Red and Adobe

[Dave Blackham]

Id be interested to hear Adobe Premiere users views on Switching from FCP7 to Premiere and Red functionality. How good is Premiere as an editor both for creative editing and also picture finishing.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Meh.

That's the one word version.

I am not a fan of Premiere .. but its fast, supports RED well, and has a great feature set.

You can do any sort of creative editing you want in the system, and you can finish a picture with it too ... to roughly the same standard as you'd use in FCP.

The quality of the rendered results is a step up from FCP, but not quite as nice as you'd get with Color or Resolve.

My quibbles with Premiere are not about what it can do.

My issues are with how it does things. Forget keystrokes and other things you jsut have to figure out with any new NLE.

I am concerned with things like including the broadcast video output as a sequence setting instead of a system setting. With FCP, I set up my FCP system for broadcast output, and then any sequences just use that set up, without regard to what the native sequence is. Premiere requires you to set up your sequence to use the broadcast out.

So if you transfer a sequence from one Premiere editor (using AJA i/o for example) to another (using Black Magic i/o) then the new editor has to set up a new sequence with the proper output settings.

If you are bouncing an edit back and forth ... well it can get silly. This is a technical flaw in their system design. Think it through and you'll find other issues quickly. It makes Premiere a pain in the ass for any setting with multiple editors, where the editors are not working on identical systems.

Also the effect controls Adobe prefers are abysmal. People seem to get used to them and just work - but they are abysmal. If you really hate yourself, try grading inside Premiere. AE is a touch better ... but still you'd have to be full of self loathing.

Thank goodness for XML and tools like Resolve for grading.

It amazes me that Photoshop and Illustrator can be such elegant creative applications yet Premiere and AE are just such crappy systems to use.

So ... to sum up:

Premiere technology and features : A-
Premiere system design: D
Premiere User Interface: D-

As to my future plans ... I plan on switching to FCP X as soon as that system supports flawless interchange and broadcast i/o.

I'll keep using Production Premium of course ... Photoshop and Illustrator kick ass, and those products alone make a great value in Production Premium. I also like to have AE and Premiere on hand for when I get projects brought to me using those tools.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Thanks for that, sort of what my take is too. We use resolve for Grading which is really nice to use. Great results.

My biggest misgivings with Premiere is its not intuitive, same as AE but then Im not a compositor so what do I know. Im more interested in workflow. I do like Adobe products but your completely right about Photoshop and Illustrator GUI, may be who ever designed the interface for those apps needs to take a look at the motion picture apps too.

 

[Doug Beatty]

Meh.

It amazes me that Photoshop and Illustrator can be such elegant creative applications yet Premiere and AE are just such crappy systems to use.

Just so I'm clear, the biggest negatives are:

1) Renders straight out of Premiere don't look as good than renders that have been graded in Color or Resolve.
2) Broadcast video out, when changing from AJA to Black Magic requires an editor to create a new sequence with the proper settings selected.
3) Adobe effect controls (i.e. sliders and curves) are "abysmal"

I have to say that you are the first person I have read about that has these quibbles. Valid for you, but I haven't had any similar issues and I have been using Adobe for the last 5 years.

I have to push back when you say After Effects is a crappy system. I find it to be the most powerful application in the creative suite in the hands of someone that is familiar with its interface. It's not an NLE or a color grading app- it's primary use is for compositing. It just so happens to be extremely robust with what you can accomplish inside of it (pixel motion blur, advanced keying, time remapping, etc.)

To each their own, though. If it works for you, use it. If it doesn't find another solution that will.

Forgot to mention that you can change the keyboard shortcuts in Premiere to match Final Cut if you want. That would cut down on the learning curve for some.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Switched from FCPro to Premiere and haven't looked back.

Was even able to keep my Matrox MXO 2 hardware with it.

Native editing is where it's at, and if you shoot on RED, then it is a no brainer.

RE: Adobe AE, I concur about it's flexibility and power.

 

[Trevor Meier]

Have to agree with Alexander's assessment... Technically great but usability is poo.

 

[CK Olsen]

IMHO, As far as traditional editorial, Premiere Pro is pretty much awesome. And I've found the the workflow between multiple editors to be both VERY easy, and highly portable. Project files are small and very self contained, and PPro works directly (and beautifully) with a multitude of original file formats right from the source media. PPro also cuts RED RAW 4K (or sony media, or mxf files or whatever) like a razor, on both high end AND low end stations, with (almost) complete access to all metadata, allowing for nondestructive, realtime onelight color grading right from the R3D files...NO TRANSCODING REQUIRED... AND NO SPECIAL HARDWARE REQUIRED. (But it gets even better with a Red Rocket!)

