Adobe Premiere over Final Cut Express?

[thomahawk]

I have used Adobe premiere pro for many years. but ever since i switched to the mac i have not been needing to do some video editing for clients up till now.

right now im wondering if i should use final cut express or the premiere in which i know. i have used final cut before in cinematography class but i did not enjoy using it. iMovie 08 isnt good, i rather use imovie HD 6 from the tiger OS but i just found out apple scrapped it.. so i cant use the old favorite imovie i used to know. i dont want buy iLife09 however it may seem people like it.

i want something that wont take so long to use and suck up resources. (i only have 1GB of RAM, and NO im not going to be purchasing anytiem soon)

opinons from you video editors here would be great!

 

[ZAK248313]

Stick with FC dude- it will take a while for you to change your Premiere habits, but its worth it.

 

[macrumorsMaster]

imovie 06

They didn't scrap it, you can find a direct link to download it.

I think you didn't enjoy it because you only used it in ONE class right But you used Premiere for several years? Of course you're not going to like change...most people don't....especially with getting used to a different UI.


However, if you give FCP a try I think you'll like it. take another class...or get a FCP book from the library or buy one and try to learn more about it.


However, if you'd rather stay with Premiere, that's fine too. Just most work you'll find advertise for FCP...or Avid. If you prefer not to go the FCP route, try Avid. That is definitely worth learning!

 

[thomahawk]

Avid looks interesting, i will look into that.

and yes im not used to FCP since i have been using premiere for years. i dont understand how things work on it.

 

[mithrilfox]

There are lots of tutorials online on how to use Final Cut. If you've been using Adobe, you just need to basically learn the different ways to do the same thing.

Watch tutorials, play around with it, and find a book or two.

 

[tri3limited]

Avid is great but expensive as the hardware to go with it can cost a fair whack!

I suggest getting Final Cut Studio but it might be worth hanging back for a bit if possible as Studio 3 is rumoured to appearing sometime nearer the summer this year.

 

[polaris20]

Avid looks interesting, i will look into that.

and yes im not used to FCP since i have been using premiere for years. i dont understand how things work on it.

Avid is a total pain in the ass, IMO. We've got a 30K system for editing videos, and it's unstable as can be, and is not at all user friendly. We're actually ditching it late this year for a Kona/FCP system.

 

[thomahawk]

well i just finished checking Avid, it doesnt seem appealing to me.
right now im really wondering if i should make a transition to FCP since its 200 bucks O_O compared to buying adobe which is like 800 bucks O_O and i spent 400 on photoshop already and im not wasting anymore cash. pretty soon i might resort to torrents.. PSYCH! i wont do that yet..

 

[bki122689]

Both Adobe Premier and Final Cut equally powerful. I like FCP better because it has better organization and it is a pretty much standard, apart from avid, in the industry.

I would suggest really getting into FCP because so many studios are demanding their incoming workers to know FCP.

As for Avid...

Most film production companies use Avid because it more compatible with 35mm film than FCP is. Hence, almost all modern day films are edited on AVID.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I can think of a number of reasons to choose Avid over FCP even though Avid does a higher initial learning curve (and the Adrenaline series weren't the most stable things out there).


Lethal

 

[Luis Ortega]

I have used avid, premiere pro and FCP studio, as well as the amateur editors like imovie, movie maker, fcp express, avid free dv and premiere elements.

If you are on the mac, I would recommend FCP studio or premiere pro, if your computer is powerful enough and you are doing more complex work. If you are just doing home movies, then stick to the cheaper (or free) editors.

well i just finished checking Avid, it doesnt seem appealing to me.
right now im really wondering if i should make a transition to FCP since its 200 bucks O_O compared to buying adobe which is like 800 bucks O_O and i spent 400 on photoshop already and im not wasting anymore cash. pretty soon i might resort to torrents.. PSYCH! i wont do that yet..

Unfortunately, you should have bought one of the adobe production bundles rather than any standalone apps, since the cost of buying photoshop and premiere pro individually is outrageously expensive and pretty much of a rip-off.

 

[Griffter]

Having had 2+ years experience with both packages, I find FC to be far far better for my workflow. I use FCP, but started a few years ago on FCE and the jump was no where near as bad. If your using HD footage though, make sure you've got a powerful enough machine to handle it. If not, you may want to consider Adobe, for some reason it handles HD better on slower machines, I have no idea why, just talking from experience.

 

[thomahawk]

thanks for all the suggestions, i have decided to buy Final Cut Express for 199.99! too bad there was no student discount! >_< argh oh well im poor again, but maybe the money i'll make from editing vids for clients will pay back the expense!

