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Notes from using Premiere Pro in a real-world, client-in-the-room edit

Premiere Pro has come a long way and is a real alternative for FCP users looking for a quick switch.

By Scott Simmons | July 26, 2011

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Adobe Premiere Pro has been back in the post-production public consciousness for quite a while. Now at version 5.5 it feels like Adobe began really pushing it when the Mercury Playback Engine was added in 5. I've been toying with it off and on for quite a while now but with the recent release of Final Cut Pro X I wanted to give it a real-world, client in the room test. In the end it was both very good, kinda bad … and a little bit ugly.

Before we discuss how Premiere Pro performed there's a number of questions that I've been asked about finally using PPro in a "real world" edit.

First is the question I've been asked most often: Why now?

With the arrival of FCPX came the end of future development of Final Cut Pro 7. In my opinion and my workflows, FCPX isn't ready. Besides missing "pro" features like I/O and 3rd party hardware support I think the basic editorial tools are a step backwards from Final Cut Pro (but that's a different discussion for a different day). Many say "FCP7 didn't stop working when FCPX arrived" but personally I don't want to keep using a end-of-life NLE as I want my tools to continue to evolve and get better in both functionality and performance. Hearing that argument we'd be expected to continue to use FCP7 forever or at least until FCPX gained needed features. That may be years from now ... if ever as I doubt some of the basic editorial tools in FCPX will ever change. I want to give my time and energy to tools that I know have a future and sadly FCP7 doesn't have a future beyond where it sits now.

The second most common question is why not edit with Avid Media Composer?

That's an easy answer in that I do work in Avid ... all the time. But I like to have multiple editors available for different tasks. This job happened to be a more flashy promo-type piece that required some After Effects work as well as mixing of the audio. I often feel these types of things are easier achieved in a studio suite of applications like Adobe Creative Suite (or what would've been Final Cut Studio). Plus I've found it easier for me to do some of the more flashy stuff with the PPro/FCP way of working with effects.

The final question has been this: what's the learning curve from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro?

There are some pointed differences as they are different applications but overall they are VERY similar. They are nearly identical in a lot of general tasks and operations. The major editorial differences come mainly in where a certain task or button is located. The origins of FCP and PPro come from the same people so it's no wonder they are so similar. Unless you have a deathly fear of change moving to PPro shouldn't be a fear that keeps you awake at night.

The Project



This edit was a mix of Sony F3, XDCAM EX and Canon 7D. It was refreshing to have a camera like the F3 selected for the main interviews as that meant sound was recorded directly to camera so no dealing with double-system sound for DSLR. PPro 5.5 introduced a new Merge Clips command to make this easier but even easier still is not having to worry about it at all.

7D media was converted to ProRes LT before we began but the Sony media was imported natively. PPro relies on the Mercury Playback Engine for it's amazing performance and this MacPro was running an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac.

The other thing that made this move possible was the release of AJA Kona drivers for CS5.5. This was absolutely critical in a client focused environment as I often had the client in the room as we worked the edit and without display on the client monitor he would have had nothing to look at. Yet another reason this missing feature from Final Cut Pro X is so baffling.

Matrox actually beat AJA in availability of their CS5.5 drivers but testing both an AJA Kona LHe and Matrox MXO2 Mini revealed better performance on my system from the Kona card (or so I thought). Premiere is interesting in its monitoring in that to use 3rd party hardware you choose a dedicated sequence preset for the hardware you want to use. And just looking at the playback settings for each reveals a big difference.

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The AJA player settings in PPro offer a lot of choices of formats and monitoring.


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The Matrox player settings in PPro are rather ... simple in comparison.


UPDATE 7-27: Andy made a great point in the comments below that the Matrox video settings that parallel the AJA settings are located in the System Preferences under the Matrox MXO2 Mini tab. This is where you would change your video monitoring options like output resolutions and downconverts. Matrox uses the same system preference between PPro and Avid Media Composer (and I'm guessing Final Cut Pro as well) but when you check the video output preferences in Avid it actually launches the Matrox System Preference. It might be worth Matrox adding a button in their PPro setting that launches the Matrox system preference right from within PPro.

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Options for Matrox hardware are handled within the Mac System Preferences.


This article isn't intended to be a "how to" switch article nor is it intended to teach an editor how to use Premiere as there are many resources for just that. Instead this article is intended to convey the good, bad and the ugly when working with PPro for the first time in a real world post house with a client in the room. With that I'll break this into three sections with bullet points and notes in each. Some of these comments are on big issues, some on small things I noticed as I worked. And the ugly was definitely ugly though that's really no fault of Premiere Pro itself.

