Premiere Pro Versus Final Cut Pro

[Steve Freebairn]

They both are very good. Even though I love premiere, there are things that FCP does well. Like working with Film originated material. In using it though, there are also things that I’m surprised that it is lacking. For the sake of time, i’ll just give two examples.

1. In premiere if you want to trim the head of a clip and automatically have the rest of the project (or clip) slide over to fill the trim, you push CTRL. I asked many FCP users and no one new of a way to do it. I’m not saying it can’t “close the gap” in fact, it tries closing the gap even when it shouldn’t, but it is nice to be able to grab a clip and shorten/lengthen a clip by holding down CTRL.

2. When you slow footage down, there is no magical “Maintain Audio Pitch” button, which isn’t used all the time but it can be used. (it really isn’t a big deal, but I was shocked that the program that everyone says they love and is the best didn’t have all of Premiere’s features and then some, it actually had different features)

Ok, so those aren’t huge, but I’m curious why you don’t use AVID on a mac, if you’ve already used it. HDV works just fine on PCs and Macs, although you’ll pay more for the mac side of things. Storage is where you’ll really get taken.

[Erik Lindahl]

[Mike Cohen]

you know, that would be an interesting book – FCP vs. PPRO.
Invent a video project, shoot the footage, write a script, with storyboards for effects and editing selects – basically do all the prep for hading off to an editor.
Then hand the materials off to one or more FCP and PPRO editors, and have them keep track of time spent doing each task, and document how they did each effect or type of edit.
Then interview the editors on a edit by edit basis to get feedback about how they were able to do everything, including workarounds or hassles.

Then make a book comparing and contrasting the two approaches to editing the
same material.

I’d buy it.

Mike

[Eric Addison]

They are very close in feature set…each one has its own quirks and way of working. Having spent a lot of time editing with both, I think Adobe has really nailed it with the current release.

I could list a side-by-side comparison (or you could find one on-line somewhere), but you know something, in this case it really all comes down to what you, as an editor, feel most comfortable with. I love the way PPro, and the other Adobe apps, work. For me, everything just sort of flows together…I don’t find things to be that easy or smooth with FCP and the Apple apps. They are good, but not great. But I have plenty of editor friends who think the opposite.

Download the trial version of PPro 2 and play with it…see what you think. Honestly, that’s the best way for you to figure it out.

[Steven L. gotz]

When I did the Premiere Pro 1.5 tutorials for Lynda.com, I copied the FCP tutorials using the same footage. All I know is the other instructor kept explaining workarounds that were no problem in Premiere Pro. And the ability to edit in audio units is very cool. On the other hand, mouse users like myself could get used to the concept of drop zones like they have in FCP. Drop toward the top of a track is one thing, the bottom another. Kind of cool.

In any case, the two products are a lot closer than you might think. The test would need to include real world editing issues, but you would have to be certain that the features that make Premiere Pro better are included, and that the features that make FCP better are also included. So you would really have to be familiar with both products uniques features.

[Mike Smith]

Looking ahead to HDV, you might want to consider that workflow carefully, and look at the HDV forum posts.

At present, the http://www.cineform.com approach appears to have a lot to be said for it – which might influence your thinking.

[Dickij]

I thought that the advantages of Dynamic link with After Effects and the other tie-ins would mean that PPro would be a better choice than FCP. However, I just had to post this

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=3&postid=862782

as my PPro would not connect to my SONY Z1 over Firwire, so perhpas FCP does HDV more painlessly!? Any tips?

(What was the problem with AVID|DS not importing QTs? I thought DS was the business!?)
Jamie

[Alex Udell]

Hi…

Just to be fair:
“1. In premiere if you want to trim the head of a clip and automatically have the rest of the project (or clip) slide over to fill the trim, you push CTRL. I asked many FCP users and no one new of a way to do it. I’m not saying it can’t “close the gap” in fact, it tries closing the gap even when it shouldn’t, but it is nice to be able to grab a clip and shorten/lengthen a clip by holding down CTRL.”

Answer: This is accomplished by using the Ripple tool when performing the timeline Trim (keyboard shortcut RR)

“2. When you slow footage down, there is no magical “Maintain Audio Pitch” button, which isn’t used all the time but it can be used. (it really isn’t a big deal, but I was shocked that the program that everyone says they love and is the best didn’t have all of Premiere’s features and then some, it actually had different features)”

Answer: Unlink the events ont he FCP timeline Prior to doing the timeline based speed change. Also FCP will natively allow speed ramping something Pre Pro does not do.

As far as After Effects is concerned: FCP + Automatic Duck is a great combo for that workflow…It’s not dynamic linking, but it will get you into AE pretty painlessly.

I’m not talking down Premiere, I spend more time in it these days.
But I want the options out there.

Cheers…

Alex

[Erik Lindahl]

What was the problem with AVID|DS not importing QTs? I thought DS was the business!?
This is, you could say, an AVID|DS problem put more a windows-problem. We delivered 14 uncompressed QuickTime on DVD:s to the post-facility. Since they came from a Mac they actually didn’t have the extension “.mov”. This made Windows and AVID|DS clueless to what kind of files we we

[Ron Shook]

Erik,

[Erik Lindahl] “I would, however do two things:

1. Try out Premier Pro 2.0
2. Wait after NAB and see what Apple + AVID has to offer (or perhaps something new from Adobe, however that seems very unlikely)”

Good Advice!

As far as anything new from Adobe, as you say, “That seems very unlikely.” However…, what we need to have delivered, or hear about delivery, from Adobe at NAB is a patch to correct the things that were broken in 2.0 and to deliver the proxy files and MXF native support for DVCPro codecs, XDCam & IMX codecs, and other MXF codecs. If PPro is gonna deliver as a pro NLE application, we can’t wait another year or 2 for those features. If some of this comes from a 3rd party, like Matrox, at extra cost, so be it, but immediate needs and broken features can’t be left to fester between major upgrades in a professional application.

Ron Shook