 

[macrumorsMaster]

If you haven't bought it yet...

Check on Ebay...sometimes you can get it cheaper! (make sure it's regular and not academic)


If you don't care about upgrading you can get the academic version for $179 direct from Apple. (or cheaper on ebay)

 

[Chris7]

I think Premiere Pro is generally compared to Final Cut Pro, not Final Cut Express. People prefer Premiere Pro or FCP for various reasons. But I have never heard of Final Cut Express being in the same league as Premiere Pro. This is from reading too many posts, not from direct experience, so take it for what it's worth (I use FCP, not Premiere).

 

[Chaos123x]

I would get Final Cut Pro (not express) are you in school? get the discount.

I think Premiere Pro and FCP are pretty much the same in the way they control (they were designed by the same guy).

But Premiere has a lot issues and stability problems, I was ripping my hair out everyday using Premiere on windows for 5 years and I will never ever go back to that hell.

Premiere on the positive side integrates with other Adobe apps, like photoshop and after effects allot better (a feature that keeps me interested).

But the bottom line is FCP is awesome! Plus any good paying freelance gigs are for Avid and FCP guys only.

(I bet Final Cut Studio 3 is just around the corner)

 

[mcpryon2]

Yeah, I'd have to agree about Avid. It falls into the category of "if you need it, you already use it."

But, the edu price for Media Composer is really good, so it's definitely worth checking it out to learn if it can be of use for getting a job later. But, you can't use it for commercial purposes. Avid has teams of flying monkeys they will send after you if you do.

 

[Chaos123x]

Yeah $300 is great edu pricing from Avid.

To bad there commercial pricing is not very good at all, it's expensive and you don't really get any extras.

For half the price you can get Final Cut Pro which comes with a whole bunch of studio apps.

 

[LethalWolfe]

A suite is only a much bigger bang for the buck if you use all the apps. In the market segment that Avid still dominates editors edit. They don't make motion gfx, they don't author DVDs, they don't do final sound mixes and they don't do online/finishing work. Some of the changes in Avid MC 3.0 don't sound very flashy but they useful timesavers to working editors and I hope Apple is paying attention because Adobe and Avid look like they've turned it around while Apple has been preoccupied w/other things.

If Avid would've come out w/MC 3.0 a year earlier I would bought it to replace FCP 6 on a documentary I'm working on. Given certain workflows the price difference between FCS and Avid MC 3.0 can easily be negated by increased productivity. I really, really hope that the next iteration of the FC suite will include a refinement and improvement of the current toolset and not just be more bells and whistles.


Lethal

 

[NXTMIKE]

Premiere Pro for SURE!!!

Especially because you said that you have already Photoshop, having other Adobe apps will really streamline your work flow because they're all made to work together quite easily. For example, you can import in the layers of a photoshop project into Premiere, with no hassle, for Final Cut...it doesn't work like that.

Premiere has always been the more respected editing software for years and I doubt it's going to change. Stick to Adobe man, you'll never regret it!

 

[Exman]

I use Premier Pro CS3 and recently upgraded to CS4. It is more stable (didn't have much problem with CS3 though) than CS4. The hardware acceleration feature in CS4 is great, it basically offloads tasks to your videocard and can give a huge boost in encoding time. FCP doesn't have this feature. Premier Pro can also edit AVCHD files natively, FCP doesn't.

I much prefer Premier Pro, it also handles more files such as VOB and mpeg2. The thing that annoys me about FCP is the lack of format support (like AVCHD, VOB, mpeg2 and so on). Adobe Media Encoder in CS4 is faster than Compressor imo.

 

[Chris7]

Does anyone here know if FCP is more stable than Premiere? I’ve read a few posts of Premiere users saying they’re system had started behaving weird, even on Mac’s.

People often think they're upgrading when the talk of switching from Premiere to FCP, but if you look at some good posts, people seem to say they're just pro's and con's to both.

Here’s a decent one, even though it’s for FCP6 and Premiere CS3:
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/977306

I freaked out for a few weeks after I got FCP, when I read that Premiere Pro offers more real time playback when using effects (even without the acceleration hardware for PC's). I'm happy with FCP now, largely due to the available of better/longer/more video tutorials, such as on lynda.com (this wouldn’t matter to someone working in a production studio, but for me it seals the deal).

Given certain workflows the price difference between FCS and Avid MC 3.0 can easily be negated by increased productivity...

