FINAL CUT PRO vs. MEDIA COMPOSER vs. PREMIERE PRO

Some quick thoughts and notes: I get the occasional email or tweet about which NLE (non-linear editing program) I think is the best.

That’s like asking which car is the best and the answer is the same: there is no “best” NLE, each one has its pros and cons but, most importantly, they all do pretty much the same in pretty much the same way.

For professionals and semi pros the choice usually boils down to Apple’s Final Cut Pro, AVID’s Media Composer, and Adobe’s Premiere Pro. Sony’s Vegas is an option but except for a few notable exceptions you usually don’t find it to be the professionals tool of choice. It’s actually a very good program but as with so many tools, the one that has been used the longest and has built the largest fan and support base, wins…and Vegas just hasn’t been around quite as long, or has the extensive plugin and extension infrastructure yet.

GIMME A DAMN ANSWER!

If you are like me, I hate it when people say stuff like that: “Oh, they’re all good, there is no best, it just depends…” isn’t the type of answer I usually like but in the case of editing programs it’s true.

Of course there are some differences and those differences are what makes some people prefer one program over another. (That, and hype.) It also matters what type of projects you’ll be doing for the most part:

Long feature films with hundreds of hours of source footage, and tons of effects? AVID Media Composer is great at that and their collaboration and multi participant workflow is yet unmatched. Media Composer tends to be more stable with huge projects, and with additional (and pricey) add-ons like the Avid Media Access you can now work with P2 and XDCam footage very nicely and without transcoding, something only Premiere Pro offered until recently.

(I hate transcoding anything and Premiere Pro allows you to natively work with a lot of different sources without doing that. OTOH, Final Cut Pro transcodes a lot, something that bugs me because it takes so much time. But it’s often necessary, particularly if you work on a less-than-awesome Mac with limited memory and processing power.)

Short videos, including adult, or indies? Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro are about equally good at that.

Mostly AVCHD footage? Premiere Pro CS4.

Short on cash and on a Mac? Final Cut Studio gives you a huge complete toolset for the lowest cost, at least at the time of this writing.

Do you use Photoshop or After Effects a lot in your work? Premiere Pro really does make this much easier for you then.

Of course you can do anything with any one of the big three, but for some things (like features) one or the other NLE has a few advantages over the other.

Personally I’ve been using Premiere Pro as my main editing program for six years now. It’s come a long way since its early stages  and since version CS3 I dare say it has achieved professional status on par with Final Cut Pro and even Avid Media Composer (for the most part), provided you know what you’re doing.

Premiere Pro is still trying to shake its non-pro image from the distant past, and if Adobe continues on its current path this will happen. There’s (almost) nothing Final Cut Pro can do that Premiere Pro can’t, and vice versa. The few minor differences that are there can usually be worked around very easily.

SOME EXAMPLES

I like the smooth integration with Photoshop, Soundbooth, and After Effects, something the other guys don’t do quite as well, if at all. Yet. The user interface and workflow was something I just “got” immediately back when I started, something I can’t say for FCP or AVID. Or Photoshop, for that matter.

But Apple (Final Cut Pro) and Avid (Media Composer) are not resting on past achievements and make constant improvements to their stuff too. Final Cut Studio just got an upgrade (FCS 3) with some nice enhancements, and so did Avid with its new Media Composer 4.0. Every new version of any of these programs tends to have some improvements, modernizations, updates, and – yes – some additional bugs.

The bugs with Premiere Pro and Media Encoder CS4 were initially particularly horrendous but those were largely fixed with a major update a few months ago.

I find Final Cut Pro to run quite well even on the mid-level hardware Apple tends to put in its iMac and Macbook Pro systems, something Premiere Pro doesn’t do as well running on the same specs. For example, I was able to edit HDV and H.264 encoded (yeah, I know…) footage fairly well on a Macbook Pro with a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, only one drive, and 2 Gigs of memory. Premiere Pro on Windows would be very sluggish with those specs, particularly with that little memory.

