Really getting disappointed in the lack of apparent support for FCP. Premier seems to get useful feature updates more often than FCP over the last 5 or more years. I don't want to debate subscriptions, which kept me from switching --- But now I'm ready to pay to play. Just looking for feedback from people that have made the switch. I'm am amateur, but like using feature-rich products when I can. Is it worth the learning curve?
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FCP to Premier migration feedback
- Thread starter dorsal
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Hi Dorsal;
You will be unhappy with the performance Adobe Premier on a Mac. Why not switch to Davinci Resolve Studio? No subscription with this NLE. It is as fast as FCP (maybe even faster) and more feature rich. I made the switch from FCP in late 2021 and never looked back.
Hope this helps.
Don Barar
You will be unhappy with the performance Adobe Premier on a Mac. Why not switch to Davinci Resolve Studio? No subscription with this NLE. It is as fast as FCP (maybe even faster) and more feature rich. I made the switch from FCP in late 2021 and never looked back.
Hope this helps.
Don Barar
I'm curious what "useful feature updates" are we talking about exactly? With that I mean actual features that you need more than maybe a few times a year — if that — and can't in fact get via plugin or otherwise? More often than not for free or for a fraction of what Adobe costs you for just one month. Or maybe you're just parroting something you read on the internet without knowing what was meant? 🤷🏼♂️
But then I guess a more padded feature list is much more important to you than usability, stability, and speed? Because PPro is a complete UX nightmare in comparison, lightyears less stable, and worst of all s l o o o o o o o o o o o w ! ! By multitudes. Only Avid is worse. In which case I can only assume you're just someone that, no offense, ignorantly conflates "feature list length" with "better" for lack of any real practical experience? Assuming that because your software can do more, you can automagically do more i.e. become a better editor?
You can obviously do what you like, but I for one would rather become a Sewage Diver before I went back to the vastly inferior track-based editing, Premiere or otherwise. But then… I edit for a living.
No. It's not.
But then I guess a more padded feature list is much more important to you than usability, stability, and speed? Because PPro is a complete UX nightmare in comparison, lightyears less stable, and worst of all s l o o o o o o o o o o o w ! ! By multitudes. Only Avid is worse. In which case I can only assume you're just someone that, no offense, ignorantly conflates "feature list length" with "better" for lack of any real practical experience? Assuming that because your software can do more, you can automagically do more i.e. become a better editor?
You can obviously do what you like, but I for one would rather become a Sewage Diver before I went back to the vastly inferior track-based editing, Premiere or otherwise. But then… I edit for a living.
No. It's not.
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How is that "harsh"? What is it you think you need as a self-proclaiming amateur that you can't get with FC? You never did say.
And no, speed surely isn't the main complaint. It's a by-product of everything else, coming full circle. It goes hand in hand with a GUI stuck in the 1990s, and dealing with constant crashes is just as horrible. The same goes for Resolve. Just creating a new project or setting one or two preferences is enough to make you want to chew your own fingers off.
Oh right… that's the "pro" part. Make something so convoluted and confusing to mere mortals that only a "pro" can figure it out. 🙄
But hey… as long as you win the Feature List competition! Who cares how much of it actually works as expected or is even useful for more than 0.032% of users, only adding to the existing instability and confusion.
Just as Final Cut Pro pre-X was for over 20 years. Thank god at least Apple came to their senses.
And no, speed surely isn't the main complaint. It's a by-product of everything else, coming full circle. It goes hand in hand with a GUI stuck in the 1990s, and dealing with constant crashes is just as horrible. The same goes for Resolve. Just creating a new project or setting one or two preferences is enough to make you want to chew your own fingers off.
Oh right… that's the "pro" part. Make something so convoluted and confusing to mere mortals that only a "pro" can figure it out. 🙄
But hey… as long as you win the Feature List competition! Who cares how much of it actually works as expected or is even useful for more than 0.032% of users, only adding to the existing instability and confusion.
Just as Final Cut Pro pre-X was for over 20 years. Thank god at least Apple came to their senses.
Which is faster? DaVinci Resolve or FCP. Depends on what you are doing. Here are couple of videos on the topic for M1 products.
MaxTech
Creative Video Tips
There are other tests out there, but all yield similar varying results. I will say this, if you are doing any animations, you will find that Apple Motion is faster to render out than BlackMagic Fusion for both integrated and stand alone versions. Yet, key framing Fusion projects that are part of an overall video is much easier in Davinci Resolve. Where, key framing Motion projects is a PITA--at least it used to be before I left for Davinci Resolve in late 2021.
