I started to write one of these articles comparing NLEs myself, but this Editor David Maurer does a much better job!

http://www.flickgym.com/2009/10/top-ten-reasons-avid-beats-final-cut-pro.html

I’m a recent convert, though not from Final Cut to Avid specifically.  And not because it was a hard decision to make, but because I never had access to Avid.  Previously I regularly flip-flopped between Adobe Premiere and Final Cut and quite frankly I preferred Premiere to Fina Cut for the pure usability.  I hadn’t gotten too complicated with multi-cams shoots or working offline before moving to New York because all my projects were usually small, one camera shoot, indie short films.  Maybe I would have had choosen FCP over Premiere for those features if I ever needed to try them out.  I don’t even know how Premiere handles multicam, if at all still.  But as soon as I started to work with Avid, I realized how much more robust the program is.  And THEN to go back to FCP at some post houses and try and do some of the same things Avid does, it was like trying to push a car up a mountain.  You can sometimes do it, but it’s real damn difficult.  Now I’m a full Avid convert.

One thing about this article I have to frown upon is the idea of saving money by not needing to hire an Assistant…. Boo!  Besides, us Assistants do a lot more than that anyway!  But yes, it is cheap for students which is nice.

Lastly, I have one more comparison to add to his list which is: In Avid, you can color code any type of file any color you want.  There’s a color wheel to pick colors once you’ve gone through all the defaults.  It’s SO useful to organize and designate work or work done, indicate an easy to find recent cut, etc.

(Some of you may know or have figured out I’m not too big of a fan of Apple, but posting this article isn’t about starting a fight but more to qualify in my head why I’ve made this decision of choosing Avid… and only a little bit to silence the people always saying FCP is the wave of the future!)