Why do you use Premiere Pro 2

[Mike Schrengohst]

Thats what they do for EFX work and some features.....
Impractical in day to day editing.....
I have both platforms....
Made the switch to FCP because it just works with
P2 and the HVX200.....
I like the color-correction tools in FCP better than
in any PC editing app.
I can export an OMF file and send it over the net to
my audio studio for sweetening. They send me .aiffs back.
I can do many operations right in FCP that I used to
do in AE - had to do in AE on the PC.
I still use AE for some things but find myself
using it less and less.
I just finished editing a 5 screen HD show.....
I had 5 HD sequences open and then could nest those in
another sequence and scale to show the client what
the presentation would look like.....
(Yes I did have to render but times were managable)
I tried doing edits like that in Premiere years ago with SD
footage running SCSI raids and had problems....
Maybe Premiere works better now but I won't visit that
software again.

[Gene Crucean]

Originally Posted by Steven Gotz

It just occured to me that the simple way to get the highest quality image from one platform to the other is as a numbered series of stills. Huge storage issues, but that is probably the simplest and more quality conscious way.

What do people think about that option?

That's exactly what I did. LOTS of full res tga's. Then exported all audio as one really long audio track. Movie wise I couldn't figure it out because nothing would work.

[Saturnin Kondratiew]

i've been using adobe products for 10 years now...yah sure premiere messes up once and again..but if u have edit rig it shouldnt.

I would love to go into FCP but i jsut odnthave the $$ to swich to mac just yet....and i'm hoping p2 will be suported by premiere next version.

In all honesty like i said before, it doesnt amtter what u edit on, as long as u get the end product to the client. I can work super fast in pro, so why would i switch to something and re learn it(like vegas or avid). Its good to know more NLE's, but not necessary i dont think. But it also depends what type of work one does right.

[David Ziegelheim]

I've used FCP, PP (and old Premiere a long time ago) and Vegas (escaping from old Premiere). FCP does support some codecs (DVCPro50 for one) that PP doesn't. However, I don't see the loyality to it otherwise. IMHO, PP and FCP have a very similar interface. I found the audio work easier in PP. Ditto the video filters...and more of them. Both have subclips, folders, etc.

FCP is more widely supported at the pro level, but that doesn't affect me. In fact, Cineform with the promise of a high quality editing result is a much bigger inducement to use PP for me that any other possible inducement.

David

Note: I deserted Vegas for PP years ago for two reasons: Vega didn't support subclips, sequences and folders in a way i could manage project; and Adobe integrated Audition, which was Cool Edit Pro, which I was already using and is IMHO the best low end audio editor.

[Kyle Prohaska]

I use Premiere and the whole Adobe Suite at work but when I get home its FCStudio for me, or Premiere if really needed to. I think the key to using Premiere and probably my biggest reason is the Photoshop integration. The full integration with AE, PS, and Premiere is very nice. FCP although integrated with Compressor, Soundtrack Pro, etc. still lacks the image editing integration so that is a pain sometimes for me. Premiere never crashed on me but a few times so I guess im a lucky one. I love using it still and I know the Adobe products better than Apple right now but sooner or later im sure ill grow to love both equally.

-Kyle

[Jeff Chandler]

I use PP, FCP, FCE, Liquid, Avid, Edius and MSP. I teach television production so I need to be reasonably proficient with all these NLE's. In our edit lab at school I have as many freezes and force quits with FCP as I do wioth PP. My students prefer PP because they find it more intuitive and simple to use. For my side business I mostly use Edius. Very stable and real "realtime".

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

The secret is, and this is where Paul hit the nail: wipe your drive clean, install XP with no junk (aka service packs), install your drivers and your software. NEVER connect to the internet, never install any freeware or any other unnecessary software. It will work like a charm!

Perfect example of what I do also. I have a dual boot scenario. One XP install is for general stuff (office, games etc). The other is editor only. ONLY Adobe Production Suite, Photoshop, and a few encoders and titlers. Never a crash once and it runs MUCH faster than on a sw bloated install of XP. I also slipstream my editor XP install so that just the bare minimum installs (no theme, no firewall, no security center, no apps or services that won't ever be used -not even calc.exe). Totall processes after a boot into editor desktop is somewhere in the teens. THEN I only use windows certified drivers as well.

So...

