Moving over from PP

hscully

hscully

Veteran
Yesterday I downloaded Media Composer 7. I have restarted my Lynda.com account and am pouring through some tutorials. So far so good. I have been an Adobe Premiere Pro user for the past 3 years and am looking to move over. I do editing, color grading, compositing and dialog editing primarily. I also do a little scoring.

What should I be looking for in MC as it compares to PP? I like After Effects and Audition in PP. What are the significant differences and what, if any, functionality could I lose/gain? What's easier/more difficult? What about primary and secondary color correction in MC as compared to PP? Is there a significant integration with ProTools and should I invest in that as well, while I'm at it?

Anyone else making this transition? What are the differences and how do they compare?
 
First let me say that I learned to edit on an Avid, now have 2 licensed MC7 systems running on PCs. So my perspective is firmly from an Avid standpoint. However, I also have Premiere Pro cs6 on my Windows 8 laptop.

For me my MC's are more robust and solid. While the PP CS6 system works fine for me- it always feels like a "toy". [Take one look at the "page turn" transition, and you'll know what I mean]. I use the PP CS6 system edit power point slides to seminars and other easy edits, my MC7's for corporate video & tv spots. I have a buddy who produces really nice corporate stuff using only PP CS6 [He moved from FCP]. But its nothing I couldn't do on my MC's.

All in all, they both have some very nice features/attributes- it's really which one you feel most comfortable with. Many people are moving towards PP, seems like Final Cut is dying (my perception). Certainly Adobe made it affordable to get into the Creative Cloud for new editors. I will agree that the integration of Photoshop/AE in Adobe's products is awesome- wish my MC systems had that functionality. Keep cutting, draw your own conclusions!
 
I like what I'm seeing in MC7 so far. I have a lot more work to do to catch up but I am glad to hear your comment "... it's nothing I couldn't do on my MC's." That's my main concern. I just finished a track matte constructed with the rotobrush on PP. That's a pretty handy tool. I'm sure there is an analog in MC7 and I'm pretty psyched about learning about it.

I like the integration in PP and I don't like it at the same time. I would like a workflow that enables using other software such as Davinci Resolve or working with other VFX people, more competent than myself, when necessary and so I hope to benefit from Avid being the professional standard, as I grow out as well as improving on my "one man band" stuff.
 
After 14 years editing with Avid I switched to Premiere Pro two years ago. Avid these days feels sluggish and old. I edited with great speed on Avid did sport highlights during games and such but after I got used to PP I see very little reason to go back. The only reason would be if I were to work as an editor at another production house. Avid still got a strong hold of the business within television.
 
That's interesting. I get that Avid benefits from it's former position as the standard. I appreciate your perspective. That's a lot of experience and I do not want to take a step backwards. Do you feel that MC7 has not kept pace with PP? Have you revisited it in the past couple of years? The feature set in PP is very broad. In fact, I only use PP, AE and Audition with shakey forays into Photoshop but it has a lot of capability that's for sure.

Both pro and con comments so far talk about "feel." "like a toy... or "sluggish and old." I worked for a while with Sony Vegas and I liked it for editing. I visited that recently and felt it to be "toyish" compared to PP especially around grading.
 
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I do feel that Avid has kept up. It's perspective, you could argue anything. I could argue Premiere has not kept pace. I had a Nubus Mac many years ago (mid 90's) with a version of Premiere 2.0 (not CS). They used those crappy unusable page turns back then & they haven't learned a thing since (who would use that transition I have no idea??!!?).

I used to get into this argument with an editor of mine (Jeff) who would extol the virtues of FCP when it first came out. The thing to remember is that Avid has a bazillion installs out there, they have been the industry standard for decades. They cannot afford to alienate that client base. If they were to come up with a new revision where you hit the "." key instead of "\" key [above enter] to add a quick dissolve, all of us "old timers" would go crazy. [Look at the outrage with the upgrade to FCP].

