Is Premiere Pro a better NLE for editing documentary films?

[Anna Wong]

Thanks Oliver. Yes, I am from 25p country. Safer.

[Matthew Gordon]

Oliver, can you describe your workflow for editing long-form docs in Premier?

The last version of Premier I worked with was CS6 (on a 2012 Mac Pro with plenty of RAM). At the time, I found it to be very unstable and slow when working on large, complex projects (over 100 hours of footage and with lots of folders, clips, and sequences).

I’ve been using Avid Media Composer almost exclusively for the past few years and am contemplating switching to Adobe Premier CC, but I’m worried I will still run into the same problems.

I had these same problems with Final Cut Pro 7, but I got around them by creating new projects for each scene or sequence. And since FCP 7 open multiple projects at the same time, it was a great work around.

This multi-project workflow never worked for me in premier since I couldn’t open projects at the same time (I know there are workarounds, like importing sequences and clips from other projects, but it just got too complicated).

So the three main questions I have are these:

1) Can premier cc now handle very large and complicated projects without bogging down?

2) If premier DOES still have problems with large complicated projects, what workarounds do you use in order to edit longform docs?

3) Have you had success switching a project from Avid to Premier CC?

I may just stay with Avid, but if Premier has continued to improve and can now handle big sprawling projects, it certainly would be nice to be able to more easily interface with After Affects, Photoshop, etc.

Thanks!
Matt

[Oliver Peters]

Hmm… I can’t say I’ve gone through anything that large. Probably the largest to date was around 60 hours of footage and that was with FCP7. No real issues there. However a lot of Premiere jobs with long timelines. Stability with Premiere depends on tons of variables, but the more convoluted your project gets, the more risky it becomes. Media Composer is probably still more stable overall. But here are some pointers.

Transcode all oddball media, like MP4 files into ProRes before you work with them. The transcoded files are your “camera masters”. Canon C300 files or Panasonic P2 are fine as is. Make sure you have unique files names on all of them. Keep an organized folder structure both on your hard drive and within the project. Use Media Browser within Premiere to import all files. Do not rename files.

Work in segments and do not keep tons of sequences. There’s no problem in doing a “save as” to create a duplicate of your project and delete old rough cuts in the new copy, just to keep your project streamlined.

If you want to break the doc into reels, you can create individual projects for each reel and then import the final sequence into a “master project”. This is the way Premiere deals with multiple projects. To do that you have to use Media Browser. It can access sequence files (and any other files) from within another Premiere Pro project file. Drill into each project and import the sequence for that reel. It will then import this timeline and all associated media. This timeline in the “master project” will be independent of the original, so changes made in either do not “ripple” changes between projects. This is more or less a lot like the “open bin” command in Media Composer for accessing bins from other Avid projects.

For example, I have an ongoing corporate client where are lot of the videos use interviews and these are mixed and matched in a variety of different videos. I have one Premiere Pro project just for assembling the interview clips. There I group into multicam clips and do my initial cutdowns. I go no further in that project. Then when I start a different video, I can import any of the interview selects sequences from the main interview project into the new project. I get the timelines I want as a starting point. Since everything is on the same drive, there’s no media being copied, since Premiere is smart enough to know the links.

Does that help?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Matthew Gordon]

Yes, this does help! It definitely matches up with what some other long-form doc editors have said. When projects get long and complex, Avid seems to handle it better. Which means that Avid is still probably my best bet for long-form work.

That said, your Premier tips will come in handy for smaller jobs in Premier.

Thanks!
Matt

[Bill Davis]

[Anna Wong] “Hi Dave,

Thanks for your advices! Yes, I don’t have much good memory with FCP7 too.
You mentioned to use Premiere Pro CC 2015.4 or 2015.3. But how to reinstall the previous versions?
Thank you!

Best regards,
Anna”

Unfortunate you asked about this in a Premiere Pro forum.

If you not wedded to the idea of tracked timelines, you could be flying through things in FCP X with some half-decent training.

It has NO issues with iPhone footage or any other mixed media. Generally, everything you need for normal transcoding is already built into X.

It RARELY crashes at all on decent hardware – and when it does you typically lost NOTHING of your work to that point, as it gracefully re-launches to exactly where you left off.

This is a Premiere Pro forum. So that’s a consideration. Basically if you ask how it’s best to prepare fish in a steakhouse, the answer is typically going to be “grill it”. It’s a perfectly fine response. But it’s conditioned on what the restaurant has the MOST experience with. It’s not the full range of possibilities – just what most of the cooks in THAT restaurant are used to doing.

Just sayin’

Good luck with your project.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Peter Garaway]

Hi Anna,

Obviously I may be a little bias on what application I think is the best ???? but of course you should have many tools in the belt and choose which one is best for the job at hand.

I thought I’d point you to a few helpful/inspiring sources of people that are using Premiere Pro in longform film making.

If you need any help along the way please feel free to reach out.

Great tips and workflow suggestions
https://vashivisuals.com/category/editing/

Premiere Pro customer stories:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD8AMy73ZVxWIJEetrniROpS4x6qbaqeW

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/category/digital-video-audio/page/2/

Peter Garaway
Adobe
Premiere Pro

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[Doug O’connor]

Anna,

Since this is a popular topic, I will jump in as well.
I am a doc editor and have spent most of my career on an Avid.
Up until recently, I considered Avid the best choice for ling form doc.
I have always found it better than FCP, which I am sure many will disagree with but having cut on both I just liked Avid better.

I am currently starting my third long form doc in Premiere.
I do not think I will go back to Avid. Definitely, do not cut in FCP as some have already voiced. It has aged out.
and save FCPX for shorter projects I think- myself, I am just ignoring it.
Premiere is a pretty remarkable program, and I think after the past few films, I am not looking back.

As for version, I am working in both 2015 and 2017. I have had no real issues in 2017, for what it’s worth…

Good luck.

Doug O’Connor
Z Post