[Oliver Peters]

Paul – I believe it’s an optimization issue. FCP is designed for video, pure and simple.

[Oliver Peters]

I ran a quick test yesterday of a complex, multilayered Photoshop file. That PSD imported nearly perfectly into Affinity Photo. I tried the same with Pixelmator Pro and the translation wasn’t as good. So if you are going for Photoshop compatibility, then Affinity Photo is the better alternative for you. However I like working in Pixelmator Pro and would actually suggest you might get both. They are a fraction of your Photoshop rental cost over time.

[Oliver Peters]

Robert – Affinity refers to the Affinity apps made by Serif in the UK. They include Photos, Designer, and Publisher, which are comparable to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

[Oliver Peters]

Just for clarification, even without going with a proxy workflow, FCP handles most native media formats better than just about any other NLE.

Regarding Resolve, two pointers. The Edit page seems to offer worse playback than the Color page, which makes no sense. Second – edit first, then grade. Do not try to add a lot of grading nodes and then do the editing. Resolve simply gets bogged down in the Edit page, once all of the clips have several nodes applied to them.

[Oliver Peters]

Premiere Pro 14.8. The latest release version (not beta). On and off, I’ve had the issue with Premiere, AME, and Photoshop since the update. Shared storage.

[Oliver Peters]

Here are some more ideas. I wrote these up a while back, but some may be helpful. It’s written about edit suites, but also includes sound pointers. Hopefully some of this will be helpful.

Edit Suite Design, Part I « digitalfilms (wordpress.com)

Edit Suite Design, Part II « digitalfilms (wordpress.com)

Edit Suite Design, Part III « digitalfilms (wordpress.com)

DIY Edit Suite Design Pointers « digitalfilms (wordpress.com)

[Oliver Peters]

I second the FCP (formerly X) suggestion. I use both Premiere Pro and FCP going into Resolve (via FCPXML and XML respectively). Both work well, but FCP will require a bit of relearning from the traditional NLE paradigm. Once you get used to it, however, the speed and performance are hard to beat. If you do go with an M1 (like an M1 Mac Mini), then FCP is the perfect solution. The determining factor is whether or not you need to exchange project files with other editors. However, even there, you can export Premiere-compatible XML files from Resolve.

[Oliver Peters]

Oxberry! Now there’s a blast from the past! That’s a good idea, but I was actually thinking of large photos on an easel with a human camera operator – camera on tripod. Less controllable, but more natural. Unfortunately, you have the cost and time to print out the stills.

Making moves on stills in an NLE chews up RAM, which is part of the issue. Best would be to prebuild the moves or stills sequences in Motion or After Effects and render them out as video source clips.

[Oliver Peters]

Premiere handles MXF and MP4 just fine. MP4 files are visible in the Finder (depending on the codec). AME will rewrap, but that still might not make the file visible in the Finder. Still depends on the codec.

[Oliver Peters]

My guess is that the still images are what caused your Library to load so slowly towards the end. It’s old school, but I’m a great believer in actually printing out large scale stills and doing real camera moves on them. I’ve done it both ways and a human operator gives you much more natural results.