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Calling Dr. Zelin…. and other brilliant thinkers
Hi Bob (and other bovine)
Like many, we were waiting patiently for the FCP “upgrade.” I don’t want to get into a discussion of the merits of the new FCP – that’s been well documented and will continue to be.
I’m reserve judgment until I see FCPX for myself. But regardless of whether I buy it (or Avid or Premier Pro) it would appear that if I want to upgrade, I’m learning a new app. So FCPX is far from a “gimmie.” And from what I’ve been reading Premier is looking better and better for my company. (We do lots of corporate video and some local broadcast spots)
But reading about it isn’t using it. And the propaganda that Adobe put out it just…. well… sales propaganda.
So here’s the questions:
1) Will my existing AJA hardware (Kona 3 and LHi) in my 2 MacPros work as well (or better) with Premier? Other than installing new drivers, are there any “gotchas?”
2) Adobe says that Premier can open FCP projects via XML. How effective is it and can I really count on it to actually work for legacy FCP projects? Or is is just “marketing speak?” Really just curious here and it’s not a big deal since I don’t have to uninstall FCP.
3) From what I can tell, Premier interface looks similar to FCP in many ways and wouldn’t require a complete re-think on how we edit – with the exception of a few missing (or extra) functions. Or am I missing something major in my limited view thus far?
4) Does Premier handle media and/or project files in a similarly to FCP7? Any surprises and/or land mines to consider?
5) Other than the hassle and inconvenience of getting used to new keyboard short cuts, etc…, has anyone transitioned from FCP to Premier and wish they hadn’t? If so, why?
My hair isn’t on fire to make a change right away, but we’ve been thinking about upgrading the CS5.5 anyway (we’re stilling running CS4)and we’ll get Premier Pro with the Production Bundle anyways. So it seems like an opportune time to start the head scratching. Reminds me of 9 years or so when we switched from M100 in favor of FCP It’s been a good ride and FCP has served me well. But times… they are a changing….
Any thoughts, advise and input is welcomed!
Thanks,
SteveProduction is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!
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12 Replies
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1) Will my existing AJA hardware (Kona 3 and LHi) in my 2 MacPros work as well (or better) with Premier? Other than installing new drivers, are there any “gotchas?”
REPLY – we are seeing posts that to play back ProRes422 in Premier, a Quad Core Mac Pro is causing stuttering. Walter Biscardi has stated this, as well as others. But yes, your AJA hardware will work just fine.
2) Adobe says that Premier can open FCP projects via XML. How effective is it and can I really count on it to actually work for legacy FCP projects? Or is is just “marketing speak?” Really just curious here and it’s not a big deal since I don’t have to uninstall FCP.
REPLY – dont know the answer to this.
3) From what I can tell, Premier interface looks similar to FCP in many ways and wouldn’t require a complete re-think on how we edit – with the exception of a few missing (or extra) functions. Or am I missing something major in my limited view thus far?
REPLY – Premier looks a lot more like FCP 7 than FCP X ! Of course, you can do what everyone else is doing right now – absolutely nothing.
My hair isn’t on fire to make a change right away, but we’ve been thinking about upgrading the CS5.5 anyway (we’re stilling running CS4)and we’ll get Premier Pro with the Production Bundle anyways. So it seems like an opportune time to start the head scratching. Reminds me of 9 years or so when we switched from M100 in favor of FCP It’s been a good ride and FCP has served me well. But times… they are a changing….
REPLY – this is the right approach. You need CS5 anyway, and it will give you the opportuninty to play with Premier, and see how you like it.
bob Zelin
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[Steve Martin] “But reading about it isn’t using it. And the propaganda that Adobe put out it just…. well… sales propaganda.”
You have the opportunity to download a full 30 day trial of the entire CS 5.5 suite. No watermarks, full function. free.
[Steve Martin] “1) Will my existing AJA hardware (Kona 3 and LHi) in my 2 MacPros work as well (or better) with Premier? Other than installing new drivers, are there any “gotchas?””
No new drivers, it’s the same 9.0.3 Driver you would install for FCP. It’s the CS 5.5 Plug-Ins that you have to add.
The only gotcha I’ve found is that you have to set the Audio Hardware to anything OTHER than AJA or you get drop outs in the audio.
[Steve Martin] “2) Adobe says that Premier can open FCP projects via XML. How effective is it and can I really count on it to actually work for legacy FCP projects? Or is is just “marketing speak?” Really just curious here and it’s not a big deal since I don’t have to uninstall FCP.”
Works perfectly here. You will not get your filters and you’ll have to rebuild your text, but as far as all your bins and sequences, yep. Completely as they appear in FCP.
