the EDITBLOG on PVC by Scott Simmons

Back in January news broke that reality television producers Bunim/Murray were switching their post-production facilities from Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composer. This probably didn’t come as a great shock to anyone who follows post-production as the release of Final Cut Pro X had left many people (especially those in the broadcast world) a bit stunned at its lack of broadcast features. There was a lot written about this subject but I had a few more questions so I spoke with Bunim/Murray’s senior vice president of Post Production Mark Raudonis as he has been the public face of this switch. Our Q and A follows.

Pro Video Coalition: One question that many might be wondering is why not move Bunim/Murray to Final Cut Pro X?

Mark Raudonis: As one of the largest producers of reality TV programming, Bunim/Murray Productions deals with an extraordinarily large amount of media. We have almost 100 editors working on half a dozen shows simultaneously. Everything is SAN based, and a collaborative workflow is a central part of our creative process.  After much testing, we concluded that FCP-X was not going to allow us to maintain the efficient workflows that we had developed over the years with FCP legacy.

Secondary to the first question, why not just continue using Final Cut Pro 7 until it’s finally killed by lack of OS or hardware support?

We were not interested in that option.  There are too many changes in codecs, camera formats, and delivery models to just sit on an old software version hoping that you can hang on until something better comes along.  That’s NOT a formula for success. read more...