[Dennis Radeke]

Per,

Premiere Pro only has four sources which you already know. However, you can use anything as a camera – even another sequence. You can also mix and match different types of media without any penalty if that’s useful to you.

As for Premiere’s ability to handle large projects, we are fairly dependent on a decent amount of RAM to provide robust stability for truly large projects. This is probably true for FCP and AVid as well. Good news is with CS4, we are optimized for 64 bits meaning we can address much more than 4GB of RAM and use more than 2 of your CPU cores (if you’re using a Mac Tower).

If your project is large, then 8GB is a minimum and more is better. Given the trend of the industry, it’s never a bad thing to go out an buy more memory.

The latest version of PRemiere Pro is 4.21 which added native support (true native) for AVC-Intra.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Dennis

[Dennis Radeke]

I’m an Adobe guy, so chances are my opinion is biased. 😉 I monitor this forum once in a while to help people with Apple/Adobe based issues and workflow.

All NLE’s like FCP, Avid and Premiere Pro are tools. They’ve all got their strengths and weaknesses. Certainly all three you mentioned would be considered Pro, though Premiere Pro is considered the third of these by most users. Clearly Adobe wants to change that which is why Adobe has announced the next version of Premiere Pro will be 64 bit native and announced the Mercury Playback engine. You can find out more of the latter at this link: https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/11/technology_sneek_peek_adobe_me.html

Back to your issue: one of the strengths of Adobe Premiere Pro is that it can mix and match different codecs better than the other two. Since I’m including links try this: https://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-beginner-classes-with-dennis-radeke/episode-15-the-incredible-playback-demo/

Good luck with your documentary in FCP – I’m sure it will turn out great.

[Dennis Radeke]

You might give CS4 a try with your new rig if you have purchased it already. I’ll point out that CS4 offers substantial stability when given the right amount of memory. I’ll also mention that Premiere Pro uses all of your CPU cores and can address the memory… Check your activity monitor (applications/utilities/activity monitor) when running FCP7.

[Dennis Radeke]

There is a clean script you can run in case something in the installer didn’t work properly. Also, if you’re using CS3, make sure you’re using at least Premiere Pro CS3.1 which supports P2 (3.2 was the last version)

[Dennis Radeke]

Ah, you see that my fingers type faster than my brain sometimes. 😉

It’s true that many people (including myself evidently!) confuse transcoding and re-wrapping. Neither are ideal in most workflows, but they are a part of our lives in most cases.

thanks for clarifying.

[Dennis Radeke]

The yellow line should indicate in Premiere Pro that it will play back in real time but need to be rendered for final output, so I don’t think you have a problem there.

As for exporting, I think that’s an area where we need to grow. I’ve got XDCAM HD export working, but it’s not a part of the public builds. Doesn’t help you now, but it’s good to know that Adobe’s focused on it.

I hope this helps.

[Dennis Radeke]

Yep, 32 bit OS can be a limiting factor which is why Adobe has officially announced that the next version is going to be 64 bit only:
https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/10/its_official_64bit_is_the_futu.html

I blogged on the importance of 64bit on CS4 about a year ago. Here’s the link:https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/03/64_bit_os_and_adobe_products.html‘>
https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/03/64_bit_os_and_adobe_products.html

[Dennis Radeke]

Jason,

I’m an Adobe employee and curious to learn exactly which news group you are with and to learn some of the specifics of your current system that is giving you problems. Tim’s first response is valid (I especially find the bits about Avid/Apple system requirements vs Adobe requirements to ring true) but it would be good to get a handle on what you’re actually using.

As for news organizations, you might check out these semi-recent press releases.

Hearst (20% of North America with 25+ stations)
https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200909/HearstTelevisionAdoptsAdobeVideoProductionSolutions.html

Turner’s News organization
https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200909/AdobeandTurnerBroadcastingSystemInc.ExpandAlliance.html

[Dennis Radeke]

AE supports 30,000 x 30,000 as of right now – probably making your suggestion the best one Ben.

[Dennis Radeke]

I think your choices would be

1 – After Effects would probably do fine here and as another person said, would probably do a better job of compositing anyway.
2 – Try Premiere Pro CS4 which will natively import either PSD (haven’t tried PSB) or TIFF and then animate within the Premiere Pro.
3 – Flatten to .png and try again in FCP.