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Has Avid Cinema completely disappeared?


Patrick Cooper

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I did use Avid Cinema some years ago at University. It was actually the first time that I had used video editing software. Since then, Ive mainly used other (similar) basic / cheap NLE programs like Ulead Video Studio and Windows Movie Maker. There's a project that I'm going to start work on shortly that unfortunately would reveal the limitations of both Ulead and WMM. Ive looked through Ulead's list of transitions and I just cannot find dissolves which seems crazy for an NLE program. While WMM can do dissolves, it doesn't offer very accurate cutting (can't trim frame by frame etc.) And for some strange reason, if you want to create a DV avi of your film with WMM, you don't have the option of saving it to your hard drive (it is exported to tape as default.)

 

So I thought why not grab a copy of Avid Cinema. It should be pretty cheap (used) and hopefully straight forward to get to grips with again. I haven't used this software for ages so my memory of it's capabilities / features is a bit vague. I do remember that it can do dissolves. I can't remember how accurate the cutting is (whether you can trim frame by frame or every 5 frames etc.) Does it allow you to save a DV avi to the hard drive? And does it support firewire capture and export? Ive just had a look on Australia eBay and to my surprise, there were 0 results for Avid Cinema!

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  • 1 month later...

I'll be honest that I'm too young to know what Avid Cinema is/was. I'm thinking it was the old version of Avid Media Composer. Either way, the four that you should be checking out are:

 

Avid Media Composer, the 5th version just came out and you can get a software only version for like $2,500. Check Avid.com

 

Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Studio is like $1,000 but you can get just Final Cut Xpress for like $300 I think. Check Apple.com

Adobe Premiere Pro. Now its like billionth version (It's in Creative Suite 5, which started after like version 9), Premiere Pro used to be looked down on but with CS5 it's picking up traction and might be of interest to you.

 

Sony Vegas Video. Vegas isn't awful, but it's not great either. I haven't looked into the price of Vegas, but it might be worth looking into.

 

Mac Based: Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro

Windows Based: Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas Video

Edited by Tyler Leisher
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I think Avid FreeDV was the replacement. If you're a student there's a student version of Media Composer 5 which goes for around $400US. The only problem there is you have to have a pretty stout computer to handle MC5 and all of its features. You need a computer in the league of HP Workstations with Nvidia Quadro Pro graphics, HP Elitebook laptops with mobile Quadro pro graphics, etc. Having said that I got pretty okay results with MC4 running a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with GeForce AGP card...but I wasn't trying to edit HD or layer up a lot of effects.

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A word to the adventurous - you certainly used to be able to run some of the Quadro drivers on higher end gaming boards. This was four or five years ago, though. The principal hardware difference was that only Quadros had dual DVI out, which the drivers don't care about (everything does now, of course).

 

P

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