I’m through with Final Cut Pro
I never though I’d say this, but I’m finally through with FCP and I’m moving over to Adobe Premiere CS5. Farewell, Final Cut Pro, it’s been nice knowing you. So why am I switching? I was really skeptical at first, but I’m now convinced that Premiere gives the best results and fastest editing for prosumer and independent editors.
Here are my reasons for switching:
- Apple recently announced they are discontinuing the XServe, which means Final Cut Server won’t be seeing any major upgrades. It signals to me that Apple isn’t that invested in Pro Apps any more since they will no longer have server-level architecture to support the Pro Apps (like a Final Cut Server or QMaster nodes). Which means, bye bye render farms and video archiving.
- There were rumors have it that the Pro Apps team at Apple were given a directive to focus on bringing more newbie users from iMovie into the Pro Apps, and cater less to the power users. Basically, all the cool features are coming into iMovie first (like in iLife ’11), and then later onto FCP. If you look at the last FCP7 release, it was a lame release with virtually no really improvements and I never felt any real benefit from it. iChat integration? Motion has fundamentally been flawed. Color 1.5 is as hard to use as Color 1.0. Soundtrack crashes the same when round-tripping with FCP. Apple knows the money is in iLife apps not Pro Apps. Look at the latest iMovie ’11, with it’s fancy new rolling shutter fix for DSLRs, which was missing in Final Cut Pro 7. So, iMovie will be in the lead for product innovation? Please.
- Premiere’s rendering/playback engine is superb. I can have 7 layers of text, animated blur, blending modes, transparency composited over moving video. You preview close to 20fps with no rendering (that in just software, without leveraging the NVIDIA GPU CUDA). If you do want to render, rendering is multiprocessor and 64-bit, same goes for exporting.
- Premiere’s text tool is far better than FCPs. You can have multiple text per title, with fine control of kerning. Font preview actually works and wrapping is all done for you. You can preview titles over the video, and create templates.
- Color Correction tools are better. Though it’s not as good as Color, the UI however is more accessible. FCP’s 3-way color corrector felt clunky. Moving the controls on the color wheels always felt imprecise.
- Premiere CS5′s UI is great. Just being to adjust UI brightness is a plus as I need to work in dim environments when editing to maintain color accuracy. Values are precisely set similar to the After Effects UI. Setting and moving keyframes is like After Effects. Keyframe editor that actually feels usable and unconstrained to a little palette window. Coming from a UX background, CS5 (and I would guess CS4 as well) inherits the UI investments that Adobe has made across all their Creative Suite. Compare to FCP, where none of the applications in the Final Cut Studio look, feel or work the same.
- FCP import/export will allow decent interoperability.
- This is a big one. Premiere CS5 allows editing of DSLR footage at various formats without having to use ProRes. On FCP, we convert to ProRes in order to make editing easier since applying effects to H264 footage means tons of rendering in FCP. Well, because of Premiere’s awesome playback engine, you can use H264 native footage from DSLRs without having to convert ahead of time. This means we save like 4 times the hard drive space and time! Plus, this is nerdy, but when converting H264 footage to ProRes there are huge gamma bugs and your almost always ends up dark and saturated. You get none of that in Premiere.
- Premiere is cross-platform, so we can have more editors and edit stations.
There are cons to Adobe Premiere CS5 as well:
- There’s about a second or 2 delay when starting a playback (I assume it’s caching). JKL works but not as responsive as in FCP. I’m willing to pay for this to avoid rendering and I heard is solved when you have a more powerful graphics card.
- Premiere is expensive at $800. Final Cut Studio is $1000. Adobe Production Premium which includes Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects, etc is $1,700. Hopefully student/nonprofit discounts can help here.
- There are some silly bugs on the timeline when dragging clips in and targeting the proper track. For example, when unlinking a video from it’s audio, you have to deselect and re-select it for the link to actually break so you can roll edit one without affecting the other. Razor tool hotkey is funky, requiring you to enable tracks that you want to cut. You’re forced to use the razor tool (c) to do any cutting, and I hate lifting my hands off the keyboard when I edit. Perhaps I’m a newbie, but it does have some annoying hiccups and there’s less hotkeys to selecting edit cuts, extracting empty space before a clip (hotkey ‘x’ in FCP), etc.
