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Problems in switching from FCP7 to Premiere CS5.5
When I first saw Premiere CS5.5, I was blown away and ready to switch,now I’m back on the fence. Has anyone experienced these difficulties:
1. File management. Final cut would crash with big project files. We’d cut them down and manage with multiple files to avoid the problem. Premiere offered help. I thought with 64 bit levels of ram (I have 24 gb in macpro) that this wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s worse. My imported project in premiere is 400mb and it takes a minute to save. Final cut takes 2 seconds and autosave is in background. Premiere’s saving process is single threaded and it maxes on the save. Since I have larger project files that this nor, I’m thinking of waiting until I can find a solution to this problem.
2. No snap on the razor blade. We use markers in the clips and fcp snaps but pp6.5 doesn’t.
3. When moving between markers you have to select the clips individually, fcp makes this possible with select all. Same is true with marking. This seems unfortunate since clip and sequence marking are smartly divided.
4. No way to select between in and out. Fcp does this with option a. This is a great feature.
5. Playing to an external monitor can be buggy and there is no shortcut key possible to toggle this.
6. Reconnect media on fcp is maddening in it’s requiring you to reconnect clips it already knows the path to, but premiere’s equivalent link media is bare bones by comparison.
7. XML export from fcp can crash requiring multiple exports. Premiere is pretty stable here, but the ability to directly read fcp files would be fantastic.
I’d love to figure out how to switch, but the file size problems and the inability to work with multiple project files simultaneously makes it difficult to justify the switch in the middle on my fairly complex project.
Any ideas?
Jim
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3 Replies
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Hey Jim,
I can address a few of your issues. Others can chime in with more info.
[Jim Ven] “1. File management. Final cut would crash with big project files. We’d cut them down and manage with multiple files to avoid the problem. Premiere offered help. I thought with 64 bit levels of ram (I have 24 gb in macpro) that this wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s worse. My imported project in premiere is 400mb and it takes a minute to save. Final cut takes 2 seconds and autosave is in background. Premiere’s saving process is single threaded and it maxes on the save. Since I have larger project files that this nor, I’m thinking of waiting until I can find a solution to this problem.”
Saving large project files is a present issue. Although I work with huge projects I’ve never come close to half that size. Perhaps there is some inefficiency created when importing FCP XML. Premiere is set up to optimize project size so if it remains that large on re-opening, that’s the size it will be. One thing I do is turn off auto-save. The app is stable enough that I manually save and go check my e-mail. One solution is to save your projects to a fast SSD.
[Jim Ven] “2. No snap on the razor blade. We use markers in the clips and fcp snaps but pp6.5 doesn’t.”
I don’t know what you mean but you can hold down the Shift key while dragging the cut line and it snaps to every significant marker that I’m aware of.
[Jim Ven] “5. Playing to an external monitor can be buggy and there is no shortcut key possible to toggle this.”
I assume you’re talking about a non-third party monitor (second computer monitor). Try the ` key. It’s not buggy, that I’ve ever experienced.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
I very much appreciate the help. I will try out the suggestions for the work arounds.
The file size issue is a killer because Final Cut 7 seems to be much more effecient and effective at managing large projects and large amounts of data. We do selects into sequences, so we have a large number of sequences, with a number of cuts of many clips in each sequence. For rough cuts there will be fewer sequences but many more independent objects on each sequence. So I can’t imagine the situation will improve as the project progresses.
Premiere has such an amazing application foundation, perfect interface, addons like Story and script recognition, but on these basic issues of managing a large amount of material, background autosave, reconnect media, etc., it seems to not have matured yet into being more powerful than FCP 7. I’m hoping that Adobe will rev up their development efforts and match FCPs features so there will be no question for anyone to move from FCP (or avid) to Premiere.
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[Jim Ven] ” We do selects into sequences, so we have a large number of sequences, with a number of cuts of many clips in each sequence.”
That’s the reason for your huge project file size. I do selects into bins with sub-clips which is a lot more efficient project-size wise. At most I’ll be working with a dozen sequences per project. Most of them small ie outs when I’m moving to a cut down.
David
AllinOneFilms.com
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