I'm curious what these are, if they can be explained without too much trouble. I think FCP's round-tripping to Compressor to remove the telecine for 24P HDV is a little unnecessary. I wonder how Premiere Pro CS4 and Avid MC deal with this.

Premiere has always been the more respected editing software for years and I doubt it's going to change.

From what I've read, Final Cut Pro tends to be the more respected software, at least in the sense that it's used in more production studios, but I do not know that this respect is necessarily deserved.

Premier Pro can also edit AVCHD files natively, FCP doesn't.

Personally, I like converting AVCHD into AIC or ProRes, as I do not have a fast enough computer to handle native AVCHD. Even if I did, I would want to render into ProRes rather than AVCHD, as this would produce much better looking video (I have read that Premiere does not have its own codec to use in this kind of workflow).

 

[Exman]

I would want to render into ProRes rather than AVCHD, as this would produce much better looking video (I have read that Premiere does not have its own codec to use in this kind of workflow).

Absolutely not true at all.

In video editing, you'd want to minimize video conversion to the bare minimum. The fact that you convert the AVCHD file to Apple DV (Prores), then convert it to something else like back to AVCHD or mpeg2 does not produce better quality than doing so natively (from the original source).

While Premier don't use Apple ProRes, there are many other lossless DV formats you can convert the AVCHD to for less CPU intensive editing. More often than not you do not need to convert many/all of your videos to another format, Premier can edit them natively and this saves you lots of time and maintain original or close to original picture quality.

Premier CS4 now natively handles AC3 audio as well. This is another example of something FCP lags far behind - the ability to handle many file formats, natively.

The difference between Premier Pro and FCP is minimal, if you are good one one, you'll get the hang using the other in quicktime. The interface is similar, so are the filters and overall, the workflow is similar.

All I can say about CS4 is, it's brilliant

 

[LethalWolfe]

I'm curious what these are, if they can be explained without too much trouble. I think FCP's round-tripping to Compressor to remove the telecine for 24P HDV is a little unnecessary. I wonder how Premiere Pro CS4 and Avid MC deal with this.

Only on the lower-end cameras do you need to use Compressor to reverse telecine the footage because those cameras don't record the "flags" that let the editing software know what the cadence of the footage is. Off the top of my head Avids script sync feature, realtime TC window burn, superior media management and superior multi-user environment can make it better than FCP in certain workflows.

From what I've read, Final Cut Pro tends to be the more respected software, at least in the sense that it's used in more production studios, but I do not know that this respect is necessarily deserved.

In terms of prestige Avid is still top dog, FCP is being accepted more and more in areas that used to be 'Avid only' and everything else, Vegas, PPro, etc., is pretty much seen as something only fit for hobbyists and wedding videographers. That's not necessarily indicative of the quality of the apps or the quality of the work you can do w/the apps it's just the common perception of the apps in my experience.

Absolutely not true at all.

In video editing, you'd want to minimize video conversion to the bare minimum. The fact that you convert the AVCHD file to Apple DV (Prores), then convert it to something else like back to AVCHD or mpeg2 does not produce better quality than doing so natively (from the original source).

Apple DV and Apple ProRes aren't the same thing and while the footage itself can never be better quality than when it was acquired working in a higher quality codec can result in a better quality final product as well as a more streamlined workflow on larger projects. Horses for courses as they say.


Lethal

 

[Digital Skunk]

I am only chiming in to tell people to listen to Lethal Wolfe.

LW is right on 98% of the things he/she says.

When it comes to the superiority of Avid, the only thing that can actually be said for it is ALL AROUND WORKFLOW SUPPORT. Not to mention the Mojo which has blown away render times with HD, and in many cases negated it.

From Newscutter to providing large media houses, larger than those using FCP, with online/offline access to media files Avid is king. And Avid will work with you once you drop a certain load of cash of course, while both Apple and Adobe will just leave you with the bill.

Avid hurts when it comes to the freelancer, but with growing and large media houses that need constant access to media files when onsite or offsite, and video archiving Avid's systems are top notch. Final Cut server helps to alleviate that for FCP users, but Avid got to the arena first.

not to mention that most of their stuff does run on the Mac, save for a lot of their NewsCutter systems.

p.s. not that I have used Avid professionally recently. I am a FCP man myself, but Avid is still king amongst the pros in broadcast and in many areas of film production. Avid is king because it serves the multiuser, archival, offline, server based, environment better, and provides better service since their company does ONLY that. While Adobe works with other graphics apps, and Apple concentrates only on the iPhone.