Premiere Pro alternatives

[Phil Lowe]

Are there alternatives that are more stable in use? Thanks for your recommendations!!

I take by this you’re on a workstation and not a networked system, correct?

I can address the only other piece of software I use for the PC when it comes to editing: Avid Media Composer. It’s stable. It’s also nothing like Premiere Pro. Whole different workflow. I use both, occasionally using PPro when the need for simple DVD authoring arises, and I mapped my keyboard in PPro to work like my Avid keyboard. Much easier that way. If you go that route (mapping PPro keys to Avid’s) you may find the transition somewhat smoother to make.

Having noted all of that, I’m not a big Avid fan right now, as I am forced to use their really god-awful networked Newscutters at work, and – like you – am sick and tired of dealing with bugs and crashes much of the day. But that’s another story. Suffice to say if you stay away from Avid’s networked “solutions”, you may find Media Composer stable and – once you get used to it – even easy and fast to use, if you can swallow the initial cost.

I can’t address FCP: I don’t use Macs. Maybe someone else can tout its virtues. 🙂

[Nick Griffin]

Maarten-

First and foremost I think you should post some specific issues / behavior you are experiencing on the Premier COW and see if any of the experienced bovines there can help identify something which may be causing your problem. Your issues could be caused by any number of conflicts with other software or hardware.

Second, you didn’t say whether your problems were with the Mac or PC versions of PP. Specifying that will be important to help in finding a solution.

Third, in answer to your question, NO, all editing programs are not riddled with bugs. Personally I’m a Mac user of Media 100 (1st choice) and Final Cut Pro (3rd choice because I like Media 100 that much more), but my partner uses a lower cost version of Avid on the PC and is also quite satisfied.

I like Media 100 because it is highly streamlined, allowing me to work faster. Final Cut Pro does most of the same things, and in some cases, a few more, but requires more steps and more clicks to get the same results. Media 100 comes with Boris Red, yet Final Cut Pro comes with Motion, Color, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor and probably a couple of additional pieces I’m forgetting. All things considered, it’s worth it for us to have both and use each for its strengths.

I’ve written two two articles on Media 100. First on Producer, which chronicled my move back to Media 100 after moving to Final Cut:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/griffin_nick/media100_producer.php

Then late last year I stepped up to Media 100’s hardware-based version 13:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/griffin_nick/m100v13_transition.php

This summer Media 100 Suite was released, replacing both Producer and the full Media 100. I love it, it seldom crashes or has any other problems, and — of greatest importance to me — I use it to earn a living.

[Maarten Mylemans]

Thanks for the responses!

Nick: thank you for the recommendation. The reason I didn’t post this in the Premiere forum section is because I’m tired of looking for solutions on how to fix Premiere… and I’ve already done extensive research on the problems I’m running up against. All of my research returns the same answers time and again: “it’s a bug in the program, use a workaround.” Which I would be able to live with if I didn’t have to find a workaround every two mouse clicks.

Phil: Yep, I’m on a standalone workstation, it’s kinda sad to hear that most editing software are riddled with bugs. Maybe I’ll finally give Avid a try, I’ve been putting that off because it’s always so uncomfortable to learn a new software, but the irritation of having to troubleshoot even the most basic of actions is now outweighing that uncomfortableness.

Since I’m on a PC, FCP isn’t an option at the moment (I am looking into changing systems too though). If Avid Media composer is more stable, I’m gonna give it a try, see how it works out.

The only thing I’d be miffed about is having to work out an entirely new workflow between Avid and After Effects and all the other programs I use… oh, well.

If someone else has anything to share on editing programs that work or don’t work, please do! I don’t want to lose anymore sleep over failed editing software 🙂

[Nick Griffin]

[Maarten Mylemans] “I would be able to live with if I didn’t have to find a workaround every two mouse clicks.”

Then you are correct to look to move on. That’s unacceptable.

[Maarten Mylemans] “it’s kinda sad to hear that most editing software are riddled with bugs.”

Is this what you’ve read elsewhere, because it wasn’t part of this thread and has not been part of my experience. If you’re convinced that changing platforms isn’t an option then you should also look at Sony Vegas to see if that’s more to your liking. The good thing about entry level Avid is that it will make moving to the higher levels of Avid in future jobs simpler. Then again, the higher levels of Avid are usually on Macs — at least as far as I’ve seen.

[Tim Kolb]

I’m not really sure what the “dreaded QuickTime bug” is…you say it as if the whole world knows about it. I edit lots of QT on PPro PC…even ProRes. No issues as far as I can tell.

I haven’t had any issues with MP3s for some time…and the Media Encoder is usually not frozen, but it is often spending inordinate amounts of time gather metadata for every clip it will touch before it starts encoding. (the default setting for the software is to “use all XML metadata” which is shut off with one click, one time.

I do know that an underpowered system will have problems with Adobe products…insufficient RAM, drives that are not fast enough or are too full to operate properly, smaller processors…etc.

I know you’ve decided to move on, but keep in mind that IF your system is the issue (and if it’s more than two years old, the chances are good it is at least a contributing factor), then chances are good that your next editing solution will have some stumbles as well.