I would agree that Color Correction within PPro could benefit from some revamping, but you can still do an awful lot with its existing CC tools. BUT... PPro projects open directly within AE, allowing you access to a wide, badass world of color/graphics tools, assuming you know how to use 'em.

That being said if you're goal is to perform seriously hardcore grading with power windows, etc... from within PPro, it might behoove you to look into CC plug in tools to help you out.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

1) Renders straight out of Premiere don't look as good than renders that have been graded in Color or Resolve.

This is expected, and I don't consider it to be a real problem. Sorry if I created that impression.

I just do my CC in Color or Resolve and move on. Starting with CS4 or CS5 Adobe software became a lot smarter about not rendering what they didn't need to, at the same time they started delivering far better results.

Let's be serious though ... this isn't Smoke.

2) Broadcast video out, when changing from AJA to Black Magic requires an editor to create a new sequence with the proper settings selected.

If you haven't encountered this, I'm guessing you probably work alone or in studio with people with identical hardware, and only on projects you control. Or maybe you just aren't using broadcast monitoring.

If you have a client with say, Matrox MXO i/o hardware, and they send you a Premiere project that you need to work on with your AJA system ... this is going to be fun.

First you have to create a new sequence to work with your AJA, and copy/paste the client's sequence into yours.

Now, when you send the project file back to the client ... they have to take your sequence and do the same thing for their Matrox MXO settings.

Go back and forth a few times and you can end up with a dozen sequences with similar content.

Each copy/paste operation and sequence set up is a chance to introduce errors into the project.

Now, multiply that over 4 editors over a feature post.

Now add a Resolve Colorist, with Black Magic i/o who gets your Premiere project and has to work with that ...

Now add a sound editor and ...

It becomes a complete clusterfuck.

I'd rather use FCP 6.

I don't know how FCP X will work out for that sort of environment. so I'm looking at Avid MC6 as a possible next step.

Its a pity ... I really like Premiere's project file package ... everything is tidy ... it could be so easy to swap project files and get so much done, but this one bug breaks all that in any serious workflow.

3) Adobe effect controls (i.e. sliders and curves) are "abysmal"

I have to push back when you say After Effects is a crappy system.

I didn't say that at all. I said AE was a crappy system to use.

Like all the Adobe video applications it has a great feature set, especially for the price, and can deliver results.

If that is all that matters, then Premiere and AE will work for you.

I think how I work with the system matters - and I find the antiquated Shake interface more compositor friendly than the AE interface.

Shake doesn't have the features in AE ... because at this point Shake has gone 6 years without an update.

As far as working in a timeline compositor (AE's interface is timeline compositing, Shake & Nuke are node compositors) I think Motion is far more pleasant to use. Too bad its feature set doesn't stand up to what AE can offer.

Now ... what does that mean? "pleasant to use" "bad UI" blah blah.

I'll take a simple example the sliders.

Adobe's various effect sliders in Premiere and AE are "fiddly" or "twitchy."

Comparing them to Photoshops sliders, it takes longer to set a specific value, and sometimes a small input can give a large change.

Stepping past that, its a bit slower to skip the GUI element and get to numeric entry. In Photoshop I can usually just start typing, in Premiere I have to click on the value.

This is in part because Premiere and AE insist on keeping tons and tons of settings in a single window with twirl downs, while Photoshop pops up a task specific window.

Let's look at how the color correction is implemented in FCP versus Premiere.

Both offer a 3 way color corrector. FCP however lets you make that effect into a separate tab in the canvas ... you get fast intuitive access to secondaries via the GUI. Its a good editorial color corrector ... without attempting to do more than the interface can handle.

Now, Premiere. I think you can affect just about every parameter you can control in Color ... provided you are willing to spend 20 times as long doing so! Most of these are in twirl downs, with those fiddly sliders and click to type effects. Its a disaster.

Also FCP supports control surfaces, gods ... how did I get this far without mentioning that Premiere doesn't support control surfaces. A minor disaster in my mind.

I mean, sure I can use a Contour Shuttle Pro - which I have on my desk now, but not an Artist Control or Artist Transport or any other professional control surface.

What this all ends up adding up to is time. Time spent not editing, but fighting the system under the NLE and fighting the NLE's controls.

