Experts?!?!
Im highly shocked at the amount of experts here talking crap! There have been some good comments but the amount of people chucking opinions and rumours around as facts is disturbing!
Final Cut is, jointly with Avid, the current market leaders and both work wonders, although Avid has more specific broadcast programs such as NewsCutter, not to mention that they produce their own hardware solutions. Adobe's CS4 suite with 64bit rendering and RED compatibility as standard would in my opinion lead it to compete with FCS2 & Media Composer 3 in the near future and would be a great product for smaller, corporate or similar video houses until it receives a larger take up.
Final Cut might be "a terrible piece of software" to quote the most mis-representative Daniel Ocean but it is currently being taken up by the BBC, ITV and Sky to name UK broadcasters alone. Most of these businesses are currently in transition to P2 cards (a 64gb version is due soon) which is optimised for Final Cut hence it's use (although Adobe's latest update adds promising compatibility). So no actual mention of HDD based solutions anywhere here!
As for storage I think everyone can agree that server based storage takes up far far far less room than tape based solutions, never require recapturing (once in a recognisable format), and are quick to distribute amongst multiple edit suites at one single moment. Yes tape is still being used at an in-house level but even so, the majority of these now store digital copies of most of their key projects.
As for cost... Don't get me started!! The cost of space per amount of footage on harddisk based storage already outweighs the cost per amount of footage on tape. If you buy a large HDD you save money over a smaller sized HDD, and that taking into account the cost of a tape easily wins. But wait!! To do this fairly take into account the time and cost it takes to pay someone to capture the footage, maintain the library and tech the decks. A server based solution would require just the organisation and the tech work, both of which can be fulfilled in one job role such as a Master Control Room Operator.
I love Apple equipment alot, i own two Macs an iPod and an iPhone... But I also love Vista x64 as any true PC user should. I have my own custom Vista machine and run VMware on my iMac so I'm pretty much on the fence, bar that I personally prefer to use Mac as it does what I want in the best way for me.
As for edit software can I make it clear that I've used everything going from Ulead to Pinnacle to Final Cut to Premiere 4 through to Pro CS4 to Avid Media Composer 3 to Vegas and I have to say by a long shot Pinnacle and Vegas come at the very very bottom of that list. If you want to know what systems Sony use to edit their own footage, like Sony Style adverts look no further than Avid and Apple (asides from CineFilm where even then sony isn't involved). Don't get me wrong i have a PS3 and my P2 camera of choice would be Sony or Panasonic but edit wise there are far better options available that are so much more flexible and feature-rich.
Any comment, disagreements or the like please feel free to correct.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
