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Making the switch to Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro?
Hi All!
I am a professional editor who has used Final Cut my whole career, starting with version 1.0. I have experienced the software become more stable over time and win industry respect…until…well, you know.
; )I now find myself at a crossroads wanting to switch editing platforms and have really been researching the pros and cons of Premiere and Avid to decide which to switch to. I haven’t been able to find hardly any forums with other editors in my position weighing the options. I am especially curious as to how each software may be able to import a Final Cut project down the road, should a client want to revise it.
Can anyone chime in with what they’ve found?
Cara Myers
vesperafilms.com -
16 Replies
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[Cara Myers] “I am especially curious as to how each software may be able to import a Final Cut project down the road, should a client want to revise it.”
Premiere can do this now…completely, in it’s entirety. Export an XML of the project from FCP…import that project into Premiere. Done. You cannot do this in Avid. It will take in the sequence (if you use Automatic Duck), but not the entire project.
What you choose is really up to you. Which app does what you need? Which app is most used in the area of post production you are in? They are both very capable, but have different strengths and weaknesses. If you need lots of graphics, for example, stick to Premiere. If you are part of a workflow that includes audio sweetening done elsewhere, color correction done elsewhere…work on broadcast TV or films that need Avid…use Avid. Rock solid media management, and film tracking…but not the best with graphics.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
As Shane says, there’s not really a right answer, it depends on what kind of work you’re intending to use it for.
I started on Avid (well, actually I started on tape, but Avid was my first NLE) before adding FCP to my repertoire, so I’ve gone back to using that at the moment, although I’m not intending to chuck my FCP7 away for a long time yet. That choice makes sense for me for the time being – my last couple of projects were serious docs (lots of narrative restructuring as the edit went on but very few effects) and I’m currently doing a car show (lots of Boris BCC effects to add a bit of extra zing, but the main graphics were done by someone else and imported), for which I graded one of the docs, the other one and the car show go to a Colorist for the grading and all of them are sound mixed by a Dubbing Mixer, and Avid is still the default choice in this area.
For graphics heavy or “do it all in the same box” work, one can easily make an argument for Adobe as the integration of After Effects and Photoshop with Premiere is very impressive and I certainly don’t dismiss it as something I might go to in the future.
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Hello Cara,
I haven’t been using FCP for as long as you have and probably to not the same extent as you have as I am not an editor but a director BUT I love to do my off-lines and I am a mac lover. I am troubled with what happened to FCPX and realise that the pros are leaving FCP as Apple is reaching to a different target 🙁 Today, after reading people that replied to you and mac rumor and also another guy that had good things to say about both Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere and that was very specific about details, I have downloaded both trial versions preparing to make a decision and I am at lost. I knew all my short cuts and feel terrible about switching. I was hoping you could let me know how your transition is going and what you have discovered with one or the other software. I must say, to me it feels overwelming! I wander if a few pros will stick to FCP but probably it will be hard to find people that can finish off my off lines without hassles…
Thanks!
Sophie -
[Sophie Marcil] ” I must say, to me it feels overwelming! I wander if a few pros will stick to FCP but probably it will be hard to find people that can finish off my off lines without hassles…”
Don’t be worried Sophie, it’s natural to be afraid of making a big switch because of all the unknowns.
I’d advise you to go to a reseller near you who specialize in Avid and/or Premiere, and have one of their people give you a walk through. It will set you mind at ease, and you’ll quickly realize that the only thing you fear is the unknown. As soon as you see that editing is not all that different in any app, you’ll relax. Then, you can immerse yourself in the new app and you’ll be just fine.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new tutorial: Prepare for a seamless transition to FCP X and OS X Lion
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCP-10-MAC-Lion/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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We have been evaluating Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid for about 2 months now and have already put PPro into production on both our national PBS series and for CNN news stories. It’s a VERY easy switch to PPro and it works with all current FCP hardware.
I have three videos right now on my Vimeo Tips and Tricks page that show you how easy it is to move a project from FCP to Adobe Premiere Pro along with showing the basic workflow similarities between FCP and PPro.
https://vimeo.com/channels/biscarditipsandtricks
For Avid, we’re in the waiting game to see when they get the AJA Kona boards working with Media Composer and how good that integration is with the product. I expect it to be very good since Avid and AJA have been working together for years, but there could be some rough edges at first.
Just like with Premiere Pro at this very moment, use of the AJA Kona board causes sluggish performance of the software. AJA is actively working to correct that situation and we should hopefully see a fix soon. But I’ll take that sluggishness for the moment knowing that AJA is working on it and that the rest of the Adobe suite is working very well.
The Native editing is just so freakin’ sweet that I can kick myself for not going to the program sooner. But the caveat to that is you can’t just take those native files into very many other programs, like say Resolve. So you do have to plan for your output when you start a native project. But what I have found is that the immediacy of working with the native files right off the bat far outweighs the time spent on the backend to convert the final files. With FCP I have to convert everything just to start editing. With PPro I just have to convert the actual elements from the final timeline.
I’ve used this example in the past but I had 24 hours of MP4’s from GoPro Cameras for a documentary we’re working on. Took the 12 Core Mac Pro 3 days to convert that footage. Today we had 30 minutes of GoPro footage for a project and we started editing with it immediately, no conversion. Been doing that these past two weeks with P2, XDCAM, DSLR and the GoPro cameras and just loving it.
The way the Sequences work in PPro is the part that takes the longest. I bought Richard Harrington’s book for the entire staff, “An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro” and cannot recommend it enough.
Keep in mind both Avid and Adobe offer 30 day free trial downloads of their products so you can try them and see which on you like the best.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
I went to watch your second video on vimeo. FANTASTIC!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to do this 🙂 and to let us know it was there
I will definately switch to Premiere
Sophie -
Hi Shane!
I really appreciate your advice, especially your overview on the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms so simply put. ; )
Cara Myers
vesperafilms.com -
Any updates to this topic?
I am designing a new edit station based out of the same quad core mac pro and have at my finger tips both the full versions of Avid and Premiere Pro (lucky win at an auction). I will be producing content for web and would love to hear updates to experiences with the transition (either way) and recommendations for small production web work.
I think for my personal work as a video artist I will move to Premiere for the time being. But for the professional web work I feel the broadcast quality and seamless workflow as production expands is more suited for Avid especially when accounting for the expansion of production scale. Also thinking of working on multiple projects simultaneously (does avid support that?)
I would love some rambles on the topic, I am still with my FCP7 like holding a slowly dying family dog, I have been with FCP since the beginning.
cheers all.
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Adobe Premiere Pro Cs 5.5 on a QUAD core Mac, is sluggish. I have that at work and have been evaluating it. Doesn’t deal with the NATIVE footage well. Doesn’t help that the computer doesn’t have an NVIDIA card to enable the CUDA and the Mercury engine. At home…an Octocore with Nvidia 285. There things are swimming. I use that for native editing needs.
But, since most my projects are long form, and broadcast, I am leaning on Avid more and more.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “Adobe Premiere Pro Cs 5.5 on a QUAD core Mac, is sluggish. I have that at work and have been evaluating it. Doesn’t deal with the NATIVE footage well.”
As Shane knows, CS5 or CS5.5 is all about balance. If you have 1 core and 32GB of RAM, you’re wasting money on RAM. If you have 8 cores and 2GB of RAM, you’re starving your CPU’s for memory. CPU speed, disk throughput, memory, GPu and bus speed are all important components for any 64-bit system.
As for handling native footage, I’d love to hear where it’s not handling well as that is a hallmark of Adobe – handling native footage well.
Dennis – Adobe guy
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