macworld.com — Adobe will announce on Thursday that it will revive a Mac version of Premiere, the software maker’s video program aimed at professional editors. The new Mac version will only run on Intel-based Macs and will be part of a larger Adobe Production Studio suite that will include Adobe Encore DVD and Adobe Soundbooth.
Jan 4, 2007 View in Crawl 4
joenickJan 4, 2007
The only advantage I see for switching back from Final Cut to Premiere is the new compatibility features between Premiere and After Effects. The fact that you can now import AE sequences into Preimere and change them (in realtime!) back in After Effects is HUGE. For animators that is going to save entire days worth of work. For me, thats well worth the switch.
diggumjonezJan 4, 2007
oh, just like Apple did when they started releasing FCP? Several studios not only received full FCP software, but the computers to run it on and additional funding. This wasn't enough for many of the production houses to switch, but enough did to help Apple's marketing drive.
digitalkid215Jan 4, 2007
I use both Premiere and FCP but I prefer Premiere, especial PP2.0, over FCP for a few reasons. 1. It is far easier to use, as in jumping and just getting something done. FCP isn't quite as user friendly as people would have you believe especially if you're coming from any other NLE. 2. GUI is much better, I can do a lot more without having to deal with extra windows needing to be opened, ie making changes to audio. 3. Since Production Studio 1.0 integration with other Adobe apps. which is even better now with 2.0! 4. Much better work flow with the Adobe Apps and even a lot of non-Adobe apps. 5. This is the most important one of all, NO RENDERING for previewing! With FCP you have render everything before you can see it! From titles to something as simple as a dissolve! You would have thought this would have been addressed when they went to the G5.A lot of people have to admit that once Adobe Premiere left the MAC OS there was little to no choice and who wants to purchase another Workstation when you just got that nice Dual G4 or G5? You use what is available and compared to the price of Avid, FCP looked cheap for someone who freelances or small company just starting.Adobe Production Suite will slowly begin to dominate on the MAC Platform and those who think lowly of it just haven't given it a chance. Having said that there are a few things I do like about FCP, I like how you can color code your markers and how any info in them can be displayed on playback and I like that it does support a lot of formats out of the box. I have to remember the rest and to be honest I haven't used FCP much but it is very clumsy to use if you use other NLE's. Vega though nice is hard to use at first too, but I almost feel like FCP is harder for many basic tasks. Once people start seeing the ease of use of Adobe Production Suite, it will begin to get the "Pro" title that FCP has seemly captured. Try using Adobe Encore and then try to use DVD Studio Pro. You will have what took you longer to do in DVD Studio finished in half the time. Lastly lets not through in EDU pricing, it makes little sense to even try to compare the pricing right now. FCP Bundle was priced at a nice sweet spot for what you got and if Adobe to meet or beat that price it will be a non-issue. Also have you tried to go from FCP Exp to FCP? It's difficult which says a lot about that app.No matter what though, like a lot of people said already it's about preference. A good editor can use just about anything once they know where the tools are. Besides, competition is always good for customers!!
Closed AccountJan 5, 2007
Yeah at last. That's the way they learn.
sddsJan 5, 2007
I had to throw in my 2 cents here...Probably my favorite straight editing program on the PC was EditDV by Digital Origin - now owned by Media 100?? by Pinnacle??? so it's been buried and non-updated. It was FAST, but not as 'layer-friendly as Premiere. But it did have something else going for it - full Quicktime support for editing on PC. For anyone that's tried to make a long-format edit of ANYTHING using AVI that did not have any sort of time-line playback codec installed, you know AVI is evil. And FORGET trying to take your long-format AVI-based timeline into another program for finishing. If you had some great program edited in Premiere and wanted to apply an overall 'look' through After Effects using AVI - you better start trying to figure out how to set up a frame server. But with Quicktime, you could edit a huge movie and save a 35Kb QT file that referenced all the raw footage and feed THAT as your movie to any program you needed to - including Premiere! So you didn't have to ass around with 2 GB file limits and all that. You could instantly load well over 2 GB worth of footage to any other program... Ahhhh.... I miss you EditDV...Now... I've still used Premiere since version 4 all the way through PPro 2.0. It is most CERTAINLY a love/hate relationship. I CANNOT for the life of me figure out WHY Premiere Pro insists on f-ing up the interlacing when applying brightness/contrast or other video transitional things. I cannot very easily edit between one progressive scan framed camera and an interlaced one without things going ca-ca. It's like they forgot how to interpret footage properly. They should be ashamed! I really wish they would lift the code from AFX for footage interpretation - it completely blows my mind. It makes me WANT to go and re-start a project on FCP just for this ALONE... Another annoyance has been the switch when the Pro version started (7.0) that had SO MANY cache files built upon import... If you've previously captured a ton of footage and then import it to PPro, it has to build a TON of cached files that take up a TON of room. And sometimes when you are previewing effects and they don't take, you have to clear ALL of these out and let them be REBUILT which takes forever. My projects are HUGE now compared to pre-pro versions. BUT, I still use it. Some of these projects I'm working on have taken years of playing around and I just can't start over in another program till they are done. The new features have been worth some of those pains - hard drive space is enormously