I’ve read some reviews and comparisons between Adobe Premiere CS5 and Final Cut Pro, but they tend to be pretty superficial. The Adobe Premiere users tend to be PC users that have a gripe against Apple in general, and the level of editing expertise is a little underwhelming from the points they raise against FCP. Well, as a Mac users and admittedly an Apple fanboy, I’m finally leaving Apple pro apps. First, it was my decision to use Adobe Lightroom over Apple Aperture,which I never regret doing. Now, it’s FCP. I love OS X and it’s the best platform to code, edit, design, and manage files. I just can’t say I have the same love for Apple’s pro apps. They need to learn a few lessons from Adobe here.
Categorized as Design, General
Check out this Apple Final Cut Pro 7 vs Adobe Premiere CS5 shootout: http://vimeo.com/14110589
Welcome! We’re happy to have you.
Be sure to install the recent update ( http://bit.ly/hfwZHx ). It may help with some of the lag that you were experiencing.
Also, if you’re coming from Final Cut Pro, these documents might be helpful:
http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2010/09/premiere-pro-overview-documents-for-final-cut-pro-and-avid-media-composer-users.html
If you bring questions and issues to the Premiere Pro forum, we can help you there: http://bit.ly/4LhNPW
You bring up some great points. What kind of video card is in your test machine? I note that the new FX4000 is available for less than $1500 – I’m specing that in my next box regardless of whether I stay with FCP.
If we have the Creative Suite (I do, for Photoshop and AE), it comes with Premiere CS5. It’s not like I’d be laying out more cash just for that. The FCP import is the icing on the cake. Can’t wait to try it!
Apple rumored to discontinue Xsan and Final Cut Server.
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/17/apple-considering-discontinuing-more-server-focused-products/
What did I tell you…. yeesh
The first reason of switching from Final Cut Pro the author states the rumor of Final Cut Server being discontinued. Hm.?
And what does Adobe have that matches Final Cut Server?
Nothing…
It’s because their discontinuing of Final Cut Server signals a decline in the overall Apple’s overall commitment to their Pro Apps line. If you discontinue the asset management system for your pro line, what does that say?
Conrad,
You are spreading unsubstantiated rumors: there was no an announcement of Apple discontinuing Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Server or for that matter, Xsan ( they usually go in the same line on the rumor mill), and you will look like a gossiper when Apple releases their new versions.
And the signs are all around us:
1. Steve Jobs confirmed a new version of Final Cut Studio is coming soon, and it is not a rumor. I am sure Apple is completely rewriting the code to make it 64-bit. BTW, how long did it take Adobe to rewrite Adobe CS as 64-bit?
2. Drew Tucker just released a new book on Final Cut Server. If the product was on the slaughter line, Apple censors would not let it see the light of day. Again, I can assure you that despite bragging of other vendors there is absolutely nothing on the $1,000 – $10,000 video DAM market right now that matches the power of this 32-bit asset management system, and from my experience working with some +$500,000 DAM attached with high-shot tech support gurus, FCSvr literally kicks ass even there. We have over 100K assets and searching them is a breeze. I have complex scripts that exchange metadata through web services as well as utilize CLI of a few transcode engine. Nobody else could do that, not without a 300K budget.
Developing a video DAM is not an easy task. I would love Adobe come up with their DAM, just like they did cheaper and maybe even better Lightroom when Apple unleashed $500 Aperture ( i still use Aperture though). Yet, still Adobe doesn’t have anything. Which, btw, should not really stop users from going over to Adobe Premiere, because FCSvr works with it as well. You just can’t manage projects files the way you can Final Cut Pro projects, and if you are serious about archiving, this is huge. Checking in your FCP projects allows you seamlessly archive assets based on access timestamp.
3. Xsan 2.3 is coming. I personally came across a job posting posted by a clueless recruiter for Quantum look for an engineer to test Xsan 2.3. It was “corrected” and any words of “testing” or “2.3″ were removed a day later.
Anyway, the competition is good. It is great that Adobe has a mature video editing app now, and users do have some alternatives in the broad market ( Avid never really came down from the skies, unfortunately), but let’s not make dramatic statements. Yes, FCP is showing its age, but Adobe Premiere doesn’t have the same market share as FCP or Avid yet. So for those editors who tend to pick one horse to ride on, try to book a job at an agency and tell them you use Premiere only.