You will find many colorists are leaving FCP for Resolve. Getting the colors right in Resolve just seems more intuitive than FCP.
In any case, almost all will agree that Premier Pro is abysmally slow in MacOS. I stopped using Premier Pro when I switched FCPX in 2015--worked much faster. And then switched to Resolve in late 2021 from FCP when I badly needed to track a mask out of view. Just did not work in FCP and worked great Resolve. I read that FCP now has cloud tracking. Have not used FCP since late 2021 to see how well it works.
They will have to pry Resolve from my cold dead fingers before I went back to FCP or Premier Pro.
Hope this helps.
Don
MaxTech
Creative Video Tips
There are other tests out there, but all yield similar varying results. I will say this, if you are doing any animations, you will find that Apple Motion is faster to render out than BlackMagic Fusion for both integrated and stand alone versions. Yet, key framing Fusion projects that are part of an overall video is much easier in Davinci Resolve. Where, key framing Motion projects is a PITA--at least it used to be before I left for Davinci Resolve in late 2021.
You will find many colorists are leaving FCP for Resolve. Getting the colors right in Resolve just seems more intuitive than FCP.
In any case, almost all will agree that Premier Pro is abysmally slow in MacOS. I stopped using Premier Pro when I switched FCPX in 2015--worked much faster. And then switched to Resolve in late 2021 from FCP when I badly needed to track a mask out of view. Just did not work in FCP and worked great Resolve. I read that FCP now has cloud tracking. Have not used FCP since late 2021 to see how well it works.
They will have to pry Resolve from my cold dead fingers before I went back to FCP or Premier Pro.
Hope this helps.
Don
Ah yes. Shifting the goalposts as we go.
Now it's suddenly Motion v Fusion? Never mind that Fusion has an exponentially steeper learning curve than Motion, no matter how much of "a PITA" keyframing is or not. (it isn't btw… assuming you know what you're doing)
But then when it comes to just regular editing, Resolve, with its archaic track-based editing, can't hold a candle to Final Cut Pro in terms of speed either. So there's that.
Just look at such seemingly mundane things as the scrolling timeline. Something that is amazingly useful in Final Cut Pro and completely useless in Resolve, if not just plain annoying.The "Cut" page scrolling is nothing but infuriating. Premiere's is even worse many times over. Something I would not have thought possible. I don't know anyone who uses either app that has ever had it active. And now I know why.
Oh, and the biggest irony is that your videos only proved exactly what I said. 😂 If anything, both were mostly the same and Final Cut Pro was faster (even considerably in some cases) when they weren't. And that's all before export segmentation was added. So… thanks for the confirmation. 👍🏼
Colorists? No kidding? Gee, it must be because Final Cut Pro, even though it has very powerful color-grading features, isn't a color-grading application? So why on earth would a colorist be using Final Cut Pro, a video editor, in the first place? 🙄
But even then: feel free to tell me what indispensable non-specialty feature I'm missing in FC, be it in terms of color or otherwise that also makes it worth having to put up with much-reduced usability, stability and speed. I'm very curious. Still haven't heard what "useful feature updates" we're talking about either.
Now it's suddenly Motion v Fusion? Never mind that Fusion has an exponentially steeper learning curve than Motion, no matter how much of "a PITA" keyframing is or not. (it isn't btw… assuming you know what you're doing)
Maybe try some that are at least close to today. Even last year. And maybe one that talks about "Export segmentation", something that Resolve does not have, sorry. Because regardless of playback speed or other such things, which may be more or less the same here and there, rendering/export is where speed really decides how much lifeblood you want your NLE to suck out of you.
But then when it comes to just regular editing, Resolve, with its archaic track-based editing, can't hold a candle to Final Cut Pro in terms of speed either. So there's that.
Just look at such seemingly mundane things as the scrolling timeline. Something that is amazingly useful in Final Cut Pro and completely useless in Resolve, if not just plain annoying.The "Cut" page scrolling is nothing but infuriating. Premiere's is even worse many times over. Something I would not have thought possible. I don't know anyone who uses either app that has ever had it active. And now I know why.
Oh, and the biggest irony is that your videos only proved exactly what I said. 😂 If anything, both were mostly the same and Final Cut Pro was faster (even considerably in some cases) when they weren't. And that's all before export segmentation was added. So… thanks for the confirmation. 👍🏼
😄… seriously? Funny enough I hear a bunch of copywriters are leaving Final Cut Pro for Pages! Go figure.
