Premiere CS5 will kill all!

[Tim Kolb]

“Change” from what?

What sort of material are you working with?

What kind of post workflow do you envision?

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is pretty good stuff, a fair slice of the upper end of the market is taking notice…but if you have to re-learn an entire editing interface, you should consider what saves the most time.

The Mercury Playback Engine is real…it works…

Like most other apps, you get a machine with the correct muscle, it’ll chew through most anything.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Bala Chandran]

After I moved from Video Toaster and FAST Video Machine to Adobe Premiere, I have been happy. Now the PPro CS5 is absolutely a pleasure to work in. I do not do films, except for occasional trailers or trailer-like theatrical commercials. I do mostly TV shows and event videos, but I enjoy working with PPro CS5. And the dynamic link is a great time saver to go back and forth to After Effects, Encore, Photoshop and Illustrator. I never got used to FCP’s workflow, even though I have to use FCP every once in a while.

[Ken Bennett]

I too am a long time Video Toaster user. But it could not handle HD and is now lacking in support and development. So I decided to try Vegas Pro. After gearing up and learning the basics, putting a lot of time and money into it, I find when I put it in full production it falls flat on it’s face. Clips crash it. Adjusting clips crash it. It will swap clips with other clips upon reloading the projects.

So, like Joel, I’m now looking at CS5. What I want is a stable NLE that can handle real world editing. I do a lot of weddings and events and videos of corporate clients and websites. So Premiere Pro CS5 users, enlighten us with you experience. How many times a day does CS5 crash?

Ken

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[John Frey]

I have used both Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas in a studio situation for many years on a variety of short and long-form projects. After Premiere Pro 2, I solely stuck with Vegas through their current version 9e. I acquired CS4 last year and have completely migrated over to it. No crashes, no problems. I just moved up to CS5 and am in the testing phase with it – so far so good. I do feel that both of these apps are very stable – when used on a properly configured system. I have built all of my edit workstations in 2 working studios over the past 5 years, and have picked out all of the components installed in them. All of our projects for nearly 3 years now are in HD. Premiere demands a powerful system for optimal workflow – there is simply no getting around that!

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[Erik Lindahl]

The Mercury Playback Engine is real…it works..
I read some weary reports the performance is slaughtered if you work with an external monitor though a video-card (i.e. Kona 3 for example). Is this still the case?

However, as the poster if anyone that finds a solid “move to Premier CS5” would be a lovely read-up. We’re an FCP based post-house at the moment but I’m open to other options. The main question though is WHY do you want to move to Premier? What isn’t working very smoothly for you today?

I can say from my POV it’s:

1. Speed.
FCP sometimes suprices in speed and sometimes feels like a dead horse. This goes from simple things like real-time editing and effects, working and visualizing or even finalizing projects more in real-time. Color-correction, film-effects such as noise and grain and titling are things FCP doesn’t always excel at.

Speed is however more than just “look mom, I got nice effects in realtime!” – speed can be workflow as well.

2. Workflow
We do a lot of AfterEffects work. Sending more complex comps here via Premier should be easier. What we however don’t want to loose is our current workflow we already have. The ability to capture and lay-out to tape (asaik you don’t even have deck-control built in), the ability to work with EDL’s to and from other post-facilites when working with for example film. We also do our fair-share of tracking using Mocha or work with external sources such as 3D. How does Premier work here? What format do you natively use across the apps? Don’t give me “you can use any native format” cause you don’t edit and finnish something in RED or h264.

From my brief tests with the above it seem the FCP XML import works decent enough given FCP has much better performance on ProRes and RED media (given this was wrapped in QT-file so I presume that’s why). This does however open up more complex AE-comps from FCP way easier for our suites. Compared to CS4 it seems Adobe has cleaned the app upp a lot and it didn’t feel sluggish as their former editing candidate. But a proper case of the editor would be very interesting to read. On thing we would lack is Apples Color but you CAN use that given some XML-trick via FCP.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se