As to discontinuation of Xserves: Apple was never very versatile on that, it was too obvious, and we will have better options very soon. BTW, Adobe is not in a server business, and it doesn’t worry anyone.
Vitali,
I never said Apple would discontinue Final Cut Pro. I do think Final Cut Server is due on the chopping block. Without the Xserve as it’s server backend, where do you plan on running your Final Cut Server? On a Mac Pro under somebody’s desk? Or perhaps a stack of Mac Mini’s in the closet? Seriously?
I just think if Apple is not serious about the Xserve, they have a lot of convincing to do to sell the Final Cut Studio ecosystem, as the Xserve really is the backbone of XSan, FCS, QMaster, etc. Any serious server architecture does not rely on a workstation, which is what Apple is apparently suggesting as their “transition” plan.
Final Cut Server is ridden with bugs. I can’t even get it to properly fire off QMaster without rebooting it every day. It’s postgres connections are flaky. FCS 1.5 also requires the entire organization to upgrade to FCP7 in order to maintain compressor/qmaster/prores compatibility. Very lame.
I guess my point is that it seems Apple is not focusing on it’s pro apps as much. You have to agree there. FCP7 was a joke release. Are they going to change their ways? Is it a new beginning? Steve said the new FCP will be incredible, and then discontinues the Xserve. Something is not right here.
Apple will follow it’s nose on what is profitable. Final Cut Studio might profitable, but the server market isn’t. And so logically, they will cut there and that will have a ripple effect on all server-related software.
Conrad,
I am in broadcast IT business, and I know first hand the impact of Apple discontinuing the Xserves. However I would not rush to make quick and loud assumptions and would wait how the field plays out next few months. I am sure new and interesting technologies will emerge as you can already see with Active Storage announcement. In the past discontinuing of Xserve RAID only helped other storage vendors offer better solutions.
It also appears you don’t have a deep understanding of Final Cut Server, and the issues you have had with it ( rebooting Qmaster cluster every day? come on… ) are more of the result of your lack of training and expertise in deploying and managing this particular asset management system as well as overall OS X Server experience. Nobody said Final Cut Server would match the simplicity of iPhoto. It is a professional DAM after all. BTW, Final Cut Server 1.5 does support Final Cut Cut 6: actually it is better for system stability if your users can’t submit direct jobs to Qmaster on their own, but rather go through the Final Cut Server route. I actually run a large deployment with Final Cut Server 1.5 and Final Cut Pro 6: trust me, we are fully operational, and don’t have any major complaints, except a few annoying misspellings in pop-up windows. We had to stay with Final Cut Pro 6 because another industry “leader”, a solution we ingest, play out and used to do asset management with (barely), still doesn’t support FCP7.
You would also want to steer away from hacking into FCSvr PostgreSQL database, because it is too risky and Final Cut Server has its own very powerful CLI, which let’s you do a way a lot more.
In short, it appears you know very little about Final Cut Server and what is more troubling, is that you are dissing it while not offering real alternatives. While you seemed to be evangelizing Adobe Premiere ( good for you, why not? competition is great! ), but you don’t stop comparing it with Final Cut Pro only. You need to take down the whole Apple Pro line with it, including Server products, while you curiously omit the fact that Adobe doesn’t even have products in that lineup that match what Apple offers. Instead, you are trying to predict the future. Careful there: there are a lot of Apple Kremlinologists out there, but not many had right answers.
As to the subject of lame releases, you will have to convince me that CS4 was a revolutionary step from CS3. However CS5 is a different matter. But I don’t want to throw stones at Adobe and criticizing them for releasing CS4: it did address quite a number of issues and it served the needs, just like Final Cut Pro 7.
Anyway, I would suggest to deal with facts and leave predictions to rumor sites.
Hi Vitali,
Though, my original posting is not really about FCS, I do have some gripes about it:
1) Watch Folders and Copy Responses … not terribly robust and for me, it’s a key feature I rely on for workflow and ingest. .fcsvr folders often go stale in those watch folders. In order to reset it, you have to manually remove those files, bounce FCS server and then somehow update the modtime of the file in the watch folder to get it to recognize it again.
2) FCS Server 1.5 ships with the latest version of QMaster/Qadministrator that is incompatible with previous versions. Which means your FCS server can never run as your cluster controller, since it would require that all your cluster nodes also be on the latest version of QMaster/Qadministrator, which is only possible by upgrading everything to FCP7. So the only workaround is have a separate machine for FCS Server and Xseve to be your cluster controller. Yuck.
