What is so great about Adobe Premiere?

[sander kamp]

Sorry about the title but this is a genuine question. After reading Adobe Premiere is the best current editing software for Red footage and that people are switching from FCP 7 to Premiere I thought to give it a try, helped by the wonderful discount of course.

My experience so far has not been that great though. Is it my system or is the PC version much better?

Overall I find it sluggish and buggy with the program taking its time to start playing from the timeline, not being able the render the timeline, output rendering errors and so on. Not all the time and not unworkable, but from time to time very annoying. And then there's these unexplainable limitations like not being able to change the timeline resolution once you have started editing or not being able to change a track from stereo to mono.

There's some good things as well of course, like RedRocket support and support for the latest R3D versions and I really appreciate it that Adobe is so active here on the forum. So please someone enlighten me to make this work!

My system is a 8-core MacPro with Resolve setup so a GT120 and a GTX285.

 

[Dane Henry]

We are currently trying to move away from FCP7. We had the right job come up to use Premiere cs5.5 on...Really enjoy editing on the program BUT the extremely long render and export times are KILLING me. I don't think I can have a client in on a session with using Premiere and have to wait 1 hour for their video to export. I feel this is a huge problem, and I'm really surprised more people are not up in arms about it.

Coming for FCP where you can export lighting quick on a 32bit program...I would have figured CS5.5 would smoke it, but it's not even close.

I think we will have to look at AVID, we bought the cross grade...Premiere just looked so enticing, seemed have it all (by their marketing talk).

System: Mac Pro 3GHZ 8core, 12GB Ram, Quadro 4000, BM Multibridge Pro 2, 4x 8TB Gspeed ES Esata RAID Array

-Dane

 

[Johnny Friday]

dropping in mixed codecs to your timeline to edit is one factor. Oh....full range of control in RAW over R3d files within Premier. DOWN side so far is monitoring out of an I/O box at 8bit, but Adobe says 10bit to come one day.

and you should upgrade your video card as well....i'm using the Rocket and Quadro 4000, so no slow clunkiness like you explained. BUt Rocket card is the big benefit there.

EDIT: yes, render time SUCKS; relinking mass media is archaic, and w/out special video cards etc....i go back to FCP7 on my laptop vs Premier. but in house on my desktop, back to Premier

 

[conrad gaunt]

Premiere does allow people to exit the 8bit rgb/10bit yuv world fcp traps you in.. which means you can do an online export and then grade (elsewhere if you're me, but i haven't used it for a while so maybe its internal colour tools have improved).

Some premiere filters, i believe, are still 8bit, so would truncate this advantage.. but the last time i used it i was pumping 3k 48bit tiffs through it.. about 12 years ago i think, which is why i use it (on windows)

its always been buggy, exports have always crashed, sometimes it freezes.. which are many of the reasons fcp was adopted by ex-adobers. i still like it for its promise though, and the fact adobe still sell it and are working on it

 

[David McGavran]

We are currently trying to move away from FCP7. We had the right job come up to use Premiere cs5.5 on...Really enjoy editing on the program BUT the extremely long render and export times are KILLING me. I don't think I can have a client in on a session with using Premiere and have to wait 1 hour for their video to export. I feel this is a huge problem, and I'm really surprised more people are not up in arms about it.

Coming for FCP where you can export lighting quick on a 32bit program...I would have figured CS5.5 would smoke it, but it's not even close.

I think we will have to look at AVID, we bought the cross grade...Premiere just looked so enticing, seemed have it all (by their marketing talk).

System: Mac Pro 3GHZ 8core, 12GB Ram, Quadro 4000, BM Multibridge Pro 2, 4x 8TB Gspeed ES Esata RAID Array

-Dane

So are you seeing longer render times than FCP with a similar project? Can you give me an example?

Thanks

Dave

 

[Steve Sherrick]

David, I have a question about re-linking. I had a client who decided to break all their R3D shots into shot-take folders, and also remove the RDC folders. So I cleaned that up for my purposes into one media folder, recreated RDC folders for 700 clips (via a script) and now everything is nice and tidy for downstream purposes. However, going back into project it's making me link every file. I thought there was smart linking built in. In other words, point it to some files in the folder and it will dig down and find the rest. No?

I see Johnny must have run into this as well.

Thoughts?

 

[Tim Sutherland]

I'm pretty sure this is based on original file/folder structure, so it will mass relink as if you are changing the drive over, not an entirely new fold structure. But it's been a while since I used premiere.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I'm pretty sure this is based on original file/folder structure, so it will mass relink as if you are changing the drive over, not an entirely new fold structure. But it's been a while since I used premiere.

Ouch, ok. Probably be at this for a while tonight.

 

[David McGavran]

David, I have a question about re-linking. I had a client who decided to break all their R3D shots into shot-take folders, and also remove the RDC folders. So I cleaned that up for my purposes into one media folder, recreated RDC folders for 700 clips (via a script) and now everything is nice and tidy for downstream purposes. However, going back into project it's making me link every file. I thought there was smart linking built in. In other words, point it to some files in the folder and it will dig down and find the rest. No?