This won't be fixed with a set of new shortcuts for FCP editors. Adobe is going to have to spend real time making these controls work intelligently, and building in support for things like EUCON.

I'm very excited about Adobe's acquisition of Iridas Speedgrade ... could spell great things for the color correction side of their products, which is a real weak point now.

(TO ADOBE: Real support please with configurable softkeys and such - if you are going to do it do it right.)

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

That being said if you're goal is to perform seriously hardcore grading with power windows, etc... from within PPro, it might behoove you to look into CC plug in tools to help you out.

I'd say that a toolset like Colorista is an absolute must ... but even with such tools grading in Premiere Pro is a disaster.

Resolve or Color today.

Adobe SpeedGrade in the future ... assuming they don't invent a way to screw up the integration.

 

[mikeburton]

Meh.

That's the one word version.

I am not a fan of Premiere .. but its fast, supports RED well, and has a great feature set.

You can do any sort of creative editing you want in the system, and you can finish a picture with it too ... to roughly the same standard as you'd use in FCP.

The quality of the rendered results is a step up from FCP, but not quite as nice as you'd get with Color or Resolve.

Alexander, just so we are all clear this statement about Premiere not rendering as "good of quality" as Color or Resolve I assume your referring to the Color Grading Tools themselves and what you can achieve with those and not the actual quality of the picture you are capable of "RENDERING" in Premiere? Remember, Premiere is a 32bit and will render say DPX, Tiff or Quicktime without loss in quality unless of course you are going from DPX or Tiff to a lesser codec such as a Qucktime ProRes HQ for example, which is of course taking a 10bit 444 file or 16bit 444 file and brining it into a 10bit 422 world. But if you are going from DPX to DPX for instance there would be NO quality loss whatsoever. I've used Premiere many times for doing final layback and mastering from Resolve, Scratch, Color, SpeedGrade, and Lustre systems ingesting final output DPX files adding titles etc and mastering back out to DPX with NO quality loss whatsoever. I think you should rephrase what you referring to here because its quite misleading and not very detailed or accurate. If you are referring to the color tools as apposed to the actual "render quality" which i truly hope you are, well, that seems to be why Adobe purchased Speedgrade.
As for the difference between the two editors ie FCP and Premiere its a users choice. I was extremely comfortable in FCP and Media Composer and still am but started using Premiere with the CS5 launch and have come to love the speed of the system. I agree there are still some tools and options that Premiere could improve upon but if you're an editor you should really be comfortable with all the tools and choose the right one for the particular job at hand.

 

[jonathan homer vargas]

I use adobe premier and i like more than fcp because is more flexible and i can export to AFTER EFFECT, is wonderfull

 

[Tim Morten]

Premiere is not above criticism, but its CUDA support is stellar, its Red support is native, its AE interoperability is tight, and there are no doubts about its future as a pro tool. None of which can be said about Final Cut. I know changing tools is hard to swallow, but Premiere is the best option available at the moment, IMO.

 

[Paul Hudson]

I was an original beta tester of FCP 1.2 and have used it and other platforms since. I recently started using Premiere extensively and I am very pleased with the advancements by Adobe. I believe Apple has lost interest in video professionals.

 

[Kacey Baker]

Apple has lost interest in video professionals.

Apple has lost interest in all professionals. They have abandoned their loyal creative industry MAC market and chased the money with LIFESTYLE products, as any business should.

Premiere is in it's infancy even at cs5.5 - its awesome and I think it's UI and work flow will improve quick smart given the window of opportunity Apple has given it.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Alexander, just so we are all clear this statement about Premiere not rendering as "good of quality" as Color or Resolve I assume your referring to the Color Grading Tools themselves and what you can achieve with those and not the actual quality of the picture you are capable of "RENDERING" in Premiere? ... I've used Premiere many times for doing final layback and mastering from Resolve, Scratch, Color, SpeedGrade, and Lustre systems ingesting final output DPX files adding titles etc and mastering back out to DPX with NO quality loss whatsoever. I think you should rephrase what you referring to here because its quite misleading and not very detailed or accurate.

Wow ... that's a tirade born of picking my original apart too finely, but without understanding it at all.

I mean, you seem to have skated right by the part where I said you can finish in Premiere.

Then you had a little freak out.

What I wrote was, "The quality of the rendered results is a step up from FCP, but not quite as nice as you'd get with Color or Resolve." That's what I meant ... and you are wrong to try and correct me.

