more about ZONE STAD?

The series Zone Stad stands out compared to other Flemish series by the fast rhythm of the cut and Visual effects. The sound post production is of an extremely high standard and deserves a “Flemish Oscar”. The fact that I was able to easily import footage in After Effects and apply a whole series of Plug-ins gives the series a distinguished and expensive look, making it stand out compared to other series. I am planning on using Shake in the future, so who knows what that will bring.

Any other plans for the future?

Anything that has a story and hopefully a feature film soon. Keep’m Coming!

Links

Steven Sanders
AVID/FCP5/After Effects
Legeweg 86b
8200 Sint-Andries
0495 26 77 40
www.zonestad.be
sanders-steven@telenet.be