The Very Good



• A short learning curve from Final Cut Pro

Premiere Pro is very much like Final Cut Pro (that's FCP7 and above, not FCPX) in that it all beings with a project. That project files contains bins of media, sequences, imported graphics, audio and all the stuff that goes into making up an edit. In fact, IMHO, it will be easier overall for an editor to move from FCP7 to Adobe Premiere than it will be to move to FCPX.

PPro uses the familiar Viewer/Canvas 2-up layout (in PPro it's called Source monitor and Program monitor) for editing. The Project window is like the FCP Browser and that's where you'll organize things like bins, sequences and pretty much anything you import into a project. Keyframing of effects and motion parameters takes place in the Source/Viewer in a timeline just like FCP7.

It'll be an instantly familiar environment to FCP users since they are so similar. Window layouts can be arranged and saved, bins have columns of different metadata, there's an audio mixer and level meters and a toolbar. If you realize that conceptually they are very similar but recognize things will be in different places (and steps to achieve a goal will be different steps) then that will go a long way toward making an FCP to PPro transition easier.

• Mercury Playback Engine

We had mixed codecs and a few mixed frame rates in this job so the Mercury Playback Engine performed well. The only things I had to render were two sequences that I Dynamic Linked over to After Effects to do some beauty work on one of the subjects. Sometimes they felt like they wanted to play realtime but other times they did not. Other than that no render was required on things like titles and transitions that were built out of several layers of video and blend modes.

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With a supported NVIDIA GPU the Premiere Pro performance screams.


There's been some discussion on whether Mercury playback is enabled when using 3rd party hardware like the Kona card but I can confirm that it does work. I tried the usual picture-in-picture, stacked clips with filters test and the Mercury acceleration does work in conjunction with hardware i/o. I didn't get as many realtime streams playback on the PPro monitor only but certainly enough for most of what I encounter in day to day editing.

• Interface

I had been skeptical at first about the PPro single-window style interface (as in all the PPro windows are gathered into one large, resizable window) as it seemed too structured when compared to FCP's free-floating windows. Once I really got into PPro I made two large windows for my two 24 inch monitors and it actually works really well. Workspaces can easily be saved and accessed by keyboard shortcuts.

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Different window layouts are easily saved and recalled, ala Final Cut Pro.


Each window has a pop-out menu that lets you undock, close or maximize the frame. Once you figure out just where to dock a window to get the desired result when you move it then it's easy to build just the workspace you want. FCPX could learn a thing or two.

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All PPro windows have this panel menu for docking and organizing windows.


• Per track audio adjustments

PPro is quite strong in the audio mixing category. Things like separate gain and volume controls are great but PPro moves a step beyond with per track (not just per clip) levels, effects and automation control. You can turn on rubber banding for either individual clips or an entire track. When using automation via the audio mixer there's Read, Latch, Touch options that will be familiar to anyone who has worked in audio editing applications. You can also assign audio filters to an entire track. This was very handy when applying a compressor to the interview subject's audio.

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It's nice to have both per clip and per track audio adjustments in Premiere Pro.


• History menu

If you want to see an undo menu the way it should be done look no further than PPRo's History menu. It's a step-by-step listing of the actions that have been performed. Adobe says you can "undo as many as 32 recent changes made to the project in any Premiere Pro panel" and while that's not unlimited it's very usable thanks to the History panel. The History panel gives a count of how many Undos you have left available. Now if we could just get it higher than 32!

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Seeing your last 32 actions in a list form makes for easy undos and redos.


• Subframe audio editing in the timeline

If you want to edit audio at a subframe level it's as easy as selecting Show Audio Time Units from the Timeline, Audio Mixer or Program monitor panel menu. With that the timecode display changes to subframe units. If you remember how difficult subframe editing was in FCP then this will be welcome.

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No shift+dragging to subframe audio edit in Premiere Pro, it's just a menu item away.


• Best in class title tool

PPro's title tool beats its competitors hands down. Once created in WYSIWYG form over a frame of the video a title is then saved into a bin to it can be loaded and edited into a sequence. I once asked WTF Title Tools ?!?! which declared that PPro beat FCP and Avid when it comes to simple titling. It still does.

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That's a nice title tool.


• Project Manager

PPro uses a Project Manager to do a lot of what FCP's Media Manager does. It works on an entire project basis as opposed to being able to use it on a per sequence basis. But if you look at the image below you can see that all edit sequences in a project show up so you can choose how many or how few of your cuts you want to manage. It's a pretty nice way to archive at the end of a project and it worked well archiving this edit when we were done.

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There's quite a few archiving options available using the PPro Project Manager.


