DVCAM

Serious Editing

A few years ago, serious editing meant a turnkey system of proprietary or highly modified hardware bundled with software. It usually involved buying the entire system from one place: computer, boards, software and tech support. The system could wind up costing more than a luxury car. Avid became the market leader in nonlinear editing, followed by Media 100, Softimage, Lightworks, FAST and others.

If you shoot or edit for a living, time wasted installing incompatible cards and resolving hardware conflicts can be more expensive than the extra cost of buying an all-in-one editing system. Anyone who has ever tried upgrading from Windows 95 to 98, or 98 to ME, knows the agony of hours spent on hold trying to reach intelligent signs ...