Goodbye FCP

[nickbaer]

Like many video editors, I have been struggling with the dilemma of either completely re-inventing my edit workflow with FCP X, or adding Adobe Premiere Pro.

Yesterday, after working all week on testing various combinations of Toast/FCP 7/Compressor to get 1440x1080 and 1280x720 clips for VOD and DVD, I installed Premiere Pro.

20 minutes later I had my most recent shoot all laid out on the timeline, and ready for export. 90 minutes later, I had my 70-minute movie as the mpeg-2 for VOD. No Toast for AVCHD conversion, no Compressor. All-in-one Premiere.

From what I read on video forums, the version of Premiere that I downloaded yesterday was not the Premiere other editors struggled with for 2-3 years while I was producing dozens of SD DVD and VOD videos. Premiere has evolved a lot, especially in the past year that Apple has pissed off an entire industry with FCP X, and for 2 years that FCP 7 has gone not updated.

Adding FCP X might be an eventual possibility. The two things holding me back: FCP X shares some Library resources with FCP 7, making those resources no longer accessible to FCP 7, and Premiere accepts AVCHD files with the same ease that Premiere, and FCP 7, accepts DV video on its timeline(s). If I want to go back into an old project, would FCP 7 still be able to; and both of my cameras, video and still with movie, are AVCHD, and I don't have time nor money for all of the conversion steps with FCP 7, possibly FCP X.

Apple developed Final Cut in the early 2000s, bought out from Macromedia's fledgling video department being developed alongside Flash, in order to have synergy with its hardware lines: Final Cut was a reason to buy a Mac, and Macs were improved to handle the demands of the ever-upgraded Final Cut. That stopped in 2010 with the iPad.

With Apple moving to social media mobile video platforms, pro editors and production houses are left gasping for air.

Premiere looks and feels the same as FCP 7. Apple tries to make fun of the FCP 7/Premiere timeline that goes back to the 1990s, but there's no need to try to compete in that way. FCP X might be a good product, but Apple wasn't able to lead an industry of horses to their water, and they were't able to get them to drink...

[sc32803]

Welcome to Premiere, Nick! I've been using it for years and always thought it was the best video editor available, other than maybe Avid. For editing HD video I think Premiere is the best, although I hear Sony Vegas is good too. I tried it and FCP and hated them both.

[nickbaer]

It has been a tough afternoon.

I am trying to build a movie menu montage... a stack of clips and text (video generators) to build a montage of 7 video clips (6 windows), background, 6 text boxes 1 under each video window, and 2 more text boxes.

How do you copy 20-seconds of a clip from the feature sequence, then paste it into the movie menu sequence?

How to you scale a video clip? Put the gold border around the clip?

This is what I'm trying to make: 6 video clips scaled from 100% down to about 15%, stacked on top of each other, but then positioned for the 2 rows of 3 across, 100% background, 5 text boxes as names of the clips, and "play" and title of the movie.

MENUB&C1.jpeg

(sorry the video is "red", missing, in FCP, I've finished this one in FCP, wanting do recreate n PP).

FCP menu.png

This will go into Encore, to put buttons over each of the 6 video windows, plus "play". So far, that is not working either. In Encore the menus and buttons Library came empty. The 30-minute download "fix" was some stupid birthday and Halloween menus, and NO buttons.

I liked being able to drag the AVCHS clips at 1920x1080 and just start working, but making the menu has me at a loss.

And trying to get Encore to do anything like the tutorial videos on YouTube.

[nickbaer]

OK, it's called Picture In Picture. The rest is in the "Effects Controls".

Learning new ways to ask questions.

[sc32803]

Although I think Premiere is currently the best video editor on the market, I cannot say the same for Encore as a DVD builder. I have yet to find an easy to use DVD builder, but fortunately I don't make a lot of DVDs. When I do I just use the simplest menu structure available.

The only suggestion I can offer is to sign up at the Adobe forums and post your question there (without any naked pics of course!). I have found their user forums to be a great resource.

[dirtyratstudios]

I've made a few discs with GUI For DVDAuthor (Windows)

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/GUI-for-dvdauthor

[nickbaer]

I think the problem lies in my (official) copy of Encore fresh from Adobe 2 days ago, did not come with the template menus and buttons.

So I'm going to wait until Monday to call and point out to them that I am not the only one on Adobe forums to be slighted by this.

[nickbaer]

I think I'm going to stick with both FCP 7 and Premiere Pro for a while longer.

The killer is Encore. Just awful stubborn mule.

Probably will give FCP X a try, also. I get to use it for 30 days free.

[sc32803]

I seem to recall that the downloadable versions of Premiere and Encore do not come with templates... you have to download these separately. The DVD versions come with them.