Next Up: The Kinda Bad and the Little Bit Ugly

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Comments

Tom Daigon: | July, 26, 2011

Scott, I just put in a feature request for Automated Media Relinking. It definitely is a bottleneck in the process. I suggest you assert your desire for enhancements by making feature requests here.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Scott Simmons: | July, 27, 2011

Thanks for linking to Adobe’s feature request page Lasvideo. I’ve sent some over and I hope others will tool

Tom Daigon: | July, 27, 2011

Glad to help Scott. I want to see Premiere Pro meet and exceed editors expectations. Feature requests seems to be the path to that goal.

Andy: | July, 27, 2011

Hey Scott
In the interests of fairness, it might be worth mentioning that many (not all, but many) of the monitoring options presented in the AJA player settings are also available with the Matrox MXO2 hardware too ... its just that they are non-specific to Premiere so you set those up in the MXO2 preferences pane, not the app.
Cheers
Andy

Scott Simmons: | July, 27, 2011

Great point Andy, that’s the same as in Media Composer. Thanks for pointing that out. Article updated.

Tom Daigon: | July, 27, 2011

Scott, I wanted to share something I discovered that fills a void in PrP’s options for transitions.

There have been several discussions recently regarding the lack of good transitions for PrP. As a working editor I need a variety of tools just in case that marketing video or music video needs a different kind of transition just to spice things up. The Avid DS excelled at this by using a node structure to allow you to mix and match every filter in the box to create something unique and different when that need arose (i.e. clients asking for it).

I spent my share of Google time researching this and all I found was limited and weak (in the sense of programming controls).

Well, last Friday I stumbled upon a product that I prematurely dismissed many months ago. Boy was I wrong.

Boris Red will soon release Red 5 for Mac (64 bits). It does many things I dont need since After Effects is my go to motion graphics software. But it does one major thing that I see as an answer to the prayers of editors like me… it allows you to make customized transitions or to use their vast library and alter as needed. It has lots of things from Continuum as well as the AE library know as Final Effects complete. You can stack them, matte them,blend them as you choose.The degree of control rivals that of Sapphire and Avid DS. It renders fast and gives PrP editors more choices when they want it. It should be released soon. I now feel like I have what I need to make just about every client happy. I tend to do more commercial, marketing and corporate communication projects which tend to need a little more glitz then narratives or docs. I feel like I have discovered a real treasure. I neglected to add that Boris Red 5 is already out for the PC as a 64 bit plugin for PrP. The Mac version will be out in the near future. I think this is a positive thing for PrP and enhances what it can offer the vast variety of editors flocking to it these days .

Ray T: | July, 27, 2011

Scott. Great observations on Premiere Pro in the real world. You hit the nail on the head with the weak link of Premiere Pro, the hardware I/O.

In fairness to all three manufacturers - Blackmagic, Aja, and Matrox, they all have very similar problems making the I/O work with Premiere Pro. The user experience is so different running through a I/O card versus using the GPU output its unbelieveable. I think unless this corrected or improved, professional users should proceed with caution….

Premiere Pro is an awesome tool. We need to get passed this hurdle.

Mitch Lewis: | July, 27, 2011

Wow!  Finally NLE software that allows you to apply audio effects (like a compressor/limiter) to individual TRACKS (not just clips)!  This feature makes me want to switch more than any other.

Scott Simmons: | July, 27, 2011

@Mitch - Avid added this in version 5 with the addition of RTAS (real time audio suite) to Media Composer. Super useful. I’m not sure how long Premiere has had this ability. Makes me wonder how I survived for so man year without it.

Mitch Lewis: | July, 27, 2011

Good to know.  Thanks Scott.  (Avid burned the bridge with me years ago charging $98,000 for an NLE that crashed constantly. As a result I’ve never taken a serious look at them since)

extrabyte: | July, 28, 2011

Thanks for a great hands-on review in a realworld environment.

Just a couple of things I’d like to mention.

First, and forgive me if I missed it in the article, but I found it kind of odd that you didn’t mention Premiere’s built-in ability to natively offer a nice fullrez(HD at least), fullscreen output for a client monitor. On my win7 machine, I have 2 video cards installed, a gtx480 for the heavy lifting and a gtx 220 connected via hdmi to the client monitor (currently a samsung 40 inch lcd, calibrated).  I know less than nothing about macs (I’m assuming tho that the highend macs have at least two, full 16 lane video card slots).

Second, and I know you said you’ll be covering this in your second phase of this review, is that as good as Premiere is on its own, it’s use and integration in the Creative Suite is what really elevates it and sets it apart from other nle’s. For me, I don’t have the luxury to be “just an editor”. I have to also be a motion graphics artist, a graphic designer, an audio engineer, etc. A lot of devoted FCP and Avid editors might not realize just how powerful it is when used within the suite so I was just a little surprised when you didn’t mention that.

