Our DVi community members offer feedback regarding their experiences in switching from various NLE applications to Premiere Pro CS5. We’ll look first at various reports about moving from Final Cut Pro, and follow with a report from a user who transitioned from Sony Vegas.
User Testimonial: From Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro
Robert Lane: Stability, whether it’s PC or Mac based, has always been about the foundation the NLE lives on. If it’s installed on a system with a wacky directory or one that’s constantly pounded by all the cache files generated by web use, then you can expect that at some point things will go wonky. Proper system and software maintenance coupled with common-sense separation from business and web use has always been the hallmark of a stable edit box. In fact at most post houses worldwide and regardless of the platform, the system the NLE lives on simply does not have access to the Net at all. The scenario of the edit station being vulnerable to a web-based virus has always been the domain of single-user home or small-business based systems, not serious edit houses.
If you want a stable system PC or Mac, then put your big dollar equipment into the system that houses your NLE, and get some cheapie low-end system (such as a $300 laptop) and just use that for all of your web stuff.
As things stand right this moment, with no hint of FCP8 on the horizon, no clear idea of what it will look like and and all the things Apple has stated they will *not* do (Blu-Ray, Flash, etc.), if I were in the situation stated above I’d make a Windows 7 Premiere Pro edit box my system of choice (with Avid co-loaded for film-based work) and I’d keep my MacBook Pro for all my web-based work and for downloading all the updates for my PC too.
The only hardware-specific issue with Premiere Pro currently is the Mercury engine requires a high-end Nvidia card to get all the acceleration benefits. Outside of that, CS5 will happily do it’s job on any recent Intel-based Mac or PC made within the past two years.
Steve Oakley: Premiere Pro CS5 now exports Final Cut Pro XML, so you can swap XML files with Final Cut Pro edits pretty easily.
Jeremy Harlan: Actually, I’m seriously considering the purchase of CS5 Master Collection. My wife has been a photographer for fifteen years, and is a Photoshop expert. We’ve had PhotoShop since CS2, but I’ve always used Final Cut Pro for my video business. Since CS5 dropped, and they added 64-bit support for Mac across the spectrum, I’ve given the trial a run on our Mac Pro. Absolutely phenomenal! And I’m as green on Premiere Pro as possible (however, I’ve used FCP for almost seven years now). I’m also very excited about learning After Effects.
I’m happy that I can run Windows on our Mac Pro as this essentially gives me two machines in one, and I still rely on the old tried and true “Audition” from Adobe on Windows. However, moving forward in this economy, I’m not so sure my next workstation will be another $6,000 Mac Pro. Hence, the reason to start learning Premiere Pro.
Jeremy Hughes: I run both Final Cut Pro and Adobe CS5. I wasn’t a fan of Premiere CS4 as it dropped frames and stopped for me way too much, but the new Mercury engine is the real deal. I’m pushing a project though it right now with RED footage in realtime without the need for an online / offline and FCP’s uber-slow injest.
Todd Clark: The Premiere Pro GUI is the best out of any of NLE’s that I use. I use the three major players and find Premiere to be the easiest to navigate and I can find anything I need in an instant. The first time I ever opened it… it just made sense.
Steve Kalle: Premiere Pro’s GUI / Interface can be greatly customized to suit just about any editing task. You can easily move windows around and save each interface setup, and the setups can be either recalled manually or saved as part of a project.
Your clients may not be aware of the benefits from 64-bit software, which is understandable. If you demonstrated FCP and Premiere Pro CS5 next to one another, showing the entire workflow from ingest to output, I guarantee that your clients would be impressed by CS5 for several reasons: 1) FCP requires transcoding for some of the long-GOP MPEG video formats (such as HDV), so Premiere will save your clients time right from the start; 2) Premiere does not require rendering when using different frame rates, codecs, multiple layers and many effects – again saving your clients time; 3) add a curves effect and a vignette, and even CS4 struggles to play it back in real time but CS5 has no problem; 4) take a clip into After Effects and Premiere does not require any rendering. Heck, you can even see it automatically update in Premiere. However, FCP requires you render from After Effects first; 5) Now render / encode the video. Premiere CS5 blows away anyone and everyone thanks to CUDA processing and being 64bit native.
Tim Kolb: As far as the intuitiveness of the user interface of either of these programs… everyone’s right. You make such judgments based on your own experiences. I’ve used Final Cut Pro and I find it to be more similar to Premiere Pro than different, frankly. There’s a few areas that I think there are advantages for one or the other, but most of those are a matter of preference.
The base titler in Premiere Pro is one of my favorite everyday utility features and the titler tools in FCP leave me cold, but again, that’s a personal preference thing. Everyone has Photoshop and titling can ultimately be done there for whatever NLE you have.
As far as making enough money to pay for the CS5 Production Premium Suite… it costs less than After Effects alone did not so many years ago. I don’t see how anyone can complain about the price of anything these days. I remember buying Media100 instead of Avid because I could buy two for $100k vs. only one Avid, and the capabilities of either at the time would be laughable next to any solution you want to compare it to these days, whether it’s Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Vegas, Edius, and of course, modern day versions of Media100 and Avid as well. I think price is sort of an absurd argument these days when you can pay for any of these solutions in one single job.
As far as real-time support is concerned, Premiere Pro has got that one vs. FCP I think, regardless of a GPU being present or not. DSLR, AVCHD, XDCAM in just about every variety including Canon’s new XF format (except Convergent Design files for some inexplicable reason), DVCProHD P2 has been quite fast and easy for a couple versions now, without any rewrap / duplication of data of course. I was running un-processed RED RAW on a dual-core Windows laptop in CS4 (I needed to drop the playback resolution down of course, but I had the RAW processing controls right there, no flattening or conversion necessary).
