Does anyone use PPro as a professional?

[Mike Cohen]

This is a never ending discussion. Premiere has some quirks. But I like many on this board not only use Premiere professionally, but with great results.

A better subject line might be “help with a few functions” and then ask your “how to” questions.

Not sure you can change a tape number once captured.

You can use TAB to go from cut to cut on the timeline, but not to select one clip after another.

Premiere, FCP, AVID all have things that are different. You can’t please everyone all the time.

Mike Cohen

[Matt Rickman]

Thanks for the response Mike..

Yeah.. I guess I am just surprised that Premiere isn’t more refined. Heck, it has been around for quite some time.

Will post some specific issues/questions as they come up.

thanks again
matt

[Eddie Lotter]

You will also find links to many free tutorials in the PremiereProPedia that will quickly show you how things are done in Premiere Pro.

Cheers
Eddie

[Jake Williams]

You can change the tape name in the browser window. It is set up in a way similar to the FCP browser. Just sidescroll over to the tab labeled tape name and click to make your changes. However the program does not ask you to confirm as with FCP. Good luck making the switch.

[Alex Udell]

Hey Matt…

Page Up/Page down is the default for prev/next edit navigation.

You might look at Keyboard Customization functions in the edit menu. In fact, I think Adobe ships PPro with sets for FCP and Avid users (where there are equivalent functions anyway).

We use 8 Systems running CS3 on a SAN here and I am quite pleased.

Having cut on a fair share of NLE’s myself there are always things I’d like to have from one system in another.

My systems are configured with Matrox RT.X2 hardware though, so I’m a little spoiled I suppose. Matrox’s CC is quite good for primary and secondary.

Sorry for your frustration.

Keep asking questions…we’ll try to help if we can.

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
Younversity TV
http://www.youniversity.tv

[Baz Leffler]

Hey Matt

I had been using Adobe Premiere since its PC inception (4.2) and all the way up to CS3. I was a severe Mac hater and was forever finding myself arguing with what I called ‘the pink crowd’ (mac lovers).

I got commissioned to edit a High Def series and upgraded one of my edit suites with the most powerful PC around and a Blackmagic Extreme. Prior to that I was using Canopus hardware.
The PC was built as per BMD’s specification right down to the raid controller and graphics card etc. (quad core AMD 64 bit)

It took 18 weeks to edit 5 episodes and the projects got so large it took approximately 8 min to load each ep; a major problem, given that it would crash 8 to 10 times a day. I worked with some Adobe people to resolve the issues and they were very helpful sending me beta .DLL files etc and I also was very helpful back to them. I also worked with the hardware supplier to resolve major issues and it all boiled down to Adobe’s memory management; I could go into more detail as a techo but I will just cut to the chase…

As I was now so far behind in this series I was editing, I decided to bite the bullet and try FCP; luckily my Multibridge worked on Mac as well so I was only up for the cost of a G5 and some storage.

The next 5 episodes I edited took 4 weeks all up! AND that included the learning curve of walking in cold on a new system and not only learning HOW to use a Mac but how to use FCP as well. I must admit I was so bewildered with this new experience of working a whole day without a crash, fast project load times, the ability to output to HDCAM without having to do 10 pickup edits every half hour episode, the list goes on!

Then I did another 5 eps and they were out in 2 weeks; I think I had peaked by then…. but come on, 18 weeks as compared to 2 weeks? As a professional time is money and that equates to a lot yeah?

So back to your original question “Does anyone use PPro as a professional?” I would have to say yes; plenty do but I am sure they could not make an existence using it on very large intricate projects, unless they had the time and the patience; oh and the knowledge that auto save was set to about 2 mins AND continually going ‘ctl S’ every second keystroke.

I have now converted 3 of my edit suites to FCP and have never looked back. I even put an Octocore MacPro with 8 gig ram and 8 terrabyte raid in one of the edit suites and does that puppy run well. I am such a Mac lover now and I really don’t mind being part of the ‘Pink Brigade’ – yes I have been eating humble pie ever since. Incidentally has anyone ever noticed how quite a Mac runs as compared to a PC? It really IS chalk and cheese! Anyhow, I have now also got a MacBookPro with a Matrox MXO2 for field editing so I guess that confirms I am a converted soul. (oh, did I mention I have an iPhone as well?)

So back to Premiere – my ‘all bells and whistles’ PC that I mentioned earlier has now been upgraded to Vista 64 and Adobe Premiere CS4 and am beta testing the CS4 hardware… say no more…. Its all looking pretty good (for a noisy box) but I work it very cautiously as it brings back bad memories and will do forever I think.

