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Premiere on a MacBook Pro – ugh!
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[Oliver Peters] “Huh? Isn’t that contrary to your argument that X is faster? If you are charging more to use another NLE and you are supposedly faster on X, then you are really giving the client the middle finger and pricing yourself out of the market. This strategy effectively tells the client that you have no interest in cutting with anything other than X, even though that might not be in the best interest of the client or the project.
“Nope.
I’m doing EXACTLY what is appropriate. If a client elects to force me to use a tool that makes my work harder and less efficient, then they have to pay MORE than if they let me use a tool that enables me to be more efficient.
Why? Because efficiency is a thing that benefits EVERYONE. Client and editor alike.
And in any case, I have LONG been staunchly against trading money for time in general.
If you sell your TIME two things are inevitable. The first thing is that your inventory will shrink every second you are alive — even when you are asleep at night. And secondly,, you will make less if you are good and fast, then you will if you are lousy and slow. That has never made ANY sense to me.
Time billing is a construct of accounting and generally benefits the HIRING party by connecting pay to a metric they can used for cost control.
I elect, instead, to charge for EXPERTISE – Never time. It shifts things away from a focus on the process – to a focus on results. It’s preciesly why one artist gets far more money for arranging the EXACT same paint on canvas as another.
You are paying for their expertise in obtaining results, not their time.
If your project quotes reflect your expertise, then the time it takes to complete a project shouldn’t really matter providing you meet the agreed deadlines. It’s how creative output has ALWAYS functioned, really. A great song that takes an hour to write, has no less market value than an equally popular one that took a month to write. So why charge more for one than the other? Makes no sense.
That X is faster (which I completely believe) simply allows me to shift my attention more and more away from the mechanics of assembly – and more and more into the ACTUAL editing – which is really using expertise to curate what to eliminate, what to prioritize, and how to arrange my chosen elements in order to help it to communicate successfully to it’s audience.
It’s not giving the client “the finger” at all.
It’s saying “let me do the real job you are hiring me to do – to create something worthy for you – with tools that I have mastered because I have found they will best help me get you a superior results, faster.”
That I may be able to get us there faster is a shining benefit for you! So if I keep MORE money for working LESS time but STILL delivering faster – then we BOTH get motivation to keep this process going.
Thats kinda how I see it.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “That X is faster (which I completely believe) simply allows me to shift my attention more and more away from the mechanics of assembly – and more and more into the ACTUAL editing – which is really using expertise to curate what to eliminate, what to prioritize, and how to arrange my chosen elements in order to help it to communicate successfully to it’s audience.”https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
[Bill Davis] “I’m doing EXACTLY what is appropriate. If a client elects to force me to use a tool that makes my work harder and less efficient, then they have to pay MORE than if they let me use a tool that enables me to be more efficient.”
You have it backwards. If you are less efficient, then the client is already paying more, because it takes you longer. So now you are asking to charge a premium on top of what is already more expensive for the client. Doesn’t sound like a way to win over a client. Unless, of course, it’s a flat bid, which is typically not the case in this type of situation. And besides, no one would be “forcing” you. You either take the job or you don’t based on the requirements and your qualifications.
[Bill Davis] “And in any case, I have LONG been staunchly against trading money for time in general. “
That’s dumb. An editor is supplying a service and that service is paid against time – by the hour, day, week, month, whatever. It’s not a full-service, creative service, like a production company might bid.
[Bill Davis] ” and more and more into the ACTUAL editing – which is really using expertise to curate what to eliminate, what to prioritize, and how to arrange my chosen elements in order to help it to communicate successfully to it’s audience.”
That’s the essence of what every editor does on every tool and on every job. You can argue that X let’s you do it faster; however, it’s impossible to say that you can now pay attention to it purely because you are using X. Any editor worth their salt does that day in and day out on every NLE and does it rather quickly.
And besides, the fastest editor isn’t necessarily the best editor in the first place. So to argue that the client gets more value because X allows you to be faster may be an incorrect metric. One thing you aren’t factoring in is compatibility with the rest of the operation.
Let’s say this is a corporate conference and you are hired to edit the on-site videos. The company is all Adobe-based. They want to supply you with elements and prepared project files done in After Effects and Premiere Pro. At the end, they expect you to turn over Premiere Pro project files that they can revise back at their home base. You are in a pretty weak position trying to argue that X is either faster or better, simply because of the hoops you have to jump through to meet the requirement. And even then you haven’t fully satisfied the needs. The bottom line is that in such a situation, the client doesn’t hire you, they hire someone who is comfortable with the Adobe suite of tools.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Steve Connor] “Day to day I edit using FCPX on a top spec 2015 MacBook Pro, very happy with the speed I get with XAVC material shot on FS7 and FS5’s, I also use a lot of library material which is mostly .h264 – never have any speed problems at all.
Last couple of weeks I’ve been forced back to editing on Premiere Pro and I’m genuinely shocked by how slow the performance is, even scaling down to 1/4 or 1/8th res I don’t get great playback at all, have Adobe not caught up yet?”
Each codec behaves differently on each NLE. Sony’s XAVC, esp XAVC-S is somewhat sluggish in FCPX on an iMac Pro, but that is nonetheless lightning fast relative to Premiere on the same hardware. Resolve 15 and later is also much faster than Premiere in terms of decode and scrubbing latency.
Part of the perceived performance difference lies in how you edit. If you drag the playhead and wait a second, then Premiere doesn’t seem so bad. However if you use JKL commands a lot, then Premiere is very slow on that codec. Moving between fast forward and reverse via JKL can cause lags in the program monitor of several seconds, even with the display at 1/4 resolution.