Final Cut Pro runs pretty darn well when you are using it as it was designed, as any product does, including Premiere Pro. I think you need to examine any of these products, at least somewhat, within the context of their design philosophy. We’ve all got it so good now, that we have forgotten how many compromises we used to have to make in the late 1990’s.
I’ve now run CS5 on enough different machines with GPU accelerated effects preview, without GPU, with AJA I/O, Windows, and Mac. I think it’s the real deal and Mercury works impressively, even without a GPU. So…ultimately I think it’s coming down to what interface works for you vs. what workflow you find yourself in, and where you’re willing to compromise on one to serve the other if necessary.
User Testimonial: From Sony Vegas to Adobe Premiere Pro
Author: Roger H. Shealy
Occupation: Director of Engineering
Video: Serious video hobbyist, shooting community events and special interest pieces
Equipment: Canon 7D, T2i & assorted glass (Tamron 17-50 f2.8 VCII, Canon 18-135mm, Canon 50mm F1.8, SMC Takumar 50mm f1.4; SMC Takumar 35mm f2.0, SMC Takumar 28mm f3.5, Small HD DP1, Sennheiser G2 & Lav, Rode NTG2, Zoom H2
Computer: i7-950, GTX 470; OCZ 110GB SSD, 2x1TB Sata III Caviar Black
Software: Sony Vegas Pro v10, Adobe CS5 – Master Collection, Cineform NeoScene, Pluraleyes (Vegas), Neat Video (Vegas)
I have been a long time user of Sony Vegas Movie Studio (versions 6, 7, 8) and Sony Vegas Pro (versions 8, 9, 10) NLE software to edit video as a serious hobbyist to capture my growing family, community events, and to communicate technical work more effectively at the office. My profession is directing a design / engineering department for a large company. My serious hobby is videography and the technology that surrounds it. My cameras have progressed from my Sony 8mm Handycam to Sony Hi-8mm Handycam to numerous Canon Powershot cameras in movie mode to a Sony HDR-HC3 to a Canon XHA1 to my current Canon EOS 7D and Rebel T2i cameras. In the standard definition era, Sony Vegas products were grossly underrated and were often passed off as consumer software while Final Cut, Avid, and to a lesser extent earlier versions of Adobe’s Premiere Pro were considered professional grade. Sony Vegas was fast to use, drawing from its audio editor roots. Drop, drag, mix formats, millions of output options… Vegas was really good in an SD world. When I switched to HDV in 2006 things slowed down a bit in my Vegas world, but I believe most NLE programs shared similar struggles. When I moved to D-SLRs in 2009, my Vegas world began to really suffer, even with a new i7-950 processor, GTX470 graphics card, and SSD/Sata III drives. Fortunately I was able to compensate through the use of Cineform’s excellent NeoScene software. Unfortunately that patch comes at a cost in time for transcoding files into large .avi files.
When Adobe CS5 was announced with its Mercury Playback Engine, I, like millions of other editors struggling with HD footage, got goose bumps. After one-too-many multi-track D-SLR projects using Vegas v9 and v10, I decided to give Adobe CS5 a whirl. First of all, I really like Vegas. It’s a comfortable friend that I know well. I have learned to appreciate its lightening fast cuts, fades, and excellent audio editing. Once source footage is converted into a format Vegas can handle; it is perhaps the fastest way on earth to edit to professional looking results. It doesn’t have the plug-in selection some programs enjoy nor does it have the mind-numbing flexibility of others. It’s just fast, flexible, easy, and adequate for all but the most demanding editing tasks. Vegas in my opinion has always been on the doorstep of excellence but has never quite managed to open that door. Vegas has two Achilles heels: persistent programming bugs and poor handling of HD files, especially .mov / H264 files. Even with a very fast computer multiple tracks and special effects are problematic and resulting low frame rates make precise editing very difficult. Did I mention bugs? In every HD version I have been plagued with mysterious clip disappearances, “red” clips, lost audio tracks and other unexplained phenomenon. The Vegas implementation of CUDA graphics is not noteworthy and performance gains are extremely modest.
My journey into Adobe CS5 has been an interesting one. Premiere Pro is more complex than Vegas, plain and simple. As I see it, CS5 has two major advantages over Vegas. First, the Mercury Engine is awe inspiring. Drop two, three or four tracks of D-SLR footage into the timeline and with a decent processor and a compatible NVidia card you can view and edit flawlessly. This is very freeing — even complex effects usually play smoothly at native frame rates! This is a big deal. A second advantage is the ease of switching from editing to After Effects to PhotoShop. These programs interact as if they were designed to work with each other. Hmmm, I guess they were! Certainly you can use After Effects and PhotoShop files in Vegas, but it’s a little more work.
When I have a complex project, I sometimes invest time in Premiere to “learn the ropes” a little more. For me using Premiere feels like writing with a better pen but having to use my left hand (I’m right handed). I believe for the newcomer about to invest in new software the CS5 Suite is the better choice. For someone that uses PhotoShop, Illustrator, or After Effects extensively, CS5 is the better choice. If you are like me with many years of Vegas experience trying to create clean, basic edits without extensive use of other CS5 products, Vegas is the faster, easier option and becoming proficient with Premiere is difficult to justify. If Vegas develops a “Mercury Engine” of its own and manages to avoid its traditional software bugs it will be the best editor for basic to moderately complex editing tasks. For now, however, Premiere Pro is the superior editor with great integration with all of the other tools provided in the CS5 suite.
