Dennis Radeke
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeff Meyer] “1) Once you get to a certain point the speed of the box isn’t as critical as the speed of the operator. Adobe Premiere may be a fastern NLE than Final Cut Pro, but retraining myself to use it breaks my muscle-memory with FCP, and it only takes a few extra crashes to negate any speed boost. When working in ProRes Final Cut is pretty stable. Working with MXF XDCAM/QT H.264 in Premiere hasn’t been as stable in my experience.”
You can use FCP shortcuts directly inside of Premiere Pro which will get you 80% of the way there. I also disagree that the speed of the system isn’t as critical as the speed of the operator. In the case of FCP7, you are forced to transcode nearly all of the time. Therefore, you can be a slower operator in Premiere Pro and still finish faster because of FCP’s transcode workflow. Also when creating final outputs AME always can work in teh background allowing the operator to move on to the next project.
[Jeff Meyer] “2) Exporting on the backend matters…sometimes. Often an export can run in the background while working in another application. If it’s too large to be done in the background chances are it’s a lunch break or overnight render anyway, at which point it doesn’t matter how fast it exports as long as it’s done by the time I get back to the computer.”
True, but watch folder workflows and overall speed do make a difference. Many times the render time is neither 5 minutes nor overnight but usually somewhere inbetween. Therefore, speed and background rendering DO matter.
[Jeff Meyer] “3) RAM is a huge factor. You can load a MacPro up.”
Sadly, not as much as you can on your typical PC. I haven’t checked in with what the latest max RAM is for Mac Towers, but with HP’s of two years ago, you could load up 192GB of RAM. Granted, you could almost buy a house for the cost of 192GB of RAM, but the point is you can really load up a PC more than a Mac. Last I checked, Mac towers had 32GB MAX. I’d guess they are at least 64GB of RAM now.
[Jeff Meyer] “4) Changing platforms can be costly. If you have a pile of FCS projects, Motion documents, etc. switching to a PC means many assets will need to be rebuilt, or you could to go back to the Mac for any old projects that need to be updated. Now you’re rebuilding a lot of assets or you’re maintaining two systems. If you start talking about rolling this out to several editing seats the costs add up pretty quick. MacPros may be expensive towers, but 3.9GHz chips don’t come without a premium either.”
Absolutely true. I’d stick with a Mac if this were the case. However, you could still change platforms and render where necessary. What I found fascinating is that you can import a Motion Project dynamically into Premiere Pro. Weird, but kinda cool.
[Jeff Meyer] “5) Apple computers tend to last longer. If you need to buy two towers over 10 years instead of three or four that can change your bottom line. If you’re doing a lot more cutting than animating five years isn’t out of the question for a computer, particularly with a few strategic upgrades.”
Agreed if you purchase a whitebox PC but not necessarily if you’re purchasing a quality PC system like an HP or BOXX. I’ve had HP’s for at least 5 years and they’re still going strong. If you build your own, chances are you know how to take care of it. Bottom line, you pay extra to get a Mac – do the same for your next PC and you will get the same return.
[Jeff Meyer] “6) The CPU/GPU isn’t always the bottleneck. Q-Master (segmented processing in Compressor) is the only thing I can get to peg all 24 logical 2.66GHz processors in my Mac, and even to get that I’m going from one RAID-5 to another RAID-5 transcoding footage. Without two separate RAID boxes do you think I’d be pegging the CPU? Pulling data off of a spinning disc will always be slower than data flying throw a chip. You can talk SSD all you want, but with the storage requirements for video this isn’t even close to being affordable.”
Again, I’m sorry but I disagree. I can get many apps including some non-Adobe apps to peg all of the CPU’s in either a Mac or PC. Basically, any legit 64-bit app that needs the horsepower will take it. I will say that the disk drive needs to be looked at more as people move to 64-bit aware apps as that CAN be the bottleneck.
