Premiere Pro gets an update – where’s ours?

[David Frisk]

I don’t see it as any different than when all the Avid people made the switch over to FCP. I’m in no way saying that a switch would be for everyone, or that everyone should do it or would want to do it. Walter just questioned why someone should consider looking at Premiere when they already have FCP set up. I just gave reasons as to why someone would.

And for what it’s worth, FCP and Premiere are incredibly close together as far as operating them. If you know FCP, picking up Premiere can be done in relatively no time, and vice versa. It’s not like someone going from FCP to Avid, or Premiere to Quantel, or anything of that nature. They’re the two most similar editors that I know of out of the bunch.

On a side note, at least Soundbooth is now multritrack. Meh, whatever 🙂

[David Frisk]

“Come on, Chris – let the resentment go….give it chance! ”

“Why? I have an entire shop and workflow built around Final Cut Pro and it works. A few new features on Premiere is not going to sway someone like me to drop FCP and switch to Premiere.”

It was a suggestion for someone else to give it a chance, and you asked why. So I explained why someone else would give it a chance. You then went on to say you don’t need to give it a chance because of whatever reasons. So I merely pointed out that your reasons for not giving it a chance doesn’t necessarily coincide with everyone and therefore is no reason for someone else not to give it a chance…whether they’ve already got an established outfit or not.

I realize you don’t recommend Premiere…but like you said, you don’t use it. I respect the work you do, I love watching your tutorials when you make them (even though I don’t use the products), and I’m confident that you’re very good at the work you do. But just like I don’t recommend Quantel or Edius or any of the other editing tools I don’t touch., I don’t see how you recommending or not recommending Premiere carries any weight. I’m not saying you tell people not to use it, but your lack of recommendation probably doesn’t mean a whole lot when you don’t use it in the first place to be able to recommend it.

[Bret Williams]

I compiled a quick list of everyday features I found in Premiere CS3 after just playing with it for a couple hours. I haven’t even checked out CS4.

Premiere has -4 up slip/slide & on client (ntsc) monitor with TC overlay
FCP has – 2 up and it only shows on the tiny computer canvas.

Premiere has 2 up trimming with TC overlay on client monitor
We all know FCPs trimming isn’t up to par with Avid, but I didn’t realize Premiere has a comparable edge, and with 2 up on client monitor

Premiere’s waveform has a setup display option.
FCP – no. Nice to see things the way you’re accustomed.

Premiere actually zooms where you think it will. To the playhead, not the selection (if there is one).
How many annoyed posts about how FCP zooms have been answered here?

Premiere actually shows the video sources in the transition panel.
When trimming in the trasition window you actually see the A and B sources. Go figure. What an interesting idea.

HOWEVER – it was also missing basic features like displaying a thumbnail in the bin in list view. That alone kills my workflow.

And people say that the crazy rendering process that Premiere had is gone, but I found it was just camouflaged by a prettier interface. When looking at the drive there’s still all sorts of temp render files and process files that I just didn’t understand.

[Bret Williams]

Here’s the difference – when people made the jump from Avid to FCP. FCP was $999 and had many many compositing features that a $50k or 75k Avid lacked. It actually imported layered PS files, and it had compositing modes. It handled larger than 720×486 files. Avid at the time was sorely behind and relied on it’s more expensive DS systems or animation programs for those functions. As if editors were supposed to just be assemblers. Plus, Avid had little support for DV. They only had DV input on their inexpensive 25k xpress systems that were hampered with a timeline that was worse than Premiere 4. FCP was allowing one to import DV and Quicktime files natively. Avid had all but given up on the Macintosh at the time. They almost dropped support completely until FCP came out and they did some massive backtracking.

So, the switch to Premiere is just a software and maybe some hardware switch. Almost a personal preference. The big argument being integration, but if people are comfortable with their workflow, that’s still a tough sell.

FCP hit a sweet spot in the marketplace selling a variety of features Avid lacked, for at least $25,000 less. What happened is upstarts chose FCP. Freelancers like myself bought it to do small projects. And from there a freelancer base grew and production houses folouirished.

Premiere during that time had an antiquated interface that they updated with Pro, but without Mac support. They had the right price with Pro, but they completely missed the window in the market. Now, Avid has lowered prices and has great mac offerings. They’ve offered software only solutions and updated their feature set. Basically, FCP kicked them in the rear and they got more competitive. Premiere got to work and is putting out a great system. All 3 are great systems and the price differences are negligible. But Premiere is now the 3rd party in a 2 party system. But 3 is better than 2 for competition and I hope they gain a foothold on the Pro market so FCP gets even better.

[Eric Addison]

“HOWEVER – it was also missing basic features like displaying a thumbnail in the bin in list view. That alone kills my workflow.”

Click the Icon view button in the bottom left of the project panel – thumbnail view for all the clips in the bin.

—Eric

[John Welsh]

KC, you’re right-on about Soundbooth. It’s weak sauce. I’ve put two other posts in the Cow to try to “stir it up” a little, since what Adobe did, in arrogant Microsoft fashion, is FORCE me use SB in CS3. In other words, they denied me the ability to configure PP CS3 so that I could right-click on an audio track and see an “Edit in Audition” option that would allow me to “round-trip” edit audio tracks.

Adobe says they replaced Audition with SB in CS3 based on user feedback. And lots of users DO like SB. That’s fine! But why FORCE us Audition veterans to use SB? That’s why I think Adobe is in danger of becoming the Microsoft of creative software… they are presuming to know what’s best for me, trying to think for me, instead of giving me the freedom to decide what works best for me. It really grinds my lights out when companies arrogantly do this. How hard is it to program it like CS2 so you DO have the “edit in Audition” option????

ADOBE, ARE YOU LISTENING???