Premier vs. Final cut

[Tam Perl]

We have a small studio equipped with Macs, and we use the Adobe suite, current version is CS4. Believe me, there are tons of issues with Premiere, and every time we hit a serious snag — which has been often — we “swear” we are switching to Final Cut. We have FCP on one of our machines, and we’ve done some testing. On balance, our decision has been to stick with Premiere. Because ultimately every Adobe problem has a workaround, and there is one major advantage to using Adobe — and that is dynamic link. In our particular workflow we have a lot of “back-and-forthing” between Premiere and After Effects, and the ability to do this via dynamic linking has been the clincher which has kept us with Adobe.

My bottom line advice to you is — stay with the app / system that you’re familiar with. If you’re starting from scratch as between FCP and Premiere — I think FCP has the edge on the individual program Premiere, but the dynamic linking is (for us) the decider.

Important — if you’re setting up a new system, make sure you have enough computing power, with plenty of RAM.

Good luck

Tam

[Tim Kolb]

I think as editing systems, the two apps are not that far apart from a function standpoint in my view…

I do think that in cases where you’re working with graphics and non-(specific camera format) video media, PPro is a bit more flexible on what you can put on the edit timeline.

Final Cut has features I’d love to see PPro have, and I think there are things that are easier to do in PPro than FCP…it just depends on what features you’re focusing on.

…and yes, I’m sure you’ll get input that states that one is fundamentally better than the other. You can come up with a workflow that could tilt the balance either way.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Keith Cohn]

Thanks Tim and Tam, no pun meant: Well, staying with a PC is certainly cheaper at the moment. And I work heavily in Photoshop CS4 anyway, so the “suite” advantage sounds encouraging as well. I think I’ll probably stay with a PC, and therefore Adobe for now, and at least get a trial copy and experiment with it.

So, if I do stay with Premier, do I then leave Audacity, and do all my audio editing in Adobe, and if so, can you tell me where Premier leaves off and Soundbooth picks up–does the sound editing begin with in Soundbooth and then transition to Premier?

keith

[Brian Barkley]

I moved from EDIT to PP after EDIT was no longer available. Most of the old EDIT guys went with PP, so I followed that crowd. At first, I did not like PP, but I am liking it more as I become more familiar with it. I use Soundbooth for E.Q., leveling & smoothing out tracks, converting stereo recordings to mono, etc. There is another program that is superior to soundbooth when it comes to eliminating unwanted background noise. This is the link: https://izotope.com/products/audio/rx/

The Izotope RX will eliminate most extraneous noises. The software is only $350 … and I use it A LOT.

[Jake Williams]

Tam-“Because ultimately every Adobe problem has a workaround, and there is one major advantage to using Adobe — and that is dynamic link. In our particular workflow we have a lot of “back-and-forthing” between Premiere and After Effects, and the ability to do this via dynamic linking has been the clincher which has kept us with Adobe.”
What follows may resemble a rant:
There shouldn’t be a need for a work around. The software should function and do so predictably. When it comes to user interface I would choose CS4 especially because of the ability to work with many diverse codecs but when it comes to reliability I would choose FCP. FCP is a toyota while CS4 is a fiat. While working with CS4 I spend a lot of time finding and using workarounds to supplement the malfunctions of dynamic linking and bad code than I ever have using FCP. With FCP I simply know what will work and what won’t.

Jake Williams

[Toby Nichol]

Hi. Im an Adobe Suite user, specifically CS4 and im on PC 64 bit 6g RAM and 8 Core CPU yet im still incredibly familiar to a crash screen!

In the event i move to mac wich is more likely to crash, Adobe or FCP?

Thanks