The place I work is considering switching to macs and gettting final cut pro. Have any of you worked with it? I have always stayed away from it because I generally despise macs, but I might have to deal with it, as it is not my decision. Anyways how does it stack up to Avid xpress or premier? Any hard facts i can present to my boss to stop the switch?


Jobefx

Final Cut Pro is fairly equal to Avid Xpress and Premiere Pro. All three have their limitiations as well as strengths. Once Premiere Pro came out, I found the few remaining weaknesses to be of no great consequence all things considered. For me, Premiere Pro is the better editor of the three, regardless of platform.

But should your employer make a switch, FCP will feel a bit more like Premiere than Xpress.

I cant see any reason to change OS format ... if you already have a Windows system. Changing to Mac will also entail buying new software (utilities, office suite etc etc) and learning the new OS. There is a substantial learning curve especially if you've never used a Mac before. There ia also the issue of networking. Are the editors networked? Video sharing (work-group) is a feature that all the NLE suites are advertising now .. this allows more than one person to work on a given project ... Are your NLE's networked now? If so there are a few (not major) issues related to a hybrid Mac/ Windows network.
As far as one being better than the other though ... it's a matter of personal preference over funtionality ....
Peace

If the switch happens - look at the bright side
It is much esier to switch from windows to mac than oposite
FCP took me couple hours to get a feeling and output to tape some small project and i am nothing even close to pro editor.As audioda said it feels more like premiere than avid.
The one good reason to upgrade to FCP if you planing to work with HD couse its cheeper than windows setup's.
Networking both platforms it's much esier now with Panther than it was with earlier OS X systems.

wow you guys nailed two of the reason that we may switch. We are going to slowly transition to HD and FCP can handle HD with no problems. Second reason is all the editors are net worked and we are having problems with avid xpress transfering files from one computer to another. We do it all the time but every time we do we get errors on the machine that the files are transfered to. The errors get worse and worse until we have to break out the avid disks and repair the install. killing several hours of work.

Oh well if we do switch it is just more on more editing system to put on my resume.

thanks for the advice

Jobefx