Switching from a 3 year old PC with CS4 to a brand new Octo-Mac with FCP will be an improvement…but the software will be a minor part of it.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Scott Cumbo]

Just remember if you consider going the Avid route. It’s not like adobe stuff, it’s not designed to run on any and all PC’s. Avid is picky about motherboards, chipsets and GFX cards (nvidia cards only)
they have a list of all the qualified systems on their website (mostly high end HP workstations).

Yes it will run on home built systems, but it’s at your own risk.
at home i’m running Media composer on a home built system and it solid as a rock, but i did a ton of research before i built it.
and my home system is not to make money, just hobby stuff.

Scott Cumbo
Editor
Broadway Video, NYC

[Maarten Mylemans]

Thanks for the recommendations, again 🙂

Nick: Oh, dear, I just completely misread your sentence! I thought you said “all editing software is riddled with bugs”, while you said the opposite of course. So, yay, that’s good to hear!

Tim: I’m sorry if I gave the impression that the quicktime bug is well known… it’s actually a quite exotic bug that sort of seems to almost at random pop up on CS3 installations. But when it does, quicktime inside of Premiere gets broken (it has a very specific error code, but can’t remember what it was). When I went looking for solutions, only a handful of people had it, but there was no fix, so I had to rerender all my sfx shots from my feature film to uncompressed AVI in order to export my film.

Have you done an entire featurelength film in Premiere? Because for me that’s where Premiere started bugging out, before that I did maybe movies of maximum 15 minutes, and Premiere worked fine. But when I got about halfway into my feature project, Premiere just started flipping and it was one hell of a road to the finish from there on. Eventually had to use Debugmode Frameserver to even just get my movie out of Premiere.

That xml data switch, where can I find that? The thing is, I tried two versions of Media Encoder: 4.0 and 4.2, the 4.0 would start encoding almost immediately. But with 4.2, even exporting a single frame grab, I’d have it sit there for an hour and it would still say “loading project”.

I don’t feel like my system is underpowered, because I never have problems with other software, mainly After Effects and Photoshop, they stay quite responsive (even when working with an 8K frame in photoshop at 300dpi for publising). And I’ve only really had to troubleshoot one bug in either of them (in the course of working with those for about 7 years now).

Scott: okay, so Avid is still kinda risky 🙂
Maybe it is safer to go the MAC route just because I can’t really mess up the hardware configuration because I don’t design it myself? 😀 (I’ve always designed my own workstations)

Here are my system specs:
Windows 7 64-bit (only recently, all the bugs I’m talking about were also present on Windows XP)
Intel Core DUO 2.66 GHz
3GB RAM
Nvidia 8800 GTX with 712MB RAM
I have about 2.2 Terrabyte of storage in my PC, spread over 4 disks all at 7200 RPM

[Gary Hazen]

“Then again, the higher levels of Avid are usually on Macs — at least as far as I’ve seen.” Nick G.

Many Post Houses use PC based Media Composers and Symphonies. And Avid’s top of the line system, the DS, only runs on the PC platform. Besides that it’s not a big deal switching between a PC Media Composer and a Mac Media Composer. It’s just a different OS, the UI and the commands are the same.

[Tim Kolb]

[Maarten Mylemans] “Here are my system specs:
Windows 7 64-bit (only recently, all the bugs I’m talking about were also present on Windows XP)
Intel Core DUO 2.66 GHz
3GB RAM
Nvidia 8800 GTX with 712MB RAM
I have about 2.2 Terrabyte of storage in my PC, spread over 4 disks all at 7200 RPM”

Is that a two-core processor? 3 GB of RAM?

OK…your system is the bottleneck. You should update your platform.

-get the RAM up to 8 GB minimum, 16 GB preferably

-get a couple 4 core processors

-get rid of the gamer card and get a Quadro

-make sure you have some speedy drives in a RAID configuration.

…then whatever editing software you choose will run.

While you might have some problems that are Adobe-related (Vegas might run on this system as it’s very resource starvation-tolerant), you’re simply underpowered for CS4, and that has to be a contributing factor. It needs serious RAM and processor power as is helped immensely by a strong display card.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Micah Mcdowell]

Your system “may” be a bottleneck, but it’s not terrible. Are your drives a RAID array or just four random separate disks? If they’re striped together, that will help your performance immensely. More RAM would be very beneficial as well.

Somewhat like you, I’ve always had issues with longer form projects in Premiere. I used to edit a 30 minute hunting show and had horrible issues daily; in my current position I rarely edit anything over 5 minutes and Premiere has been acceptably stable for some time. For whatever reason, it just doesn’t do well with feature length edits.

I’ve worked on low-end Avids, Premiere, FCP, and occasionally Vegas. My work system is Premiere on a PC and I use it daily, but my home system is now FCP and it seems to be the most stable of any I’ve used.

You could try Avid, but if you’ve always been a Premiere user the Avid interface and limitations of lower end Avids may drive you nuts, plus Avid needs very specific hardware or it won’t be fun. I’d just get a Mac and go the FCP route, but I’m becoming a bit biased.