Which NLE for You and Me? Well, that depends

by Doug Luberts

I’ve been following the ‘NLE Wars’ with quite a bit of interest for some time now. Like many, folks who have been using FCP for years, including all of my own current work work, as well as a number of feature films in the past, I am very concerned about the end-of-life for FCP/FC Studio in the wake of the release of FCP X, and am really, really, not motivated to switch to another platform. Switching costs time, switching costs money. Switching means that a video that could take a half a day to edit in FCP could take days more.

Switching is also an inevitability.

Although FCP 7 has been running like a champ on OSX Lion, there’s no reason to believe it will continue to do so on future version of Apple OSes, and every reason to believe that FCP will, at some point, just cease to function entirely, or that components will begin to break as Apple’s core architecture continues to advance into new areas.

This simple truth has caused no end of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) for professional editors and content creators alike. What to do? Where to go next?

We all keep on hearing in the major publications and blogs from NLE pundits, that editors must be open to working with multiple platforms, and that no single NLE is right for all situations, and that is true…But at the same time mastering a handful of NLEs to cover all contingencies is also not a reasonable solution for editors who need to get the job done in the best, cheapest, and most efficient way possible. read more...