So far I am enjoying learning Premiere Pro, in fact much more than I thought I would, but one feature I really miss is iChat theater.
The ability to cut remotely and show your cut and see the producer and let them see you was an amazing addition by Apple, and something that really needs to be added into Premiere to bring it on par with Final Cut Pro 7.
Neptune Salad has an article that is worth reading on waiting for Final Cut Pro X to release to start a big job, and then seeing what it is, and moving to Premiere Pro. It is really worth checking out, and looks to be the start of a series of articles.
But the real question anyone who edits is this: What are we going to do right now? I mean what are we actually going to do? As professionals, we don’t have the time to play around with multiple new programs until this dust settles as it could be months, and it might take Apple over a year to put FCP back on track.
And
Honestly, I’m not excited about moving to a new platform. This will be my third (Media 100, Final Cut Pro, now this – go ahead and laugh, Avid users). But the integration of AfterEffects (which is becoming a must-have item for filmmakers, see www.videocopilot.net to understand my zeal) and Photoshop make it an attractive one-two knockout punch.
Kind of how I feel, though he did not get a refund on Final Cut Pro X, and I did, but we both are making the move to Premiere Pro.
Looks like I am going with Premiere Pro. It is fast and responsive, though I have had some random crashes, but it was on sequences that I had imported via XML from Final Cut Pro 7.
The thing is the CUDA support with the NVIDIA card is unbelievably fast, and the integration with After Effects plug-ins makes it so usefull.
OK, so the same 4 video clips in Canon 60D H.264 on the timeline and I put Magic Bullet Colorista 2 on one, and did a color correct, and then played back in real time! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY DIDN’T I TRY THIS EARLIER! AMAZING!!!!!!
Sure adding an effect on a second clip basically slowed it down too much and I had to render, but I never thought it would work that well. Wow!
OK, that is the most responsive timeline I have ever seen.
I just ran my first Premiere Pro 5.5 Cuda test with an NVIDIA QUADRO FX 4800. I imported some RAW Canon 60D H.264 footage, and put it in a timeline, scaled it 50% and added 3 more shots, and it played back smoother and fast than any timeline I have ever seen. Color me impressed.
Premiere might not just replace Final Cut Pro, it might blow it out of the water!
Studio Daily is reporting that AJA has released drivers for Premiere Pro 5.5. that allow realtime editing with the CUDA accelation. They are working fast after Final Cut Pro 7 was killed. Nice!
I installed them and a small test looks like it’s running fine with good performance for the Mercury Playback Engine with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac. Once installed, you get a full set of AJA presets:
If Adobe is really serious about competing in the pro video editing space (and I think they are), they’ll get on their hardware partners like AJA, Matrox and Blackmagic to be as quick supporting Premiere Pro as they have been about supporting Final Cut Pro.