[nickbaer]

The thing I didn't mention in this thread last July, is/was that I am doing Premiere Pro (and all of the Adobe CSS Apps) IN THE CLOUD!! Using an Adobe CSS Cloud Subscription.

It works! For 7 months now! In multiple countries! It actually works!

Because I am a 1-man shop, and only actually used PhotoShop and InDesign and Acrobat up until July 2012, the old CSS Suite that I had from a trial box was sufficient. When Lion broke CSS, I went with Apple Pages instead of InDesign, and now almost 2 years later, I ONLY use Apple Pages for DVD box cover and DVD face label artwork. It is so much friendlier to use!

I made over 200 of my Books with InDesign, now I make them with a PHP script, that builds a multi-page PDF document from a directory of .jpgs. 48 .jpgs = 48-page PDF, complete with text added to the front cover and back cover.

When I got my brand new machine in February 2012, and sold the other two, I therefore sold the only machine I had with anything pre-Lion that my CSS Apps still worked on.

When PhotoShop broke, I used Apple Preview, to do almost everything I needed to do on the machine I had with Lion. But then faced with no working PS, I first did a Cloud subscription only for PS. Part of me thinks I wrote about that a year ago, when I did my first Cloud subscription.

Then in July 2012 when I had some coaching from one of my VOD partners, and figured out the skinny way to do 1920x1080p HD and 1280x720p HD video with Premiere Pro, I upgraded to the full CSS Cloud subscription. (I still author my DVDs with Apple DVD Studio Pro, and when FCPX proves to handle AVCHD, I will drop PP in a heartbeat. last I checked, the FCPX App was like $250 flat).

So far, the only negative about the Cloud Subscription is the way in which they process credit cards. The old fashioned way they use, gets an authorization day one, but they do not capture the funds, or close their batch, for 3-4 days, and in the interim, the amount is not calculated into the "available" balance. because my CSS was 3 years old, it didn't qualify for the $29/month, and instead I am fine paying the $49/month. But when $49 is not calculated in the available balance, it presents an open door for fraud to occur with fraudulent on-line charges, or buying something at a POS and getting an approval by thinking I have $50 more than I really do - especially when I am outside of the US, and there is NOT a branch of that Bank to go run to.

THat, too, was difficult to argue with "customer service" in India, because the India-an on the phone had no experience with, therefore no idea of how, the US banking system worked - of course!

But those faced with the option of laying out a ton of money to upgrade CSS vs. a $29 or $49 monthly CLOUD subscription - The Cloud subscription works! Sorry I didn't describe that part last July, for those of you who might have done the cash CSS upgrade. For me as a 1-man shop, the subscription works.

[abostonboy]

I switched to Premiere as well and am going with the cloud.

Lloyd

[dirtyratstudios]

Very happy with Sony Vegas.

Did you know that you can download the CS2 version of Premiere from the Adobe website with a serial number for free?

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

[nickbaer]

The Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group, which I attended their monthly meetings 2004-2006, and learned a lot about the business, recently changed its name, dropping the exclusive Final Cut Pro reference. I still like to visit them on-line www.LAFCPUG.org .

They already had been doing side-by-side comparisons to Premiere and Sony Vegas. While PP is the big player, Sony Vegas always was well respected. I think I went home from one meeting in 2005 with a trial disc, but I don't remember if it was WIN or OSX. Back then, I did have a couple of Windows machines, now I just have Mac.

[RobertChandler]

Isn't it possible to use Final Cut X with the old DVD Studio Pro? That's what the folks at the Apple Store told me.
Also, hasn't FCX added back a lot of what was removed like multiclip and DVD chapters?

Is there anyone using Final Cut X and happy with it?

[nickbaer]

yes, I do use the ages old DVD Studio Pro for authoring DVDs as I have since 2005.

I'm doing a project tonight that is audio intensive, so I converted the AVCHD camera files to .mov, and then spent a couple of hours editing (me as the director out of) the audio, adding a brand new music track, as well as sweetening the live sound of the shoot - all in FCP (3 years old) !

It was sooooo much fun to be using FCP (3 years old) again!

As soon as I know that FCP X can handle raw AVCHD files, I'll be on it. There's times I need Acrobat and DreamWeaver from the Adobe Cloud subscription as well, but not life or death now that I create my PDFs by PHP script.

I guess could do all of my projects, again, by first converting AVCHD to MOV and then using FCP or FCP X, I just thought I should give Premiere Pro a try, and save the conversion step - but PP is so much harder than FCP.

And when the software is hard, the creativity is stifled, when my brain is so worn out from the archaic PP GUI.