[Daniel Mcclintock]

Mike,

I work at Western Colorado Community College in Grand Junction, Colorado. We’re a branch of Colorado Mesa University here. WCCC has been using the Production Premium Suite for five years and the University switched over to the Master Suite this year.

One thing to consider is that as the world starts going transmedia, Adobe provides affordable products that can be used as curriculum changes.

We not only teach video editing, but use the suites in combination with 3D animation programs to create content that goes not only on television, but the web, print, tablets, phones and so forth.

Another thing to consider is that while you may thinking about just video editing, consider that in the Master Suite your students will be learning industry-standard programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash (and soon HTML5), and Dreamweaver. That’s what convinced us over just buying Avid or FCPX. For a reasonable price, we obtained programs that not only fulfill current needs, but future needs.

“Sometimes Life Needs a Cmd-Z!”

[Daniel Mcclintock]

I think the reason why you don’t see a codec like ProRes on Premiere is because I think they don’t need it.

Premiere Pro plays a good majority of the codecs used out there natively so you don’t have to transcode — just import the file, drop it in the time timeline and just edit — this is especially true for DSLRs and RED.

Also, if you already have FCP on your system, the codec will be shared by Premiere Pro.

Basically the best of both worlds.

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“Sometimes Life Needs a Cmd-Z!”

[Daniel Mcclintock]

They’ve talked about this in the Adobe Forums.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3298711

Don’t know if this will help you.

If it doesn’t then I would recommend you head over to the Premiere Pro Adobe forum and ask your question there.

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“Sometimes Life Needs a Cmd-Z!”

[Daniel Mcclintock]

Are you editing on a desktop or laptop?

When you say click on the video are you clicking on the window or are you actually clicking on the image?

If you click on the image you’ll see a white outline with handles show up around the video. This allows you to manipulate the size and position of the video. On some video cards, the image may degrade as the video card refreshes.

You may also want to check to see what percentage of the picture is filling the window. Right below the image you’ll see a pull-down menu. Much of the time it defaults to “Fit.” Sometimes this can cause issues with your computer’s graphic card. I usually change this setting to 100% to check this out. Usually if the video is at its full size, you shouldn’t see any degradation.

If it’s still fuzzy, I don’t know what to tell you. Render out a small section of video from the timeline to whatever format you want. Shut down Premiere, then play that video with the Quicktime player or whatever video player you like. If it looks fine, I wouldn’t worry too much. If it’s too bad, head on over to the Adobe Forums. Your problem probably isn’t unique.

https://forums.adobe.com/community/premiere/premierepro_current

Hope this helps a little bit.

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“Sometimes Life Needs a Cmd-Z!”

[Daniel Mcclintock]

I agree with Color Finesse. Love it so much that for my home computer I bought the full version of it so I can access it through Premiere Pro without going into After Effects.

https://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/cf/index.html

If you’re looking for a bit more gusto, you can use DaVinci Resolve with Premiere Pro.

You can use XML to send your edit and native files into Resolve, grade in real-time with their tracker, windows, secondaries, etc. Then render your clips and export an XML that you can re-import into Premiere Pro.

Hope this info helps.

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Sometimes life needs a Cmd-Z!

[Daniel Mcclintock]

My two cents…

I think Apple has run up against a brick wall with Final Cut Pro. I think Apple has hit a saturation point with the software. I don’t think they can grow the professional market anymore… especially a market where the department of labor only sees a moderate growth pattern for the next 10 years.

https://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos091.htm

In other words, I think Apple could not sell to enough professionals to justify development and implementation costs.

Also, to a certain extent, I think the limitations of just being on an Apple platform are starting to show… especially with the competition. Avid and Adobe are on both Windows and Mac. For Adobe, this has meant incredible numbers now since the Premiere Pro rewrite just over a year ago to 64 bit.

Mr. Dortch has indicated that 1.8 million people own FCS3 by his estimates — Adobe announced this month that they have sold two million copies of Premiere Pro CS5 in the last two years. And these are full versions, not upgrades.

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/industry-trends/adobes-vision-for-professional-video/

Also, Premiere Pro is not an easy piece of software to learn, so that means that a good majority of people who are purchasing it have to be former Final Cut and Avid users. There’s a reason why PP 5.5 looks very similar to Final Cut.

In order for Final Cut to be competitive, Apple has to find new customers. For Apple those customers still have to come from the 10% pool of people who own Macs. And in that group, The only ones available are the people who want to take their video editing to a step beyond iMovie and those people who don’t expect to create large market commercials, TV shows or motion pictures.

FCPX in its current version does not surprise me. You have to remember that it has always been Apple’s philosophy to make what looks hard easy. Apple’s philosophy is also very democratic — software and hardware for The People. I think Final Cut Pro occurred during a time when getting into video was still an expensive venture. Nowadays you can get decent-looking video off a cell phone. Everyone has video today and now they need an easy way to edit it that looks good without being too complicated. And despite what some people may think FCP7 was difficult for 90% of Apple’s customers.

