Thinking of switching from FCP 7 to Avid or Premiere

[Roli Rivelino]

Walt Biscardi a senior member on this forum and one of my heroes is switching all of his studios to Premiere; if it’s good enough for Walt it’s good enough for all of us.

Premiere “acts” more like FCP so not such a steep learning curve as with AVID.

FCP X sucks balls

https://www.rolirivelino.com/

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Shane Ross]

The current version of Premiere Pro CS 5.5 is lacking in many many ways. Targetting tracks takes 2-3 more steps than it should (and than it does in FCP or Avid)…it gives a bad name to TRACK BASED EDITING. Audio mixing/manipulation on the timeline is VERY time consuming (and the audio mixer effects the entire track, not individual tracks like the mixers in FCP and Avid do). Media Management is OK, but not quite up to FCPs ability, and FCP’s is weak as it is.

PPRo is great for working natively, and allowing you to go back and forth from AE…but for broadcast work, and quicker audio mixing…Avid is the way to go. Bette trim tools, more stability. Although you still need to transcode to Avid media. AMA allows for you to ACCESS many media types natively, but native editing isn’t as smooth as it could be. Although with RED, it’s not bad. And if you work in 3D, Avid pretty much is your go-to app for that.

But…it still has limitations that cause me to pause. 16 tracks of realtime audio playback only. Add a 17th track, and it is dark…you can’t hear it until you turn off another track. Which makes adding tracks above 16 pointless. Why they have this limitation when they aren’t limited to hardware anymore is puzzling to me.

Both will work on your current mac and with any of your current third party capture card (with a few exceptions). Just depends of if you want to be able to edit natively, or if you need to have multiple editors on shows..and where your final product is destined to be viewed.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Roli Rivelino]

Mmm good points Shane, though I’m surprised you differ from Walt on what’s best for broadcast.

Also you forgot to mention if cost is a factor then Premiere beats Avid by quite some way.

I reckon with the fall of FCP 7 Adobe are going to step up they’re game in the next couple of years or so and really iron out some of those problems that Shane mentions. After all wasn’t it FCP that copied the Premiere platform in the first place?

https://www.rolirivelino.com/

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Shane Ross]

[Roli Rivelino] “Also you forgot to mention if cost is a factor then Premiere beats Avid by quite some way.”

Adobe CS 5.5 production bundle is $1600-$1700, includes PPro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Encoder, Soundbooth, On Location, Flash.

Avid MC 6 is $2500 ($1500 if you have FCP)…and includes Avid, Sorenson Squeeze and a couple smaller things. Not a full package like Adobe.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Bret Williams]

[Roli Rivelino] “After all wasn’t it FCP that copied the Premiere platform in the first place?”

Nope. Premiere was originally a one window viewer sort of thing, with lots of palettes all over as Adobe loves to do. Other NLEs of the time were all sorta different. The video cube had no window because it was always out to a dedicated monitor. Avid was the first to make the source / record analog metaphor a standard. Media 100 had it’s own one window thing. I remember EditDV copying the metaphor, and then FCP. FCP mimicked what was the standard in Avid. And I guess Premiere fell in line and copied them both.

[Roli Rivelino]

[Bret Williams] “FCP mimicked what was the standard in Avid. And I guess Premiere fell in line and copied them both.”

Ah I didn’t realise that, I’ve never used anything other than Avid Xpress and FCP

https://www.rolirivelino.com/

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Herb Sevush]

[Bret Williams] “Avid was the first to make the source / record analog metaphor a standard. “

On the Mac, yes, but the first, no.

EMC came out on the PC at the same time as AVid and it also had a source / record GUI. Montage was earlier than either but I believe it was a single viewer interface.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf