Benchmark Tests: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 vs. Apple Final Cut Pro X [Archive] - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

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Postmaster

07-09-2012, 09:53 AM

Just stumbled over this:

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 vs. Apple Final Cut Pro X
There have been lots of comparisons between Final Cut Pro X and Premiere Pro CS6, with most focusing on features and workflows. This article discusses a series of multiple-format benchmark tests that analyzed comparative performance between the two programs.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Producer/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=83582

mmka1985

07-09-2012, 05:01 PM

Interesting read. I'll try FCP X again when it gets a few more adjustments. In the meantime, Premiere Pro CS6 is my go to and FCP 7 is by number 2

Vultch

07-10-2012, 11:43 AM

Well i'm a FCPX user and I must say i'm surprised at the results, I dont have CS6 to do a comparison or run some tests myself but i used to have CS5 and FCP 7 and yes the mercury engine did make a big difference, but I find FCPX a ferrari to FCP7... I'll keep an eye on this thread.

homestar_kevin

07-10-2012, 12:10 PM

There's a lot of question marks in that test...

Gary Huff

07-10-2012, 01:09 PM

There's a lot of question marks in that test...

Go on...

GavinAbe

07-10-2012, 11:46 PM

I would also like to know like Gary does........

daihard

07-11-2012, 05:10 AM

Read the comments though. Everyone has stated an obvious oversight... the graphics card favored Adobe (NVIDIA).
ATI, and you'd get very different results. So, this is a very 1 sided test.
Photoshop CS6 and GPU acceleration (http://www.barefeats.com/pscs6.html)
After Effects CS6 on 2012 Macs (http://www.barefeats.com/aecs6.html)
I'd love to see some more comparisons though...

stefanhuberfilms

07-11-2012, 06:08 AM

i wonder if apple will come out with an update of FCPX for CUDA and OpenCl acceleration and a Camera Tracker for Motion maybe?

Gary Huff

07-11-2012, 06:56 AM

i wonder if apple will come out with an update of FCPX for CUDA and OpenCl acceleration

I'm pretty sure FCPX supports OpenCL already.

stefanhuberfilms

07-11-2012, 07:15 AM

I'm pretty sure FCPX supports OpenCL already.

a comparison of the opencl acceleration of both programs would be interesting.

Gary Huff

07-11-2012, 07:16 AM

I didn't look back at the link, but if Premiere CS6 was running on a 2011 MacBook Pro, then it was also using OpenCL (as long as it was OSX Lion).

simonpwood

07-12-2012, 02:33 AM

stefanhuberfilms

07-12-2012, 03:52 AM

indentical performing machines with different graphics (at same clock speeds and ram maybe) could make this significant... the big render shootout? muhaha

Postmaster

07-12-2012, 04:42 AM

So this test was sponsored by Adobe, and some of the footage was provided by Nvidia? Hmmm...

As Ben mentioned the computer used was nicely optimized for Premiere with the mercury engine, but not so much for FCPX.

If there was a test sponsored by Apple with footage provided by ATI/AMD people would be up in arms about possible bias, so what would be the point....?

What's the point? Do you really think, footage that comes from ATI renders faster on a Mac?
And how can you "nicley optimize" a Mac at all? It´s not a PC, there ain't much you can do on a Mac.
So what does the Test say? Premiere with a Cuda card performs better than FCPX with the same card, using Open GL.
No surprise, it's common knowledge that Cuda is faster than GL.
The point was not, this vs. that, the point was: what to buy when you need top performance.
Would FCPX have performed better with an ATI card?
I doubt it - but I reserve the right to be wrong.

Frank

simonpwood

07-12-2012, 05:59 AM

What's the point? Do you really think, footage that comes from ATI renders faster on a Mac?
And how can you "nicley optimize" a Mac at all? It´s not a PC, there ain't much you can do on a Mac.
So what does the Test say? Premiere with a Cuda card performs better than FCPX with the same card, using Open GL.
No surprise, it's common knowledge that Cuda is faster than GL.
The point was not, this vs. that, the point was: what to buy when you need top performance.
Would FCPX have performed better with an ATI card?
I doubt it - but I reserve the right to be wrong.

Frank

No worries man.