I see Johnny must have run into this as well.

Thoughts?

Yes it is based on relative paths. I am going to be spending some time on this next week or so and will report back...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Thanks David. Here are some suggestions.

- I would look at something like FCP where it gives you an overview of which files are offline. I always have a way to check to see where I'm at. For example, right now I'm just clicking away with no way to know where I am in terms of how many clips have been done and how many still to go. In a project with 20-30 clips, no problem but when there are 700+, makes a big difference.

- If there is a way to check relative path and be able to dig deep within a path that would be cool. For example. Original path of clip is SCENE 1>SHOT 2>TAKE 1>A010_C001_0511HD.RDM>A010_C001_0511HD_001.R3D. New path is RED_MEDIA>A010_C001_0511HD.RDM>A010_C001_0511HD_001.R3D. If you point to the new path of this file and all the other RDM folders are in this same RED_MEDIA folder it could just dig down and find them. That would be very time saving.

 

[shashbugu]

Media management ie clip relinking is a terrible bore in Premiere Pro. especially if you shut down and restart your computer.
Now to answer the question Why Premiere Pro?
1. Amazing Color fidelity== 32bit float workflow
2. if you really learn the interface well its actually faster to edit in Ppro than in both Avid or FCP
3. Regardless of what Adobe tells you the is some decompression and conforming into a 32bit colorspace which workings in the background but takes up significant system resources. This slugs the workflow in the short term, but if you walk away from your system for a half hour, on your return it will be charged and ready to go. Its solid with your above configuration GT 120 GTX 285, amazingly stable and flawless. always cheek your drive speed. download drive speed checker from Blackmagic. a lot of 7200 drives cant even put out more that 50MB per sec
4. There are still some quirky things that need to be taken care off in the user interface. for example there are two whole inches of unusable interface tabs between the source program window and the time line. screen real estate is really key in editing.

 

[J Davis]

Please bring in smart rendering.

If I've got a 15 minute timeline rendered out to a client and they ask for 1 small change then the entire 15 minutes must be re-rendered !

Only good for short form at the moment

 

[Justin Molush]

Please bring in smart rendering.

If I've got a 15 minute timeline rendered out to a client and they ask for 1 small change then the entire 15 minutes must be re-rendered !

Only good for short form at the moment

I dont really have this problem - Premiere is a lot smarter when changing things in the timeline and re-rendering than FCP7.

 

[J Davis]

I dont really have this problem - Premiere is a lot smarter when changing things in the timeline and re-rendering than FCP7.

I've been struggling this one for a while so if you can help me see the light you'll have my eternal gratitude! And I've even been experimenting with 'use preview files' options on export.
When I've got a timeline that takes 45 minutes to render, and then I go and make one little change, I'm sitting thru the same 45 minutes to see another export.

 

[Luis Ortiz]

Thanks David. Here are some suggestions.

- I would look at something like FCP where it gives you an overview of which files are offline. I always have a way to check to see where I'm at. For example, right now I'm just clicking away with no way to know where I am in terms of how many clips have been done and how many still to go. In a project with 20-30 clips, no problem but when there are 700+, makes a big difference.

- If there is a way to check relative path and be able to dig deep within a path that would be cool. For example. Original path of clip is SCENE 1>SHOT 2>TAKE 1>A010_C001_0511HD.RDM>A010_C001_0511HD_001.R3D. New path is RED_MEDIA>A010_C001_0511HD.RDM>A010_C001_0511HD_001.R3D. If you point to the new path of this file and all the other RDM folders are in this same RED_MEDIA folder it could just dig down and find them. That would be very time saving.

Couldn't agree with you more.

In addition, it'll be nice to be able to find media for audio that has been added to a new video clip. (ie. In instances when empty audio tracks are removed from a video clip and then replace with clean audio tracks. We should me able to relink the new audio to video and treat them as one clip. That can be achieved now, but if the video and audio became unlinked from it's media, I don't think your able to find seperate audio and video media for one clip.) Sounds confusing?

 

[sander kamp]

I have given it a try now for the past few weeks but after getting a spinning beach ball again and losing my work of the last hour I am ready to give up. So far I have had:

- Random crashes that make me loose my work (random as in just clicking somewhere)
- Timelines that refuse to be rendered and giving an unknown error (it actually said that)
- Audio that doesn't play when you hit the space bar
- Video that doesn't play when you hit the space bar
- Yellow timelines that refuse to play in real time and red timelines that play fine
- Output errors where 4 clips had the same audio track (re-rendering solved the problem)
- Very sluggish timeline that only updates half a second after you move the playhead

I don't think I have a very exotic system or anything, everything else seems to work fine.

Anyway, going back to FCP 7 or I'll give FCPX a try I guess. Really a shame because it has lots of good things in it and I am still willing to give it a try if somebody can tell me how to make it work.