Premiere Pro in 2015 vs. FCPX

Moved to the Lounge for off topic discussion.

Regards,

Kevin

I've used both extensively. Premier has way more features and the new grading tools are really impressive. However my experience of using premier (on a mac) has been a mixture of love and hate. I love the features and how it integrates so well with the rest of the CC apps but I hate how all of a sudden simple tasks stop working. For example exporting your final video (usually to a deadline). I just can't count on Premier as a pro tool any more. If I have a client in the room who wants to watch a sequence I honestly find myself praying that it plays ok. At some point during your ownership of premier you can be sure that you'll have a show-stopping glitch and it'll cost you time and money. I've never had to spend so much time talking to a support team or troubleshooting various issues with a piece of software. Last night I spent 45 minutes exporting a 3 minute video. Not because premier was slow to export - but because of various audio glitches and bugs that I had to work around. I currently have an assembly of a 90 minute edit that I need to get working on. I just can't rely on premier giving me a good export of that when its final, so today I'm going to be exporting out an xml and bringing it into FCPX to finish.

My experiences of FCPX is that its still missing a few features and I really miss the integration with after effects. But at least I know what I'm working with. There are also lots of great plug ins that you can get (e.g. way better stabilization and grading). After getting used to the UI editing editing has become very very fast and more enjoyable. Just much more fluid than premier, although sometimes you'll suddenly be stopped in your tracks when you can't figure out how to do something. But thats just part of learning. What jasonvp says about the transcoding isn't true. You can turn background render off and still play footage ok (depending on your system). However the background render is really fast to the point that once I've finished editing a sequence everything is rendered (and by the way pro res is generally accepted to be about the best editing codec around). Then when I hit play everything plays smoothly. If I were working in premier I'd still need to render my sequence to ensure no dropped frames. Also you don't have to have everything rendered to export, as stated by jasonvp. In fact its always best to trash your renders before final export.

Anyway, I was a very happy premier user about 6 months ago. Gave fcpx a try and thought it was great. Definitely better  and faster at story/creative editing. Then CC2015 came out and I thought I'd give it a try. Turns out there's a massive bug which renders multicam editing impossible. And then tons of audio bugs which, as I said above, turned a simple 5 minute export into a 45 minute head in the hands episode. I can confidently say that FCPX is a much more stable and reliable system. And much cheaper. $300 + $200 for some decent plug ins. Premier will cost you way more plus (and I'm not exaggerating) at least a couple of $thousand in lost time spent trouble shooting. I'll be stopping my CC subscription when my year is up and I think the combo of FCPX and Davinci will serve me very well.

lehestro wrote: So what I was hoping to talk about is, despite what has for me been a rise in unreliability, is Premiere still better than FCPX?

If you can get over the UI changes in FCPX, then it's a perfectly easy NLE to use.  If you're too used to a traditional NLE style and layout, then migrating to FCPX may be challenging.

FCPX is generally more responsive on the Mac than Pr is.  The problem, from what I can see, is that Apple sort-of lies when it says FCPX edits everything natively.  Unlike Pr, FCPX is still transcoding everything to that utterly useless ProRes format in the background while you're busy editing.  If you finish editing and try to export your project to before the transcoding has finished, you'll have to wait for it to finish the first transcoding before it can start the real export.

No thanks.

The other issue at this point in time is the version of OS X that's required.  The absolute latest version of FCPX requires OS X 10.10 (Yosemite).  It won't even install on Mavericks or anything prior.  Yosemite has been and still is a complete disaster from Apple.  It's actually the first OS X version in a very long time that's made me regret being a Mac user and having me reconsider my hardware and OS position.  If I want to avoid Yosemite, I can't buy any new Macs; they come pre-installed with Yosemite and back-grading them is impossible.  While that's a bit of a rant, it ties back into FCPX a bit: if you want to run the latest version, you have to run Yosemite.  Bleah.

Ultimately it depends on your workflow, OS choice, and whether you can grok the FCPX version of a timeline.  If you do a lot of work in ProRes already, you'll avoid that extra transcoding FCPX forces you into (oh, no, it's editing the files natively.  Honest it is!)  And if you're OK running Yosemite or the next: El Capitan, then the OS isn't a concern for you.

I'm left wondering if [Avid is] actually the only truly viable option for a clean, minimally problematic workflow.

I would say no.

The Adobe suite is a very stable, feature rich suite of tools that seems to work extremely well when you use it on a:

1. Properly configured

2. Self-built

3. Windows machine

4. Dedicated to editing.

As you fall away from that ideal, I do believe you only increase the chance of having issues.

So...get back to that ideal!  A good many of us are there and thoroughly enjoy editing with PP.

i am also pc only, so i haven't had a chance to use fcpx. my understanding from looking at it some, is apple has tried to change the timeline to be somewhat different than the traditional one we are all used to. i want to say they called it story mode, but i cant remember. it seems like many try it for a few minutes and cant grasp it, so they abandon it. i think this change in behavior would be a major deciding factor for switching. i've seen some video's of it in action, and it sorta makes sense and possibly even faster. there are plenty of video's on youtube for fcpx vs premiere, as well as video's about fcpx in general.

another big consideration is post workflow. fcpx seems to be lacking in its abilities, while apple slowly adds features to allow for real work. there are many third party solutions jumping in to fill the void. there are many articles and videos about the filmmakers of Focus using fcpx and some even list all the programs they used to get their complex workflow done.

stability... again i cant say for fcpx... for premiere, yes they have basically fallen off the wagon since version 8. the only light at the end of the tunnel for premiere is that they finally seem to be done integrating the buyout of iridas speedgrade into premiere. its been a long ongoing process, replacing major under-the-hood components of premiere and ame with the code of speedgrade. while we have already have the benefit of this for better performance for a while now, its also lead to more bugs. this long process may finally be over with the next release of premiere, and perhaps they will return their attention to stability. adobe's plan of buyout instead of having the talent to create, is alive and well, as they have already announced more buyouts. luckily none seem to be for premiere, just photoshop and AE.

other nle's...  avid's media composer seems to be feeling the pressure of premiere. they have announced a subscription model as well. avid has some nice features premiere doesn't, and since premiere is an avid clone, you may feel more comfortable using avid. avid is known for being reliable, even with long/large projects. the new kid on the block will be davinci resolve 12. if you are into color correction you may already know about it. its a best-in-class coloring program, that will be adding nle features in the next version. the bad part is you may have to invest in ofx plugins to get some of the fancy effects that come with premiere.

in the end, it depends on budget, workflow, and preference. watch video's of the programs in action, look to see if/how they handle tasks you need to have them perform, and try them out. fcpx and avid have 30 day trials, and davinci resolve lite is free.

You are asking something difficult if not impossible to answer for most  because of variances and differentials. (Hardware , software , O.S vers. and to which I would add experience)

Who uses and has a lot of concurrent experience with both versions of those apps. ?  I have never used FCPX for example so cant comment.

I use a Windows PC and windows versions  of Adobe aps... and never any experience major issues I read about here.  I cant comment first hand  on a MAC experience because I don't use that combination.

My guess is that MAC users may feel the way you do and Windows users...less so.

As a MAC user you can load both and try them for your self. You can even try AVID again.  These are options a Windows PC user like myself does not have.

For me...my hardware and Adobe apps are solid as a rock and have been for ever. I cant imagine any reason I would change anything.