Though I don’t want to make this a flame war about the merits of Final Cut Server, I think if you zoom out, the fact is that the Xserve will be discontinued. This is vastly different than comparing it to the XRAID fiasco. It’s probably more analogous to Apple discontinuing Shake … they did it because there’s no large market for it and it’s a not easy to support. And so whole hordes of Shake users flocked to other solutions like Nuke, and entire infrastructures built around the Shake workflow would have to be ripped out and redone.
My point is that the discontinuing of the Xserve spells trouble to almost every server-related product on Apple’s product line. How can it not? What will those server-related products run on? And so my argument goes that it is likely that Xsan, FCS, and OS X server will likely be on the chopping block. Say you had a friend responsible for building up a broadcast infrastructure from scratch, would you recommend the Apple server product line to them as something to bank on, especially with those Apple products are tied to the hip to Apple’s Xserve? So I think this is a logically sound argument that Apple will not likely invest in their server-related product line. You are right in saying that Adobe has no alternatives, and Avid is too expensive. But I rather bank on a sub-par DAM solution than on Final Cut Server, whose future is questionable (which at the very least you would have to admit)
My decision to leave FCP had to do with a lot of reasons. The server-related infrastructure reasons were only 2 points out of my 9. We might debate the merits of what sub $10k DAM that can compete with Final Cut Server, but I think that is really beside the point.
http://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/1365
Sounds like a 800 pound gorilla is about to smash things around ;-)
Anyway, Conrad, you completely missed the points I outlined to you. It looks like more and more your predictions will be totally off both on FCP and FCSvr. Stand by for more news.
“There’s about a second or 2 delay when starting a playback (I assume it’s caching). JKL works but not as responsive as in FCP.”
It’s the h264 codec; prores is made for editing; h264 is not. If you imported a ProRes file (or convert to cineform) to Premiere, it’s nice and buttery just like FCP handles ProRes. The advantage of converting to edit friendly vs. advantages of native editing is all. CPUs/GPUs seem to be making a stride to make h264 handled even better, though, so may not be an issue for long.
“There are some silly bugs on the timeline when dragging clips in and targeting the proper track. For example, when unlinking a video from it’s audio, you have to deselect and re-select it for the link to actually break so you can roll edit one without affecting the other.”
Use alt-click to select just one of the links. You really never have to unlink files which is probably why it’s not well-developed–though a global unlink (or at least unlink while multiple clips are selected) would be extremely appreciated, Adobe.
“Razor tool hotkey is funky, requiring you to enable tracks that you want to cut. You’re forced to use the razor tool (c) to do any cutting, and I hate lifting my hands off the keyboard when I edit.”
Yes, similar to media composer, the ‘razor track’ command will cut your enabled tracks without actually having to go use the razor tool. Quite handy for quicker cutting.
- tw
Using CMD K will razor all tracks you have active at the scrub. This is useful for me. I dont like to have a cut on a track I’m not trimming. You can activate/deactivate a track by clicking it’s info to the left of the timeline.
Using ALT Delete will ripple delete, so all highlighted tracks will move the length of any gaps. If you don’t want a track to move while rippling (a music track or ambi) just deactivate that track.
I prefer Premiere myself because the discounted rate for the entire Master Collection CS5 was cheeper than Final Cut Pro alone at Apple’s student pricing.
I’ve also found that the true glory behind Premiere is in the department of compatibility.
Some more quick tips.
Use In Point -Out Point on the source viewer to save time editing and moving around the timeline.
Use multiple sequences(timelines) in the project for larger projects (full length films in HD) for each chapter, then use Encore when making the final export medium to string it all together.
Make yourself custom workspaces with only the tools you need for the task at hand.
For tedious tasks, record a macro and let Premiere apply whatever you did automatically in the future, and it might be hotkeyable, but I’m not sure.
Audition for the Mac is still in beta, so make Audition (which is free right now) your computers default waveform app and edit your audio there ( you’ll be amazed at what you can get away with without ever needing ADR.)
Make sure you save AND render before exporting. You will find out why soon enough.
Finally, do your rolling credits in Photoshop, or Illustrator and keep the .PSD filename if you really want control over your final output.