cheap now... PPro still has what looks to be the EASIEST 5.1 mixing solution out there - if someone knows a better way on Mac PLEASE let me know. AND of course the recent tighter integration with AFX has made some things go by faster.All this said... I STILL want to convert to FCP only. I've edited some short format items in it and it seems to be a very capable program. I really like how THOUGHT was used in making the program itself. Premiere always seems to have features GLUED on top somehow to stay compatible with the latest and greatest in camera tech but FCP seems to have been made a lot better in regards to this. If I can just find some surround mixing love on FCP, then life will be better. I'm sure it exists out there since a whole slew of films are cut on it - I didn't see anything in Soundtrack Pro that convinced me of 5.1...Encore DVD vs DVDSP... hmmm. Honestly, I find them both to be about on par with one another at the moment. I DO like the editing integration of Encore to Photoshop for menus to be a very handy feature. But for run of the mill DVDs, I seem to get where I need to be a tad bit faster in DVDSP using themes. If it needs to be a completely original set of menus and so forth then I find them both to be about the same in time use - most of the time is in planning the DVD and menu making anyway.After Effects vs Shake or Motion - Can't even comment yet. Used AFX since v 3 and know it VERY well. I've dabbled in Shake and was impressed with what I saw but have never really put it to use - can't even say anything about Motion yet though the demos I've seen are nice.In all, I think Adobe is just trying to think ahead. AND, with the processors being Intel now, it's probably fairly trivial to port to OSX. Maybe they can use all the old Win32 API or maye it's their OWN API and port it all to display on one big OpenGL window... Poof, minimal effort for more sales. Makes good business sense. I don't think they will dent FCP market much - only those PC users that switched and have old PPro projects to finish like me...
systemerrorJan 5, 2007
nor any or the other Pros or Co's that are switching from Avid to FCP for HD
dralienJan 5, 2007
This is great news for four reasons:1. Competition is great and will lead to better/cheaper tools for all Mac users2. Adobes full-fledged return to the mac will kill the "Adobe leaving the Mac" rumors and bolster the platform's relevance. I can see the press now "Intel switch makes Adobe and Apple buddy-buddy once more".3. Premiere users who may otherwise be interested in the Mac can now make the move.4. This return finally puts to rest the idea that Apple's entrance into application markets pushes away developers. Apple wisely realized that whatever can improve the platform is a net win for developers. Final Cut helped maintain the Mac as a desirable video platform. This is what brought premiere back, as well as Avid symphony and express, which had been windows only.Now, Premiere has a real uphill battle in the pro space. Avid's strength aside, TV post has moved to final cut in a major way, especially in-house post for network promos and show production (for example, MTV Networks are almost all final cut based now). Film is moving slower, but it's gaining traction there as well. Apple's recent purchases of Silicon Color and Proximity suggest very very powerful new color correction and media management capabilities in coming versions of Final Cut. Apple has wisely moved fast to incorporate new formats and work flows in totally seamless ways, such as Panasonic P2, keeping it on the cutting edge.Most important of all... core image. If Adobe hopes to compete with final cut on the mac, it's going to need to match core-image's real-time capabilities either through the use of the API or some Adobe-grown solution. I have doubts of an Adobe solution being as low-latency as core-image, given it'll reside a layer above it in terms of abstraction (I could be wrong). Adobe's cross-platform approach can be a blessing and a curse with this.After Effects integration will be very powerful for animators and lower-end production where one person is doing everything but I don't see Final Cut editors moving to it for this feature alone. It may prove as a useful editing extension to projects that are primarily after effects jobs, even if Final Cut remains the primary solution for a person or studio.In any event, welcome back Adobe! Now bring on the native technology support!
jb978Jan 5, 2007
pretty sorry there wont be an ppc or UB release :( I feel bad about my dual 2.3ghz g5.
gregcottenJan 5, 2007
@04TLI apologize for what I said. I was slightly enraged at the point of posting. No, I don't believe ingest can be found by "googling" to coolest ways to say import. I try to avoid saying digitize (because that would refer to changing an analog signal to a digital signal) and import, well, just because it is the "norm". Anyway, smokeHD runs on Linux, and I prefer their GUI approach to streamline editing more than FCP or Premiere (or Vegas, for that matter). For example, Smoke's footage proxying features for working with 4K, 2K, or HD footage really are far superior than FCP or Premiere. Additionally, its interfacing with RS devices (such as HDCAM CINEALTA decks and basically any other deck with serial interfacing) is unparralelled. This can probably account for the price difference. Sometimes I just get annoyed with elitist/snobs (which you are not) who will push their agenda needlessly. Let's face it, FCP does have critical acclaim (all be it self-fueled from Apple) and has found it's way even into the lower-budget Hollywood community and mainstream commercial television. They're right - why use proprietary hardware for things that you don't need proprietary hardware for? However, this does not excuse flaming other editing systems with (in my opinion), comprable features that help people make a living. I use Premiere Pro at home for self-projects, but stick with more streamline applications at work. For some background, I work with compositing on a daily basis. Usually this involves integration with Maya, Shake, (sometimes) After Effects, and (sometimes) Combustion.In any case, I again apologize for my flame - it was uncalled for.