Transitioning: FCP to Premiere Pro “Gotchas” Part 1
At the urging of a friend, I got back to work on these Transitioning videos as he is now jumping into the Adobe Premiere Pro application.
As I’ve noted in my blogs, for the Final Cut Pro editor migrating over to Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5, the transition really could not be much easier. I often refer to PPro as “Final Cut Pro 8” because it feels like the natural progression from FCP 7.
But there are a few quirks within the application that will drive you absolutely bonkers. So before you pull your hair out and start swearing up a blue streak, here’s a few of the “gotchas” that got me and how to avoid them.
One great thing about Adobe is that they ARE listening to feedback. So if you would like to offer input as Adobe prepares CS6, be sure to go to their website and give info on their feedback page.
And if you really want to learn about Adobe Premiere Pro, be sure to pick up this book by my buddies Richard, Robbie and Jeff!
Walt,
It looks like most of the tracks assignments are based on the Avid way of thinking.
Whats driving me nuts about Premiere Pro is creating a freeze frame.
I can’t find it anywhere!!! Where is my “shift N”?!?
Lou …
I just use the Still Image function that’s in both the Source and Program windows. It showed that in my original FCP Workflow in Adobe Premiere Pro video.
Freeze Frames are as easy as context-clicking a clip in the timeline and selecting “frame-hold” - not to sound like an ah, put do you guys read manuals/help at all?
We’re still in the process of learning the app, so we’re helping one another learn. Yeah, we do read the manuals, I have the book “An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro” and I watch the tutorials on the Creative Cow.
However we’re also working so many of us just jump in to the applications and start working. Hence this Gotchas! video series I’m doing for the FCP editor who just wants to jump in. There are much easier ways to do just about everything I’m showing I’m sure, however as a newbie Premiere editor jumping over from FCP I’m trying to help others who jump right in as well.
I’m also amazed that you can’t right-click and add a transition.
Some things are so much farther ahead than Final Cut and others are just flat out missing all together.
I watched a colleague of mine pull a key in FCPX the other day. I was amazed. I ‘m starting to wonder if I haven’t given it enough of a chance. I think I’m more pissed at Apple than FCPX.
Right click to add a transition is more than likely coming to CS6, in fact a LOT of the functionality we have been used to with FCP is more than likely going to appear in Premiere sooner than later.
As for pulling a key, about 10 ways to Sunday to do that in After Effects, Premiere Pro, any of the Adobe products too. Yes, that’s one thing X can actually do well, but not something that would get me to go “gee I didn’t give it enough of a chance” type of thing. I never refunded my copy of X so I still have it here and open it up to see if I “missed” anything, but so far, nope.
Adobe is moving in a very good direction right now with the addition of IRIDAS and they are listening to all the feedback. So I’m very satisfied staying on the Adobe / Avid course right now. Moreso Adobe for now because the AJA Kona boards work with the product and that’s very important to our workflow.
I have a KONA LHe card as well. But I have only used my BVW75 sporadically in the last 2 years. Same can be said for my AJ-SD93. I can honestly say that my own little edit suite really has no need for tape anymore. My broadcast clients can take Full Res QTs in the appropriate codecs as final output if needed.
(Wanna buy an LHe card? Ha!)
I know that there are 10 ways to pull keys in AE and Premiere but they almost all involve tweaking. This was basically one step. Apply the filter and watch in real time while it renders in the bknd!!! You do have to ask yourself why, after 11 versions of Aftereffects we can’t even play a Quicktime movie in realtime without generating a Ram Preview. And background rendering with all of these unused cores should really be mandatory for all software. Some companies really are lazy about adopting new OS capabilities. There are so many good things in FCPX that I hope the other companies adopt. Yes, there is too much missing for it to be a viable option but it really is fast.
Forget AVID. I work on AVID systems at NBC at 30 Rock in NYC all the time. It seem like they have been stuck in a timewarp for 15 years. FCP7 is basically 4 years old at this point and it is still light years ahead of AVID in the desktop editing space. AVID does some impressive stuff on the server side. NBC alone has about 10 satellite streams of video being digitized 24/7. The video is useable anywhere in facility after about 8 minutes. But Media Composer shows its age every time I use it. Version 6 better show an extremely current functionality if they want to compete. Resolution independent clips would be a start. An audio waveform that is functional would be a godsend. And they really have to stop treating black as a clip in the timeline.
In my shop we still have 5 VTRs we use all the time, Beta, DVCPro HD and HDV. Constantly pulling raw material and mastering to tape on a weekly basis so ease of use with tape machines is still a vital part of our workflow today.
If you really want to ask a question “Why?”, then why is it that back in 2003 I was able to lay off realtime chroma key, as in “realtime edit to tape chroma key” using the Pinnacle CineWave board with FCP but nothing has ever been able to replicate that? 🙂 As for why Adobe AE still needs to render, well that’s part of the app. FCP X is so fast BECAUSE of all of the things they have missing quite honestly. It’s easy to make a super fast app if you just limit yourself to certain things.
