Why no love for Premiere in the job world?

R

RockmanX3

Well-known member
I started my video editing hobby 9 years ago with a copy of Adobe Premiere, my old home movies, plus a cheap video capture card, and have used premiere till now with CS3 Pro being the latest version. Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects are the unstoppable force I use for video editing. I've done alot of freelance gigs like commercials and documentaries for local companies and 2-3 independent films.

However, I'm looking to branch out into bigger projects for bigger companies and the majority of them require FCP or Avid. I forced myself to learn enough of Avid to make a simple video, but I feel that everything I can do in Avid, I can do much better in premiere. I was thinking of shelling out 1 grand to get a macbook so I can learn FCP (which I heard is easier to adjust to from premiere), but I just can't justify the cost. :crybaby:

I know the saying "It's not the program that makes the video, it's the editor", but how are people going to get their foot in the door if FCP and Avid are the dominant requirements for video editing? I know I can fulfill the After Effects requirement of a job listing, but usually 1 out of 6 jobs have listings for Premiere users and none of them have gotten back to me yet..

I'm a media graduate with an emphasis on film and television and I've always used premiere for everything I've done. I already understand the concept of flow and storytelling, but I don't want to be forced to use other programs since I can do everything I need in premiere.

I wonder if I should just bite the bullet and start editing in avid or spend the money for the macbook to learn FCP..
 
I know what you mean. There's a misconception out there that if you're not an FCP editor, you're an amateur, and it's frustrating.

The reason FCP is so popular was that in the early stages, it really was light years ahead of Premiere. Premiere started out as strictly a consumer NLE, and versions 5-6.5 pretty much reflected that with no EDL support, limited codec compatibility, no sequence nesting, keyframing etc. Even doing a simple Ken Burn effect was difficult and imprecise. The makers of FCP on the other hand were more forward looking and aimed from the get go to make FCP competitive for professionals. I read Walter Murch's account of how he edited Cold Mountain on FCP and it was clear that the appeal of the program at the time was that it's so incredibly cheap compared to Avid. Now it's almost the de facto standard.

But certainly Premiere has really changed after it became the "Pro" version. PP 1.5 was pretty good, CS2 was much better and while I didn't think that CS3 really added that much improvement it's clear to me that Premiere Pro is now very competitive with FCP in all areas, and even exceed it in others (MXF compatibility, anyone?).
 
From what I've heard, Avid was the standard of editing way before FCP and Premiere entered the scene and most companies still stick to avid since it was there for the longest time. To be honest. I find the program extremely irritating in comparison to premiere.

I have to admit that I was reluctant to switch to premiere pro after years of using 5-6.5 for my hobby videos. When I started getting more serious about professional work, I moved on to pro and now I can't go back.

It sucked one time when I called a company regarding a job and the person had ONLY heard of avid and FCP and didn't know what premiere was.

After Effects and Photoshop are industry standard, but I dunno why premiere is like the black sheep of the Adobe family...
 
It´s a religious thing.

A good editor can make a blockbuster on Windows movie maker.
Heck, many of the best films we know where edited on a Moviola.

And NO, not only in the 70s.

2005 Spielberg's Munich received an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing - and it was edited on a Moviola.

Most of us are used to the digital workflow and it´s often a matter of what you are used to.

I started with Premiere on a hpped up, modified frankensteined Power-Mac 1994 (Pizza-Box) and a Radius Video Vision Broadcast card.

I was one of the first ones that could do full-rez editing without the need of low res proxies like Avid.

Then I worked as editor on Avid (cause that´s what my clients had), switched to Speed Razor and than to Premiere,
at a time non of the MAc based, super expensive Avids was able to do realtime full resolution (SD-PAL).

I work on FCP and Avid for clients somtimes, but if I can choose I use Premiere.

The reason why there is not much love for it is - it´s cheap.

1. You can build a realtime HD system with in under $3000 including storage. Cheap always screams "hobby amateur"

Everybody knows that. So it is hard to charge much for it on a hourly basis.

2. All those post houses that once payed a fortune for Avid systems want to keep that investment as long as possible.

Frank
 
The biggest problem with Premiere, is that it has glitches and bugs when you least need them. I've been using Premiere since version 4, currently using PP2 which has still has bugs that were around in version 6.5. From what I understand, FCP has a few too, but mostly just works and has better features.
 
There's the way things were, and the way things are. The way things were, is that Adobe used to bundle Premiere for free with just about anything -- a cheap Dazzle card? Free copy of Premiere. Buy a horrid cheap little digitizing board? Get a free copy of premiere. While this tactic resulted in a lot of people getting Premiere into their hands, it also resulted in people not valuing Premiere at all, precisely because it was free. And because it was free, Adobe didn't have a lot of incentive to make it world-class, and they kind of got stuck with a low-end user base.

And yet, Adobe has, normally, a high-end user base. So the whole situation didn't make a whole lot of sense.