However the fact that Final Cut Pro runs on Mac OS (and only Mac OS, unfortunately) plays a role in that. Premiere Pro CS4 may be just as smooth on the Macbook Pro, but I haven’t tested that yet.

I don’t like how Final Cut practically forces its own proprietary codec stuff on you though. If you capture HDV for example, it’s transcode everything into its own proprietary Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), which can only be worked with on Apple machines with Final Cut Pro installed. No Windows.

If you need to edit High Def footage and have limited computing resources, transcoding into Apple’s ProRes codecs can come in quite handy though.

GOOD ‘N BAD

I plan on doing a much more thorough comparison between NLE’s in the near future but for right now suffice it to say that regardless if you choose Premiere Pro (PC and Mac) , Final Cut Pro (Mac only), or Avid Media Composer (PC and Mac), you’re in good hands but need to live with certain limitations and frustrations in either case.

For example, for being an Apple product, Final Cut Pro is surprisingly crash happy (comparatively), and archaic looking. And while Mac stuff is usually really easy to use, FCP I feel is not. Some things that the other guys do very easily for some odd reason take much longer to do in FCP. Watermarking is one example.

AVID’s customizability and workflows are fantastic. There’s a reason why it’s still one of Hollywood’s favorite NLEs, and it’s not (not anymore) because it “cuts better” than FCP or Premiere Pro.

Media Composer is probably the most stable out of all three programs, everything else such as hardware and source footage being equal.

Personally I find Premiere Pro to be slightly faster and easier to use than either FCP or Media Composer but this is a preference you may or may not share, and won’t know until you try them all yourself for a while.

WHAT ELSE?

Whatever program you choose, do yourself a huge favor and learn as much as possible about it. I’m talking shortcuts, tricks, available plug-ins, effects, color correction tools, hardware options, organizational flows…everything. The more you know your program the better you will be, regardless if you use FCP, AVID, or Adobe.

If you are just getting started, any of these three can seem incredibly daunting. All three have a learning curve, with some people saying Final Cut Pro having the lowest. I disagree with that and personally find Premiere Pro much easier but that’s just me. With Final Cut Pro you’ll also get Compressor, which is a standalone encoding app that you really need to learn to get the most out of it. It’s got some bugs and stability issues, but then again so does the Adobe Media Encoder.

All three programs are very powerful, the key is in learning (and I mean really learning) the ins and outs of whatever NLE you choose. I know I said this before but I’m saying it again because it’s so important. All too often I hear people bitch about this or that thing their NLE of choice “can’t do”, and then it turns out it does but the complainer never bothered to actually learn to properly use it.

It’s also okay to use several programs at once. If you’re doing both long feature films as well as short stuff for example it’s totally okay to, say, edit your huge projects with Avid (it tends to be more stable with very large amounts of footage and effects than FCP) and maybe do your shorts in Final Cut.

You can even swap programs for the same project but that can get quite tricky so it’s best to stick with one program per project unless you’re willing to learn all about EDLs (Edit Decision Lists) and all the other workarounds required to make it all work together.

If your plan is to one day edit for one of the big production houses you’ll need to learn AVID. Some companies are using Final Cut Pro but AVID is still the king in Hollywood. There’s also a very expensive but incredibly powerful professional editing and compositing software called Flame and Smoke, made by Autodesk. Many movie companies use those with great success.( If you’re a small outfit or one man show you don’t need to worry about Smoke or Flame though, unless you have lots of cash to burn)

Finally, the hardware you run your NLE on is vital. Myself, I prefer to cram as much processing power, memory, and storage space in my workstations as possible. It’s costly but the enhanced stability and speed are absolutely worth it. If you find Premiere Pro or Avid to be sluggish, chances are your system itself needs some upgrades rather than the program being at fault,  as both NLEs run very well provided you give them what they need.

Hope this helps a little bit. If you need a more in depth, personal consultation with video and/or photo production gear you know where to find me.