[Jeff Meyer] “The PC may have some more guns today, but a computer is only as strong as the weakest link. If changing platforms makes you the weakest link it doesn’t sound like a good choice. If the weakest link is a storage solution both computers will have similar performance. Same is true for RAM. Programs that aren’t multithreaded will have some benefit from the added clock speed, but OSX’s Grand Central Dispatch is pretty likely to still gave Apple the advantage. Numbers aren’t everything. There’s a lot of work being done using MacPros right now. Don’t expect this to change overnight because there could be a minor performance benefit in going to PCs.”
Agreed in general though Grand Central Dispatch is just a fancy name for a bit traffic cop. Any 64-bit OS is going to have it and Windows 7 does too. I do think you’re really talking about the differences of a 64-bit OS and that I think is something to look at. As a guy who regularly uses both daily, I don’t really see much difference, though I tend to feel that a) Mac UI is still superior b) PC’s are faster. So, it becomes a question of what do you want more – smoother experience or more power? That’s always what it comes down to for me.
Dennis – Adobe guy
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[Chris Kenny] “You could switch to Premiere, but Premiere still doesn’t seem to have quite gained acceptance in many segments of the industry, which makes it awkward if you need to work with outside editors, DI facilities, etc. or if you’re a facility trying to hire editors. The risk in adopting Premiere is that it’s not yet clear when or if this will change.”
I won’t argue about the statement outright but would point out that the acceptance you speak of is growing quite rapidly. We’ve had success at major broadcasters(CNN, BBC and Hearst are all public on our website) and film (Avatar, Social Network etc.). There are many more that are in process or are not public (we respect our customers).
So, while I agree that we have room to grow, I do think that we a) are a completely acceptable professional tool b) are growing in the space c) listening to our customers d) intend on supporting them
In the end, when we speak of 45% growth on the Mac (public video), it didn’t all come from lower end users. 😉
Dennis – Adobe guy
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John – I hope you’ll give us another shot some day. Our focus moving forward is along the lines of what you infer. removing obstacles is a focus. Of course, many FCP users have to unlearn some habits when moving to another NLE (like transcoding).
That said, any switch involves ‘thinking different’ so I understand your hesitancy.
Dennis – Adobe guy.
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[Andy Neil] “The thing is, I don’t know if you can send Premiere or Avid projects to Color”
It’s possible to import Premiere Pro projects into Color, but it is within the limitations of XML and of course the codec (ProRes). Assuming you’re on a Mac, I’d transcode to ProRes via AME, cut your piece and then send the Premiere Pro XML to Color.
Moving forward, with Adobe’s acquisition of IRIDAS and SpeedGrade, it will be interesting to see where we go.
Dennis – Adobe guy.
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My guess is this will be a service based business. I see these guys as looking to get bought by somebody else…
The one I’ve always liked is animoto. They’ve been at it much longer. https://animoto.com/
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[Tommy Campbell] “Dennis, what about other codecs like Cineform. Is it any better or worse than ProRes or DNxHD?”
Hi Tommy,
With Cineform, you have a well established, high quality codec that can operate not only with Adobe products but others as well.
The downside (as I see it for most users) is that it doesn’t really scale up or down too much. @30MB/s, it’s basically uncompressed. For most video productions, that’s excessive when you can get good 50 megabits (not megabytes) codecs out there.
Still, I like Cineform and I think their stereoscopic 3d workflow for Premiere Pro is very solid…
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The architecture of Premiere Pro was designed to deal natively with the codec/format whenever possible. To that end, with things like H.264, we decided NOT to use Quicktime whenever we could work around it. Mostly because QT is 32-bit as I understand it.
With ProRes and DNxHD, we do have to use Quicktime which takes a certain performance hit. I find that DNxHD is much worse than ProRes, which makes sense.
I would characterize working with ProRes as “great” and DNxHD as “satisfactory”
Hope this helps.
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Well, I can’t pass up a chance to respond to this, but there a few responses to put in so, I will hope to address them all… 😉
[Chris Harlan] “What would be an interesting wrench for me is if Adobe can convince a few major boutiques to throw in with Premiere because of their deep involvement with After Effects. I would be happy to see some competition remain here-abouts.”
I think we already have. We just don’t advertise every place that does. Granted though, I think we have room to grow. Anecdotal story for you is that the AE product manager is going to boutiques as you would expect and many times the first thing they want to talk about is Premiere Pro.
