Final Cut Pro vs Premiere Pro CS5

[frezeframe]

Hey everyone

My name is Mike, and I'm the video editor for PhotoshopCAFE. I just wanted to open up a little discussion for any filmmakers, or video editors out there who have used both Premiere and Final Cut- or prefer one or the other. I used Final Cut for 10 years, since Final Cut 2. During that time, I avoided Premiere as much as I could. Every time I glanced at someone using it, it just didn't look right or feel right. I thought Final Cut was the industry standard, and I was comfortable there.

Then came fall of 2010, and I started working at PhotoshopCAFE. After working on a monster 8 DVD project using Final Cut (which took well over 2 months), Colin Smith my boss (and an Adobe insider)- suggested I try Premiere. I was not too excited about that idea, but I trusted him and was willing to give it a shot.

A light clicked on.

Renderless workflow. Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects, Audition... I felt much more integrated here, than FCP Studio. The Mercury Playback Engine is superb to Final Cut (although I haven't tried the new Final Cut 10 yet). So I tried Premiere on a smaller project, and quickly became hooked. Premiere was just a more seamless experience (it still crashed, just like Final Cut) and there are little glitches that they still need to iron out, but the Adobe team is much more accessible and open to upgrades and suggestions (for us anyway).

As for Final Cut fans, there are a lot of people who feel the Apple Pro Res Codec is superior to Adobe. Like I said, I haven't tried Final Cut 10 yet, but I'm guessing they have a renderless workflow now? I hope so. Otherwise, you're wasting a lot of time waiting. As we all know, in this industry, time is the absolute most valuable commodity.

Thoughts? Experiences?

[kiwicolin]

Hi Mike,

Good to see you on here
Creative Suite all the way

[jsdesign]

Hi Mike. Never tried final Cut. Allways worked with Premiere and just tried out Sony Vegas. But, just like you, since I started working with Adobe products, i was amazed with the possibilities. (since PS 3)

[fotodog]

I've used both in my days (not the latest versions of each) and I've found Premiere to be more intuitive every step of the way. FinalCut is nice and with the right tutorials you can get the workflow going pretty easily. But out-of-the-box, Premiere winds hands down for me.

I know other people that would beg to differ, it all comes down to preferences.

I do like the whole Suite-integration with Audition, After Effects and Photoshop/Illustrator to make this such a powerful tool.

I wish I did more video editing these days. It would be nice to see what the latest Adobe bundle has to offer.

[kiwicolin]

The new CS6 is nuts! It also includes Speedgrade, which does cinema style color grading, it used to sell for $30,000 a seat!
Premiere Pro and After Effects are really fast now. Makes me happy

You can read about them here http://www.photoshopcafe.com/cs6