Why do I use PPRO? I've used Premiere for years now and have been quite happy. FCP, if you didn't know, was written by some of the former Premiere coders. So there is a lot of that Adobe power in FCP and vice versa. I don't see the point in shelling out loads of money for MAC JUST to run FCP. Now if you already have a MAC, then great! All NLEs do the same thing in the end, it's just how you utilize what you know.

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

I've had soooo many problems with PP2 I never want to look at it again. It's literally killing my current project because I either can't export files of decent quality (if at all)

Sounds like issues with your PC hardware/drivers/rogue-software than the NLE itself....

I've been in IT for well over 10 years and seem to notice that people that have serious issues with their NLE usually have something ELSE in their system causing these crashes...

[Chris Kroitor]

Regarding the crash issues, I'd agree that it is probably some other kind of hardware issue that'd causing it. I'm a techie myself and have been running PPro on many different configurations for years without problems.

As for choice of NLE...... I'd agree with the other NLE-agnostics: in use, no particular preference.

However, for other reasons, I'd prefer PPro. - I'm currently working on a major project with the editor in Toronto, and the director here in Montreal. We've got a fancy proprietary system set up here that we can take an EDL from the editor and do an instant online (2k) edit with it. We tell him to make some changes, and presto, instant reflection in the online. So why do I prefer PPro?

He's using FCP, we're using PPro. I just spent 3 days tracking down a minute error in the whole system all the way down into FCP's method of re-linking to footage. This issue itself is already pain in the ass enough, but the gall of the Apple rep we called was even worse. Instead of trying to help, he said we needed to switch our system to a Mac with FCP. Never mind all the other problems that would cause (including with our needed AE integration), the idea of basically giving Apple $10,000 because of one tiny little flaw that's entirely based on their unwillingness to integrate with others annoys me to no end!

I'd love to tell my editor to get PPro....... but he just got his new $10,000 Mac...... I bet he'll love that.

[Ronald A. Halder]

I have been a Premier user for the last 9 years, but recently switched to FCP and I love the way everything handles so smothly in a Mac, I simply wish I made the switch even earlier. In my mechine even without a special capture card, FCP reproduces images much cleaner than PP with dedicated cards in DV/DVCAM format.

[Krystian Ramlogan]

I've used both Macs and PCs for over 10 years now in production, everything from dedicated Media100 and Avid systems to simple firewire/DV systems with FCP, Avid, or Premiere. I've even used the newtek videotoaster on amiga and PC. I've also used Premiere since version 5.1cRT and FCP since 1.0. At one of my jobs I use FCP on a daily basis. For my personal projects I use Premiere. I'm equally proficient in either and can take or leave both, I don't really care. But, I chose to use Premiere because the interface seems snappier and there's a lot more flexibility to what you can achieve - at least in my opinion.

However, there are differences and I think it all depends on your skill set, requirements, and deliverables.

You can't beat the integration of the Adobe Products; but more people are generally familiar with FCP and so can be productive using the same seat/system.

I see the Adobe solution for someone who wants to learn everything from the beginning and retain control ove the entire project.

I see the FCP solution for someone who just wants to learn how to edit and fast, with an option "now" to learn the rest as you move up or grow. The way Apple has positioned FCP is directly against AVID, which shares the same paradigm. I'm pretty happy that the competition has reduced prices to the level they are at now tho! (Pity Discreet Edit wasn't able to continue, that was a great editing app at it's time).

For my part I've had FCP quit on me for no reason (my work system has 2 GB of RAM and no other software) and when you open the project or recover the project there's problems or lots of work lost.

I've never had that kind of crash with Premiere, nor really any kind of crash unless I was really pushing the envelop and had 4 layers and multiple filters, 3rd party effects rendering - tho usually this was the hard drive choking.

Final thoughts. There is no one ultimate editing application right now, though we can hope it will come around sometime...for now though use what suits your style. To figure out what your style is can be expensive if you have to purchase the stuff yourself but at that point you buy what you can afford and live with it.

[Mikko Lopponen]

I use Premiere Pro 2.0 instead of FCP because PPro2 is better. I've been using FCP a lot at work and it's just not as fast, intuitive or robust. For example dragging the timeline on the fcp is just hell, on ppro it's smooth, accurate and easy to use. Especially in longer projects.

FCP has bad motion controls and no integration with after effects. Premiere has bezier curves so I don't have to bring everything to after but if I have to it's a lot easier to do.