The point I was trying to make is that Premiere is a step up from FCP 6 or FCP 7 in its image processing, but its not up to par with the established leaders.

Before I go on, I should clarify. Image processing is separate from "rendering."

Mostly I expect the problems are just bugs. Remember that Adobe only recently implemented a new image processing system. (I think it was CS4 ... ) It takes time to get all the bugs worked out and to put some polish on a whole new image handling system. The Adobe guys know their business, and I'm sure they'll work it all out ... in time.

To repeat: the image processing in the CS5.5 applications is far better than what you get in FCP 6 or 7, but it can be improved upon.

(I haven't tested FCP X image quality ... but Apple just made the same 32 bit transition that Adobe already made ... it should bring near parity - on paper.)

Let me give you an example:

If your camera masters are HDDSLR h.264 encoded material and you wish to transcode it to ProRes 4444 on OS X:

Resolve uses Apple's h.264 decoder, while Premiere uses another ... I think MainConcept's. So, the end result is that for that specific workflow Premiere Pro delivers better results than Resolve.

That's an odd case though, and very simple. It rests on using an improved h.264 decoder ... not on Premiere's image processing.

Add in a basic primary color correction step, say shifting midtones 5% towards blue and expanding the contrast range, and now Resolve will deliver better quality results. That's because of the quality of the internal image processing. This isn't to do with being able to accomplish a specific task - that's an easy grade to achieve in Premiere and Resolve.

So there is a difference ... but its not likely to be one where audience members are going to be saying to themselves, "what the hell, was this rendered in Premiere?" No ... most people won't ever note the issue. Then again, the bigger the change, the bigger the difference.

You are more likely to run into issues when you are transcoding or doing a color space transformation. As an example, if your sources are Log YUV files, and you have to output linear RGB, that's the sort of thing Premiere and AE can trip up on. The more uncommon the transformation, the more likely you'll see a problem.

Where there is no transcoding or transformation, there is no problem. That's because there is no image processing occurring.

If I go from 10 bit 422 uncompressed to a new 10 bit 422 uncompressed render, it will be perfect. If I go from 10 bit 422 uncompressed to ProRes HQ, it will be as good as ProRes HQ can be. That's the actual rendering at work without any need for image processing, and as I said, there is no problem with rendering.

This comports with your experience finishing in Premiere.

If all you do is lay in titles on a DPX sequence and then render DPX, I don't think there is any way AE can screw that up. Mathematically its just an addition. Drunken monkeys flailing abacuses can get that right. Strictly speaking there is image processing ... but its very simple.

Look ... this is a great system from a technology standpoint ... and all this technobabble is distracting from my more serious concerns about how the system interacts with me, the user. I trust Adobe will continue to improve their image processing ... because well ... Photoshop!

 

[Kacey Baker]

Wait a sec guys, just grabbing some pop corn.

Wow ... that's a tirade born of picking my original apart too finely, but without understanding it at all.

I mean, you seem to have skated right by the part where I said you can finish in Premiere.

Then you had a little freak out.

What I wrote was, "The quality of the rendered results is a step up from FCP, but not quite as nice as you'd get with Color or Resolve." That's what I meant ... and you are wrong to try and correct me.

The point I was trying to make is that Premiere is a step up from FCP 6 or FCP 7 in its image processing, but its not up to par with the established leaders.

Before I go on, I should clarify. Image processing is separate from "rendering."

Mostly I expect the problems are just bugs. Remember that Adobe only recently implemented a new image processing system. (I think it was CS4 ... ) It takes time to get all the bugs worked out and to put some polish on a whole new image handling system. The Adobe guys know their business, and I'm sure they'll work it all out ... in time.

To repeat: the image processing in the CS5.5 applications is far better than what you get in FCP 6 or 7, but it can be improved upon.

(I haven't tested FCP X image quality ... but Apple just made the same 32 bit transition that Adobe already made ... it should bring near parity - on paper.)

Let me give you an example:

If your camera masters are HDDSLR h.264 encoded material and you wish to transcode it to ProRes 4444 on OS X:

Resolve uses Apple's h.264 decoder, while Premiere uses another ... I think MainConcept's. So, the end result is that for that specific workflow Premiere Pro delivers better results than Resolve.

That's an odd case though, and very simple. It rests on using an improved h.264 decoder ... not on Premiere's image processing.

Add in a basic primary color correction step, say shifting midtones 5% towards blue and expanding the contrast range, and now Resolve will deliver better quality results. That's because of the quality of the internal image processing. This isn't to do with being able to accomplish a specific task - that's an easy grade to achieve in Premiere and Resolve.