I still believe Premiere was designed for Bollywood (just read the AP credits…) and maybe Bollywood isn’t as adventurous as what FCP caters for. What do I use Premiere for nowdays? It is mainly delegated to Blu-ray authoring and encoding and the occasional mastering of an external project that come to me created on Premiere.

I should stop now before someone says ‘horses for courses!

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Tim Kolb]

Uh…yeah.

First off…it’s always the best strategy to not call a tool unrefined until you have some idea how to use it…people who could help you might decide they have better things to do.

On long timelines…this has been a frustration for a long time with PPro…many of us are constantly on Adobe to fix this…we are told they are working on it, but there is no question that XP’s inherent 2.5 GB recognition ceiling for RAM is a killer. CS4’s minimum recommended RAM is 8 GB (it will run with less, but frankly, if you plan on doing any heavy lifting and dynamic linking, it will be painful with 4 or less), PPro seems to actually run better on a Mac in my experience, possibly for this reason alone.

FCP has it’s issues as well. Obviously if one needs to do a lot of graphics work on the edit timeline, PPro has the upper hand…for miles and miles of footage, I do think that for the moment, FCP is the better choice.

For color correction (I try to use Iridas whenever possible…love that software), I might recommend the quite affordable Colorista, although it acts more like a high end CC environment than a 3 way color corrector does. I tend to use levels myself…seems like the control is better.

As far as professionals…actually I guess I qualify…as far as PPro being used in general, at NAB in 2002 or 2003, (whwnever that initial “HD Post” explosion happened…seems like eons now), there were more HD edit systems on the floor running Premiere than Avid and FCP combined.

“Dust to Glory” was the first feature edited online in a finished, compressed codec (CineForm) and sent directly to a film recorder without an additional conform edit…and it was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Try to slide sound in finer increments than a frame in FCP…can’t happen…in PPro, you can convert the sound tracks to operate in audio samples instead of video frames, and literally edit out a click or pop with a razor cut and delete in a smaller increment than the ear can even detect.

PPro also works with a wide variety of formats on the timeline directly (MXF, MPEG, as well as QT), whereas FCP only edits QT, menaing incoming tapelesss media must be converted.

I could go on. All apps have benefits…and they all have issues. You try to pick an app for the benefits and work around the issues.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Jeff Brown]

and Matt–
How can anyone use a “professional” tool that doesn’t support file sequences? (or has FCP finally been updated in that respect)
Just my poke…

I don’t have to do long projects, so I haven’t run in to that ugly side of Premiere. For my short (<20 min) work, in SD and HD uncompressed, I've been pretty happy with CS3; I can't remember the last crash I had. I know there have been a few, but it's been a while. (Boxx 8300, WinXP Pro, 4 GB RAM). The titler tool is lousy; I typically build titles in Photoshop. For color correction and FX, I go to other software as well. So, FCP may be better suited for your work. I'd say if you feel the productivity gains warrant, plopping a MAC into the mix isn't all that hard these days. Convincing management of that is more difficult.

Personally, I have clients that won't change from AVID. It works for them, but I can't see the logic these days. Then again, I'm not a "real" editor, I'm doing more animation/FX. Hence the need for file sequences.

-Jeff

[Tim Kolb]

[Jeff Brown] “I don’t have to do long projects, so I haven’t run in to that ugly side of Premiere.”

…and I probably should have noted that, while I have run into some projects where length becomes a factor in stability, I have also completed some very long timelines (2-3 hours in several cases) where the app did not become unstable…and this using weird project settings of 1024×768 and sourcing everything from DV to PSDs, TIFs (PPT slides) and Camtasia interface captures.

Just a clarification. 🙂

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Matt Rickman]

Tim/Jeff/Baz

Thanks for your time to respond to this.

1st – I think I do qualify to call the product unrefined, as I have 16 years editing experience and about 3 of those on premiere. An Editor is an Editor and at the end of the day they all do the same job (Basically). I don’t want to upset the powers that be here, so in reviewing my original post I can see how some of you professionals out there might have taken my post as a little bit of a jab, for that I apologize.

I am just wondering what my weak link is? Is it my system? Should I get a Matrox RTX2 (or ??) would that help? More RAM? It’s Ironic that I can edit on a 2 year old Macbook with a Dual Core Intel 2.0 and 1gb RAM just fine… (oh and it wouldn’t take 20+ hours to render a 45 minute timeline out.. see my other post)

I understand that every NLE has a learning curve, and I am committed to learning Premiere. I absolutely love the way that it integrates with other products.

Thanks again and in advance for your help…

matt