Colorists? No kidding? Gee, it must be because Final Cut Pro, even though it has very powerful color-grading features, isn't a color-grading application? So why on earth would a colorist be using Final Cut Pro, a video editor, in the first place? 🙄
But even then: feel free to tell me what indispensable non-specialty feature I'm missing in FC, be it in terms of color or otherwise that also makes it worth having to put up with much-reduced usability, stability and speed. I'm very curious. Still haven't heard what "useful feature updates" we're talking about either.
Call me crazy, but that just may have had something to do with Final Cut Pro not having a tracker back then? Hmmm… 🤔
I have no clue what "cloud tracking" is supposed to be. Unless you just half picked up on the term somewhere and mean point cloud? Which yes, it has. A point cloud tracker along with a machine learning-enhanced tracker.
Good for you. That's why we have options and competition.
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Hi PP,
No goal shifting. I have used all three extensively and ended up preferring Davinci Resolve.
The reason I brought up Fusion is that if the OP plans on doing any video at some point the OP is going to want to do some custom animations. While Apple Motion will encode them quicker, the integrated approach of developing these custom animations within the Fusion page makes them easier to keyframe.
What is cloud tracking? Easiest to explain is with an example. I shot a clip where I panned across the room that had windows. I set the exposure of the camera so as to not blow out the windows, but the room was dark. After I adjusted the lift, gamma, and gain to make the room look better the window were blown out. The solution was to mask the windows and track that mask as I panned across the room. Back in 2021, there was no good way to do this in FCP. Any mask that I developed would collapse and distort as the window moved out of frame making the masks useless.
This is what forced me out of FCP and to Davinci Resolve. When I masked the windows and selected track, a cloud of points was automatically generated that are all tracked. When the window moved out of frame, any tracking point that was generated for the out of frame potion of the window was discarded but the remainder of points still functioned. It worked great. This issue may have been fixed in FCP since I left in 2021. I have not used it to try and find out.
There is a decent audio editor with Davinci Resolve called Fairlight. While it is not as robust as I would like it to be, Fairlight makes it easy for me to round trip to an external audio editor of my choice. This is does not make Fairlight useless. I still use it to set up: 1) the automatic ducking of music portions behind the vocal, 2) create more space for the vocals, etc.
I do a fair amount of chroma keying. This works well in Davinci Resolve, but the FCP tools were useless. The FCP solution is to buy plugins to improve the functionality that Apple failed to make work well. I ended up with Hawaiki. That's not the only plugin I purchased for FCP to make things work better. For example, I was never crazy on color gradeing in FCP. I purchased ColorFinale. That worked OK. However, whenever Apple issued an update to FCP, many of these plugins stopped working. I never feel the need to purchase additional plugins with Davinci Resolve.
Davinci Resolve issues a fair number of updates to improve functionality that are free of charge. There are free updates for FCP and Motion. But the updates to the plug-ins are not necessarily free. Many of these were subscription based if you wanted them to keep working. So updating FCP was not necessarily free.
Anyways, my 2 cents.
Don
No goal shifting. I have used all three extensively and ended up preferring Davinci Resolve.
The reason I brought up Fusion is that if the OP plans on doing any video at some point the OP is going to want to do some custom animations. While Apple Motion will encode them quicker, the integrated approach of developing these custom animations within the Fusion page makes them easier to keyframe.
What is cloud tracking? Easiest to explain is with an example. I shot a clip where I panned across the room that had windows. I set the exposure of the camera so as to not blow out the windows, but the room was dark. After I adjusted the lift, gamma, and gain to make the room look better the window were blown out. The solution was to mask the windows and track that mask as I panned across the room. Back in 2021, there was no good way to do this in FCP. Any mask that I developed would collapse and distort as the window moved out of frame making the masks useless.
This is what forced me out of FCP and to Davinci Resolve. When I masked the windows and selected track, a cloud of points was automatically generated that are all tracked. When the window moved out of frame, any tracking point that was generated for the out of frame potion of the window was discarded but the remainder of points still functioned. It worked great. This issue may have been fixed in FCP since I left in 2021. I have not used it to try and find out.
There is a decent audio editor with Davinci Resolve called Fairlight. While it is not as robust as I would like it to be, Fairlight makes it easy for me to round trip to an external audio editor of my choice. This is does not make Fairlight useless. I still use it to set up: 1) the automatic ducking of music portions behind the vocal, 2) create more space for the vocals, etc.