It also would not surprise me that within the next five years, you will find some version of Final Cut on the Windows platform. It depends on how many people purchase the next couple versions of the software between now and then.

I think Apple is at a crossroads right now with FCPX. I think you will see them make updates to the software but I believe it will never be as extensive as FCP7. The question is: Does Apple believe the loss of sales from the professional user can be offset by an increase in sales from the primary Mac user?

Something to chew over.

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Sometimes life needs a Cmd-Z!

[Daniel Mcclintock]

Matt,

double-check two things…

1) In the Effects Control Panel make sure the Drop Shadow effect is below the Ultra Key filter. Premiere and After Effects apply their effects from the top down.

2) Also make sure Ultra Key’s output has been reset to Composite.

I hope that works for you.

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Sometimes life needs a Cmd-Z!

[Daniel Mcclintock]

First, for all FCP people, welcome. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how far PP CS5.5 has come since you last looked at it.

I’ve been teaching the Production Suite at a local community college for about five years and didn’t pick up a copy of FCS until last year. I know where you guys are coming from but in the opposite direction. After delving into FCS I was shocked by how similar the two pieces of software were.

A couple of tips to help you out. Adobe says 4 gigs of RAM minimum to run the studio… nah, I’ve found 8 gigs minimum is your best bet. You will be running a lot of their other programs simultaneously. (You’re going to love Dynamic Link the moment you start using it. It’s one of the closest things to magic that I’ve seen on the program.) On one project I had Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Audition all open at once.

The coolest thing about Dynamic Link is when you make a change to one document (whether it’s After Effects, Photoshop, Audition or whatever) it’s immediately changed in your PP timeline. It’s astonishing and neither FCP or MC has anything like it.

Audio — In CS5.5 Adobe finally ported over their industry standard Audition to the Mac. You can sweeten either one clip or you can import your entire project in. In fact it will duplicate the layout of your project directly in the multitrack.

Color — I’ll admit it… color correction still sucks in Premiere. There’s a fine program in After Effects called Color Finesse but I had to buy the full version so I can access it in Premiere Pro. There might be a way to do colorization in Color, but I haven’t experimented. Unfortunately you may have to go to a third party for this.

ProRes — I don’t think Premiere Pro can record or read ProRes video just by itself. The first thing I noticed when I loaded FCS last year is that my copy of Premiere instantly had access to those codecs. I’ve been able to export and read ProRes files ever since. Also, Apple does have a codec pack on their site so that you can read ProRes video only. You may have to do a search for it.

Rendering — Adobe’s Media Encoder doesn’t care if you have haven’t rendered out your preview files. If you have, make sure you check the box in the initial ME window that says “Use Preview Files.”

DVD/Blu-Ray — Still use them? You’ll love Encore. In fact, because of Dynamic Link, you don’t even have to export out your project! Keep Premiere open, then import your project into Encore. You can even chose which sequence you want to put on the disc. Create a new timeline and your project will show up. It will transcode later when you’re ready to burn. (If you want to see something really cool, shrink down the windows of both Encore and Premiere. You can drag the sequence directly out of the project window and deposit it in the asset window of Encore.)

Dynamic Link — To use properly you have to keep all affected programs open. When reopening a project, I’ve found it easier to open up the other programs first before opening up Premiere. Because of this the Production Suite can be a RAM hog. I recommend as much RAM as possible to keep everything from crashing.

Other things you may or may not like — Pay attention to Adobe specification recommendations. You do need special video cards to take full advantage of the Mercury playback. I got a card about six months ago and I love it, although it set me back about $1,400. But now I can do 1080p multicamera with ease.

Premiere’s Chromakeyer is okay. I much prefer going into After Effects and using Keylight 1.2. You can pull some incredible keys with this program.

H.264 does not need to be transcoded! Premiere does it natively and even output the video in 4:2:2. I’ve even edited directly off the card without transferring any of the files to my computer. This is great if you ever want to show a producer or a directer immediately out in the field. Same thing with Red. Adobe has work extensively with both Red and Canon over the last couple of years to help make this possible.

You can make any of the windows full screen by hovering your
mouse over the window and hitting the tilde key (the key right above your tab key that looks like a curvy mustache.) Hit the tilde key again and the window returns to normal.

Use the “+” and “-” keys to zoom in and out of your project. The zooming will center in on the CTI or playback indicator. If you’re zoomed in use the “\” to see your entire project. Hit the key again and it will zoom back in to your previous setting.

Well, I’ve rambled enough. Again, welcome to the party and keep asking questions. You have lots of people here who will be glad to help you out!