From FCP to PP – Questions from an editor ready for the jump!

[Alex Udell]

No….Media on the drives is not duplicated.

You just end up with additional Master Clips in the project Browser.

You know how in FCP you can have Clips in a sequence with no master in the Project panel?

This is not true for Ppro. When you have a clip in a sequence, it’s always tied to a Master in the project panel. Likewise, if you a delete the master clip from the project Panel, PPro will warn you that it will also delete it’s affiliates out of the sequences its used in.

The problem is that when you import a Project to another project to merge them, PPro will not recognize the existence of a master clip if it’s already IN the project panel. So you end up with multiple master clip instances and project file bloat.

So 5 editors all using their instances of the same master clip will not yield 1 master clip in the project panel, but 5 master clips in the project panel, each one pointing to the same underlying media file.

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Alex Udell]

[Jon Hiseman] “So, delighted with the Clip duplicate, I immediately tried to duplicate a transition to another clip in the same way – not possible.”

but copy and paste does work with transitions….

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Jon Hiseman]

[Alex Udell] “[Jon Hiseman] “So, delighted with the Clip duplicate, I immediately tried to duplicate a transition to another clip in the same way – not possible.”

but copy and paste does work with transitions….
“

Yes – That’s great if you want to set up a paste operation for 10+ Transitions but way too slow for a single shot.

I used to be Jon Hiseman but I’m feeling better now.

[Kevin Monahan]

[Jon Hiseman] “point me in the direction of the tutorial that allows me to grade 8 different parts of a clip with a minimum of key stokes and keyframe them over time without resorting to the dreaded round trip. I’ve done it in AE but its really hard work.”

How in the world did you grade 8 areas of a clip in FCP, and with few shortcuts?
•Garbage mattes? Premiere Pro has that.
•Secondaries? Premiere Pro has that.

Tell me your FCP method, and then I’ll tell you if the same one exists in Premiere Pro.

[Jon Hiseman] “So, delighted with the Clip duplicate, I immediately tried to duplicate a transition to another clip in the same way – not possible. I don’t think I should have to put a request in for this. Somebody is just not joining up the dots.”

Whatever the reason, you do need to make a feature request: https://www.adobe.com/go/wish

Option+dragging a clip, and Option+dragging a transition are two separate functions, and two separate engineering tasks.

It could’ve gotten left out for any number of reasons:
•There was not enough time to implement the feature.
•The new feature broke an existing feature with no obvious fix.
•It isn’t possible to implement something precisely as it worked in another application.
•Feature requests were not specific enough.
•…and more engineering “gotchas” than you can throw a stick at.

Things will get much better. I apologize for any problems you may have in your workflow. Keep up the posts. We appreciate the feedback.

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Jon Hiseman]

[Kevin Monahan] “Hi John,
Forgive me if I’m missing something, but you can use travel matte effects, gradients, and blend modes in Premiere Pro very easily.

Unlike FCP, blend modes run in real time. In FCP, you always had to render anything with the blending mode changed. “

Hi Kevin
Forgive me if I go on a bit but I think its sensible to talk from actual real world experience.
The comments from FCP switchers regarding PPro’s poor compositing result from being used to doing very quick invisible fixes, on the original footage, on the fly, while editing. For PPro I have only found tutorials for titling, smoke and explosions etc,. But I am always fixing, fixing, fixing.

Two problems I encountered recently editing shows that have recently been shown on the BBC:
Music footage in Documentary; Stage – 4 musicians, keys of keyboard, cymbal; all over-lit for a couple of seconds by an excited stage lighting tec.
Wideshot cam op got bored and chose to join the action!
Resort to FCP in extremis – create 6 tight travelling matt areas – regrade individually. 8 mins start to finish.
2nd project – 15 mins 1979 film stored very badly – remove worst of scratches in two hours.
Resort back to FCP – duplicate 15 min clip to track above on timeline. change blend mode to travel matte luma – move clip 1 frame to the right – sandwich custom gradient and, cutting affected clip as you go, substitute advanced clip onto the tiny ares of damaged original. ( Very few blemishes last more than one frame.)

The tragedy of this story is that PPro could actually do this faster but for two key omissions in it’s arsenal.
Take the first music vid example.
In PPro duplicate the clip 6 times above the original (tracks 2-7) in the timeline (Alt Drag – yea!)
Select all six and drag from the effects panel:
A colour corrector of choice, the Luma key and either the 4-8-16 point garbage matte
Then individually set the threshold of all the Luma key plugs to 0.0, and the garbage matte points to position and grade the individual areas.

Except it won’t work

You can’t feather the mattes. Use the feather plug I hear you cry – no it feathers the edges of the whole clip only. Use the title tool – no you can’t keyframe individual matte points – only its original shape position and then only via the motion tab. Use AE – yes it can all be done in AE – no question, but its actually overkill and is much, much slower because of the way blend modes work – unless you are a serious full time AE guru. (One man bands seldom know everything about anything) Lastly, but not least, AE requires the dreaded round trip.

So, Whadda we want. We FCP switchers want quick fixes on the fly. Give us great choke, feathering and opacity controls in garbage mattes in PPro and most importantly give us a pen tool for unlimited bezier point mattes (OK – 40 point will do), resizable , feather-able and point key-frameable. All on the timeline and in the program monitor. When you have done all this in 50 mouse moves, show it to a photo of Steve Jobs and listen to the wind – then go away and do it in 10.
Actually, that last sentence is OTT, but I got more and more frustrated as I wrote this.

P.S

Go here to see all this aired in a 17 point thread in 2010
https://forums.adobe.com/message/2917573
The points were answered then by Todd with ‘just do it in AE’.

I used to be Jon Hiseman but I’m feeling better now.

[Adam White]

Alex,

Thankyou for explaining that so clearly – and apologies my thanks are so late (I have to chalk that up to just being insanely busy)

I feel better about the multiple editors situation. Its clearly very flawed (duplicated master clips) and needs to be addressed ASAP, but I guess I can see how one might manage it. Its not a deal breaker for me.