This entry isn’t about X, if you want to see why it isn’t ready for primetime, check out this post and this post by Walter Biscardi.

This post is about the future of editing and post production and which platform will replace FCP7. Cutting to the chase, I believe it will be Premiere Pro CS5.5, and here’s why.

1. Striking Similarity to FCP7

Both applications have extremely similar GUIs and follow the same workflow premise. The viewer in FCP is the same as the “Source” window in Premiere where you can set your in and out point. Effects work the same with the tab in the source window, and the same track structure as FCP. Sound Syncing is easy with CS5.5 by using the merge function with clips in the timeline. Any FCP editor could pick up on the premise of Premiere in 2 hours, max.

2. 64 Bit, direct support for RED, XDCAM EX, and H.264 right out of the box

The neat thing about Premiere is that it retains the same structure of FCP7, yet under the surface it’s far more advanced. For starters, it’s 64 bit, which means it’ll harness all the RAM your system has to offer.

With FCP, you’re stuck downloading lots of plugins to get it to work with your footage, not so much with Premiere. On top of that, one has to re-transcode H.264, NXCAM, XDCAM, AVC-Intra, DVCPROHD, and RED to appropriate quicktime codecs. While XDCAM may not take long, it doubles the amount of space needed for your material. NXCAM and Canon DSLR, on the other hand, requires a full transcode to ProRes which takes a substantial amount of time.

With Premiere, you just navigate to the BPAV or RED .RDM and simply import the files from that location, no re-wrap needed. It just.. works.

Final Cut sucked with RED. No Metadata control within FCP for quick grading and lackluster debayer support. Premiere essentially gives you the “Red Tab” from Color and addes FLUT control. It also allows you to choose your playback quality from within the App.

DSLR/EX series slow motion shooters will welcome the “interpret footage” option. instead of having to use Cinema Tools to retime 720p60 footage to playback in slow motion in a 720p24 timeline, you can just change the playback rate from within Premiere.

3. Hardware/Legacy Support

AJA Kona, Matrox MXO/MXO2, Blackmagic Decklink and probably many more are supported with Premiere, unlike Avid’s miniscule support (MXO2 mini and AJA IO express). This means facilities geared for FCP can make a switch will most of their hardware supported. Drexel would only have 1 of 4 suites operable with Avid for example.

Another cool part of Premiere is that you can “Import FCP XML” and get your FCP project into Premiere.

4. Deep CS5.5 integration

Final Cut Pro was the pandora’s box of output options. Sure, I could export via compressor, but it was a crapshoot if it would work. Premiere has direct support for Adobe Media Encoder for fast and efficient output. Have to push out a iPad H.264, do it direct from Premiere while harnessing all of the cores of your mac (try that “Via Compressor”). No more 4K master needed to show a cut of your RED project.

I love Adobe Media Encoder and haven’t used Compressor in months. Out of the box it supports all your cores and will suck up every drop of processing power your workstation has to offer. The only department it lacks in is multi-computer clusters and the occasional XDCAM EX bug, but other than that, it’s rock solid.

One can send projects directly to After Effects from Compressor. Check out the workflow The Social Network utilized.

And you can send Premiere Timelines directly to Adobe Encore, which is Adobe’s answer to DVD Studio Pro (which allows you to create complete menus with buttons directly in photoshop).

5. There’s a reason shops had FCP7 and didn’t have Avid…

This is purely opinion here. You’ve been warned.

Why would a facility that previously chose FCP7 now revert to Avid if there is an extremely similar option to make the switch to?

Facilities will probably be turned off at the $2,000 price point for just the NLE and “Avid Studio” (which isn’t that great), where as you can get Adobe Production Premium for $1.600. And you get

-Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Media Encoder, Adobe Encore, After Effects, Premiere, OnLocation, and Audition.

My point is, if a facility already avoided Avid and chose FCP, why would they turn to Avid? It just doesn’t make sense.

Peace out Final Cut. You have been replaced with the Adobe Suite on my Dock. Hmm.. but should I buy a PC next time for half the price of a Mac Pro…

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What do you think? Add some comments below

Lots of people have been nagging me to install iDVD onto the computers in the Drexel editing labs lately, and here’s why it’s not happening.

You’re all film majors. You pay $35k+ a year to go to film school, so learn to use a real app like DVD Studio Pro, or Adobe’s solution, Encore. I know everyone isn’t a post production guru, so that’s why i wrote the book on post production (it’s the PDF on the desktop). Anyone who can read a simple PDF can create a menu-less first play DVD that will use a good render engine, Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder, instead of the god awful iDVD one. At the very least, everyone in the program should know how to author a basic DVD using DVDSP.

If iDVD was on there, the crappy template menus would be used to death, both for in-class use, and more horrifyingly, client use.

Put on your client’s shoes for a second. If you were paying good money for a job, wouldn’t you want the person you hired to use the best software out there? It’s horrible quality and the client will see right through it. It’s like showing up to a wedding using a flip-cam or PD-170. Also, the argument “I don’t know how to use DVDSP” doesn’t work on client ; learn it.

In the same veign, CHANGE YOUR DAMN FONTS IN FINAL CUT. I’m working on remixing the content for the TV in the UCross lobby and litterally half of the projects have “Lucinda Grande” for the credits, or the intro title card (over black naturally with FCP’s notorious not-centered default).

I’m guilty of it, I’ve outputted masters with it. But I regret it on multiple levels. It just screams amateur/youtube/themasses/filmstudent/nocreativity. It also lets everyone know you cut in on FCP, which can be a good or bad thing.

But more importantly it shows (educated) viewers that you didn’t think everything through and you’re cool with cookie cutter template designs (same deal as iDVD menus).

Don’t be plain and boring. Mix it up.

Oh, and if you’re feeling especially dangerous at the time, pick a serif font. Mix up your fonts, make it personal, I tend to use Gill Sans.