# Vid Editors Premiere Pro CS6



## HenriHelvetica (Oct 4, 2011)

A good vid editor friend of mine who's been in TV for years was saying that *Premiere Pro CS6* has come a long way as an editor and that ppl were starting to switch over. I want to start with some relatively simple edits (imagine a short trailer/commercial) but before anyone starts to suggest iMovie, i wasn't too keen on my experience with it yrs past. 

My only q? is more whether or not it's too much to take on or should I go w/ *Premiere Elements 11*?? 

I'm getting into some more web dev and don't plan on doing full on made for TV edits, but just want something that will look kinda slick. I'm comfy w/ both Illustrator and PS so the integration i've been told is lovely. BTW, I have legal access to both editors for cheap so as odd as this may sound, $ is no real issue (Adobe products that is)

Just looking for testimonials.

Thx as always.


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## a7mc (Dec 30, 2002)

It really depends on your editing style, how you work, and what you're editing. In a few cases, I've used FCP X successfully and it did speed up my work over a "traditional" editor. But 80% of the time, FCP X has been horribly frustrating to work with. It's over-simplified at the expense of fine control. If all you're doing is simple editing with transitions, it's probably fine, and will have a shorter learning curve than Premiere. But if you're doing anything complex (external audio sync, speed control, keyframing, effects, etc), stay away. Also worth noting, my FCP X crashes 10-20 times per job.

Premiere CS6 is like an improved version of the old FCP. It's a more standard and traditional editor with a lot of control. It may feel overwhelming to someone who has never done real editing, but it really is a great program. I can't really comment on Premiere Elements as I haven't used it, but it looks decent for home movies or quick and dirty work.

Avid Media Composer 6.x would be another great choice if you want to go more pro, but expensive.

A7


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## HenriHelvetica (Oct 4, 2011)

Ya. My friends use AVID. But not even trying to go there. Seeing they do heavy TV - def not for me. But thx for that.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

*FYI - topical? - this appeared today:
*
*Apple launching Final Cut Pro X campaign to win back skeptical professional users*



> Apple is beginning a campaign today to win back the video-editing community that abandoned its flagship video-editing software after the release of its controversial Final Cut Pro X. The LA Times reported that following several updates to the software over the last two years to fix some of the criticisms, Apple is launching a number new ads on its website today that feature professionals using Final Cut Pro X. The campaign is apparently timed to lined up with upcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention and aims to win over professional video editors by featuring professionals such as editors at the Globe and Mail newspaper






+
YouTube Video









ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.






(9to5mac)


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Hold on - they're going to try to convince "professional" editors to use FCPX by citing the video work that appears on the Globe & Mail's site?

No Walter Murch? No Bunim/Murray Productions? No BBC?

I don't want to be too catty about this (since I do use FCPX) but newspaper video is not what I would consider a shining beacon of light in terms of form, content or presentation. Appearing on Canada's National Newspaper's site notwithstanding.

Back to the OP's question. Premiere Pro CS6 is great, yes, I use it regularly. Not sure what it was about iMovie that turned you off...I agree that it's a frustrating program but that's coming from my perspective (so called "professional" editor) rather than yours.

We use an older version of Premiere Elements at work and it's perfectly fine, handles whatever we throw at it (it's usually used for format conversion rather than editing).

You really can't go wrong with iMovie/Premiere Elements/FCPX/Premiere Pro/Avid Media Composer/Smoke/whatever because they all deliver great results. It's a matter of how much you want to spend & the way you want to work. We live in wonderful times when there is so much choice at nearly every price point.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

jellotor said:


> Hold on - they're going to try to convince "professional" editors to use FCPX by citing the video work that appears on the Globe & Mail's site?


Don't shoot the messenger, man! The intent was more to the point that Apple is beginning a campaign regarding FCPX. Sorry the video wasn't up to your standards! 

Cheers!


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Oh geez, no, I was just surprised at who Apple considers to be evangelists for FCPX. FCP 2-7 had Walter Murch, I guess FCPX has to start somewhere.

As a side note...newspaper video is much better than it once was...but I still find it to often be beautifully shot with gaps in storytelling. Broad generalization I know (and not everything should be a 90s bit on the 6 o'clock news, either) and I guess I shouldn't get all elitist on newspaper video editors. Editing is editing, after all.

Sorry if I offended.


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

I've been editing for 20 years, and just finished my 7th project using fcpx,and the more I use it the more I find going back to traditional timeline based editing a little clunky.


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

I guess it's about 20 years of editing for me, too.

I'm ambivalent about FCPX's timeline; it's just another way to get the job done to me. What I do like about it is the database (even while it still confuses me), multicam and the seamless optimized media/proxy media business that goes on under the hood.

