comparing editors
 

I am looking to buy a editor. for years I have been sharing an editor with some friends, but now I am looking to get my own. I have been using final cut pro on the Mac, but a friend is strongly suggesting I get Adobe Premiere for Mac because Adobe is a better program to him. I thought I read someplace that Adobe is moving away from their Mac program. I am considering going with Adobe because of their After Effects program which is think is an awesome program.

any suggestions.

Far from moving away from Apple, Adobe has now re-written Premiere for the Mac. I'd say it doesn't matter what editing program you plump for - Media 100, FCP, Edius, Premiere Elements - as long as you get to really know them and you have a spark of originality you'll get to be a good editor.

Well said Tom. Personally I wouldn't put a Ford engine in Chevy. The nice thing about Apple products is (for the most part) they play very nice together.

HD Delivery?
 

Would you like to author in HD? Maybe Blu-Ray disk someday?

I'd take a serious look at AVID Media Composer, as this has always been an industry standard. If you can edit on Avid, you can find work almost anywhere. On the other hand, Final Cut Pro is holding about 45% of the market share right now. FCP is rapidly becoming the industry standard tool.

I would recommend staying as far away from Premiere as you can.

Before spending money on an Avid I would read this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=123552

On the wikipedia there is a pretty good comparison of all the NLEs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...iting_software

Hope this helps...

If you're doing indie work only then work with whatever you feel the most comfortable with.

To throw another 2¢ into the pot…

I'v worked on both FCP and Avid. Both are great and I don't find either to be necessarily "better" than the other. It's mostly a matter of a few trade-offs and different ways of doing the same thing. I have a personal preference for FCP which is based mostly on the interface design. I find it cleaner and much easier to work with. This is a personal preference, nothing more. (Also, I have only worked with Avid on PC, which is a major score against it in my book. I hate working in a Windoze environment. Hate it with a passion as intense as a thousand suns.)

Oh, BTW… I use After Effects too. Many FCP users use it, so there's no reason to base your choice of NLE on whether or not you use AE.

I switch between both FCP and Avid Media Composer / Symphony daily at my work and I find that they both have their strong points. FCP will allow you to stay update with codecs and new things that come out a lot better than Avid. Avid on the other hand gives you strong media management tools which is the most important thing in editing especially long format shows. I think of it like this, if you want to do projects that are close or over an hour long Avid will be perfect. On the other hand if you want to stay indie or only want to bang out web vids or music videos (things under 10 minutes) then FCP is just fine. Not to say either can't do each other's job in this case but I feel that there are certain people using Avid and certain people using FCP and that the manufacturers of these products are suiting them for their customer.