So there is a difference ... but its not likely to be one where audience members are going to be saying to themselves, "what the hell, was this rendered in Premiere?" No ... most people won't ever note the issue. Then again, the bigger the change, the bigger the difference.

You are more likely to run into issues when you are transcoding or doing a color space transformation. As an example, if your sources are Log YUV files, and you have to output linear RGB, that's the sort of thing Premiere and AE can trip up on. The more uncommon the transformation, the more likely you'll see a problem.

Where there is no transcoding or transformation, there is no problem. That's because there is no image processing occurring.

If I go from 10 bit 422 uncompressed to a new 10 bit 422 uncompressed render, it will be perfect. If I go from 10 bit 422 uncompressed to ProRes HQ, it will be as good as ProRes HQ can be. That's the actual rendering at work without any need for image processing, and as I said, there is no problem with rendering.

This comports with your experience finishing in Premiere.

If all you do is lay in titles on a DPX sequence and then render DPX, I don't think there is any way AE can screw that up. Mathematically its just an addition. Drunken monkeys flailing abacuses can get that right. Strictly speaking there is image processing ... but its very simple.

Look ... this is a great system from a technology standpoint ... and all this technobabble is distracting from my more serious concerns about how the system interacts with me, the user. I trust Adobe will continue to improve their image processing ... because well ... Photoshop!

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I believe Apple has lost interest in video professionals.

I don't.

I think they are trying to engage in transformational thinking.

Where they screwed up is in not treating users like adults and telling them they were making big changes. Not explaining it would take time.

You can pull the rug out from iMovie users, they'll complain, but ultimately people using iMovie aren't depending on it for their living. FCP X would have been better received if the message was, "Here is the future of FCP in version 1. Think of this as a very mature beta though. Features are missing, we know. They'll be coming back. For now ... keep working in FCP 7, and help us by beating on the new thing when you can. Oh and we are doing free updates for people who bought"

I think the same thing might be happening in Mac Pro land ... but I also still think we'll get one more Mac Pro with Thunderbolt before they try and change the world.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Wait a sec guys, just grabbing some pop corn.

Haha!

We totally deserve that.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Wait a sec guys, just grabbing some pop corn.

LOL

Have to go to work...

 

[mikeburton]

Wow ... that's a tirade born of picking my original apart too finely, but without understanding it at all.

I mean, you seem to have skated right by the part where I said you can finish in Premiere.

Then you had a little freak out.

What I wrote was, "The quality of the rendered results is a step up from FCP, but not quite as nice as you'd get with Color or Resolve." That's what I meant ... and you are wrong to try and correct me.

The point I was trying to make is that Premiere is a step up from FCP 6 or FCP 7 in its image processing, but its not up to par with the established leaders.

Before I go on, I should clarify. Image processing is separate from "rendering."

Mostly I expect the problems are just bugs. Remember that Adobe only recently implemented a new image processing system. (I think it was CS4 ... ) It takes time to get all the bugs worked out and to put some polish on a whole new image handling system. The Adobe guys know their business, and I'm sure they'll work it all out ... in time.

To repeat: the image processing in the CS5.5 applications is far better than what you get in FCP 6 or 7, but it can be improved upon.

(I haven't tested FCP X image quality ... but Apple just made the same 32 bit transition that Adobe already made ... it should bring near parity - on paper.)

Let me give you an example:

If your camera masters are HDDSLR h.264 encoded material and you wish to transcode it to ProRes 4444 on OS X:

Resolve uses Apple's h.264 decoder, while Premiere uses another ... I think MainConcept's. So, the end result is that for that specific workflow Premiere Pro delivers better results than Resolve.

That's an odd case though, and very simple. It rests on using an improved h.264 decoder ... not on Premiere's image processing.

Add in a basic primary color correction step, say shifting midtones 5% towards blue and expanding the contrast range, and now Resolve will deliver better quality results. That's because of the quality of the internal image processing. This isn't to do with being able to accomplish a specific task - that's an easy grade to achieve in Premiere and Resolve.

No ones freaking out just trying to get clarification as to what you are specifically referring to because when you make a blanket statement that Premiere renders aren't as good as Resolve or Color you can mislead people without a proper explanation. That said, you are comparing apples to oranges here anyway.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with you in the points you make. I won't be coloring a film in Premiere anytime soon but finishing and rendering are a different story.