Rip Van Winkle just woke up

[Paul Roper]

Dealers’ stocks of FCP7 are quickly running out (apparently) so if you want to keep your existing workflow but update to FCP7, you’d better be quick about it. Having said that, you could use FCP5 or 7 all day long and maybe only notice one or two differences. FCP 7 (to me) feels like it should be called FCP5.5.

I am a long time FCP user, experimenting with Premiere, not Avid, solely because I already own Premiere.

There’s been a lot of panic about Apple dropping FCP in favour of iMovie Pro (FCP X) but look at it this way – if you’re happy editing with your current setup and it does everything you need it to, and you’re unlikely to be exchanging projects with anyone running FCP X, just stay with what you’ve got.

I saw that you said you use AE a lot – you’ll LOVE Premiere’s ability to link to an AE comp in the timeline and instantly show (no ‘reload footage’, no ‘reconnect media’ – it’s just THERE instantly!) anything you’ve changed in the AE comp – without even rendering it in AE! I, too, hop from AE to FCP all day long, and Premiere’s ability to do this is a MAJOR plus. I cannot possibly count the number of times I have to reconnect media in FCP or FCP refuses to accept that the media’s changed.

Well, those are my thoughts on the subject anyway!

– Paul

[Steve Ford]

Thanks for your insightful response…
Operating on a six year old computer does have it’s disadvantages. I don’t think that snatching up a copy of a discontinued software package and loading it into a new system is the way to go. Now I teeter on either Premier or AVID. My head says Premier because of the cross functionality… my heart says AVID because I’ve always wanted to be an AVID editor since my Media 100 days.

[Paul Roper]

I just checked and Media 100 still exists – maybe give that another try! Plus there’s always Lightworks which is now open source and FREE (but PC only). So the question isn’t quite as ‘Avid or Premiere’ as you might think. Not that I’ve ever used either Media 100 or Lightworks. My early days were using Quantel kit. When will someone look at that old Quantel interface and learn that editing with a pen/tablet can be twice as fast if you register what the pen’s doing while it’s not in contact with the tablet? Combining the incredibly responsive Quantel gestural control with something like FCP or Premiere would be fantastic.

I’m just rambling now.

Back on topic(ish) – if you buy yourself a brand new multi-processor Mac to run FCP7, don’t expect it to be much faster – FCP7 is based on 18th Century steam technology and all but one of your expensive processors will just be sitting there doing nothing while you wait patiently for stuff to render. If you open up your Mac while it’s rendering a complex colour grade, you’ll actually see little Northern blokes with flat caps and whippets running around shovelling coal into your processor, while a couple of shire horses wait patiently on your graphics card.

The holy grail of Final Cut would have been if Apple kept the program exactly the same, but made it 64-bit/multiprocessor aware to speed it all up. I pointlessly hope that Apple might one day bring out FCP 8 which will be exactly this.

– Paul

[Todd Kopriva]

If you’re familiar with FCP, then these materials should help you to learn Premiere Pro.

You could try the Production Premium trial free for 30 days and see whether you like it.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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