So who is the best candidate?

[Tom Daigon]

The easiest transition (familiar GUI),and the most high tech (64bit) choice at this moment in time is Adobe CS 5.5 Premiere Pro. It is what FCP X should have been.Adobe is serious about professional use (ie After Effects, Photoshop, etc).

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / FCP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Jamie Franklin]

[Tom Daigon] “the most high tech (64bit) choice at this moment in time is Adobe CS 5.5 Premiere Pro”

x2

[Marcus Umstead]

Wow, I used Media100 back in 1995 or so… I didn’t know it still existed. I have to say that I LOVE Adobe CS5, and I’ve considered 5.5 just to get Audition instead of SoundBooth.

[Steve Connor]

Can you get from PPro to resolve though?

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Andrew Wilson]

I think the best replacement for FCP-X is FCP 7. I’ll be staying put – making money on my current machine for the foreseeable future. I haven’t seen any features in X that are so compelling as to switch to anything else right now.

I was a Media Composer editor for many years and like the industry standard of AVID. I’ve played with Premiere 5.5 and think the metadata handling is pretty cool (especially the sound to text transcription)

If I had a crystal ball, I would say that Production Premium is going to take the place of Final Cut Studio as the go to application suite for a well-rounded solution. Look at what Adobe did to Quark when Quark pissed off its customers by not delivering an OS-X native application in an acceptable amount of time.

Andrew Wilson
WestView Digital Video & Design
http://www.westviewdigital.com

[Peter Corbett]

[Steve Connor] “Can you get from PPro to resolve though?

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television”

I asked this exact question at NAB, and the somewhat ambiguous answer was “not as well as FCP integration”. But this may change with what’s been happening.

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[Adam Claude jones]

Honestly Im not an adobe fan at all and hate premiere. But haven|t used it since cs1. But adobe would rank last on my list. Always screamed prosumer to me. Like I said I need no integration with After effects so that is a useless feature for me and probably wouldn’t but the suite but just premiere, so consider that too. Also please consider the needs I mentioned when asnwering rather than just answering what you would do, please. Specially DPX, it is a big deal in this decision.

[Adam Claude jones]

[Steve Connor] “Can you get from PPro to resolve though?

Exactly! This is very important for me.

[Daniel Frome]

I own both CS 5.5 and Media Composer 5.5.

This year alone (before this FCPX issue) I considered both of them my favorite, but for different reasons.

If you do a lot of smaller projects (commercials, generally anything under 20 minutes) then Premiere Pro is probably your best bet — because those projects tend to be short turn-around and heavier on graphics. As a sandbox editor (something you just mess/playing around in) it’s more fun than AVID. However…

I know that a previous poster said they liked Adobe for their metadata — but I’m sorry to disagree and share that I actually ended up preferred AVID for metadata-sake.

And even more funny… AVID’s biggest ‘feature’ that wins over myself and my clients is the AVID timecode generator: able to show filenames of video and audio clips on screen and a whack load of other features beyond just showing timecode. This feature has always carried some nerdy humor for me because AVID invended this generator what..like 10 years ago? I bet not even AVID knows the money they’ve made from that small feature… gets’em every time…

[Craig Wall]

I was a big Premiere user in the early days and then switched to FCP. The latest versions of Premiere are much better…and I switched back this past year.

It is flat ignorant to say PP “screams prosumer.” There is a new elephant in the room shouting prosumer and we all know what that app is: iMovie Pro…er FCPX.

Meanwhile FCP7 is becoming very dated technology. It doesn’t even properly tap multiple core or GPUs.

We all tend to hold onto the old and familiar. But I don’t see why invest in additional seats of a dated tool like FCP7? A transition will never be easy, but when the writing is on the wall, in bold red spray paint…why wait?

Premiere has well over 1 million users…and it plays very well with others, considering its deep interoperability. Premiere is not vulnerable to a recession or market vagaries.

As for the reputation or cachet of using a particular tool? Word will quickly spread that Apple has decided to swim in shallower waters.

Life is full of funny particles.