Conrad,
Why in Adobe products (AE, Pr, PS, Illustrator CS4, CS5, CS5.5) PAL Square pixel 788×576??
D1 PAL right 720×576, but Square pixel not 768×576 but 788×576? Why?
Final Cut Server was discontinued by Apple on June 21, 2011.
Vitali, it looks like Conrad was right and knows what he’s talking about.
Conrad was right, and the author of that Final Cut Server book is currently selling iPads right now.
The lesson to learned here is to never get all ‘evangelical’ about a software platform. And don’t go around trying to bully people who want to offer rightful criticism. There was nothing wrong with the Final Cut Server platform, but there was plenty wrong with the small group of individuals who tried to corner the market on it.
It was just a Proximity Artbox ported to the Mac platform with Compressor capability. They didn’t even rename the PostgreSQL tables – they all started with ‘px’. Proximity. Get it?
Back in the day, when I was looking at investing in a DAM, Artbox’s Proxmity was square on my radar. The innovation trend that the product was showing was impressive. I was actually pretty close to making the purchase when Apple swooped in and made the acquistion. I jazzed because like Color, Apple was gonna lower the price significantly and I hoped clean up the UI. Version 1.0 came out, I got it. It was immediately clear that it was a quick-port, and they didn’t push it forward much. When version 1.5 came out, I upgraded as well, and was again disappointed. Like Color, it just seemed they weren’t investing that much into it. Looking back, I wished Proximity just stayed with Artbox.
I sure feel like an idiot for advocating FCP and Apple the past few years. They make me look bad in this. I have been an editor for 30 years and have never felt so betrayed. The New FCP is piss poor. They are done with professionals and it won’t even affect thier bottom line. The writing is on the wall. Anyone who thinks different is like the person in a relationship who thinks its not really over and keeps sleeping with the heartless loser who is leading them on. I have no choice but to switch to a new system.
One that the whole company will go bust if they screw users in mass quanities. One that cares abput and listens to professionals. My biggest problem is which one? Avid? Adobe? Media100? Smoke?(Too much learning curve and price for my pro editing enjoyment.)
With any luck regarding apple, what goes around comes around. Apple has cost me a lot of time and money and I’m a small shop. They have caused massive problems and expenditures for the entire industry.They are the laughing stock of viral videos like the one
from conan and the hitler thing on utube sums it up well. What Arrogance!
Kenny Stainton
Houston
I have to admit, I would not expect Apple to discontinue Final Cut Server in such manner and thought they would offer a new Final Cut Server / FCP integration as in Avid Interplay / Newscutter .
It’s surely a hit below the belt. Final Cut Pro X release is a huge snafu: the Apple guys spent too much time talking to themselves and chosen trainers. I do see a lot of hidden features in FCP X hitting to possible multiuser workflows, but the question is if we want to follow and risk too much.
However, again and again, I want to state my main point:
What does Adobe offers in video asset management? What DAMs are so tightly integrated with Premiere as FCP 6/7 were with FCSvr, or Avid Newscutter with Interplay? This is a huge gap. Adobe doesn’t think on the video enterprise level for Premiere yet, unfortunately, and I really and sincerely wish they would.
I still do think it was unfair to compare Adobe Premiere with the whole line: Final Cut Pro 7, Final Cut Server, Xserve and Xsan, and I can still sign up after every word I wrote.
As to Final Cut Server, it will be still running and being supported by integrators for quite some time, just like, and John McVey can confirm here ;) , all those Artbox installations around the world. Still running. Here is the list of companies I just know myself have FCSvr installations now:
AOL – NY and LA
Google Lab – NY
QuickSiliver
Thomson Reuters – NY
MTV – NY & London
MLB – NJ
ABC – Burbank, CA
CBS College Sports, NY ( graphics )
Ogilvy & Mather, NY
JWT – NY
BBDO – NY
Georgia Aquarium – Atlanta, GA
Columbia University, NY
Health and Safety Institute – Eugene, OR
Premier Retail Networks – San Francisco, CA
Herbalife
Joyce Meyer Ministries – Fenton, MO
Serino Coyne of Omnicom Group Inc., NY
For Adobe Premiere to get those installations to switch, they have to show more than just FCP-like interface. The same goes for FCP X.
for cutting there is (drums) magic CTRL + K !
your welcome!