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The Videoguys' Insider Vol 1 Issue 3
Videoguy: Hi Alan, great to talk to you again. I think it is fair to say that Avid gave the entire industry a huge jolt at this years NAB when you launched Xpress DV 2.0 and dedicated so much of your booth space to it. As one of the key guys behind this project you must be very excited |
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Videoguy: Before Xpress DV I had never used Avid software, I always felt it was too expensive and high end for me. With Xpress DV everything has changed. I really love the software. What amazed me was that all this power was so easy to use!
Alan: You've got that right. We just heard from a guy who runs a program for inner city youths in Los Angeles. His kids made 29 films during their summer program. These are kids who NEVER had edited before!! This is truly gratifying news and a testament to the user-friendliness of the Avid software. The tools set in Xpress DV is a dream come true for anyone who has blistered his or her fingers editing in Premiere or Final Cut Pro. All of the industry standard Avid tools are there- this is NOT a "lite" product. From a performance standpoint, Avid Xpress DV doesn't drop frames or have difficulty maintaining A/V sync. The image quality of video displayed in the Composer window is not washed out or pixilated, the overall editing experience feels incredibly responsive. Customers tell me it is a joy to operate.
 Xpress DV also supports multiple users with individual editor and site settings. This eliminates the hassles of managing a machine used by more than one person. Using other products in an educational setting would be very frustrating. Xpress DV's ability to have individual User settings and Site settings allow multiple users to keep track of their own assets and personal settings. This is further enhanced when you combine it with your custom keyboard and tool palettes. Not only can you have multiple users set up on the same machine, each user can take his pre-sets with him to any other Xpress DV editing station via email or floppy! Xpress DV lets you customize your Bin and Timeline views. This is much more useful than FCP's screen "arrangement" command or Premieres multiple workspaces. Xpress DV lets you play clips in the bin and increase the size of clip frames to usable viewing size. Last but not least, the fastest way in the world to edit allows an editor to capture and edit in the same motion. Xpress DV's record to timeline feature gives you this ability. Videoguy: One of the most frustrating things about video editing for me is keeping track of all my clips and projects. I hate wasting time trying to find a clip I know I already found. Can you tell us more about Xpress DV's top-notch Media Management tools? Alan: Avid Xpress DV's Media Management tools are second to none. DV users love to shoot lots of footage cause it is relatively cheap to do so. Anyone working with a lot of footage needs to get their hands on "just the shot" at just the point in time that they need it. This can be an incredibly time-consuming search in other less professional NLE apps. Not so in Xpress DV. Any review you read will herald the superiority of the Avid media management toolset.
Alan: You can also assign markers and locators in the source window in a variety of colors for easy organization. These locators are then transferred across to the timeline while editing. Unlimited locators can be assigned on a per clip basis. The locators' window allows locators to be assigned and referenced as well as imported from the Avid Pro-Net Review and Approval system. Videoguy: I know many long time NLE users want to know "What makes Xpress DV so Special and why should I move up to it? What are the top reasons Xpress DV is better then Final Cut Pro (FCP) or Premiere. Alan: Every artist needs the right tool. I think filmmaking with word processing class capability is a novelty that will run its course shortly. Folks are going to find themselves outgrowing the feature set of these other apps very quickly and while there are a ton of Premiere users out there, most of them yearn for more professional tools. Videoguy: Can you tell us about some of these “more professional tools”? Alan: The first and most important is Avid's commitment to 100% Reliability & Stability By now we've all heard stories where Final Cut Pro would constantly drop frames. Users did everything that Apple tech support said, but to no avail. Finding a solution is hit-or-miss, usually involving hours spent tinkering and searching the bulletin boards. This is the way life is in FCP land. Final Cut users constantly report dropped frame problems on the most powerful G4 systems. Solving these problems has become a constant theme on the web bulletin boards. Apple tech support is quoted as not being able to help. People say they are putting up with this poor performance because of the price. Xpress DV does not drop frames. Using supported configurations guarantees performance. Professionals do not have time to scan the web looking for answers. Talk to any Premiere user who's made a long format production and he'll have stories about crashes, audio sync issues and lost portions of projects. Productivity with Premiere is an issue. Even if you have a powerful Real-Time card, that doesn't help you if you're rebooting the system or wasting time with other workarounds. Premiere is a good program, but serious digital videographers who want more productivity and a more efficient user interface are going to love Xpress DV.
Videoguy: You are 100% right about the selective Undo/Redo. In the image shown here I spent a lot of time getting the settings just right for the emboss effect. Later I realized that I needed to change one of the mark outs I had set. With Xpress DV I just undid the mark out and then set a new one. Piece of cake. No lost time, no impact on any of the additional work I had done. With Premiere I would have had to "undo" all the work I just did and then start over from that point. One of my favorite features of Xpress DV is the audio editing. It is so easy to forget just how important good audio is. With the tools in Xpress DV you are able to take full control of the audio and edit it with the same power and productivity as you can video. This is where I put Xpress DV in a class by itself. I like to explain it as having a mini-Protools built into the video editing application.