Again, thanks for your time and efforts and I appreciate this community.

Cheers

Ray T: | July, 29, 2011

Extrabyte,

Its true you can certainly use the GPU as an output. The HD picture is great for cutting together content. One thing that isnt accounted for in this workflow is professional integration with other broadcast products or facility integrations with an all HD-SDI pipeline. In my case, my machine is located 100’ away and in a central machine room with all of our other big Iron. Our pipeline is HD-SDI to all monitors and decks. We have HD-SDI routers etc. Not to mention that if you want to look at full quality - full raster signals, then an HD-SDI output is needed. Premiere Pro simple doesn’t work well enough YET with the third party hardware I/O cards as Scott writes about in his article. There are a lot of growing pains.

If you are a stand alone island of Post-Production, editing only with file based footage, no integration with a facility then I would say you are in good shape. Premiere Pro is a fantastic NLE and as you mentioned, when used collectively with all its brothers and sisters its pretty awesome.

Tom Daigon: | July, 29, 2011

Hi Ray, Tom here. I think you are making broad generalizations based on your experience. As we have discussed, I have a Mac Pro 3.1 running 10.6.7 with 24 gigs ram and a Kona 3 card. Im running the latest drivers and I get beautiful HD-SDI output from both PrP and AE on my engineering monitor.Playback performance of AJA sequences matches that of the standard Adobe sequences. I know that some Macs have issues but your statement…

“Premiere Pro simple doesn’t work well enough YET with the third party hardware I/O cards”

is a bit to broad a statement.

Ray T: | July, 29, 2011

Well, I am speaking of my experience. But the focus of Scott’s article also demonstrates that there is a problem with Adobe Premiere Pro and hardware I/O cards. So much so, that in Scotts case he had to export out flattened versions of his cut to playback to his client.

I think there is tendency for many people reviewing and also testing out Premiere Pro with any hardware to just throw a few clips on the timeline and hit play to confirm that the card is working. But when you enter into a full blown edit with loads of assets with clients in the room….you start to gain a real world experience of how Premiere Pro acts. I think that most people who are actually working on full blown edits discover quickly that the integration of hardware I/O and Premiere Pro is not quite ready for prime time. I think it will get better going forward but Adobe needs to help their partners make this happen. If you read any forum by Aja, Blackmagic or Matrox, the story is the same. I know Adobe is aware of this and are making efforts to improve this hardware I/O situation.

Tom Daigon: | July, 29, 2011

Well I apologize Ray if my last 2 projects with ad agency clients in the room doesn’t fit your definition of “real world experience”, but be that as it may, I still take exception to your broad generalizations. And slightly snarky allusions to “just throwing clips on the timeline” doesn’t help substantiate your premise. I agree some folks have issues that need addressing, but that doesn’t constitute a majority of the using population. I think that needs to be clarified.

Ray T: | July, 29, 2011

It’s well documented by the hardware partners and the community at this point, that the user experience with a hardware I/O versus no I/O is not equal. It can be measured, quantified, and demonstrated. Just to clarify, if a user decides to add in a hardware I/O card, you are right in that it may take him out of the majority of the using population.

extrabyte: | July, 30, 2011

Ray,

Thanks for your reply.

I totally agree that in a production pipeline, it’s most important and critical for everything to be talking to each other in the right way.

More so with a client sitting next to you.

And I am a “stand alone island of Post-Production” as you say so for me at this time, I am good to go. However, I work for a university and in the near future, I will be collaborating/helping to setup a production pipeline so the HDSDI capabilities for Premiere will be necessary.

Adobe is really determined to get Premiere to be a player the highend market and if what they have been doing for last couple of years or so is any indication, it looks like they will succeed.

This would be good for everyone.

Cheers

Eric Wise: | August, 06, 2011

Good thorough overview Scott. 

I’m in the same boat - I’m a Avid/FCP editor that after dipping my toe into FCP X, is ready to dive into PPro.  I’m also looking forward to the round-tripping I can do with the rest of the Creative Suite. But I wonder, now that FCPX is 64-bit and GPU-enabled will it perform as well as Ppro with Cuda and the Mercury Playback Engine?  We’ll see..

Scott Simmons: | August, 06, 2011

@Eric - I’ve done a couple of small GPU tests between FCPX and Adobe’s Mercury Engine with my Quadro FX 4800. It feels like PPro is getting a bit better performance out of the card though FCPX is doing well also. That’s just a big picture-in-picture stack.

Eric Wise: | August, 06, 2011

Ok thanks Scott, that’s good to know.  And after reading all of the comments above I’m looking forward to seeing how well NLEs perform in the future when thunderbolt-enabled GPU expansion chasis arrive.  Maybe then PPro GPU performance will be more reliable.

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