LOOKING FOR DETAILED COMPARISON OF PREMIERE, FCP/FCPX AND AVID MC

[Anson Fogel]

Red Universe -

Does anyone know of a good, current, in depth comparison of FCP/FCPX, Premiere and AVID? We've used all of them at one time or another, but growth demands homogenization and a decision soon. We're going to out own in house detailed comparison soon, but man, there has GOT to be someone that has written this up! The web seems to be full of old comparisons, and/or reviews that don't dig into the details so much. How doe Premier's audio tools (today) compare to others? What's missing? What about OMF and XML sharing of projects in all 3? Etc etc etc.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I think of these products are evolving incredibly fast....to fast to keep up with whos doing what best at moment. All i can say is i waited for a long time for FCP to do something before jumping ship to Premier--very happy with my choice....my editor i pay to do work uses Avid MC and has always from the dark ages....so hard to have an impartial comparison i think....i was very comfortable with FCP....now Premier is a breeze AND they are updating rapidly....in addition you can see their trail they are blazing to be on top of the heap....just look at all the plugins in development as well as working closely with RED---who has HDRX working in timeline for this length of time? PPro does...and i'm dropping in Epic 5k r3d's....anyway, i'm biased to FCP and Premier; but i see the path Premier is on FOR THE MOMENT....seems in this area things can change on a dime.....Oh....lest we forget i'm an in home/house editor--or should i even call myself that...but my stuff does go to tv regular....and i'm a HACK...but it Does work well for a hack like me. Now i'll let the pro editors share.....

 

[Doug Beatty]

FCP7 and Premiere are very similar, and I know that there is an option in Premiere to use FCP shortcuts if you were thinking of trying Premiere.

Roundtripping in CS5 is a huge time saver- and CS5.5 just added Audition for the Mac. I really like the mastering tools within Audition and the ability to jump back and forth between apps and have your project update in real time. It also plays very nice with After Effects (my favorite App)

It should be obvious that I'm an Adobe fan, but it just works for my purposes and it renders faster than FCP7 across the board because it is 64 bit.

 

[Rosario Balistreri]

If someone makes the comparison, don't include FCPX until it can export compatible XML and OMF.
I'm not against it, I definitely like the way that he works just because it's how edit should be performed in my opinion.
My editor vision is to edit proxies with a trackless interface that leave more space to the tracks that I really have and export to XML and OMF to other people. It isn't possible now but I'll wait.

So, the real comparison is Avid 5.5 vs Premiere CS5.5 vs FCP7.
You can compare them by different point of view:
Edit what?
Editing an interview has a totally different workflow from editing a film, this comport a lot of choice.
Probably in an interview you prefer working with native files, in a film no!
In an interview the audio mix and the color correction could be done inside the application, in a film no.
In a film you absolutely need the trim mode and you have to choose what trim mode is better for you.

I worked in past with premiere (not as a pro-editor) and it fitted my needs.
Then I discovered Avid and I said "wow! It's amazing!"
Then when I tried FCP7 i found my NLE of choice. No one can beat it for my needs.
I've tried to return to Avid, but it doesn't think at the same way that I do, the same for PP.
For example, I think that the FCP7 trim is better of the Avid's one. The same for the Slip tool.
PP's trim tool is a toy compared to both, excluded it in the first 5 minutes.

For my needs FCP is better. For yours probably not.

So,
I suggest to write the comparison not based on <i>which is better/fastest</i> but for <i>which is better/fastest and for what kind of work</i>.

 

[Anson Fogel]

Great input as usual here thanks - someone out there in this great sphere of media workers MUST have done a detailed write up recently! Surely.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Well, they're kinda aimed at different markets.

So comparing feature-for-feature is a bit silly when more likely you'll find that one fits you better than the others.

For example, I don't know of any current detailed feature comparisons between:
3D apps - Maya, Cinema 4D, Max, Softimage, Houdini, Modo, Lightwave
or 2D compositors - Nuke, Fusion, After Effects, Motion

They all have similar features but it's the workflow that counts. They all can do the basic tasks well... but when you get into specialized tasks, some have better workflows for them than others.

If you ask a pro, you'll get some paragraphs about what each specifically excels at...

Also, the ones that can do a lot of complicated things well are often not the absolute fastest or easiest to use for accomplishing simple tasks.

So you need to decide whether to focus on one or use many.

Personally, after having tried all of them for many many years (started editing in 1994), I drift more and more towards a single one (if you read my myriad other posts I'm sure you can figure out which one ... but explain what you're trying to do and maybe we can help more and I'll try to give an unbiased 2c

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com