New to Premiere, coming from Sony Vegas. These are my thoughts...

M

mitteg

Active member
Hello,

I switched from Sony Vegas Pro 13 to Premiere CC due to the high chance of Sony Vegas being discontinued. I have worked with Premiere years ago and it was very buggy and cumbersome. These were enough reasons to use Sony Vegas which has served us quite well the latest years. It's a pity Sony has decided to no longer release new versions of it.

First try of Premiere and here are my thoughts:

Its interface has improved a lot.
Great deal of supported codecs.
Great import/export formats.

But what annoys me the most is its timeline navigation slowness. Moving, trimming and playing clips on the timeline is slow, it has a delay compared to the movements I make with the mouse. Also the play/stop (or JKL) is not responsive like it is with Vegas (same system).

Also, when working with highly commpressed codecs like Sony FS700's AVCHD and gopro's H264 I do have to render to play them smoothly (yellow bar vs green bar). I renders quickly (thanks to CUDA) but in Vegas they play in a much more responsive way without any need to render anything.

Compared to Sony Vegas, Premiere is slow and sluggish. Maybe you are used to it but to me is a PITA. And it is not a problem of an underpowered computer or wrong configuration. It's a core problem that Premiere had 5-6 years ago and still has.

I'm not new to NLEs, I've worked with Avid, Premiere, FCP, FCPX and Vegas for years and every system has its pros and cons. I know that one of the greatest errors is trying to switch from one NLE to another NLE and try to emulate the functions or the workflow insted of adapting to the new one.

Well, I just needed to express my thoughtsa about this and I would be very interested in reading your thoughts as well.

Have a nice day.
 
Agree with your assessment of PP. Coming from FCP 7 I am used to smooth playback and no choppiness like PP. The lag I think is do to PP being a "kitchen sink" type NLE (being able to throw in any format and edit) whereas in AVID/FCP, etc. transcoding is standard procedure. What I do love about PP is it's convenience (direct uploads to Vimeo, etc.) and Media Encoder rocks!
 
I was on Vegas for almost ten years before switching to Premiere at CS6. It was great then, but lately with the CC updates, it's been rubish. I switched to Avid and everything just works now.
 
Try Resolve 12, it will beat PP in two years. Use it for 4K with sony xavc-i no problems. And for free. PP has still advantage with plugins but I think resolve will catchup fast. I already is very good for straight editing.
 
The biggest issue with Resolve is that you need a rather beefy system. I have an i7 laptop, 8 gigs of Ram, and 2 gig GPU. Not low end, but not super beefy either. Resolve struggles to play files from a Canon DSLR where Premiere, Vegas and Avid don't have any issues. For color though, Resolve is great
 
Good to know your opinions about it. Looks like I'm not alone about this issue.

As for Avid, I know it is a great, stable, bomb-proof system but it does not match my editing style. I like to work my clips in the timeline: move them, trim them, adjust them right there in the timeline and Avid has a rather static timeline, not so flexible. But yeah it is lightning fast, no doubt about it. By the way, which Avid are you using? Media Composer on a certified PC or MAC?

As for Resolve, I tried it, love the interface, but it is not mature yet in my opinion and it requieres a very powerful computer to play just 1080 compressed footage (canon h264 for instance).
 
mitteg said:
Good to know your opinions about it. Looks like I'm not alone about this issue.

As for Avid, I know it is a great, stable, bomb-proof system but it does not match my editing style. I like to work my clips in the timeline: move them, trim them, adjust them right there in the timeline and Avid has a rather static timeline, not so flexible. But yeah it is lightning fast, no doubt about it. By the way, which Avid are you using? Media Composer on a certified PC or MAC?

As for Resolve, I tried it, love the interface, but it is not mature yet in my opinion and it requieres a very powerful computer to play just 1080 compressed footage (canon h264 for instance).
Click to expand...
I have used Media Composer on Mac. Not a fan of AVID. For the same reasons you listed (I'm a drag and drop, move it around the timeline editor). I actually find editing on Avid to be slower, personally. It seems to me there is an extra step or two added to each task... I don't like to dwell on the past, but every time I launch FCP 7 I think of Apple's big X blunder and what might have been :/
 
mitteg said:
Good to know your opinions about it. Looks like I'm not alone about this issue.

As for Avid, I know it is a great, stable, bomb-proof system but it does not match my editing style. I like to work my clips in the timeline: move them, trim them, adjust them right there in the timeline and Avid has a rather static timeline, not so flexible. But yeah it is lightning fast, no doubt about it. By the way, which Avid are you using? Media Composer on a certified PC or MAC?

As for Resolve, I tried it, love the interface, but it is not mature yet in my opinion and it requieres a very powerful computer to play just 1080 compressed footage (canon h264 for instance).
Click to expand...

Media Composer 8.4 on laptop with extra display. No hardware, not certified, but I'm happy.
 
@the Op

You did not say what O.S , what hardware and what version of PPRo you are talking about.

FWIW - PPro has always been like "editing butter" for me and no issues. That includes FS 700 AVCHD and Samurai Prores HQ plus any DSLT , Go \Pro and any other stuff I through at it. from After Effects D.Is throught to all still formats, pngs, psds....

Desktop - Win 7 . I7 , 24GB Ram , CC2015 and all drivers current.

Personally - I would never edit professionally on a laptop no matter what. Desktops have the "GRUNT" because they are configurable hardware wise.
 
Shooter, good to hear that you have no problems. But that's not my case. Today for instance, I open my recently rendered project and I get no video at all and a message like this in the project window "MEDIA PENDING". Quick google seach and a milion results on this topic from other users.

MEDIA PENDING AFTER RENDERING IN/OUT
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1330080?start=40&tstart=0

I had to manually remove all the Premiere generated preview files and open Premiere again, and then WAIT (no more please) for it to conform whatever it has to conform.

Honestly, all that buggy performance after a trillion versions is unacceptable. I gave it a try, but I will go back to Sony Vegas even if it becomes discontinued. At the end of the day, what really maters if getting the job done good and fast.

Regarding the OS and system:

Desktop. Windows 7, i7, 32Gb RAM. Clean computer (only for editing). Mid-range two years old computer.
 
If memory serves me I had the "Media Pending" message with no video a few version increments back. I thought it was fixed. A lot of the complaints about PP revolve around how slowly the projects open. Have you waited a bit for the picture to load? I think it eventually will... (not that you should have to wait, though :/
 
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