However I also reserve the right to question a test when I see that the results promote 2 companies, both of whom have had a hand in the test (irrespective of how neglible the input was). Fair enough?

Hey, it could be that the world is full of happy coincidences.

For a guy who doesent like Macs you sure spend a lot of time talking about them! :)

Gary Huff

07-12-2012, 06:26 AM

I don't think it matters in the end anyway. Isn't it pretty much common knowledge that if you need the absolute cutting-edge in raw processing speed, that Macs are not the route you should take? If I, personally, had the resources to build the (at this moment in time of course) fastest workstation possible, it would have to be a Windows machine.

I also don't think that a difference of a minute or two in render times will turn someone off from FCPX. I think there are plenty of other factors that are more important when it comes time for an editor to choose an NLE of choice.

Postmaster

07-12-2012, 06:48 AM

Fair enough?
For a guy who doesent like Macs you sure spend a lot of time talking about them! :)

Fair enough.

For the record: It's not that I don't like Macs (I grow up on them and never touched Windows till 2001) - I just don't buy them anymore.
Give me a Mac with the same hardware specs as my Workstation, but for a better (or even same) price and I'm all in.

:beer: Frank

Sidderke

07-12-2012, 06:50 AM

I also don't think that a difference of a minute or two in render times will turn someone off from FCPX. I think there are plenty of other factors that are more important when it comes time for an editor to choose an NLE of choice.

I see your point, but as an FCP X user myself, it's a bit deceiving to say it's about a time difference of one minute or so. It's about Premiere Pro being often 2 times or 3 times as fast (1 minute export versus 3 minute export... Not a 2 minute difference on a 60 minute program, for instance). Considering how CS6 seems like a pretty mature suite, and FCP X is still maturing (but interesting none the less), these kinds of tests are important for making decisions.

That being said, it seems this isn't a truly independent test in the sense that the system was optimized for Premiere Pro but not for FCP X.
I would like to see a comparison with FCP X and another graphics card, and see if that makes the difference (a lot) smaller or not.

Gary Huff

07-12-2012, 07:10 AM

FCPX utilizes OpenCL for its GPU acceleration purposes. When Adobe was first looking into hardware-acceleration for the Mercury Engine, they originally went solely CUDA because OpenCL hadn't been ratified yet (http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2011/10/diving-into-nvidia-gpus-and-what-they-mean-for-premiere-pro.html). Given CUDA's three-year head start, I wouldn't be surprised if it's better optimized, and thus would explain some difference.

simonpwood

07-12-2012, 08:18 AM

Fair enough.

For the record: It's not that I don't like Macs (I grow up on them and never touched Windows till 2001) - I just don't buy them anymore.
Give me a Mac with the same hardware specs as my Workstation, but for a better (or even same) price and I'm all in.

:beer: Frank

I understand. I was the other way round; always preferred the low cost of PC's until a couple of years ago when I jumped on the mac bandwagon (to do with my perceived reliability issues with windows, and a number of laptops that died on me).

Horses for courses. Cheers.:beer:

GavinAbe

07-13-2012, 12:18 AM

I agree "Horses for courses."
Ok now lets throw Edius in the mix and talk about speed............... LOLOLOLOL ;)

maarek

07-13-2012, 03:21 AM

From a technical standpoint, OpenCL should be capable of great performance on par with CUDA if the programming is done well. The problem with the OpenCL on FCPX is that it's mostly marketing speak. It doesn't really do jack. Claiming that AMD cards do OpenCL "better" is complete misinformation. Nvidia had support before AMD for OpenCL.

FCPX is bad anyways so the point is moot.

simonpwood

07-13-2012, 04:13 AM

David Saraceno

07-13-2012, 09:38 AM

Let's keep the discussion relevant to the testing.

Calling one NLE bad or good without providing specific examples leads to sniping, unproductive discourse, and will some times end a thread.

Discussion is good; name calling produces nothing.

KyleProhaska

07-13-2012, 10:41 AM

Yea I call bull on the test, because I have a MacPro with a proper ATI card that FCPX loves. If I was doing these exact same tests on my system...I would be getting the opposite result. FCPX beats the pants off Premiere in final export on my machine...in 1080p with filters and all sorts of things, it's much faster then realtime on export. Premiere on the other hand takes a really long time, even just a simple edit with color-correction filters. I was hoping CS6 would speed things up a bit and it's a minor improvement but with my system configuration FCPX is king.

