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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Considering making the jump to Premier from Avid, couple questions though...

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Frank Hague

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Hey, guys. So I've been a long time Avid cutter but recently have felt the need to break free from the 2K parameters of Avid (also, I have Avid 6 so it can't read Dragon files through AMA for some reason). I was just wondering the following:

1. I've heard that the newest Premier cannot handle Dragon footage without system errors and constant shutdowns. Is this the case? I also heard that the slightly older version Premier (is it called CC? Or maybe Premier 2013?) works better with the same Dragon footage than the new one does. Is this the case? If so, does anyone know when the fix will be in, or is it already in?

2. Will my computer be fast enough to handle the Dragon 6K footage natively in Premier? I have a 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM 1600 MHz DDR3, and Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

3. How good is Adobe Speed Grade? Is there secondary color correction? How much color bit depth does it use? It has to be better than Avid's Symphony I imagine, right? I think I'm only cutting with 8bit there and the secondary coloring is difficult for me to figure out.

4. Do you guys even recommend this jump!? I'm not excited about the 50 dollars a month, but the ability to punch in at free will sounds sooooo amazing. I do really adore Avid though in terms of pure narrative cutting... do you think I'll be alright? Is it worth the change?

Thanks so much, everyone.
 
I say go for it! Adobe is getting better all the time... I'm not sure I can say the same for Avid. To answer your questions...

1) We just edited an entire season of our show (all Dragon) natively in Premiere CC; no transcodes. Certainly we had some issues along the way, but Premiere simply working with Dragon hasn't been a problem for some time. CC 2014 had some stability issues when first released, but so does everything. I can't say it's worse than 2013, but we also haven't fully put it through its paces yet. Either way, I would expect Premiere to get better with time, not worse; there will always be bugs when things are first released.

2) You'll likely be able to work with the R3Ds natively, but you'll have to kick the playback resolution down to 1/8 or so for it to be totally usable, and you'll still probably encounter some latency. Not bad if you're editing a short or a reel or something, but it'll get crazy if you have a huge project. I would keep an eye on temperature though, as I've seen the Retina MacBook Pros (and the sensitive GPU inside) overheat pretty badly when doing heavy editing. Just monitor it and keep it cool.

3) SpeedGrade has gotten a lot of flak, but it's gotten way better with 2014. I'm not sure it's addressed all issues, but it's much improved, and I can tell you that the workflow is much, much more enjoyable than that of Symphony or Resolve due to its integration with Premiere. You can work with up to at least 16-bit, and yeah, you can do secondary corrections. Something like Resolve might still be better in some ways, but man, the Premiere/Resolve workflow was painful.

4) I recommend it. It blows my mind when I see how many usability and performance issues Avid still has, given their experience and spot in the market. They only recently announced GPU acceleration support on the Mac, for crying out loud. With Final Cut Pro alienating a metric ton of people, Adobe is in a real position to compete, and they want it bad. I expect their tools will only continue to improve.
 
Daniel Keywan Hollister said:
4) I recommend it. It blows my mind when I see how many usability and performance issues Avid still has, given their experience and spot in the market. They only recently announced GPU acceleration support on the Mac, for crying out loud. With Final Cut Pro alienating a metric ton of people, Adobe is in a real position to compete, and they want it bad. I expect their tools will only continue to improve.
Click to expand...

Don't forget, most Avid users are on PC, not mac. And many of Avid's clients are networks and prod companies, not indivudal/indie users (like FCP so often was). Avid does A LOT of things well. However Premiere also looks very robust, esp as a stand alone single seat editing platform.

However in the massive edit facilities I work in (I'm currently SITTING in one of 22 edits at a giant cable post house)...there's only ONE platform I'd like to see: Avid. I've run up to 8 edit rooms all working inside the same project, flawlessly...which hasn't been so easy to do on other platforms.

Point is. Don't discount Avid so easily. But yes Premiere is great.
 
Awesome answers, Daniel. Thanks so much, truly.

Nick, what is your opinion on the matter as a stand alone editor and with smaller projects? I'm thinking I'll always prefer Avid for narrative work or bigger projects, but for music videos (especially) and commercials it seems like Premiere might be a better option for me. What do you think?
 
Na' Frank, It way too late (lol)
 
Frank Hague said:
Awesome answers, Daniel. Thanks so much, truly.

Nick, what is your opinion on the matter as a stand alone editor and with smaller projects? I'm thinking I'll always prefer Avid for narrative work or bigger projects, but for music videos (especially) and commercials it seems like Premiere might be a better option for me. What do you think?
Click to expand...