FCP with a mac g5 is also slower than my older pc with an athlon 3000+. Now I have a core 2 duo so the difference is pretty big.

FCP has also worse audio manipulation tools. I tend to do a lot of audio mixing while editing because sound is 80% of the production and I need to change audio around while editing a lot.

I really don't get all this premiere bashing. FCP is not much different except worse in a couple of areas. Yes premiere can crash occasionally (save often), but my first experience with FCP was about one crash per hour in a complex project. I love pc's and how you tinker around with everything, use for example a frameserver to get material straight to virtualdub from premiere pro etc. Quicktime is pain and exporting is better with premiere pro 2. Both fcp and ppro2 have lousy scalers so I tend to scale everything with a different program.

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lopponen

I use Premiere Pro 2.0 instead of FCP because PPro2 is better. I've been using FCP a lot at work and it's just not as fast, intuitive or robust. For example dragging the timeline on the fcp is just hell, on ppro it's smooth, accurate and easy to use. Especially in longer projects.

FCP has bad motion controls and no integration with after effects. Premiere has bezier curves so I don't have to bring everything to after but if I have to it's a lot easier to do.

FCP with a mac g5 is also slower than my older pc with an athlon 3000+. Now I have a core 2 duo so the difference is pretty big.

FCP has also worse audio manipulation tools. I tend to do a lot of audio mixing while editing because sound is 80% of the production and I need to change audio around while editing a lot.

I really don't get all this premiere bashing. FCP is not much different except worse in a couple of areas. Yes premiere can crash occasionally (save often), but my first experience with FCP was about one crash per hour in a complex project. I love pc's and how you tinker around with everything, use for example a frameserver to get material straight to virtualdub from premiere pro etc. Quicktime is pain and exporting is better with premiere pro 2. Both fcp and ppro2 have lousy scalers so I tend to scale everything with a different program.

I can just see the retorts on this one, lol, just kidding. It kinda boils down to the Chevy vs. Ford argument - they both get you where you need to go though.

[Brian Handler]

Wow it's been awhile since I've been on this ol' forum.

I've been using Premiere since 6.5 and back then the program was slow, buggy, and utilized a rather unfortable workflow

Since then I've obviously upgraded to 2.0 on a dedicated dual-boot XP system. My main attraction to premiere initially was the fact that PCs are scaleable and I could personally perform maintance and upgrades in an affordable fashion. I've used a lot of FCP/AVID/MEDIA 100 systems and for my own projects I keep going back to Premiere. I like the interface and when I go looking for a tool it is always where I expect it.

Back in 2001 I used Final Cut for the first time (around then) and it had significant crashing issues...but the machine was also sub-par. Then through much of my undergrad I ran the campus news station and they were all based in FCP (even though our media playback system was linux and required everything to be written as mpegs [thank god for main concept]) so I spent a lot of time putting together news packages and teaching the system to new students. The machines now were mostly dual processor g4s with ~2gb and we were only editing miniDV...yet I encountered the spinning pinwheel of death more than once or twice. At the same time I was editing on G5s in our master control unit and again I faced the pinwheel of death and these were on lean, tuned, powerful machines.

My home editor is still in transition (waiting to see if I can upgrade to a higher speed ram) and Premiere may render slow depending on other things I'm doing...but it has never once crashed. I think Premiere continues to suffer from 6.5 and below complex when it was still an awkward design.

In June or whenever they are releasing the new Adobe Production Suite for macs I'll be the first one in line. I want to see what this G5 can do to render times and whatnot in what I consider a superior product.

I have been experimenting with some LINUX based NLEs and I hope to write up a little report on what I find. When i was out for NAB last year I saw a demo of this $35k linux turnkey system and it was pretty hot. I've located the software but, as usual with linux, it's been a hard process to install. I'm using the UBUNTU distrubtion and it doesn't grant me root level access unless is suse su via terminal and that's annoying and it's hard to program software to install automatically because of it.

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by Brian Handler

In June or whenever they are releasing the new Adobe Production Suite for macs I'll be the first one in line. I want to see what this G5 can do to render times and whatnot in what I consider a superior product.

Are you kidding me? Adobe is really porting a Mac version again??!!!??? That is awesome news if true! Those that had to suffer (I say that toyingly) with FCP might find the light again in PPRO.