FCPX with the proper card operates like Premiere does with the proper card. They're both insanely fast at exporting given the right components. Neither is going to be much faster then the other with system's optimized for their software.

Jester2138

07-13-2012, 11:59 AM

If I was doing these exact same tests on my system...I would be getting the opposite result.

Actions speak louder than words, do it and post your results :beer:

KyleProhaska

07-13-2012, 01:31 PM

Actions speak louder than words, do it and post your results :beer:

LOL well I'm not gonna take the time to do that and post all that I would need to. I'm just telling you, when I started using FCPX I took identical edits in both and did a simple export to Prores or intermediate codec, not even an export to H264...and FCPX won by a mile. Use what you want, but nothing I've ever used exports as quickly as FCPX does (for me).

Postmaster

07-13-2012, 01:37 PM

If I was doing these exact same tests on my system...I would be getting the opposite result. FCPX beats the pants off Premiere in final export on my machine

Of course you would, Premiere would not use an ATI card - but FCPX could have used the Nvida cards open GL.

Gary Huff

07-13-2012, 01:38 PM

Of course you would, Premiere would not use an ATI card - but FCPX could have used the Nvida cards open GL.

OpenGL is for 3D graphics. OpenCL is for using a GPU as a processing engine.

KyleProhaska

07-13-2012, 11:46 PM

OpenGL is for 3D graphics. OpenCL is for using a GPU as a processing engine.

Yea, FCPX is optimized for OpenCL not OpenGL. According to the Adobe folks I heard at their roadshow, OpenCL will slowly be taking more ground in their software as time goes on. We'll see.

Postmaster

07-13-2012, 11:59 PM

Yeah, of course I was talking about nvidia's Open CL not open GL.

KyleProhaska

07-14-2012, 03:38 PM

So I did a little experiment just to describe what I see when I use both CS6 and FCPX. I took an edit of mine full of Prores422 and 422HQ footage, color corrected it, and exported it as a Prores422 master file on my Hard Drive. This included some sharpening on a few clips, and the color-correction using the color board.

Sequence Length: 2 minutes 24 seconds

FCPX Export Time: 40 seconds

Now you might think this is goofy but just to show what I'm dealing with in CS6, I exported the entire sequence from FCPX without any correction to a Prores file like before which took around 30 seconds or less, didn't time it. I dropped that Prores422 file into Premiere and dragged to the new sequence button so Premiere setup the sequence settings. I check them, they were proper. So you have this 2min 24sec long solid Prores file (no edits) just sitting in the timeline. I go to export, and click "match sequence settings" so there's no trickery going on. Maximum Render Quality was turned OFF.

Premiere Export Time: 1 minute 58 seconds

Now you can see why I prefer the render speeds of FCPX over Premiere. I've tried all sorts of combos, native footage, and also used both my 2011 MBP and my 2009 8-Core 2.93Ghz MacPro with 26GB RAM and ATI 5870 1GB...both give the same or similar results (render time % difference wise). Bottom line in my personal tests on the machines I have, Premiere gets absolutely smoked. I mean I was exporting a solid file from Premiere, I didn't even have a single edit or filter added...and I get these kind of results.

Of course I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but for those who were interested in what I was talking about...there you go.

KyleProhaska

07-14-2012, 04:29 PM

A friend said using native H264 the same way and exporting out to H264 again would be a better test...so I did it.

Tried a sequence of native DSLR footage, 1 minute 33 seconds long. Color-correction in FCPX, edited, etc. Encoding time was 73 seconds out to H264 again, 20000 kb/s 1920x1080, etc. Dropped that exact same file into Premiere, made a proper sequence, exported that solid H264 to H264 again (so no edits like FCPX, a single file to read from, no CC) and it took 1 minute 30 seconds.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here I'm just saying on the systems I use it's not comparable when it comes to render speed. No doubt on a proper PC system Premiere would be awesome, but that's not for me. Premiere has its definite strengths, but I'm always sitting around when I hit the render button.

VMT

07-15-2012, 09:37 AM