I've never used Premiere myself on a paid job yet, but everything seems to suggest that yes...as a stand alone platform...it's GREAT.

My point is a for a large multi seat environment, that's where Avid excels. But for a single seat user? Everything seems to suggest Premiere is the new FCP. If my clients were NOT on Avid, and I was starting from scratch, I would give Premiere a VERY long look. For sure.
 
Frank Hague said:
3. How much color bit depth does it use? It has to be better than Avid's Symphony I imagine, right? I think I'm only cutting with 8bit there and the secondary coloring is difficult for me to figure out.

.
Click to expand...

Since Macs still only support 8bit - the OS is your color-bottleneck - Premiere does 16bit or more since years.
You need an outboard I/O solution (like a Blackmagic I/O box) to monitor your grading on some decent calibrated video monitor.
Also your retina screen will slow things down a bit, since many of the resources of the mobile GPU, going into your high res UI (i.e. eye candy),
instead of editing and render performance.

On the other hand, everything will still be way faster than on Avid.
 
Frank Glencairn said:
Since Macs still only support 8bit - the OS is your color-bottleneck - Premiere does 16bit or more since years.
You need an outboard I/O solution (like a Blackmagic I/O box) to monitor your grading on some decent calibrated video monitor.
Also your retina screen will slow things down a bit, since many of the resources of the mobile GPU, going into your high res UI (i.e. eye candy),
instead of editing and render performance.

On the other hand, everything will still be way faster than on Avid.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, Frank.

Curiously, per your comment on my Retina scree, but what if I edit off an external monitor? That's what I've done for years, I use the Dell UltraSharp 3008 WFP 30" monitor. Will that help?

FWIW I made the leap and purchased the monthly plan and tried it out a little. There is definitely a little latency still, even at 1/8th, but it's super smooth at 1/16th. I'm thinking I'll stay at that while cutting for the first cut or two. That shouldn't be a problem right?
 
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Frank Hague said:
Thanks for this, Frank.

Curiously, per your comment on my Retina scree, but what if I edit off an external monitor?
Click to expand...

As long as you drive that external monitor from your Mac, it's only 8bit - the Apple doesn't allow for 10bit.
So what you want is a Blackmagic or Aja I/O box to get 10bit (and a 10bit monitor of course).


I might be a bit picky here, but IMHO color grading at 8 bit, with the OS color management on top of it,
doesn't cut it for me.
 
Frank Glencairn said:
As long as you drive that external monitor from your Mac, it's only 8bit - the Apple doesn't allow for 10bit.
So what you want is a Blackmagic or Aja I/O box to get 10bit (and a 10bit monitor of course).


I might be a bit picky here, but IMHO color grading at 8 bit, with the OS color management on top of it,
doesn't cut it for me.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm fine with 8 bit, I was referring to your comment about the Retina slowing down the editing process: "Also your retina screen will slow things down a bit, since many of the resources of the mobile GPU, going into your high res UI (i.e. eye candy), instead of editing and render performance"

Do you think the Dell monitor will assuage this issue?
 
I'm finishing my feature length documentary, 40 Weeks, about pregnancy and have enjoyed Premiere. It has handled over 500 hours of raw footage from DRAGONS, EPICS, SCARLETS, 5D's, 7D's, GH4's, Cell phones and more without any transcoding. Little wiggly issues, but when I think about how much stuff we're throwing at it, I'm really happy. Now that we're finishing, I don't have any conform time,which is really nice.

The main thing from my perspective to keep in mind is that with my type of workflow having a really big beast PC for rendering saves a lot.

Here's a link to the movie's trailer

https://vimeo.com/110288958
 
Ive yet to see a PC house from my neck of the woods regarding Avid.

I know its out there but not in the midwestern part of Canada.

And even my visits to Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, Ive not seen one.

Must be a Canadian thing :)
 
Yeah, I saw that they announced native 4K, and obviously that's great. I still want to see how it performs. Regardless, I find Adobe to be more enjoyable to use, less finicky, and obviously the integration with After Effects, Photoshop, etc. is a plus. Avid would have to really blow the doors off the place to get me to take serious notice, not just add in something Premiere has had for a year or two.

I am, however, super excited about DNxHR. Exporting/archiving 4K/6K in a Windows environment has... not been fun.
 
MC 8.3 due by end of year so we won't know performance until then (I'm sure whatever was shown at IBC was no where near ready)....just speculating, MC 8.4 due spring/summer will prb be the version you'd want....until then perhaps edit proxies and finish in DaVinci as they play very well together.
 
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