I do a fair amount of chroma keying. This works well in Davinci Resolve, but the FCP tools were useless. The FCP solution is to buy plugins to improve the functionality that Apple failed to make work well. I ended up with Hawaiki. That's not the only plugin I purchased for FCP to make things work better. For example, I was never crazy on color gradeing in FCP. I purchased ColorFinale. That worked OK. However, whenever Apple issued an update to FCP, many of these plugins stopped working. I never feel the need to purchase additional plugins with Davinci Resolve.
Davinci Resolve issues a fair number of updates to improve functionality that are free of charge. There are free updates for FCP and Motion. But the updates to the plug-ins are not necessarily free. Many of these were subscription based if you wanted them to keep working. So updating FCP was not necessarily free.
Anyways, my 2 cents.
Don
There still is no such thing as "cloud" tracking. If anything then that's a planar tracker, which is what Resolve has. 🙄
And even if the built-in tracker (which didn't come to full fruition until 2022 btw) didn't do what you needed you could have simply keyframed the mask past the point of failure, which would have been a perfectly "good way" of doing it within a few seconds. Or you could have simply gotten the FREE "Looks" filter from BorisFX that uses the industry standard mocha (yes, planar) tracker. Done.
But yeah, just because of a single failed track you move to an entirely different app. Sure. That seems totally sensible!
Hey, if you're into completely overblown and convoluted GUIs, go for it. I can't think of anything that I need that I can't do in FC and for which it would make any sense to have to learn an entirely new app and yet another GUI stuck in the 90s. But that's just me I guess.
If another app, I'd go with Logic any day.
Then one can only assume that you don't know how to shoot a decent green screen, as the vast majority don't. In which case no level of keyer is going to do a great job. I do know how and find the default keyer more than useful for the vast majority of tasks i.e. a reasonably done greenscreen. But the Hawaiki Keyer is the best alternative I know of. Even well above Resolve's default keyer. So if even that didn't do it for you… 🤷🏼♂️
Beyond maybe 5 years ago I have no clue why you would think you'd need it. The only thing I can think of that it does differently (certainly not better) is maybe grade groups, which is nice, but far from indispensable. But again, FC isn't even a color-grading app to begin with. I have no issue with sending something to Resolve for any extreme exceptions that I might have in terms of grading maybe once a year, if that. I can't actually even remember the last time I did. But then I'm an editor first and foremost, so who cares? Horses for courses. I'm not a jack of all trades and master of none.
Name me one.
In the end, use whatever you like. Just making a recommendation like that purely based on your needs and preferences doesn't strike me as very helpful. Especially for someone who clearly doesn't have anything close to those same needs.
BTW: I'd love for him to open both Motion and Fusion and tell us which he thinks is "easier to keyframe". Wanna wager on what he says? 😏
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Hi PP,
Which Plug-In stopped working? Color Finale stopped working with an update to FCP. Got the dreaded red media not available because Color Finale plug-in did not work. And I had to pay for this frustration.
A perfect chroma keys. Difficult for me to do in the area that I have. Needed to purchase Hawaiki to key out the background using FCP. With Davinci Resolve, I do not have to purchase anything to deal with my imperfect key. It is all included in the purchase of Davinci Resolve Studio.
Call the tracker what you will. But I do know that I scratched my head for weeks trying to fix my tracking issues using FCP. Nothing worked. Got the advice of many (from FCP.co which has since shutdown) and we all concluded there was no easy way to fix this issue of tracking masks of items that go out of frame. I believe FCP may have fixed this since 2022. But I had already moved on to Davinci Resolve.
I think you misunderstand me on key framing. When I was working with Motion projects they were seperate from FCP. So, if I wanted to keyframe some action based on what was happening within the FCP timeline I had to exit FCP and open Motion because Motion is not integrated into FCP. This was and time consuming and iterative process. With Davinci Resolve, Fusion is tightly integrated to be part of the entire project so I find key framing Fusion projects to easier than anything I ever did with Motion. This may of have changed with FCP/Motion since I left in 2021.
My recommendation is based on my needs and my experience with Premier Pro, FCP and Davinci Resolve Studio. I simply found Davinci Resolve Studio to be a better solution.
You can have the last word on this topic. I will not be responding again.
However, I will respond to the OP. The OP needs sort out advantages and disadvantages for themselves and make their own conclusions as to what works best for them.
