Life with Adobe Production Premium CS5.5
Here at Ignite, like a lot of digital media production companies, we’re at a crossroads regarding the software we use for editing. When we formed ten years ago in Coventry and Oxford, we were faced with two choices. Either we could buy a high-end PC and get the well-established Avid, or we could go all funky with Apple, and get the new kid on the block: Final Cut Pro.
We opted for the latter, and FCP has served us well throughout the years, especially due to the extra software that comes with the bundle, for manipulating sound and graphics, colour-correction and building DVDs.
Now, however, the latest version of of FCP marks a change for Apple. They’re leaving the smaller professional market for the greener pastures (at least financially) of the amateur editor, and losing a lot of loyal customers in the process.
So now we have a new choice. Adobe’s Premiere is currently passing FCP on the other side of the road, and is quickly becoming a very viable professional option. And there’s other benefits – we already use other Adobe products – After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Audition – in most of our productions. Adobe products work seamlessly together, so exporting footage from one program to another will be a much faster process. Also, unlike FCP, which is only available on Apple Macs, Adobe products are available on both Macs and PCs, meaning that we have more choice when it comes to the hardware we pick for our next edit-suite.
It’ll take a bit of time to see if this transition is really worth it, but there are already converts flocking over to Premiere, and Adobe are welcoming them with open arms, with FCP keyboard shortcuts incorporated to help editors. As Helmut Kobler writes:
“I’ve been a Final Cut user since 2000. I’ve written three “Final Cut Pro for Dummies” books (plus one about Final Cut Express). I’ve written fairly glowing reviews of multiple versions of Final Cut for multiple Mac magazines. But since 2010, I’ve been contemplating my escape from Planet Final Cut…”
You’re not the only one, Helmut…
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