Why we will be choosing PremierePro over FCPX

[Brett Sherman]

[Morten Ranmar] “Yes I know there are workarounds for many of the issues. But it is like pushing my car as a workaround to get it to start, when the battery is dead…”

Hmm. I have yet to find an editing program that doesn’t require workarounds of some sort. And I do not find any of the workarounds with FCP X anywhere near the “pushing car” level. FCP 7 was chock full of them. I have no doubt Premiere CS 7 will have plenty. To me you have to judge the workflow as a whole with the workarounds. For example I use sparse bundles to allow for shared storage and to address the slow down issue of multiple projects. Is this a workaround? I don’t know, is Premiere’s project browser a workaround? To me it’s irrelevant. Does it work for me is the only thing that is relevant.

Also on another point. Saving versions. Actually quite easy. Select All. Make Compound Clip. Break Apart. Three clicks, not one, but it avoids the proliferation of FCP projects you have to sort out later.

[Alan Okey]

At $50, Motion 5 is a no-brainier. Its excellent keyer alone is worth the price. However, unlinke FCP X, Motion 5 still does not have proper broadcast monitor support. This is a glaring omission that keeps it from being truly useful in my work. I hope Apple sees fit to update Motion 5 with the same monitoring capabilities as FCP X.

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “The two pholosophies are simple. A – I need to keep working the way I always have because my investment in process is too deep to jettison. (which is an extremely defensible contention, by the way) or B – I’m willing to explore new ways to work in order to potentially benefit from some new ideas and thinking.”

This isn’t how I see the difference between Premiere Pro and FCPX at all.

I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy between Adobe and Apple. Adobe, the stalwart defender of traditional workflows, versus Apple, the lone visionary innovator? This doesn’t give Adobe enough credit.

FCPX gets all kind of accolades for its forward-thinking, modern features like 64-bit architecture, native media handling, GPU acceleration, floating point processing — but all these features were all “new ideas and thinking” in Premiere Pro before Premiere showed up on our collective radar.

While we’ve been theorizing about Apple and databases and leftover resources in the application package that might point to a future enterprise-grade workgroup solution, Adobe is actually delivering one with Anywhere.

While we point to the speed of Apple’s development of FCPX through the first few point releases over the last two years, Adobe has answered with two major updates of their own, first from CS5.5 to CS6, and very soon from CS6 to Premiere Pro Next.

I suppose there are a quite a few ways that you could characterize the philosophical differences between Adobe and Apple, but from where I sit, it’s all about the suite.

Adobe provides a toolset with monstrous breadth and depth. No one else has an offering that can touch the combined reach, power, and flexibility of the Creative Suite as a whole. Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade and Media Encoder are each impressive applications on their own domains, but taken together, and integrated via technologies like Dynamic Link, it’s really a colossal and incomparable package.

To return to a point I made above, Premiere Pro has, like FCPX, seen some big updates — but so has every other application in the suite! Photoshop got a UI overhaul, the Mercury Graphics Engine for GPU acceleration, new content-aware tools, and an overhaul of the 3D tool. After Effects, having gone 64-bit only just a few years ago, also got a totally new cache system and a brand-new 3D renderer, and having already included powerful third-party tools like Mocha and Keylight for free, will soon add some enhanced rotoscoping tools and a bundled lite version of CINEMA 4D plus a new direct in-app C4D renderer from MAXON. SpeedGrade is the newest member of the family with CS6 bringing some UI tweaks and basic “Send to” functionality from Premiere, but the next version will bring a complete UI overhaul, will add the Mercury Transmit Engine for video I/O, and will transplant the Lumetri color engine into Premiere Pro for enhanced integration.

Taken as a whole, Adobe’s pace of development and integration is shocking. Between Ps/Il/Ae (and with ever-improving C4D integration), Adobe practically owns motion design. Story/Pl/Pr is an impressive script-to-screen solution, and Premiere Pro is an impressive NLE in its own right. With Pr/Ae/Sg/Au, Adobe has all the pieces of a very fierce finishing system that can rival the hero uber-apps.

We often say that Apple has always been about “individual empowerment” and note that they’ve been a driving force in the so-called democratization of digital video, but look at Adobe here, too: they’re taking it to the streets with all these apps available for no money upfront with a Creative Cloud subscription that costs as much every month as a single tank of gas or a daily coffee habit.