The audio tools are still not that great and the colour board is a bit backwards for me after using a 3 way colour corrector all these years.

The biggest, and more egregious hassle to me (aside from bugs like pulldown removal not working) is the fact that that the new FCPXML doesn't talk to some 3rd party software properly. I have some multicam projects that I am trying to grade in Resolve, for example, but either the FCPXML doesn't support multicam or Resolve doesn't...I have no idea who to blame. It's easier to just grade all the raw footage and then edit, but it'd be great to just send the multicam sequence to Resolve and be done with it.

FCPXML seems to be on a bit of an island.


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

The bonus is they are constantly improving it. I love the multi-cam.. 16 cameras is pretty sweet.

Apple also lays out the roadmap for upgrades to it, which I appreciate.

Ultimately, it's still a tool.. I'll use anything, but I'm finding the more I use FCPX the more I dig the workflow,


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Just out of curiosity, Garry, what kind of work are you throwing at FCPX? I've done a few documentary style cuts with it that have been pretty seamless and now the multicam stuff. Would be interesting to try out a short film or something.


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

I've thrown a multi camera music video, 2 corporate videos, one small short film, and a video with a mixture of gopro and dslr footage 


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

I think Apple is going to have a steep hill to climb ahead of them trying to win back the pro video market. First they let the software (FCP7) get _very_ old in the tooth and didn't bother to resolve some issues they promised they would resolve for years (*cough* gamma issues *cough*), then they pulled the rug out from under those same pro users by not only killing that incarnation of FCP -- they also pulled the _entire platform_ in one fell swoop. I know quite a lof of final cut server users who had invested a lot of time and $$ just to find out they lost support overnight. Xserve RAID went poof, then XServe, then FC Server and FCP + Color. Yep, that really pissed off some of the big $$ spenders in that realm. Within 2 years they went from having a pretty killer platform top to bottom, hardware and software, to faint wisps of smoke drifting in the air while everyone was frantically researching how to move their suites to AVID and Davinci without breaking the bank -- again. In all my years working with the mac professional world I've rarely seen a mass exodus like that one. Usually pros try to hold on to that aging program and squeeze a couple more years out of things, but not that time around.

I still do most of my editing in FCP7. The last one I did was a 9-up 1080p setup and at the time FCPX wasn't up to the task without a lot of hoop jumping so I just went back to the tried and true (and somewhat clunky) FCP7 multiclip setup. 

The engine behind the scenes in FCPX has some good potential, it finally feels reasonably modern with the behind the scene proxy stuff, etc, but I still really stumble around in the UI. I suppose I have to spend more time with it ... but unless I really need to get serious with it to be compatible with clients in the future I would honestly probably go back to Premier when the time comes that FCP7 just won't work for me any longer.

Lastly I have to agree that using a Canadian newspaper web video as "proof" that the pros are back into things is a bit of a stretch. No offence to newspaper video shooters/editors, but it ain't the bright lights of hollywood and ENG and/or talking heads certainly doesn't push the limits in terms of editing. It feels more like an iMovie commercial than a serious attempt at looking "pro" ... If Apple wants to impress someone they need talk James Cameron into editing Avatar2 in the FCPX "suite" ... (LOL) ... FCP used to live in a lot of hollywood editor's suites at one point, but honestly, how many of those same suites do you think rely on FCPX?


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

All good points...and having worked in TV news for 10 years I wouldn't hold ENG editing up as a great paragon of creative editing, either.

Everything I have seen over the last, what, year or so when it comes to FCPX related angst is that the very concept of what a "professional" editor is has become more and more fluid which makes defining who or what a product is made for and marketed to a sort of personal crusade.

I liked Garry's comments about FCPX, in the end, being just a tool. It's totally conceivable to run Media Composer, FCP7, FCPX and Creative Suite on the same machine (and you'll eventually be able to add Lightworks to that, too) and pick-n-choose the right platform for the job. Pretty wicked if you ask me and that serves to distract me about worrying about what Apple will or won't support in the future.

Has anyone gotten a lot of use out of Motion 5? I have to admit that I didn't purchase it or Compressor. (I really dislike Compressor.) I used to use Motion for lower 3rds and simple mograph and liked the intuitiveness of the interface but once FCPX hit I have been gradually teaching myself After Effects just to make sure that I am inoculated against further platform upheavals.

I consider it to be a real achievement that FCPX's optimized/proxy workflow stuff works great even without Compressor. That is great thinking.


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

I like the workflow apple is showing on their web site from the Cutters for LEVERAGE
Apple - Final Cut Pro X - In Action - Electric Entertainment


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

jellotor said:


> Has anyone gotten a lot of use out of Motion 5? I have to admit that I didn't purchase it or Compressor. (I really dislike Compressor.) I used to use Motion for lower 3rds and simple mograph and liked the intuitiveness of the interface but once FCPX hit I have been gradually teaching myself After Effects just to make sure that I am inoculated against further platform upheavals.


