[Adam Claude jones]

[John Godwin]
“And I’m probably pretty foolish, but with the comments from the various plug-in makers and 3rd party hardware makers I’m optimistic that a lot of the missing pieces in FCP X will be filled in fairly soon.”

Yep and “FCP-X” will end up costing more than the whole Final Cut Suite for just the editing software because we must pay extra for all the stuff apple took out. (roll eyes)

[Adam Claude jones]

Hi Ivan!
You’re absolutely right. It’s much more productive to focus on the topic in question. 🙂

– If you want to edit native you go with Premiere (AMA is not quite there)

By AMA did you mean AMC (Avid Media Composer)? If so can’t avid edit DPX natively? Or you have to convert to DNxHD? What about XDCAM, DSLR, TIFFs and maybe even Open EXR? What about Cineform and RED?

– If you don’t mind transcoding and you want best media management, you’ll choose Avid

Given that I work mainly with long form and narrative media management is a MUST. So Premiere’s media management still sucks at CS5?
How much transcoding are we talking about in Avid?

– if you want multiple editors working and sharing the same project, again Avid

This is sometimes required. But not all the time. But it’s definitely a plus.

– if AE, PS, AI are important part of your workflow – Premiere

Not at all. I do not have and have no intention of buying or using any of that. With the exception of Photoshop but when I need I have a guy who works on it for me. But I guess any program these days can work with PSD layers.
Nuke and Fusion can so the chances that I would have to directly work with them is low. They would come to me inside a compositing and already in DPX or TIFFs.

– for VFX (Nuke), you are always sending DPX or TIFF files (uncompressed file sequence), both can do that

Great!

Finishing / CC is a bit longer story (probably too long for this post), but you can send EDL / AAF from both applications. Question is what formats finishing/CC application supports.
At the end of a day both applications will get you there

No,no. Not too long at all for this thread. 😉
A very important consideration.
So please do elaborate if you can.

Thanks!

[Adam Claude jones]

Oh yes, and anything you can add about the integration with these other apps please feel free to do so. So if you have the time to look into it it would be great! Thanks.

[Adam Claude jones]

[David Cherniack]The only reasons it’s failed to move into a lot of high end post facilities are inertia, ignorance of it’s new capabilities, and a shortage of a complete third party ecosystem, that have had the time to develop around Avid and the ‘late’ FCP, that make it unsuitable for some uses. The last has been slow to change, however, but will probably accelerate greatly as people start moving from kicking its tires to taking it out for a test drive.

Hi David. And there probably lies my problem with premiere. 🙁

Premiere has been around for longer than FCP and yet FCP managed to gather that ecosystem but premiere never did. This is what worries me about moving to premiere.

[Adam Claude jones]

I thought RED users preferred FCP as even RED themselves seemed to have some relationship with Apple and FCP was the first to support them. But maybe this changed.
What I’m wondering is what will be of the Baselight plug-in for FCP now. Probably DOA.

[Adam Claude jones]

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually know Color Finesse and one of the things that I always missed in it was power windows. I absolutely need power windows. Unless they have just added that but as I remember it never had it.
Also, does it even have color keys and tracking?

I will check the link you suggested too.

[Adam Claude jones]

Sorry Ivan. I didn’t mean anything bad by it. Not trying to put it down. It’s just that you don’t really hear of C4D or AE being used for example in Hollywood features apart from the exotic situation where the guy is a AE fan and use it for a shot, not because it was the best tool for the job since Nuke and Fusion run miles around AE for film compositing, but because he could. Same thing with C4D.
In the higher end compositing is normally done on Nuke, Fusion or Autodesk with Shake still being quite used as well.
3D is normally Maya and Lightwave with Max being bigger in the game industry than in the film industry.

AE will be used for motion graphics and so will C4D and only be used for the rest by the mid level and down. Not saying a Hollywood feature has not used AE for some shot like I said or even C4D. But they are usually not the tools of choice in that level. Many times not even for motion graphics.

Of course Nuke and Fusion suck at motion graphics. They are not made for that. They are specialist tools and do not try to gather to the one man band type of market that AE does. But I have to disagree with you when you say you can do much more serious compositing in AE than you can do motion graphics in Nuke / Fusion. I can’t see myself doing serious compositing at all in AE unless I absolutely had to.
For me serious compositing would mean a something like this: https://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4950&d=1195469194 ,which I would probably shoot myself in the head if I had to do in AE.

Now for your occasional green screen interview and 2.5D presentations, sure.

[Adam Claude jones]

Thanks for all the replies. It seems a lot of people are sold on premiere. I did some search and it seems avid can do all and more. So what is the premiere selling point? Is it the lower price? Or just the adobe suite integration? The later does not matter at all for me as I do not use any other adobe product.
One of the things I find curious about premiere is that I can never really find anybody using it outside of weddings, corporate and short form stuff. Definitely never heard of a main stream movie being cut on premiere for example. I wonder why the higher end seems to shy away from premiere? What’s the catch if it is so good and powerful?

The problem of not having too many people using the program you are using for the same thing you are using it for is when questions arise it’s hard to find people who can answer your questions.

I’m sure if I start using premiere and start cutting weddings in lower formats or corporate interviews from AVCD, XDCAM and DSLRs and I get a workflow question I will have a million help replies. I’ sure if I come with a question of how to do a title sequence in AE and import into premiere I will be a quick reply.
But will I be able to get help when I come with higher end questions? +

How many premiere users here use it for long form work?

How many premiere users here cut DPX sequences? What are the premiere needs for a DPX post workflow? Any caveats?

How many export and send DPX sequences from premiere to a compositing department to be composited in Nuke or Fusion and then get it back again in DPX or EXR and you have to do a re-conform on your time line?

How many people here send their projects to a Protools facility for audio mixing?

How many must send their entire long form project to Da Vinci for grading?

How many must generate multiple versions of their projects for DVD, Blu-ray, Digital Cinema Projection, Web etc?

What workflow did you use to generate a master for 35mm film transfer last time you did it?

How many must prepare different versions of their project for different languages?

How many must generate different versions for approval? What’s the workflow you use for that?

How many must work and collaborate with more people rather than being a one man show?

Those are the things that concern me in going the premiere way. Good thing about avid is that they have been doing this stuff for decades and it has always worked for them. Before FCP they were pretty much the only game in town. We did have other applications but avid was the largest and had the huge majority of the market. Now that FCP is falling, will avid be supreme again? Doesn’t matter. But the piece of mind in knowing they have been doing all of the above for years surely makes me more comfortable with them than with adobe.

This is no adobe bashing. I’m asking serious questions with serious interest.

Oh apple, why did you have to forsake us? LOL.

[Adam Claude jones]

For me the most important is the integration with other professional tools. The integration with Adobe stuff doesn’t really matter to me. I wont use After Affects for example when there is Nuke and Fusion. I will not color grade using After Effects or Premiere but will use Da Vinci. So how does Premiere work with Da Vinci, Nuke, Fusion, Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave, ProTools etc?
Premiere alone doesn’t matter. I need to know if it can do what i need and if i can use it with the other tools I need.

[Adam Claude jones]

Yeah, I know of that. This is the thing about premiere and adobe. It seems to work very well with the mid-level stuff but not really with the higher-end stuff. Instead of After Effects (which isn’t really a compositing tool), Cinema 4D and plug-ins for color correction with AE I need Nuke/Fusion, Maya/3DS Max/Lightwave and Da Vinci.

I think this may be where premiere gets it’s prosumer rep.

Like I said I have no interest in After Effects or any of the adobe products so premiere’s integration with them is the least of my worries and very low on my list of priorities.