[David Roth Weiss[ “I just don’t see Premiere as a real contender in the L.A. arena any time soon.”
David, as a guy who lives locally in the NYC area, I see LA and NYC as the last bastions of Avid. There is enough work in these towns and Avid presents workflows and necessary hardware that make Avid a clearer choice in some situations. That said, I think long term I am very excited about our prospects as I know of many things coming down the road. Still, Adobe Premiere Pro is winning in both of these towns and I see that trend continuing.
[Chris Harlan] “I think if Adobe were aggressive”
I don’t see how we can get any more aggressive than we already are – do you disagree?
[Bret Williams] “And Adobe pretty much told the Apple editing community to shove it for a few years with Premiere Pro until CS3.”
Not true really. When Steve Jobs made the decision to abandon the legacy OS9 infrastructure for OSX, he made some hard choices and it was tough for Apple users for a while. Over time, those problems disappeared. In a similar manner, when we went about re-architecting Premiere into Premiere Pro, we made the strategic decision to focus on Windows where most of our market share was at the time. With CS3 we returned to the Mac and since then (5 years) have made a pointed effort of making sure Mac and PC versions are functionally identical. We are committed to the Mac market and as others have pointed out, we’re growing leaps and bounds on the Mac, so we’re in it for the long haul…
[Bret Williams] “CS6 is their last shot. If they can refine Premiere Pro into something stable and a bit less clunky feeling they’ll have a chance. I think they’re destined to lose the battle in the end because Avid was already number two or on par with FCP installs with Premiere pretty far behind. Premiere would have to convince all the FCP houses to switch to them to make a tremendous impact. But it appears it’s about split. So it’ll probably be a 70% Aivd, 30% Premiere/FCP X world for awhile. Corporate is headed Premiere because it’s freelancers can get up to speed and it’s a relatively similar fit. Broadcast and Film will go back to Avid, where Avid still had a large share anyway. Most corporate production seems to have forgotten Avid altogether.”
Okay, lots here…
No one ever has their “last shot”. If we’ve learned anything in the 20+ years of NLE, is that the dominant players can change. Avid was king, Apple ate their lunch for a season, Adobe has come up, Sony and GVG are nipping at everyone’s heels… Lightworks – who knows? Maybe. If FCPX fixes some of the standard complaints then it will be a three horse race again. For the immediate statement of CS6 being our last shot – I’ll say I’m extremely happy with my ‘last’ bullet. 😉
Premiere Pro believe it or not (I’m guessing not) is #1 in terms of installs and seats. Growing 45% on the Mac over the last year or so doesn’t hurt either. Plus, you’ve got the still larger PC platform. Of course, you can argue that it’s how you count the seats and you’re right. Apple and Avid similarly love to bake their numbers.
70% Avid/ 30% Premiere Pro/FCPX would strike me as backwards in the general market, but you’re talking feature film and/or boutique, so I can agree. Broadcast is changing and not necessarily towards Avid. Avid is still expensive and broadcasters now all already have Premiere Pro on their systems. In a tight economy and changing business model, broadcasters are looking at alternatives. I know, because I’m the guy getting the calls. There is a much larger reason why some broadcasters would think twice about Avid, but I will not speak it here as it would be classless…
I’d say, ‘my 2 cents’ but I think it’s better to say…
$2.50, 😉
Dennis – Adobe guy -
[Herb Sevush] “DNxHD works equally well on both Avid and PPro PC systems, giving full access to Adobe’s mercury engine”
Adobe Premiere Pro cannot play native DNxHD MXF files due to Avid’s licensing. We can however playback QT rewrapped DNXHD.
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[Herb Sevush] “I need to edit 5 to 6 streams of multicam for my work and I was told by a highly respected PPro and Avid systems integrator that ProRes does not run at full speed on Adobe’s mercury engine, it will run but not at full speed.”
Currently Herb, the limitation of Premiere Pro in this case is that our Multi-cam only supports up to 4 cameras. I have however played 5-6 streams at full-res with no dropped frames. It all depends on disk speed and that your PC/Mac system has enough horsepower to process it.
Dennis – Adobe guy