-
Premiere vs. FCPX – What’s best for slow motion/speed change
I spent several years using FCP7 and recently took a job in the last 3 months that involved using FCPX. I’m switching to Adobe CS6 for several reasons. I need a whole suite because I’ll be doing work with other professionals and who don’t use FCPX, so whether is great or terrible, it really doesn’t matter because it just isn’t used in the professional world. My recent job was a summer camp with low budget, which is why fcpx was used.
FCPX had some great things that I really liked (and others I absolutely hated). The speed controls to do slow and fast motion were pretty amazing, especially for a skateboard video I made, and I’m wondering what the alternative in Premiere or After Effects would be.
So, should I still make my personal skateboard videos in FCPX or just totally switch to Adobe? FCPX seems to have some great features for my hobby videos so it still might have a place on my computer.
Can Premiere use different frame rates in the same project? What is the Adobe alternative workflow for this?
Thanks!
Paul Boone -
16 Replies
-
Fcpx has optical flow.
Or use twixtor.
-
Hello,
while PremierePro in many regards is great;
but image processing (Scaling, De-Interlacing, etc.) is it’s weak point!FCP-X let You do de-interlacing, framerate-adjustement and
general speed-changes with optical flow analysis.If You nevertheless want to do a good speed changes in PP,
make your speed changes inside PP,
THEN send Your clip to AfterFX (don’t forget to set composition to 32bit float),
and set frame-blending to Pixel-Motion.
This is Adobe’s equivalent to optical flow.BDW:
I don’t understand why Adobe don’t give us Pixel-Motion inside PP;
or implements a good de-interlacing with the same technology;
or super-resolution upscaling;
(increases resolution using details from surrounding frames);
or temporal noise filtering…Best regards,
Bernhard -
“while PremierePro in many regards is great;
but image processing (Scaling, De-Interlacing, etc.) is it’s weak point!”Oh no! Really? I’m about to move to PPro and these are weak points of FCP7 that I was looking forward to leaving behind.
-
After Effects makes up for some or most of what Premiere is lacking in this regard.
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
-
Thanks David.
Will I have to go through AE just for decent quality scaling?
-
FCP7 wasn’t all too bad at image processing!;
better than many other NLEs;
image processing is the weak point of nearly ALL NLEs out there.
Thats the bitter truth!The very best software image processing in an NLE I’ve seen so far was in Smoke2013!
The Lanczos-scaling (Adaptive field processing turned on) produces sharp, clear images without unpleasant artifacts!Scaling in PremierePro actually is better than in AfterFX, see here:
https://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2010/10/scaling-in-premiere-pro-cs5.html
AfterFX uses Bicubic (BAD), and PremierePro uses Lanczos2 (GOOD);
but only if You have GPU acceleration.But for me it is still too blurred. I wished Premiere would let us choose and adjust the scaling method just like Smoke…
Best regards,
Bernhard -
If you don’t like what you see in Premiere on one shot, you canal ways use dynamic linking to open that clip (or more) in AE to do scaling and/or other effects.
FYI, Discreet Edit* had similar integration with its comanion app, Combustion, nearly twelve years ago, and it was seamless. It’s not a bad way to work, as it gives you the immense power of a dedicated compositor and VFX engine on any or all clips on the timeline.
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
-
I do like more what I see in PP than what I see in AfterFX when it comes to scaling.
But what I see in Smoke2013 I like at most!Dynamic Linking is great;
but I still do not understand why Pixel-Motion is only available in AfterFX.Best regards,
Bernhard -
I’d imagine pixel-motion / optical-flow isn’t available in Premier due to licence issues or costs. After Effects uses non-Adobe tech for it’s optical-flow retiming.
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/kronos/
That said, FCPX is far far better than FCP7 at scaling and retiming. I have yet to compare it in detail to After Effects or Premier Pro but After Effects seems to produce much better scaling results than FCP7 in general.
Do note I base this on working with progressive footage. Interlaced footage might vary a lot.
-
[Erik Lindahl] “After Effects uses non-Adobe tech for it’s optical-flow retiming.”
Really? Haven’t known that! As far as I now back in CS4 it was available in PP as well.
What about the Warp Stabilizer? Doesn’t it also use optical flow for analysis?
Interlaced scaling in AfterFX (bad field flickering) is sharper than FCP7 but suffers bad field flickering
interlaced scaling in FCPX is extreme blurred; FCP7 was definitely better.Only talking about interlaced scaling here.
Best regards,
Bernhard
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up