Advice on switching from Premiere Pro to Final Cut
 

Hi,

I'm planning my move to a high-def editing solution and am considering switching from PC (Premiere) to Mac (Final Cut).

My business is mainly focussed on making TV commercials (PAL) and promotional DVDs.

My current camera is a Canon XL2 and I'm planning to upgrade to the Canon XL-H1.

My current system is based on the Canopus DVStorm2 + Adobe Production Studio (using Premiere Pro 1.5).

A PC option I've considered is the Matrox RT.X2.

Anyway, it seems like to make the move to high definition I'll need to replace almost everything in my setup - new computer, new camera etc ....

So, I would love to get suggestions/advice on workflow and gear from Final Cut Pro users.

Thanks.

That's a huge, vague request.

When I'm starting from zero on a tech subject, what usually helps me is to find a forum covering the matter (like the Mac editing forum here), and I'll just sit down for a night and read every post going back as far as I can bear to read. It's a comprehensive education.

Suffice to say that a Dual G5, Decklink HD Pro or Kona 2/3 card with component outs will get your started.

A question I have is how well do you like what you have?

PPro1.5.1 will edit HDV without any hardware assist just fine. For 1.5.1 Adobe licensed a "reduced" version of AspectHD from Cineform so when you digitize from your XL-1H it will convert the m2tstream to a frame based Cineform AVI which PPro edits almost as easily as DV [although you can't use your Storm2]. You should also have a minimum of a 3.2GHz HP CPU and 2GB RAM.

It sounds like your a small, possibly one person operation. I use evrything Adobe and the recent upgrade to the Production Suite Pro 2 bundle is amazing. To work in HD there were two other upgrades I had to do, I purchased AspectHD4 and purchased a 1TB SATA RAID.

ALL of the NLE developers make it sound like editing HD is easy and works right out of the box. That's really not the case, you have to evaluate the requirements of most of your projects and then modify your system to meet those needs. With DV it was pretty much plug and play with everything, those days are over.

The level of integration in the new Adobe Production Suite makes it so configurable that with some work you can develop your own workflow that is more efficient [which should help your profitability] and enable you to produce content that is much better quality [which will differentiate your work from the guy down the street and you might even be able to charge more for it].

If you use After Effect the upgrade to AE7 is worth the additional $600 it will cost you to upgrade the entire suite. Add to that $500 for AspectHD and about another $500 for a SATA RAID and your at $1600. To get that level of functionality and performance starting new on the Mac I'd guess it would be well north of $4500.

Also, for DV I used the Canopus DVRexRT Pro and initially it was dificult for me to let go of the idea of harware acceleration. But with AspectHD I'm able to most of the DV effects and transition I could do in realtime using canopus I can do in HDV.

Sorry for hijacking the thread a bit, but if your thinking you need to switch platforms because you want to edit HDV, that certainly is not the case.

Of course if you were looking for an entirely new PC, it might as expensive as a new Mac but you would save by purchasing upgrade PC video software instead of entirely new Mac video software.

Does Adobe allow cross-platform upgrades (Photoshop for example)?

Actually they might. They used to license each application in the suite seperately but with the release of 2.0 its all under the same license so if you have already own [and more importantly registered] some of the applications there is an upgrade path.

You do have to kind of argue a bit with customer support...

I have FCP at home and use Premiere Pro 2.0 as well at work.
I can tell you that with all the trouble we experience with PP2 and Matrox, the switch to FCP is a good idea. And we are only working wth SD at work!!!
Abandon the Premiere ship now while you still can. Switching to Macs and FCP is the best decision I've ever made. You will not regret it. Go ahead and spend the money upfront now, you'll make it up later and be better off for it.