[bonniescotland]

Recently started learning editing at college using FCP, however have bought a secondhand mac with Premiere already installed, a friend of mine has Premiere and although I haven't used it I have been assisting him editing and it looks just as good to me as FCP. However all professional editors and our teachers always insists that FCP is miles better than Premiere, but when I ask them the specifics they never seem to be able to give me a reason. I have noticed that most professional editors/teachers haven't used Premiere as generally they work in a professional editing environment where of course they are going to have Avid or FCP. Therefore have wondered whether there insistence that FCP is better than Premiere is based on their lack of knowledge of Premiere, or if there really is a valid reason.

Was going to buy FCP for my Mac, but now thinking twice since I've seen Premiere.

So can anyone tell me why FCP is considered so much better than Premiere or is this just an urban myth?

[Chuck_star]

I've used both FCP and Adobe Premiere for editing projects. Both are very good video editing packages. In your case, if its free, and you already know how to use it. Premiere is fine.

That said, I use FCP by choice. I find the funtionality more advanced. Several different ways to get work done(fast). Pinpiont acuracy, and real time.

[Axo1ot1]

FCP is more versatile with respect to format and hardware. It has reasonably powerful compositing that can take the place of after effects for many tasks. It has real time. It is really easy to lerarn/use. It is always getting updated and improved. Awesome tech support.

I am not super-experienced with Premier but what I have learned through using it is that there is a reason it's so much less expensive than FCP.

[snotnose]

advanced features is the key, plus the final cut pro interface is the greatest thing to happen in mac software besides OS X. the color correction capabilities of fcp are amazing.

if you are going to buy premiere though, look around a lot before dropping the cash on it. you can get lucky and find if you buy some nice $250+ video cards, some of them come bundled with premiere (not sure of the version) for free. so you get a awesome video card too.

depends on how serious you want to get with video on which you should buy, just look around for hot deals!

[k2director]

If you're just getting started with editing, Premiere will be fine. It's in fact quiet a feature-rich program--I reviewed it for MacAddict recently, and came into it with a bit of a bias towards Final Cut, which I use extensively. But I was genuinely impressed by what Premiere gives you for the money--all the standard cutting tools, good content organization tools, respectable effects (many in quasi-real time...more than FCP supports), great titling program, etc. If you've already got it, stick with it.

However, Final Cut is definitely the superior product. The interface, as has been said, is silky smooth (for the most part). The software scales from working in DV video to working uncompressed SD and HD, etc (part of which makes it a pros choice). The color correction tools **are** quite good. You can buy a $1000 add-on (Cinema Tools) to cut film that will eventually be projected in theaters (another 'pro' application). You can script your own effects. And Apple is very aggressive about updating the program (Adobe seems to come out with a revision every 2 years, as opposed to almost once a year, which has been Apple's pace of late).

I'm saying all this just so you know what you're getting into. But for your purposes, Premiere should work fine. Of course, you could take advantage of Apple's student discount and get the newest Final Cut for $300--ie, a steal!

Good luck...

[k2director]

As of Jan 7: while Premiere is a very good product, its fate has been sealed on the Mac thanks to Final Cut Express.

At most, we might see one more version of Premiere make its way to the Mac, and then it's curtains.

The decline and fall of a once great franchise...