Final Cut Studio 2 or Adobe Digital Video Collection?

S

Steve33825

Member
I would like to get Final Cut because of the learning curve and the fact that its industry preferred more than anything else, however I understand that Final Cut doesn't include the type of "special effects" you can do with say, Adobe After Effects, so... Is Adobe Digital Video Collection as good as Final Cut Studio or should I get both?
 
Both are useful tools, I'd go with the Final Cut Pro suite, I don't know much about the Adobe editing tool however Final Cut Pro is one of the most widely used editors out there by ammeters and professionals alike, true you won't be getting After Effects but personally I'd rather have FCP. Have you considered getting Final Cut Express for considerably less and then getting After Effects. I have used both FCP and FCE and I have found that FCE has every thing I need.
 
If you want to take advantage of the full suite integration, then please do not mix Final Cut and Adobe products. Though you can send clips to and from, say, FCP and AE, without rendering, it is an expensive option requiring some additional plugins.

For the normal users, I do not think FCP has an advantage over Adobe Premiere Pro (the newer version). However, I have not seen the EDL type things put to good use in Premiere Pro though. Stick with either Adobe line of products or Final cut. Apple hardware is expensive. If you are short on budget, Adobe line of products is perfectly fine. I think After Effects still has an edge on Motion 3 as far as plugins, masking, and extensible architecture is concerned. Keying, such as Keylight keyer, that comes free with the (pro) AE is very good. As of ver 2. of Motion it has a limited version of Primatte. I am not sure about Motion 3.

Apple machines does have an inherent stability because of the Mac OS X software compared to Windows.
 
Agreed.. AE is a do ANYTHING tool... Motion is still primarily just motion graphics, though they've added some of the functionality of shake to the latest version it is seriously lacking when compared to AE
 
Avid is more of the industry standard for video editing. FCP is the runner up that is taking a stronger hold over the consumer and prosumer markets. The big boys still use Avid.
 
Editing-wise, they all do the exact same thing. You can cut together multiple pieces of footage on multiple rolls (A,B,C, etc) on your timeline. None of them is really any better than the others in that regard, and the interfaces are all very similar too. So, once you know one it doesn't take too long to get fully up to speed on one of the others.

As for compositing and such, Motion is getting better, but even combined with shake it's still miles behind After Effects. To understand just how powerful After Effects is, one must only look at the list of films The Orphanage has worked on. They've recently started using Fusion along with After Effects, but they were (and I believe for the most part still are) primarily an After Effects shop.

That said, the easiest (and most productive and lossless) workflow to use After Effects is to work with the Adobe Suite. The added bonus, as other people have said at one time or another, is that most people have played with Photoshop at some point, and a lot of the features of the entire suite are similar to photoshop tools. Like level adjustments, etc..

Footage will transfer between all the programs in the suite seamlessly, without needing a rendering pass first in most cases which equates to a better preservation of image quality overall. To do the same between FCP and AE you'd probably need Automatic Duck, which in most peoples eyes isn't terribly cheap -- because all it does it let you go from one program to another, but it does so well, so it's technically worth the money, but whether or not its money you need to spend for the same functionality included in a different package is your own call.

Finally, I'll say this. If anyone tries to convince you that the Final Cut suite is better because it's got "Color".... You can do all the same and more in After Effects, in 32bit colorspace.. and the awesome Colorista plugin makes it stupid easy. :)
 
I'm an editing n00b (VFX, not so much of a n00b) and have primarily been working in FCP5 until recently. My workflow until now has been: FCP --> Render uncompressed --> AE6.5/7 = ugh

I've just switched to the Adobe CS3 suite, and in all honesty, for me, it's much easier. As previously mentioned, the layout of tools for editing are virtually identical between FCP & Premiere CS3 and has a very small learning curve moving between the two. Workflow is where the suite comes in handy.

I'm working on a wedding I've recently shot and ended up editing it in Premiere after a PC crash or 3. I saved the project, opened the project into after fx, saved that. From there, as needed, i use "Dynamic Link" in Premiere, linking to the AE file, and every change I make in AE automagically updates in Premiere, same as for Soundbooth, etc.
 
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