What are we migrating to?

[Arne Johnson]

Hey all,

We've just been mulling over our future with FCP, after a decade of good times, and assessing all the possible avenues forward...FCPX, sticking with FCP7 for as long as possible, switching to Media Composer or Premiere, etc. Part of what would be important to us, beyond whether we liked each choice or not, is what the rest of the editing community is leaning towards or doing already, as one of the great advantages of FCP is that nearly everyone we work with is on the same program and it makes collaboration easy. I worry that fragmentation is going to hit, and it'll be increasingly tough to partner up. I'm hoping without, without inspiring any sort of flame war about what sucks and what doesn't, to just hear what people have decided. Just to get a bit of a survey of what might become a more common solution. We're fairly agnostic, mostly want a good NLE that we can easily hire freelancers to work on project without too much hassle. Most of the folks we know are still as indecisive as we are...but thought we'd try to get a taste of the weather before it blows through!

[Gabe Hinson]

I'm a small-time freelance video editor; first learning how to edit on Premiere, then attended film school where I learned Final Cut Pro (version 5).

I'd like to think Avid Media Composer is going to gain some ground again while FCPX is floundering in the freelance community. My attitude is definitely 'wait and see,' and I imagine those who bought into the Apple ProRes supported hardware will have that same mentality.

I might dabble a bit in Premiere and see what advantages I get with native AVCHD support.

Who knows? Maybe film school grads or up-and-coming freelancers who aren't invested in Apple/FCP will make the switch to Sony Vegas Pro. The specs look good. Plus, Sony has a penchant for integrating neat features into their software/hardware combos.

I've downloaded a trial copy of Media Composer 5 and will give it a shot after I'm done with my current project. Maybe some others will do the same.

[John Richard]

We've gone with Premiere:

-Not a vey steep learning curve from FCP to Premiere
-Works with our Blackmagic card for I/O and monitoring on calibrated monitor
-AE, Photoshop, Audition(powerful sound tool), Encore for Optical
-64 bit FAST
-nVidia Card with Cuda makes for mostly real-time
-Lots of training options free and paid - Adobe TV, Classroom in a Book, Harrington, Lynda, etc
-Commitment to the FUTURE development - an announced timeline - commitment to pro users
-Good online support that we personally have already experienced
-route out of Apple if Apple keeps wigging out with their OS and hardware - crossover to PC is still an option

FCP was and is still a great revolution... but time to move for us. FCPX could be something in the future,, but the Adobe studio of apps work good NOW and have a foreseeable future.

[Rick L. Allen]

We're moving to Premiere

We do commercial work for Fortune 200 companies, cable & broadcast documentaries and web video production.

After trying Avid, learning on Media100 many years ago and then switching to FCP a decade ago we're moving on. The inability to import old FCP7 programs into FCP X is a non-starter as well as the missing collaborative features. My colleagues who use Avid still complain about their poor quality support. We've been using Photoshop and other Adobe products since 2.0 so the move is only natural. Our hardware also easily transitions to Premiere.

It's a pity because we're among the people who bought Mac hardware & software when their stock was worth $1.50 a share and kept Apple afloat.

[Arne Johnson]

We were leaning towards Premiere too, especially because between familiarity with AE and Photoshop and Premiere's similarity, the transition would be less painful. Glad to hear some other folks have gone that direction too...

[Robert Turchick]

I own Premier (through the Production Premium package) but still havent made the switch from FCP. I will eventually but FCP still works great and I'm super fast in it.
Premier is the logical step for me since I'm a heavy AE user as well as PS and Media Converter. The workflow will be much simpler.
I have the same issue with the community I'm in being 90% FCP users. Gonna be a nasty transition once it starts being critical to update.
Ugh!

[Craig Seeman]

Using FPC7 and FCPX as it matures.

[Marcus Durham]

Adobe Creative Suite here. The half price offer made it a no brainer.

Not much of a learning curve for Premiere (FCP and Premiere are distant cousins anyway) + you get all the cool stuff like Photoshop and Illustrator which I find myself using more and more all of a sudden.

The latest Premiere is everything FCP-X should have been. Really nice neat features and having After Effects is a real boon. Loving it, although I did choose to invest in more memory as After Effects will basically eat anything you throw at it.

Granted I used to use Premiere 1.5 on PC so perhaps find it abit easier. But actually I can swap between FCP7 and Premiere easily. All the key concepts are the same and it's just a few small things that have different approaches.

And Audtion is to die for. I'd been eeking out my 9 year old copy of Cooledit Pro via Parallels but to have a modern version running under OSX is a dream (Cooledit is what it was called before Adobe bought it). Makes Soundtrack Pro look like a bad dream.

In short you get an excellent editor that is similar to FCP and an excellent suite of packages. Audition and After Effects are worth their weight in gold and no editor should be without them unless you are planning on doing seriously high end stuff.

A month after making the decision I'm not regretting it.

[Marc S. Brown]

It's weird, but I have a student copy of FCS2 (6.06) that I was able to get 1/2 price through the student discount. Honestly, yeah it's a couple of editions old, and I may not know what I'm missing, (maybe I'm still too much of a novice in the industry) but I find myself still learning all the features it has to offer and it still works great. For what I do (weddings and short commercial pieces) it's fantastic. Maybe if my mac breaks down I'll have to make a decision, but I don't see that happening for a few years still.....

[Arne Johnson]

Yeah, Marc, FCP 6 was fine though there are some nice improvements in 7 that we've become rather dependent on. The thing that really burns me about FCP X is that it finally implemented 64 bit, which is really the major upgrade that we were waiting for that would make a real noticeable difference in versions above 6 (and should've been in 7). Anyone who has set up Compressor to work with multiple cores through Qmaster will have had a glimpse of how rendering and other tasks could become almost seamless. We're running a pretty fast machine, actually a Hackintosh that's an i7 chip overclocked at 3.2 GHZ (has 8 possible cores, some virtual), and it just kills me to watch it work at basically the same speed as our older computer on FCP while smoking it in Compressor. Seeing that Premiere is already 64bit is a pretty big incentive.

[Chris Korrow]

Premier for me too after 9 years of FC. It was an easy switch & PS and AE alone are worth the $850.

The increased speed & the ability to edit DSLR without transcoding, by far made up for the learning curve of the switch.

Also when FCX came out, premier sales jumped something like 45%

[Chris Korrow]

Of course there's also this if you haven't seen it in the industry news section.

SAN JOSE, Calif. and AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Sept. 8, 2011 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced at the IBC 2011 Conference and Exhibition that it has acquired certain assets of privately held IRIDAS, a leader in high-performance tools for digital color grading and enhancement of professional film and video content, including stereoscopic technology. Color grading is an essential component of finalizing professional film and television content and is becoming an increasingly important part of modern content creation with the advent and rapid growth of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video.

[Konrad Haskins]

Originally Posted by Gabe Hinson

Who knows? Maybe film school grads or up-and-coming freelancers who aren't invested in Apple/FCP will make the switch to Sony Vegas Pro. The specs look good. Plus, Sony has a penchant for integrating neat features into their software/hardware combos.

Sony has it's issues. Most features work on most hardware. Enough do not that there is and has been for a long time discontent with its stability. I used version 3 through 8. Visit Sony Creative Software forum to see issues.