For the past week, I've been in the NBC News Atlanta Bureau editing. It's been a great experience.

I first brought my Final Cut Pro editing system running on my 17" Apple Powerbook. It turned out that the bureau was being torn up by renovation and my system was the right thing to do. I set up in a conference room while the edit rooms were being trashed by the carpeting crew.

On Tuesday, I put away my Final Cut system and sat down to learn Avid NewsCutter. The bureau is the first to have these new systems. For Atlanta, though, the installation is not quite finished but it is functional. We take in satellite feeds and digitize the material into the NewsCutter system. That video is available at all NewsCutter stations so editing can begin. In fact, more than one edit room can be using the video at once.

It's not easy transitioning from Final Cut Pro to Avid, but I can now cut a piece on the new system. The Avid's will be coming to my home base of Dallas and the NBC News Bureau there. Its nice to know that I'm familiar with a system that will be in use there soon.