I've played with motion, that's about it. it seems flexible.

Has anyone else used the Dashwood plugin for editing 3D in FCPX? THAT is the cats meow!


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

I used motion for a (very) short while, but ended up going back to After Effects for most stuff as well. I share the dislike for Compressor as well, it never really did it for me. Slow and clunky compared to other free stuff (like MPEG Streamclip for one). I've used a bunch of other ffmpeg based conversion tools and they are all better than Compressor, better threading, using more cores, faster encodes. I didn't buy the newer compressor or motion either. After what Apple did with their other apps I figured I'd stick with something that is likely to stay around and keep compatibility in the future. AE, while a bit clunky for some things compared to Motion is at least still able to open old projects ... I fear that Motion stuff may not be able to going forward. Pretty much lost all confidence that Apple cares much about backwards compatibility these days and don't want to end up having to redo things down the road if I need to re-render anything for a client 

I agree that FCPX is just a tool -- but tools that don't feel good/work for you are more likely to sit on the shelf and not get used -- which is exactly what my copy of FCPX is doing ATM


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## Garry (Jan 27, 2002)

Gerk said:


> I agree that FCPX is just a tool -- but tools that don't feel good/work for you are more likely to sit on the shelf and not get used -- which is exactly what my copy of FCPX is doing ATM


Interesting.. I feel the opposite.. I'm finding that Premiere and FC7 are gathering dust and FCPX I'm using more. I've cut some Red footage lately, and FCPX has handled it very well.

I'll have legacy Final cut on my machine for a while just in case I have to revisit a project, but I'm ok with that.


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

Garry said:


> Interesting.. I feel the opposite.. I'm finding that Premiere and FC7 are gathering dust and FCPX I'm using more. I've cut some Red footage lately, and FCPX has handled it very well.
> 
> I'll have legacy Final cut on my machine for a while just in case I have to revisit a project, but I'm ok with that.


Yep that's the way it goes with tools sometimes  I honestly haven't spent a lot of quality time with it because I have such a knee jerk reaction to the interface and the few times I did decide to try and spend some time with it it was unable to do what I needed for those particular projects. At some point I'll probably have to do some serious work in it and that may change my mind, but at this point it's on the shelf.


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

Gerk said:


> I think Apple is going to have a steep hill to climb ahead of them trying to win back the pro video market. First they let the software (FCP7) get _very_ old in the tooth and didn't bother to resolve some issues they promised they would resolve for years (*cough* gamma issues *cough*), then they pulled the rug out from under those same pro users by not only killing that incarnation of FCP -- they also pulled the _entire platform_ in one fell swoop. I know quite a lof of final cut server users who had invested a lot of time and $$ just to find out they lost support overnight. Xserve RAID went poof, then XServe, then FC Server and FCP + Color. Yep, that really pissed off some of the big $$ spenders in that realm. Within 2 years they went from having a pretty killer platform top to bottom, hardware and software, to faint wisps of smoke drifting in the air while everyone was frantically researching how to move their suites to AVID and Davinci without breaking the bank -- again. In all my years working with the mac professional world I've rarely seen a mass exodus like that one. Usually pros try to hold on to that aging program and squeeze a couple more years out of things, but not that time around.


I'm not a 'pro' shooting for tv, hollywood, but for home users, I edit various pieces of footage for home consumers. Tape based and HD transfers so for me, FCX works.

For the pro shops out there, I completely get why they left.

I do follow some of the pro folks out there on twitter and some of the forums. 

You are correct - mass exodus is a bang on description.

Folks were waiting to hear from Apple and when they did, they didn't like and were instantly gone (and most likely forever, if not a long, long time).

I don't blame them either. It's a finicky market in a touchy economical times. People want tools to help them finish projects quickly and effectively so their bottom lines are achieved. They have to remain competitive.

Taking a step back, as many saw it, wasn't acceptable. 

But to me, there's a missing piece not yet mentioned - what about hardware? No new updates on the Mac Pro probably doesn't have folks running to order more new systems? 

Sure, I've seen some reports of using iMacs, but I think for Apple, the hardware relates to the software. I think Apple needs to update their MPs or they may lose more users when those folks need a new system.

Cheers,
Keebler


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Garry said:


> I've played with motion, that's about it. it seems flexible.
> 
> Has anyone else used the Dashwood plugin for editing 3D in FCPX? THAT is the cats meow!


I have not tried the Dashwood plugins, but I did meet Tim Dashwood at the Battle of Stoney Creek re-enactment two or three years ago.

