Software used by hollywood

Roman G · Jun 16, 2011

Just wondering, if tools like Adobe's After Effects and Premiere Pro (along with other similar ones such as vegas) are the top of editing and compositing (not including 3d) tools for top budget and hollywood films?

What is out there? or is Affter effects and Premiere Pro are compared to windows movie makers in hollywood?

What do these top end hollywood films use (fast 5, super 8, avatar and so on)? When they put the film together....

just wondering....

ps. somehow i have a hard time wording my question.

gpforet · Jun 16, 2011

Not that it really matters, but most of the editors I know working for the larger studios cut using AVID on fairly high end workstations.

sonnyboo · Jun 16, 2011

I am a 12+ year Adobe Premiere user professionally, but in Hollywood it has no taken any ground in studio feature film or television editing.

After Effects however, IS a professional compositing tool, probably more used than any other. Programs like COMBUSTION are similar and higher end, but they do not have the professional market saturation like After Effects.

Most editing is now Apple Final Cut Pro, but as was already stated AVID Media Composer is a standard. Final Cut Pro has carved a huge chunk of the feature film and television market. Avid used to be about 90%-95%, but Final Cut Pro has taken at least 50% of that business away.

A lot of people do things like an "offline" cut on one edit system, then do an "online" cut on the higher end AVID's for finishing and color correction.

PaulGriffith · Jun 16, 2011

Avid is the most popular NLE among the big boys. It's actually probably not the best out there anymore, but old dogs don't want to learn new tricks.

As far as compositing, Nuke and Shake and sometimes Avid Media Composer are generally used instead of After Effects. Again, not necessarily better for every application. but different. After Effects uses a layer system, Nuke and Shake use nodes. different worlds, and it requires a new learning curve to switch between. Most 3D software uses a node system as well, so if you're already doing that..

Andrew Kramer at VideoCopliot.net is one of the first guys to use Aftereffects in a big way in major pictures. JJ Abrams uses him for a lot of stuff including parts of his TV shows and parts of Star Trek and Super 8.

Dreadylocks · Jun 16, 2011

I've heard that only AVID can truly handle 4k, 35mm film.

sonnyboo · Jun 16, 2011

Dreadylocks said:
I've heard that only AVID can truly handle 4k, 35mm film.

Not really. Final Cut Pro can handle the EDL's to true 24P film frames and conform the negative cutting at the lab.

In virtually every single case, a film is edited with lower resolution and only goes to 4K with an EDL. This is the "offline" versus "online" editing. Why scan every single frame of raw footage to 4K at the film scanner at high resolution at that expense when you know you're only going to need to do that with 10% of the footage? It doesn't make economical sense.

Kholi · Jun 16, 2011

Dreadylocks said:
I've heard that only AVID can truly handle 4k, 35mm film.

If you're referring to REDCODE, in this case AVID is not the only system that can cut native REDCODE (2K, 3K, 4k, 4.5K) as of today. Premiere can, and FCP X will be able to when it's supposedly released next week.

Edius, I believe, also handles 4K.

None of the systems, however, can do it at full resolution, because hardware isn't up to par yet to cut the ginormousness that is 4K.

Once FCP-X is released and people get used to it, I forsee a lot of straight 4K editing without resulting to offline. About a year ago I cut a music video in Premiere and only used the R3D footage I shot. It wasn't too bad. I imagine with a better computer it would've been a breeze.

Synia · Jun 19, 2011

May I just add Photoshop to that list? You'd be surprised how extensively a photo editing software is used in the film industry.

And also, other than the software themselves, more importantly are the plugins, most of which are developed in house. Each studio has their own secret stash of secret weapons to make their own studio unique, and also to increase efficiency.