[Steve Martin] “3) From what I can tell, Premier interface looks similar to FCP in many ways and wouldn’t require a complete re-think on how we edit – with the exception of a few missing (or extra) functions. Or am I missing something major in my limited view thus far?”
Essentially the same workflow, similar interface. Especially if you switch the keyboard shortcuts over to the FCP settings.
[Steve Martin] “4) Does Premier handle media and/or project files in a similarly to FCP7? Any surprises and/or land mines to consider?”
You can only have one Project open at a time in Premiere Pro right now. You can have as many timelines open at a time in a single project like FCP.
Premiere handles all media natively so there is no Log and Transfer function. Because of this, Adobe does NOT move your media to a Capture Scratch when you import it. The media simply stays on the drive and comes into the project. So you need to move camera data to your Capture Scratch BEFORE you import it into the project.
If you Capture through the Kona board for example, then it does put all the media into the Capture Scratch
All media labels are clearly seen in the Sequences. That is when you assign a color to a certain type of clip, say interviews are colored red, the entire clip shows up in that color in your timeline.
When you assign a media label color, all of the media is labeled as it comes in, you don’t have to go through your clips and color code them after they are in. So you assign Purple for example to all your still images and graphics. when you import graphics, they’re automatically given the purple color.
Text Tool is absolutely incredible compared to FCP.
[Steve Martin] “5) Other than the hassle and inconvenience of getting used to new keyboard short cuts, etc…, has anyone transitioned from FCP to Premier and wish they hadn’t? If so, why?”
Again, no need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
Adobe Premiere Pro > Keyboard Shortcuts
Select Final Cut Pro 7.0
over 90% of your keyboard shortcuts are now active in Adobe Premiere Pro.
So far I’ve found very little NOT to like about Adobe Premiere Pro. I’ve already moved multiple projects to the app and I’ve cut several PSA’s with it. I’m going to move my 250 hour of raw material documentary into the app this week and see how it feels.
Software works with all of our existing infrastructure so that’s awesome. Still need to test out Avid and Smoke but so far, Adobe is a very strong contender for our workflow because it’s essentially a seamless transition over to PPro.
And actually there is one more video over on Vimeo about setting up the Kona to run with Adobe Premiere.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[Bob Zelin] “REPLY – we are seeing posts that to play back ProRes422 in Premier, a Quad Core Mac Pro is causing stuttering. Walter Biscardi has stated this, as well as others. But yes, your AJA hardware will work just fine.”
Yes, a single quad core Mac. That is you ONLY have four processors in the machine. Video will stutter if you have the AJA Kona board enabled. But if it’s not enabled, then you are fine.
We were testing on our ProTools rig which happens to be one of the older machines with a single quad core processor. And it’s not even a video editing machine normally. I’m now running on an 8 core machine and it’s running very smooth now. That’s the machine I’m cutting the documentary on.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
I am pretty happy with Premiere CS5.5, too, cutting RED and some DSLR stuff. It’s our new thing, here.
P
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PatrickOrtman, Inc.
Los Angeles Digital Agency and Video Production Company -
Hi Walter,
Thanks so much for the great info – the vimeo videos were great!
If ever in Orlando, give a shout!
All my best,
SteveProduction is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!
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Thanks Bob,
We’re playing with Premier 4, but will take Walter up on the 30 day trial soon! I’ll be in touch if/when we make the switch to re-engineer hardware as needed.
Thanks,
SteveProduction is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!
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[Steve Martin] “but will take Walter up on the 30 day trial soon!”
Here’s the link when you’re ready. Also know that Avid and Autodesk both offer 30 day free trials as well of Media Composer and Smoke. So you can really have some fun playing with new software!
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=production_premium
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
Walter and others:
Are you editing locally, or via a san like XSAN? When I tried premiere, this seemed to be my problem. I was trying to save everything (metadata, etc.) to the san as we do with FCP and I just had so much background conforming all of the time, stuttering (but that may have been my kona card, thanks for pointing that out Walt), and crashing.
Max
Max Kaiser
Director
Hand Crank Films
https://www.handcrankfilms.comVarious Intel
FCP 7
OS 10.5
RED/XDCAM/7D -
[Max Kaiser] “Are you editing locally, or via a san like XSAN?”
Both locally to a small RAID on my iMac and via our Small Tree Ethernet SAN at work. No problems in either case at the moment.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
Cool. I will go back and take another stab at it. I did have ALOT of problems last time around trying to do raw dslr editing of any given length, but again, I had the AJA hooked up.
Max Kaiser
Director
Hand Crank Films
https://www.handcrankfilms.comVarious Intel
FCP 7
OS 10.5
RED/XDCAM/7D
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