I think you’ve argued that FCPX, and by extension Motion 5 and Compressor, was built to do what most editors need it to do, most of the time, with the implication that other tasks are better left to specialist applications.

Adobe aims to cover digital content creation across the board, but not in some huge conglomerated application that inevitably leaves someone disappointed: rather, they adhere to the time-tested UNIX philosophy of task-focused tools that can work together. Because the suite is not a closed-off, walled garden, Adobe can still “win,” even if Premiere Pro doesn’t!

If I may oversimplify, I see the deepest philosophical difference between the two developers is this: Apple offers hare tools which make the first 80% very easy and the last 20% very hard; Adobe offers tortoise tools that recognize that the first 80% doesn’t matter if you don’t get the last 20%, too.

We do agree on one major point: however you characterize the difference between these developers, there is tremendous value in both approaches, and “horses for courses” applies.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Lance Bachelder]

Whoa… none of this fair and balanced posting – you gotta take a stand either for or against an NLE here in this forum (usually against FCPX lol)!

Kidding… well put. Hey and for another $69 you can add Lightworks – which may emerge as the real winner in the LE wars in the near future…

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Walter Soyka]

[Lance Bachelder] “Hey and for another $69 you can add Lightworks – which may emerge as the real winner in the LE wars in the near future…”

That’s $60 per year. On subscription, just like Creative Cloud.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Lance Bachelder]

Thanks for the correction – and I meant NLE wars (typo)

They did mention at NAB they are looking at other ways to pay for full version such as one time lifetime pay etc.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Bill Davis]

[Gary Huff] “The world doesn’t quite work like that. Plus, just because something is different then what has been, it doesn’t automatically mean “better””

Sometimes, no. I agree. But sometimes yes as well.

The truth is – a thing can’t be made “better” unless it’s made different.

Yes, making a thing different can also mean making it worse – but if you don’t make it different, you’re stuck with it as it is.

While the rest of the world moves on…

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]

[Craig Shields] ” I have both Premiere and FCPX and I prefer Premiere.”

Good. You’ve found the tool that makes you happy. Run with it.

So have I. And I’m doing the same.

The bet we’re both making is that if we ever have to directly compete, the particular tool we’ve elected to learn and use is one that gives us a tangible competitive advantage.

You see that in Premier. I see that in X.

Fair game. Play on.

But also step back and undersand the philosophical differences. The game Adobe appears to be playing right now is “innovate, but don’t disrupt.” – a measured bet. Probably good business choice if preserving and growing an existing user base is the primary goal.

The game Apple is playing is “re-invent and definitely disrupt” believing that there’s a new overall game afoot.

I’d describe their vision (from the outside) as acknowledging the new digital world that requires new tools and processes to better create, modify and track digitally created information streams for deployment around the world via a persistently connected web of electronic distribution.

It’s a cousin to the TV and Movie business model of the past, but it’s also very different.

All NLEs can work (more or less) in the new game. But only X (to my eye) was specifically torn down and re-created with this functional new reality in mind.

So I’m happy to compete using the “re-imagined” tool.

Simple as that.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “I think Walter was specifically commenting on philosophies behind software design, and I’d be very surprised if he had just two in mind – there seems to be at least a handful of approaches continually discussed here.”

Fair enough.

But I was noting that most editing software was built on a “timeline centric” view of editing prior to FCP-X – and it’s the ONLY software I know of that functionally breaks from that traditional approach.

Because it has both the Event Browser as a database/pre-edit/module building construction zone – AND a linear timeline for specific project construction – it fundamentally changed what can be described as the traditional “all in the timeline” editing model.

I pretty much see all the other NLE designs as following the prior tradition.

So those are the “two” choices I was talking about.

it’s like there was a global NLE ice cream stand with five variations on vanilla – and suddenly Apple came out with Chocolate.

If you know of other popular edit systems different enough from the vanilla tradition to earn a different flavor tag, I’d be very interested in hearing about them.

I think the more flavors in the world, the better.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]

[Alex Hawkins] “Hey guess what Bill!? News Flash! –

– I am in camps A and B. Guess I must just love Premiere Pro.”

Yeah, but I bet you’re more in one camp than the other – even if you don’t necessarily see yourself that way.

In american baseball, there are plenty of “switch hitters” (those who can bat from the right or left) – but nearly all of them hit with more power from one side.

; )

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.