I would dearly love to try out some 3D stuff but I don't have access to a 3D rig. A friend of mine has a couple of GoPros and we should try that...but one of those Panny 3D cameras that shoot on SDHC would be really neat to play around with.

Ran into a problem with Premiere Pro last night that reconfigured my workflow. I had done a multicam cut with FCPX and exported with the scratch audio (essentially an unmixed BWF). My audio post guy mixed the BWF stuff (recorded on a new Sound Devices mixer) and sent it back to me. The exported ProRes QT file (23.98, scratch audio included) was imported into Premiere Pro, essentially just so that I could diddle about with AE for my graphics, along with the mixed BWF.

I also razor bladed and condensed some of the material and it's at this point that I noticed the sync beginning to drift. Tried a couple of adjustments here and there (including a forced "resync" with PluralEyes) and the drift continued. Hmmm. I'm well aware of the 32k audio glitch with FCP7 that would often lead to sync drift but this is all 48k stuff. The only thing I can think of is that the exported QT media is 23.98 whereas my sequence is 23.976 in Premiere Pro. The video may be playing *slightly* faster than the audio. Grrr.

Solution? Synced up the new mix to the cut in FCPX.


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

It still sounds like an audio sampling rate mismatch. If it's a slow drift that gets worse as the timeline moves along that's almost for sure the issue. COuld also be 44.1k vs 48k. Maybe one of the apps is lying about the real sample rate of the audio, it wouldn't be the first time -- most apps rely on the file's metadata instead of actually checking the file's real sampling rate. FCPX forcibly resamples audio to what it wants so that's why it probably worked there.


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Agreed. I kind of expected Premiere Pro to force a resample, as well. I've read a couple of forum posts from people who have had a similar problem, usually with dual system sound, and they all advocate adjusting the speed of the audio by .04% to .06%. Bleah; there's got to be a simpler/better/more obvious way.

That's a welcome feature (if you consider it to be a feature) of FCPX. Too bad the rest of the audio "features" are stillborn.


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

The better way is to load up any questionable audio tracks into a real audio editing app and checking the actual sampling rate, then resample and export if required. Adjusting the audio speed is not a good solution. Also being an audio guy it's one of my pet peeves to have the audio tampered with like that  Of course it all depends on what the audio actually is ...

To me it's not really a "feature" to have the video app forcibly resample, but it does come in handy in these sorts of situations. I'd personally much rather have it inform you that there's a mismatch and ask what you want to do -- then you could at least choose to allow it to change your audio tracks (or not and fix it properly as above). I'm also not sure that it does a terribly good resample to be honest ... but if it's simple audio and gets the job done I guess it's ok for some uses. I know if I did some serious soundtrack mixing and then the video editing app forcibly resampled it I'd be pretty unimpressed with not only the app but the editor that let that happen to my audio work  But again it depends on what the actual audio is ... talking head type stuff would probably not be very noticeable but audio dithering (which is what those apps usually do) is not the same as properly resampling the audio through a real audio engine. Core Audio, while pretty convenient, is NOT an proper audio engine


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Oh, believe me, I'm well aware of the fact that it's a double-edged sword.

Neither FCPX or Premiere Pro gave any indication that the sample rate is out of whack, so the question of what to do about the problem involved a lot of supposition and troubleshooting...and I'm not done yet.

Since you're an audio guy...my audio post guy used Pro Tools 7 to mix this stuff for some reason...any known gotchas with PT7 and 23.98 fps or anything like that?


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

Not that I've heard of .. but I'm not a big Pro Tools fan to be honest -- but there's been years of debate of 24fps vs. 23.98 vs. 23.97 in the audio world. I have seen people complaining about PT "recognizing" 23.98 as 24 in the past though, so it's possible this may be the issue as well - if he was using a video track it may have been playing back the video as 24fps instead of the proper drop frame that it should have been.


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Update to my little issue: I have had the same sync drift issue with an AIFF file, as well. Again, reports as 48k in Premiere Pro, Audition and QT player.

It seems counter-intuitive to me, but should I try to resample (with Audition most likely) to 44.1k? I assume the sync drift will still be present in Premiere Pro and that'll be one more item to check off the list.


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## Gerk (Dec 21, 2012)

At this point it almost sounds like it's not your fault ... it seems like the sound editor may be messing things up and trying to edit the 48k as 44.1k (which will make the overall file length longer). If the audio files are longer after the mixing this is probably what's happening (he's importing the 48k videos into a 44.1 audio project). Is the audio getting behind or ahead of the video? If it's getting behind then this sounds like what might be happening.

Resampling to 44.1 is going to help if this is the case, if you resample it will keep the exact same length of the file which seems to be what is off in this case ... this might be the one case where you may have to change the file length by that small percentage


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