Don
Which Plug-In stopped working? Color Finale stopped working with an update to FCP. Got the dreaded red media not available because Color Finale plug-in did not work. And I had to pay for this frustration.
A perfect chroma keys. Difficult for me to do in the area that I have. Needed to purchase Hawaiki to key out the background using FCP. With Davinci Resolve, I do not have to purchase anything to deal with my imperfect key. It is all included in the purchase of Davinci Resolve Studio.
Call the tracker what you will. But I do know that I scratched my head for weeks trying to fix my tracking issues using FCP. Nothing worked. Got the advice of many (from FCP.co which has since shutdown) and we all concluded there was no easy way to fix this issue of tracking masks of items that go out of frame. I believe FCP may have fixed this since 2022. But I had already moved on to Davinci Resolve.
I think you misunderstand me on key framing. When I was working with Motion projects they were seperate from FCP. So, if I wanted to keyframe some action based on what was happening within the FCP timeline I had to exit FCP and open Motion because Motion is not integrated into FCP. This was and time consuming and iterative process. With Davinci Resolve, Fusion is tightly integrated to be part of the entire project so I find key framing Fusion projects to easier than anything I ever did with Motion. This may of have changed with FCP/Motion since I left in 2021.
My recommendation is based on my needs and my experience with Premier Pro, FCP and Davinci Resolve Studio. I simply found Davinci Resolve Studio to be a better solution.
You can have the last word on this topic. I will not be responding again.
However, I will respond to the OP. The OP needs sort out advantages and disadvantages for themselves and make their own conclusions as to what works best for them.
Don
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The incompatibility of Color Finale was only a short while and the subsequent update was free. Not Apple's/FC's fault if people use unsupported or private APIs in their plugins. That's on them. Stick to the rules and your fine.
Again, the "Looks" filter will have delivered the results you needed if FC's tracker didn't. No idea who you came across at .co, but the fact they couldn't figure out something so completely basic is sad.
And Motion is integrated far deeper into FC than even After Effects is in Premiere. If you know what you're doing and how it works to get the needed workflow… 🤷🏼♂️
Again, the "Looks" filter will have delivered the results you needed if FC's tracker didn't. No idea who you came across at .co, but the fact they couldn't figure out something so completely basic is sad.
And Motion is integrated far deeper into FC than even After Effects is in Premiere. If you know what you're doing and how it works to get the needed workflow… 🤷🏼♂️
Man, Premiere is bad. When I have to use it to prep someone else's project for grading in resolve, bad words come out of my mouth. Being slow is not the main issue, is the complexity is and all the unnecessary clatter.
Resolve is kinda better but it has its own issues in the edit part as I found out. Buggy and unreliable. Good Colour though for amateurs and intermediate level pros until you start working on a higher budget projects and then the demands shift to the expensive hardware and software.
So for me is FCP for editing, Resolve for Colouring, Premiere for the trash.
Resolve is kinda better but it has its own issues in the edit part as I found out. Buggy and unreliable. Good Colour though for amateurs and intermediate level pros until you start working on a higher budget projects and then the demands shift to the expensive hardware and software.
So for me is FCP for editing, Resolve for Colouring, Premiere for the trash.
Hi E,
I edit in Davinci Resolve Studio. What bugs are you referring to? I just downloaded version 19 beta. I did not run into any bugs—though I anticipate some in this beta.
They added lots of new features including FujiFilm FLog2 (I use exclusively a color managed workflow) and Color Slices which allow me to rapidly make adjustments to colors.
Don
BTW. Premier Pro is slow and difficult to work with on a Mac.
I edit in Davinci Resolve Studio. What bugs are you referring to? I just downloaded version 19 beta. I did not run into any bugs—though I anticipate some in this beta.
They added lots of new features including FujiFilm FLog2 (I use exclusively a color managed workflow) and Color Slices which allow me to rapidly make adjustments to colors.
Don
BTW. Premier Pro is slow and difficult to work with on a Mac.
Too many to count. I have yet to use it without it crashing on me. Mostly for the silliest things.
Most recently it asked me if I wanted to save when I hit ⌘Q (even though "Live save" was on!), I clicked SAVE… nothing. Again and again and again. Only when I clicked DON'T SAVE did it quit. Wonderful. 👍🏼
Obviously not something that could ever happen to me with FC.
Hardly relevant for a self-proclaimed amateur.
No idea what the supposed to imply, but it's completely irrelevant whether Mac or PC since the GUI is absolutely identical and is by far its worst "feature". If anything, it's worse on a PC in terms of stability.