This might be an issue with Premiere not supporting Quick Sync or other hardware-based decode accelerators such as T2 on the Mac platform. Supposedly Adobe is working to improve this. At least they support Quick Sync for export in some cases. If you are not on the latest version of Premiere and MacOS it makes sense to upgrade these.
However I just tested the latest Premiere 13.1.4 on my 10-core Vega64 iMac Pro running macOS 10.14,6, and several common H264 codecs are all slow. This includes 4k XAVC-S and similar 4k 100 mbps 4:2:0 material from a DJI drone and a Panasonic GH5. The XAVC-S variant seems a bit slower than the others.
It didn’t make any difference whether using OpenCL or Metal in the playback engine. In all cases I had the program monitor set to 1/4 resolution.
You may have to just create proxies. Fortunately Premiere now supports those. Even on FCPX I must create proxies for those codecs if doing multicam.
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[Steve Connor] “Day to day I edit using FCPX on a top spec 2015 MacBook Pro, very happy with the speed I get with XAVC material shot on FS7 and FS5’s, I also use a lot of library material which is mostly .h264 – never have any speed problems at all.
Last couple of weeks I’ve been forced back to editing on Premiere Pro and I’m genuinely shocked by how slow the performance is, even scaling down to 1/4 or 1/8th res I don’t get great playback at all, have Adobe not caught up yet?”
Each codec behaves differently on each NLE. Sony’s XAVC, esp XAVC-S is somewhat sluggish in FCPX on an iMac Pro, but that is nonetheless lightning fast relative to Premiere on the same hardware. Resolve 15 and later is also much faster than Premiere in terms of decode and scrubbing latency.
Part of the perceived performance difference lies in how you edit. If you drag the playhead and wait a second, then Premiere doesn’t seem so bad. However if you use JKL commands a lot, then Premiere is very slow on that codec. Moving between fast forward and reverse via JKL can cause lags in the program monitor of several seconds, even with the display at 1/4 resolution.
This might be an issue with Premiere not supporting Quick Sync or other hardware-based decode accelerators such as T2 on the Mac platform. Supposedly Adobe is working to improve this. At least they support Quick Sync for export in some cases. If you are not on the latest version of Premiere and MacOS it makes sense to upgrade these.
However I just tested the latest Premiere 13.1.4 on my 10-core Vega64 iMac Pro running macOS 10.14,6, and several common H264 codecs are all slow. This includes 4k XAVC-S and similar 4k 100 mbps 4:2:0 material from a DJI drone and a Panasonic GH5. The XAVC-S variant seems a bit slower than the others.
It didn’t make any difference whether using OpenCL or Metal in the playback engine. In all cases I had the program monitor set to 1/4 resolution.
You could test whether re-wrapping the Sony codecs with EditReady then importing with “Leave Files In Place” helps any. In a few cases external re-wrapping seems to help.
You may have to just create proxies. Fortunately Premiere now supports those. Even on FCPX I must create proxies for those codecs if doing multicam.
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[Oliver Peters] “You are in a pretty weak position trying to argue that X is either faster or better, simply because of the hoops you have to jump through to meet the requirement. And even then you haven’t fully satisfied the needs. The bottom line is that in such a situation, the client doesn’t hire you, they hire someone who is comfortable with the Adobe suite of tools.
– Oliver
“I simply see this in the following terms.
If a mechanic shop is currently using ALL hand tools – and another shop has made the switch to compressor driven tools – the second shop WILL be more efficient.
Furthermore, the MORE power assisted tools the second shop uses, the overall more efficient they will become.
And if they put in a central compressor system and teach all the shop employees to learn, understand and leverage the maximum number of power assisted tools – that shop will be significantly more efficient than any shop that tries to keep doing things the old way – SIMPLY because that’s the way they and their mechanics have always done things.That’s exactly how I see the transition from track-based timelines to magnetic editing.
Sure the old shop has added some power assisted tools to their approach. But I still find it’s just not the same as moving the wholistic system forward into a new era.
I know people get angry when I say things like this and feel what I’m ACTUALLY saying is that *they* are old-fashioned or foolish for not using the tools that *I* think they should. But that’s actually backwards. I don’t CARE what tools anyone else uses. It’s NONE OF MY BUSINESS. All I’m doing is articulating how the change of toolset and editing orientation has effected MY productivity over time.
X was transformational for me in that it freed both my time AND my thinking in countless ways – leading to me being a significantly happier editor. And that’s all that matters to me.
As to the other critique above about how X is a poor fit for the type of “shop where their work utterly depends on being “compatible” with the clients decisions about which NLE to use — yeah, they are UTTERLY correct.
If that’s your goal – to occupy a seat in a shop like that – thats likely your best path. I’ve worked for a few large enterprises of that type over my career where the inefficiency of their process has been staggering to behold, but to each their own.
But I stand by my positions. If you wish to exhibit a large operation seat editor orientation – then by all means learn the apps that will get you into those seats.
I’m lucky. I can make a fine living without anyone telling me what tools to use to do my work. I KNOW that makes me lucky.
And I appreciate that.
That’s all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “If a mechanic shop is currently using ALL hand tools – and another shop has made the switch to compressor driven tools – the second shop WILL be more efficient. “
That’s too simplistic of an analogy. The end product is a fixed customer car (assuming it’s an auto mechanic). That’s not the case for most editors. Yes, the end result is a finished video/film/program, but it can also include the work product (project files). So if you have the luxury of delivering the former without needing to deliver the latter, then either tool is fine – whatever makes you the most efficient. But if both are required, then you have to go with whatever the client dictates, if that’s part of the job specification.
Besides you are arguing power tools versus by hand, when in fact, it’s really just a disagreement about brands of power tools.
[Bill Davis] “If that’s your goal – to occupy a seat in a shop like that – thats likely your best path.”
Yet, that’s exactly the situation most editors find themselves in and are quite happy doing so.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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