CS5 … Release Date – Maybe the change is coming ?…

[Rafael Amador]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It won’t do MXF files natively.”

https://mxf4mac.com/

rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Oli Da costa]

As a fervent Adobe guy for over 10 years (only having recently dipped a toe in the FCS water, but finding it not too bad…), I have to say that the momentum is certainly with PPro, and have found that this opinion is shared by many of my colleagues and friends, many of whom are tired of the secrecy and failiure on Apple’s part to address some minor and major issues with their suite products over quite some years – some of which I’m discovering as I learn.

I work for Adobe as a freelance demo artist across all the Master Collection products at trade shows from time to time and had a lot of people chat to me at BVE (UK tradeshow a few weeks ago) about PPro’s maturity as a solid editing platform as of the CS4.2 release a while back (which added more robust R3D support and lots of other CODEC format support too). Many were oblivious to the ways in which PPro has changed over the years and many simply discount it as they think it’s still like the bad old days of Premier (as opposed to ‘Pro’), which are a million miles behind it in its present guise.

I’ve been lucky enough to see and use many of the CS5 apps first hand in closed-door training sessions and PPro is pretty special, as is After Effects CS5. The Mercury engine is a powerful beast indeed, and whilst this will improve workflow issues, there’s always still the personal preference of the tool of choice (one feature doesn’t convert FCP to PPro users overnight)…but given the opportunity, I’d always go with PPro, and I’d very highly recommend it as a solid and reliable editing application for both long and short-form work – I’ve certainly never had major stability issues (well, early R3D was a bit sketchy, but I’ve recently cut a 40min film on PPro on a PC and a Mac – across a SAN – with over 1000 R3D 4K native clips and mixed HD and SD footage and had no major issues). The ‘Dynamic Link’ functionality with AE is also a huge feature which is well executed and pretty seemless, and for anyone who uses AE in conjunction with an edit application, it can be a huge timesaver.

Back to the issue of Apple’s secrecy, Adobe obviously also have their secrets, but they are much more willing to be open and disclose things that Apple (IMHO). For instance, the MXF functionality within PPro is all (or probably more correctly, mostly) provided by the guys at MOG Solutions, and it’s widely known that a lot of CODEC support is underpinned by MainConcept. Ok, so Apple have QuickTime, so they can be forgiven for keeping things a bit more ‘in house’, but native MXF or R3D playback in FCP really should have been in FCP7…along with lots of other formats, so doing away with Log & Transfer altogether.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an Adobe fanboy, but like many FCP devotees, my personal workflow works best with Adobe applications and vice versa. FCP is a solid edit system, but for many, or rather most tasks, I’d still choose PPro over FCP.

BTW, Craig, I see you’re a fellow Londoner…would be happy to show you PPro in a proper professional environment, if you’re interested!

Oli

Oli da Costa
Fraktiv Post Production
London W1