Why is PPro not suited for feature films?

[Cliff Stephenson]

I think the reasons are 2…
#1- Apple and Avid are just really deeply dug into the profession community. Premiere Pro, like it or not, is still the new kid on the block (despite being around for decades). Adobe never really positioned or pushed Premiere Pro as a serious alternative to the professional community like they did Photoshop and After Effects. A lot of people really (for a long time) regarded Premiere Pro along the same lines of Vegas or iMovie. Was probably good for the prosumer, but not a professional application. That has changed as people moved away from FCP 7&X

#2- And this is somewhat related to #1, but people just aren’t aware of what Premiere Pro can do. I had a director/cinematographer (not an indie guy, he’s shot some major studio movies) over and he was asking why I was cutting on Premiere instead of Final Cut or Avid and I started to go through some of the things that Premiere is actually capable of (like round-tripping to AE or Audition, keyword searching, content analysis, native format support, that fact that it saves your project on a crash, 64 bit, etc…) and he was kind of blown away by what Premiere had to offer. I think because people have been so used to using Avid and Final Cut for so long, that people hadn’t really noticed what Adobe had been doing or could offer. Apple really couldn’t have handed them a better gift with Final Cut X. That was the catalyst for many to say, “Hmmm. I’ve already got this thing installed as part of my creative suite… let me poke around a bit.” I just cut a 90 minute documentary in a project that has about 15,000 clips and Premiere Pro ran through it like a champ. There’s no reason to believe you couldn’t cut a feature on Premiere Pro and probably have it be easier.

That said, I think there’s still some improvement to be made in Premiere, but I’m excited to see what Adobe has up their sleeve for CS6 in the next couple of months.

[Alex Udell]

Hi….

Let me qualify this by saying that I am:

1) A big supporter of PPro
2) Not a feature film editor.

Now finally that we are in a 64 bit environment and ram is no issue, PPro can shine a bit more. I think trying to tackle long form projects in the ram constraints previous versions had would have been challenging.

Also understand that the way you think of feature editing today as an all digital workflow from end to end is pretty new.

Previously there were a lot steps that involved complicated timecode tracking in dealing with the frames per second that film is shot at and then working in a video frame rate space….

and also dealing with what’s called “dupe” detection when software would alert you when you might have accidentally used the same frame more than once. When you are cutting from a celluloid print for your final master, every frame only exists once, so this could cause all kinds of problems if you weren’t able to track this accurately.

There’s probably a lot more to it, but suffice to say that as a stand a lone product, PPro would have been pretty incomplete to handle feature work in the robust way many feature editors would have come to expect from other software. And frankly, I think Adobe never targeted it that way in the past.

The digital end to end pipeline has changed the world of feature film. The fact that the landscape of codecs is changing so rapidly now actually plays well to Adobe’s Mercury playback architecture. The feedback they are getting from migrating editors should push them to refine the editing tools pretty rapidly so I don’t think it will be long before we see PPro in the feature film space.

🙂

Alex

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It’s worth mentioning that Premiere Pro doesn’t have really robust media management or workflow features for multiple editors to work on the same project fluidly like Avid does. You see PPro more with single editors than teams on features/tv.

[Steve Brame]

[Angelo Lorenzo] “You see PPro more with single editors than teams on features/tv.”

This is apparently in flux.

https://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/casestudies/creativesuite/production/hearst-television-inc/pdfs/hearst-television-inc-casestudy.pdf

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Lance Bachelder]

I don’t think the 64 bit thing is a factor, though it can be a huge help. FCP 7 and earlier and Media Composer 5.5 and earlier are 32 bit app’s and have been used for years on feature films and TV. It’s taken a long time for PPro to get to its current state where it may finally be stable and useable enough to tackle high end shows. Many day to day editing features that veteran Editors rely on with Avid and FCP simply didn’t exist in early versions of PPro. Some are still missing but it is getting better and it seems Adobe is finally listening to power users, especially now that there is a window of opportunity with Apple’s tossing out their proven NLE for a a radical new one.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Benjamin Lundin]

CLIFF:

I think that a lot of what you say is right. Me myself looked at premiere like that, before I used it.

Haha, yes that’s true. If they don’t care for PPro they won’t listen to the good things until someone acutally shows them.

Yes there’s some things that I don’t like at all in premiere, which I hope to see a improvement on in CS6. A big one is the timeline trimming. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a way to trim directly on the timeline without having to open the trim windows. I know, I sound lazy, but I like to trim a lot and I do it often, so it’s something stopping me from getting a fast workflow.

Let me ask you something. How did the media management go on that big project? I’m not a big fan of the Premiere media management, so it would be interesting to know if it was a problem to you..?

[Jacob Kerns]

Dynamic linking is the main reason I switched it saved me so much time between After effects and Editing I can over look the other things.

[Benjamin Lundin] “Yes there’s some things that I don’t like at all in premiere, which I hope to see a improvement on in CS6. A big one is the timeline trimming. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a way to trim directly on the timeline without having to open the trim windows. I know, I sound lazy, but I like to trim a lot and I do it often, so it’s something stopping me from getting a fast workflow. “

The Trim window is kind of pain but after you setup up custom keyboard commands and multi monitor system I’ve grown to love it.
So basically you can use the keyboard but its still not on the main timeline.

NIADA
Technical Director

[Cliff Stephenson]

I really didn’t have any media management issues. To be honest… I started the project in Final Cut (been working on it since late 2010), but as soon as Final Cut X was released and I realized it was completely inappropriate for professional work, I exported the XML from FCP, imported into Premiere and kept going. So half my clips are rewrapped XDCAM EX QuickTimes and the other half is native XDCAM EX BPAV files. The only thing that I found with regard to that much media is that when you open a project, it can take 10 minutes or so to reconnect all media. BUT, unlike in FCP (where you have to sit around for 10 minutes waiting for the project to open) Premiere at least lets you start working right away and reconnects around your work. It’s about 3TB of footage, but I never had a single problem with it.

[Steve Brame]

[Benjamin Lundin] ” I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a way to trim directly on the timeline without having to open the trim windows”

I seem to be able to trim all day directly on the timeline. I’d never even used the Trim Window til just now to see what it offered. In fact, one of the main reasons I switched from Media Composer was Premiere’s ability to trim directly on the timeline without having to go into a ‘Trim Mode’.

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Daniel Frome]

I’m also a big supporter of Premiere Pro, and use it for all kinds of small corporate jobs for my freelance stuff.

I’ve got to admit though: when it comes to cutting (and especially trimming) Avid is just way better. Trim mode totally kills Premiere. No matter much I try, Premiere always ends up being the more “mousy” tool, which makes it fine for short format or graphics-heavy stuff… while Avid ends up feeling more like a real cutting program. You just feel more creative when cutting in Avid – It’s the best tool for jobs that require mostly just cutting (reality tv, feature films, etc).

I think that’s also a big factor.

It’s weird how we build our preferences like this… but that’s just my own take on it. Premiere’s UI and feel is closer to a design program, so I like working in it when doing corporate jobs where design (AE stuff, lower thirds, quick flashy effects, etc) is paramount to the picture. But If I’m going to be doing anything that relies mostly on edits, or any project that I have to keep open for a week or longer — I’ll gladly fire up Avid over Ppro any day.