So with Premiere Pro they've taken a different tactic entirely. Adobe makes some of the best, most powerful, most widely-used industry-standard programs in the world (PhotoShop, AfterEffects, etc). So why should Premiere Pro be any different? Answer is, it shouldn't be. And that's the answer Adobe's coming to, and they've amped up the program to make it comparable to their other offerings.

And they've had some success; the BBC adopted Premiere Pro instead of FCP.

As for FCP, it is largely a case of momentum. Everyone uses it and everyone thinks everyone else is using it, so if you're anyone or want to be someone you "have" to use it. That perception does not make it "better", but there's also the trend of "not fighting the market" -- if people want to hire FCP editors because that's what they think they need, you'd better know FCP, right? You can argue what's "better" all day long, or you can actually land the job, and those two things are not the same.

If you've seen a demo of Adobe Premiere Pro's latest version that's in beta, some of the new features they've added beat the living hell out of Apple FCP's implementation of certain things. I personally believe that Adobe is about to eat Apple's lunch in the desktop editing market, the same way that Apple blindsided Avid and totally stole their market share. People think I'm "anti-Apple", but rather I'm "pro-user", and Apple has cross interests: FCP exists to sell high-end Mac hardware. Period. Adobe software exists because Adobe makes software - no ulterior motive. Adobe's interests are your interests -- if they make a better product that does more for you, you win and they win. Apple's incentive is to keep you locked into a proprietary hardware platform and (ideally) to design their programs in such a way as to cause you to have to upgrade that hardware and buy even more hardware, and attempting to lock you into their proprietary file format too (Quicktime). Adobe is cross-platform, platform independent, format independent.

Now, this is all fine and dandy for those who are doing their own editing on their own systems in a closed shop, or who are working for an organization (such as the BBC) that is standardizing on Premiere Pro. But for the rest of the world, for the rest of the job market, the simple fact is: if you want to get hired as an editor, you pretty much *have* to know FCP. Doesn't mean you have to drink the kool-aid or buy into the religious fervor, but you do have to have the skills that the market is demanding. This may not always be the case, but it's the case today. You should also know Avid and Premiere Pro as well, of course, but search the job listings and recognize the reality of today's job market.
 
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*standing ovation*

Thank you, Mr. Green, for being the voice of reason in a sea of zealous screaming.

I've been using various NLEs for about 12 years, and never found one that is "perfect". And yet, I've always been able to get the job done. Sometimes the tool doesn't fit the job, and so you move onto the next tool--and that's all these NLEs are. I haven't yet been able to watch a movie, TV show, or any other piece of video or film work and ID the editing platform that was used--not once. However, I'm able to recognize masterful editing when I see it. Learn the tool(s), and get on with it.

How NLE choice has devolved into this type of athletic rivalry is mystifying--does it really matter?
 
Barry_Green said:
there's also the trend of "not fighting the market" -- if people want to hire FCP editors because that's what they think they need, you'd better know FCP, right? You can argue what's "better" all day long, or you can actually land the job, and those two things are not the same.
Click to expand...

Perfectly said, and exactly sums up why I wound up on FCP.
After editing on Avid for years I needed to get a new system... and was faced with the fact that over the past 12 months (this was a few years ago) I had lost out on a number of jobs because I was not using FCP. Meanwhile I had never gained a job specifically because I was running Avid. Add to that that most editors I knew were using FCP, and it simply made sense for compatibility to be on the same system.

My decision had nothing to do with one program being 'better' than another - it had every to do with what could make me the most money in the market that I happen to be working in.
 
So it looks like Premiere is the victim of it's past reputation...

It looks like I can't fight the current requirement for job market skills, so probably after I finish my latest gig in a month, I may invest in a mac and FCP after all..

Thanks everyone. :dankk2:
 
Premiere will get there, it's starting to shake of it's amateur rep.

And with it playing so nice with AE and PS with dynamic link, people will realize how much time they can save.

And the moment that Adobe builds in OMF support for the Adobe suite, BAM!!!!! It will be taken a lot more seriously, cause then it can play nicely with the whole outsource workflow, eg. sending audio post work out to another company.

- Derrick
 
One nice thing about FCP is that it comes with the full suite of apps. Adobe does this in the most part put it still is very lacking in the color correction area.
 
Can't say too much about the beta of CS4, but if you work with P2 . . . sweet Jeebus. Wow squared. They listened. Apple didn't.
 
Don't get me wrong, I love working with Premiere... when it feels like working with me. But every so often, I get the Digital Finger as PP decides it just doesn't feel like doing it's job. Adobe's answer to bugs seems to be ignore the problem and put out a new release instead of free upgrades that don't make them money. I swear the last time I upgraded, I heard "You give me more money now, me love you long time".
 
David Jimerson said:
Can't say too much about the beta of CS4, but if you work with P2 . . . sweet Jeebus. Wow squared. They listened. Apple didn't.
Click to expand...


Good to hear David. I love the p2 support already present in cs3 so if they improved it at all, I'll definitely be in line for the upgrade. Do you happen to have any clue as to when cs4 might get out of beta, or is it still just speculation at this point?
 
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