Another cool audio feature of Xpress DV is full MP3 support. MP3 audio is becoming a pervasive format for transferring soundtracks and effects over the internet between professionals. Videoguy: You guys are really putting this all together. It is amazing to me that this inexpensive application gives you the full Avid experience. I also think that for many potential users, the most important feature is Xpress DV's portability. I'm not talking about running it on a Laptop, but the ability to take your Xpress DV project to any other Avid suite. Can you go into this in a bit more detail? Alan: Projects, sequences and bins are bi-directionally compatible with Avid Media Composer, Symphony, NewsCutter and Xpress systems, allowing Total Conform and dramatically better bi-directional workflow than mere EDL or OMF transfer. With Avid compatibility, every subtlety of a project is transferred, not just basic dissolves and effects but titles, layers, dynamic audio levels and mix, keyframes, customized effects, color correction, AudioSuite and AVX plug-ins, and batch import information. Simply export and import the media, or re-digitize from tape. As long as you're working with duplicate media, updates are as simple as transferring the bins and sequence - small files that can easily be transferred by floppy, network drive, zip, CDR, even email. Exchanging bins, sequences and projects between compatible Avid systems is much more efficient and complete than other methods. Videoguy: Wow! I'm sure that's cleared up a lot of questions for us. We've got one more question about Xpress DV. What are the differences between the base Xpress DV and the Powerpack. Alan: I'm glad you asked! This is what you get in the PowerPack:
Videoguy: What makes this image stabilizer so effective is that the editor gets to pick the portion of the image the stabilizer algorithm locks onto. For best results you want to find a vertical or horizontal line of high contrast. In the motorcycle image here we pick the yellow poster on the wall in the background. You may have to experiment a little, but once you get it right you'll end up with a very nice image.
Back in July Avid launched a very cool educational program that is simply amazing. Could you give us some more details about it. Alan: Schools, Colleges & Universitiescan now get Avid Editing software for under $1,000. The EduPack includes the core Xpress DV 2.0 software plus all the Avid software found in the PowerPack. (It does not include any of the third party software). Not only is this a great deal, but being able to list that you or your students are an experienced Avid editor is going to look great on a resume, especially if you intend to go into any kind of electronic media. Videoguy: That is an incredible deal. We are very excited that you have extended the EduPack to include students and teachers! Before we go, lets get back to another big question about Xpress DV. What kind of a computer do I really need to make it run. Alan: We currently have the Xpress DV software certified on select Dell, Compaq and IBM workstations. We also have it approved for several Laptops. Version 2.1 will add support for select Sony VAIO notebooks. We also plan on greatly broadening the hardware list, so stay tuned.
Alan: We realize this and that's why we've chosen to go with The Electronic Mailbox as one of our key partners. You guys do understand the ins and outs of troubleshooting a system and you take the time to make sure your customers get the service and support they need. Videoguy: Thank you for the endorsement and thank you for taking the time to do this interview. There is a lot of interest in Xpress DV. Many of our customers are looking to take their editing to the next level. I think that after reading this interview, they will have a better understanding of Xpress DV and all the benefits of using it.
Alan: Thank you for the opportunity to share with your readers how much I love this software!!!
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The video capture interface is really well designed and performed flawless batch captures. I especially like the ability to type in the clip name and comments while I was capturing the video. The first thing that hit me once I really started using Xpress DV was just how well thought out the user interface is. You guys really understand editing!!
Xpress DV let's you decide how important functions are and how easy it is to get to them for your style of work. We give you a fully mappable keyboard and command palette to customize your workspace and give you instant access to YOUR most commonly used functions and controls. FCP & Premiere users are constantly looking through menus for functions.
Videoguy: Xpress DV also allows you to consolidate multiple layers of video, images and FX into a single track, called a nest. This is a very powerful productivity tool because it keeps your timeline neat and it lets you handle this entire complex segment of your video with ease. You can drill back into the nest and make changes. 
Another very important professional tool is Undo/Redo. Xpress DV has 32 levels of Undo/Redo with a list to selectively undo certain actions. FCP and Premiere do not give you an undo/redo list. This makes it impossible to undo selectively. This may be good enough for the average home video editor, but for serious work it is a very poor implementation. If a user goes 10 levels back they have no idea "what" they are undoing. Even more frustrating is that they now have to start all over and re-edit the 9 steps they undid. That's not productivity, that's wasting time. 
Alan: A very accurate observation. Pro-Tools is the industries leading audio editing tool, so it makes perfect sense for us to leverage that expertise into Xpress DV. Our audio mixing is real time all the time. Allowing you to listen and adjust volumes dynamically. This means you get the mix correct in the minimum number of passes. While Premiere & FCP now offer real-time mixing, it is very basic and not anywhere near as powerful as Xpress DV's. It's a good first shot, but it's not true mixing. If you have an audio effect on track 1 and mix audio on tracks 3 and 4, you break the render on track 1. Render, render, render. 
Xpress DV has an Audio Punch-in feature for recording audio directly to the timeline in real time. Adding voiceovers in sync with the picture is as easy as plugging in a microphone and hitting record. This is not possible with FCP or Premiere. 
Avid's Audiosuite plug-ins can dynamically increase the clip length to accommodate the longer sound of an effect when necessary. For example, adding a reverberation to a sound requires that the duration of the clip should be increased in order to play the "tail" of the reverb. With Xpress DV this is automatic. Other apps that do not have this feature require numerous special steps which are very complex and time consuming to accomplish. 
Stabilize Effect AVX plug-in for correcting shaky camera work, based on technology developed for Avid's high-end Symphony system. Xpress DV's unique stabilization plug-in makes common handheld DV footage rock solid like it was shot on a tripod. The easy and intuitive interface gives you the option to auto zoom image to maintain full frame based on the stabilized result. 
Videoguy: We've had tremendous success getting our customers up and running on generic Win2K workstations. We advise them to get an Intel Pentium4 processor, 256 megs of Ram or more, the Matrox G450 dual head graphics card and plenty of storage.
We also supply a FREE PyroDV graphics card. They are a breeze to install and the tech support is almost non-existent. While these may not be certified systems, they work great for our customers. Which in the long run is all that matters. They just want to edit, and with Xpress DV they are doing it with the most productive and professional NLE solution in this price range.