FCP & Premiere came out with their software/major revisions WAY after Media Composer..... its like anything, if you could look back at a product that's 10 years older, couldn't you easily increase the work flow? Anyone still have "cranks" in their car to open the windows? FCP/Premiere, IMO, use an easier way to modify an effect than MC does- still using "effects editor"? However, if Avid did a 180, it would truly make their install base angry. Effect Editor works well, as does an Avid, as long as you know what your doing.

For reference, the editor mentioned above scrapped FCP, and has now moved to Premiere....however, I'm still rocking and BILLING from my MC's. Premiere & MC are both good, one is probably better for YOUR workflow/processes.
 
That's an excellent point about how a more mature interface needs to maintain consistency for current users. I have no problem with that at all. I find the interface in MC to be extremely reasonable. From what I see so far, there are advantages to the way things are done in MC, being more keyboard centric and less "mousey." It seems to me that the MC way will be faster once you learn it. I did more research since posting that comment. My concern there was keeping up with codecs, raw, etc. and from what I read, there's no apparent lag between PP and MC.

I am also looking at Color correction and found some interesting tutorials about the round trip to Davinci Resolve using AAF which seems reasonable and facile. I don't know anything about Symphony except that it's pretty costly. I have to find out more. It seems to share the feature set that AE brings to Adobe.
 
In a nutshell you should just look for a bigger expense. While I use to own a six figure Avid room, Cloud makes me happy today at a literal fraction of the cost.
 
Premiere can read about any format full native in realtime, without any transcoding, no rendering whatsoever - just pull it in the timeline and start working.
Dynamic link between PP, AE, Audition and all other Adobe apps without extra rendering.
Keyboard editing/shortcuts are exactly the same in PP and AVID.


Avid is IMHO 10 years behind, and will fade away with the last generation of editors, that learned on Avid.
As soon as they investments run out, a lot of post houses are jumping the Avid ship already.
I see already more and more PP and FCPx seats being bought.

In broadcasting it may last a little longer, because of the way it is woven into their very special workflow though.

And yeah, judging PP by a page turn transition, that nobody uses anyway is a bit of a joke.
 
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The reason Avid still has a strong hold is the media network. I don't think that's in Adobes plans to make something similar. So post houses that have a working Avid media network they wont switch. For a single user I feel that the native support and laid back approach to editing is a winner on PP. I was so used to making frame decisions and after a while with PP I became much faster and didn't have to make single frame decisions. Somehow PP just works without having to think to much.

After CS6.5 I've experienced very few crashes, almost non, so that's a very good track record.
 
This is kind of an old thread from back when the shock of the subscription still stung. I'm surprised to see it updated.

I have not moved from PP CS6 because I don't have to yet, I'm faster on it than anything else, and I like it and always have. It's kind of like driving an older, paid off, car. There's a little joy in each month I DON'T pay the subscription but I think that day will come. I didn't really like MC7 that much.

Smoke it the one I like the most but it's expensive and mac. Meanwhile, I'll totter along here on PP CS6 until that day comes when I have to fork over the first month but not until the last moment ;)
 
Postmaster said:
Premiere can read about any format full native in realtime, without any transcoding, no rendering whatsoever - just pull it in the timeline and start working.
Dynamic link between PP, AE, Audition and all other Adobe apps without extra rendering.
Keyboard editing/shortcuts are exactly the same in PP and AVID.


Avid is IMHO 10 years behind, and will fade away with the last generation of editors, that learned on Avid.
As soon as they investments run out, a lot of post houses are jumping the Avid ship already.
I see already more and more PP and FCPx seats being bought.

[...]
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I'm started to think lately. I started learning Avid and I loved it, BUT, all the offline-online workflow it's just horrible.
Why Avid isn't doing anything about this? I don't think Avid users are happy to work this way. Who wants to waste time transcoding, linking, re-linking, then when new footage comes in transcoding again, re-linking... oh my!
Too bad, I would stick to Avid but I'm seriously considering an alternative - and I'm not a big fan of Premiere :/

And if I'll buy the A7s, goodbye Avid (no way I'm going to convert with another app to transcode offline, to re-link, to edit, to re-link again, to export, to re-do any of the above steps if any changes happens!)
 
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