Alternative editing.(viewpoint DV)

When you consider the world of desktop video editing, three non-linear editing (NLE) programs stand out as market leaders--Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Avid Xpress. Although most any professional video editor would love to own a high-end Avid Media Composer or a Discreet smoke system, for many people the price tags of such systems make them cost prohibitive. When that's the case, the chances are good that those editors will turn to one of these three packages that dominate the lower end of the price spectrum.

However, alternatives exist. And these programs have enough happy users to make them worth considering before simply following the crowd to the most obvious offerings.

One such user is Harry Maxon of Max Moss Productions, a postproduction facility based in Los Angeles that edits independent films and demo reels. A former Avid Xpress and Final Cut Pro user, Maxon switched to Media 100's 844/X system roughly a year ago, and he could not be more pleased.

What attracted Maxon was the system's real-time power. "For years, I wanted a smoke system, but it was too expensive for us. Then I saw the 844/X, and it did 80 to 90 percent of what smoke did, and even more in some ways. It didn't have the 3D capability of smoke, but it was certainly less expensive and enabled me to hook up enough storage to make long form a possibility."

As for the system's stability, Maxon has experienced no problems. In fact, he spends less time troubleshooting the 844/X than he did Final Cut Pro. "The system is amazingly stable and customer support is great. The real-time power attracted us, and the stability sold us."

Interestingly, however, Media 100 is not eager to position itself as a competitor to Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, and Xpress. Mike Savello, Media 100's vice president of sales and marketing, makes clear his belief that the 844/X system is a different kind of animal--an on-line "vertical" editing system, rather than a traditional, horizontally focused NLE. Unlike those other programs, he says, "844/X enables fast, unlimited, layer compositing with 10-bit uncompressed image quality in an editing and compositing work flow."

While the distinction is valid, there's no getting around the fact that the recently reduced prices of the 844/X systems--full turnkey systems now start at $20,000--make Media 100's offerings a viable alternative in the desktop editing market.