Without a doubt, the greatest challenge for HDSLR shooters has been editorial. I recently read of another new software that’s supposed to magically make your HDSLR footage palatable for the finicky Final Cut Pro. Why you would ever want to put yourself through the misery and expense of purchasing an additional piece of software that takes hours to work and may crash your computer just so you can cut with FCP is beyond me. The good news is, now you don’t have to…
I recall the first time I tried to cut footage I shot with a 5D Mark II into Final Cut. My heart just sank as if I had been cheated on by the love of my life as it wouldn’t load into FCP. I began the burden of experimenting with various decompression softwares only to become bitter and frustrated with the inconsistences and empty promises. I felt like a man in the desert, dying of thirst and running towards the oasis that is never there. That is until this May with the release of Adobe Premiere CS5.
There’s a ton of reasons to look at CS5, to many to list here. For me the biggest feature was the claim that Premiere could take native HDSLR footage right into the timeline without any pre-render or decompression. Could this be true? Could Adobe truly be the oasis I’ve been looking for? I was skeptical at first, then I tried it. Oh my God! It was literally like the heavens parted and light beamed down upon me with the goodness only Adobe could give. From that moment on, I was shooting, cutting and exporting more than ever before. For months now I’ve been meaning to sing the praises of Premiere, but I’ve been caught up in the freedom I’ve found in being able to shoot and cut with such ease.
Some of you may still be clinging desperately to your FCP, ever committed to the software because it’s the one “professionals” use. That might have been true at one time. However, when I attended Shane Hurlbut’s HDSLR Bootcamp, it put to bed any doubts that Premiere had finally come of age. It’s one thing for me to say Premiere is the way to go, but it’s totally another thing to see a cinema professional like Shane using the software on a 25 foot screen cutting 5D Mark II footage that was just shot minutes before.
Of course I could tell you this all day long, and some of you may just refuse to believe. If you’ve become jaded by the empty promises of decompression software or you’re just another one of FCP’s jilted lovers, you may refuse to believe. Trust me when I say, I understand. That’s why I’ve made this video that’s proof that the promised land actually exists.
Here, I’ll take you through a step by step process of cutting 7D footage right off of the compact flash card. That’s right! Right off the card! Some of the instruction might seem a bit elementary, but the point here is to show that with Adobe Premiere CS5, you can now shoot, cut and render within the time frame it takes you to prep your footage for editing with FCP. For the HDSLR Shooter, I have good news, the promised land does exist, and it’s called Adobe Premiere, CS5.