There are some things X does really really well and in Apple’s mind, it’s their way of taking a giant step forward. Unfortunately they did it at the expense of a workflow that many in the professional world need and from what I’m seeing of the sales numbers, the general public is not really jumping at it either. The tape operation is the least of the problems, the “island mentality” of the application really hurts it in an overall collaborative workflow environment.
In our situation we’re moving into Premiere Pro rather quickly to get the native workflows going to end all the Log and Transfer waste of time. But if Avid and AJA get their products working together with Media Composer we’ll definitely add a seat or two. The new MC 6 looks really nice in the screen shots and discussions I’ve seen about it and Atlanta is still an Avid heavy town. Lots of folks definitely interested in Premiere Pro too so it’s looking very much like this area will end up as a mix of the two. That’s a very important consideration when deciding which app is right for you. What’s your local market gravitating too? I have some friends that really prefer Premiere Pro, but their market is shifting heavily back to Avid so they need to get back up to speed on that app.
My first job interview was at 30 Rock. Actually rode the elevator up with Phil Donahue and that was a great introduction to NBC. Ended up taking the job at CNN though. Less pay, but much cheaper cost of living down here in Atlanta.
Comparing a key that was pulled with a real-time hardware card that probably cost a small fortune almost 10 years ago kind of proves my point. The fact that there is nothing real-time at all about anything in After Effects and now both FCPX and Motion give you close to the realtime ability you pine for also proves my point. I know that its “part of the software” in AE but I’m kind of sick of Adobe dragging its heels. They release a new version of the Creative Suite EVERY year. They charge the full upgrade price EVERY year and the feature upgrades are minimal. They only released a .5 upgrade and they STILL charged a full upgrade price. Premiere is the only piece of the suite that has really grown over the last 3 upgrades. All the people that just jumped because of the “switcher” pricing are going to be really pissed when Adobe release CS6 a few months later and charges them $700!!
Actually Walter, if you really think about it, you don’t have any tape functionality in FCP7 now except for DV via firewire. All of your current deck control and various IO support comes from 3rd party solutions.
Apple’s biggest failures in FCPX can be summed up to 4 items. And all of the complaints can pretty much fall into these 4 catagories.
1. Lack of Multi-cam. (A biggie)
2. Lack of XML/OMF support.
3. Not prepping 3rd party companies with APIs.
4. No support for older FCP projects. (Probably the biggest problem) And no its not the same as iTunes not opening your music files. FCPX still can open all your Quicktime source movies. The equivalent would be Photoshop not opening existing PSD files. Or Word not opening older DOC files.
As much as I love Color, FCPX does have a lot of the same functionality. If you can’t figure out how to do it is nothing more than “Editor Whine.” Same with Soundtrack Pro.
All of the Broadcast Monitor issues and various tape support you current enjoy comes from your $2000 AJA or BlackMagic hardware. And yes Apple did a terrible job getting these companies up to speed before launch. Same goes for the plug-in support. But Adobe did the same thing with CS4 to CS5. None of the plugins worked at all. Some companies like Zaxwerks finally released CS5 compatible plugs just recently.
The only software that is keeping OMF alive is ProTools. And we all know how terrible AVID is about keeping up with the state of technology. OMF is 20 years old!! Saying you still NEED Protools without seeing if you can complete a full mix or sweetening of a FCPX project is disingenuous.
Im writing this as a FCP user that is in the process of switching to Premiere. I know what the problems are in FCPX the biggest being the inability to open older FCP projects. But I’m not exactly happy about switching because the alternatives also have their problems. Adobe has not exactly proven much to me as a company in the last 10 years. A lot of the software is stagnant, they charge too much for the upgrades, they have too many programs that do the same thing and they ignore many of the new technology that is written into the OS. I’m still waiting for After Effects to take advantage of my graphics card. I can do more realtime previews in Cinema 4D than I can in After Effects. Like I’ve said before. Forget AVID. Media Composer is a joke.
Four big items that Apple missed - badly!! (and a few other small ones like custom dimensions) Everything else is editor whine. My biggest complaint is that now I’m being forced to switch to Adobe or AVID. I’m more pissed because it really does look like Apple thinks the Pro market would forgive these 4 badly missed items. Add the fact that the Mac Pro has been poorly supported for the last 5 years now.
The Log and Capture controls are supplied by Apple. The additional functionality comes from AJA and BlackMagic. It all stays within the application as it should, no need for a separate application just to capture / lay back to tape.
It has very little of the same functionality as the full blown Color. It’s more of a “looks” application now than a true color grading software. Some folks are doing a very nice job with it, but it’s quite limited in what it can do compared to a full featured color grading app like Color was. I’m very happy to see Adobe purchase IRIDAS to bring a fully functioned Color grading app to that suite. If Apple had been smart they would have developed the Color board as a plug-in that also talked directly to the large Color app so if folks wanted something simple, they stay in FCP, if they want more, they go out to Color. Like what BaseLight has developed and what I have suggested to Adobe with SpeedGrade.
I truly believe Apple does not want to, or does not care, about the professional film / television market any longer as it goes against their overall consumer marketing plan. The consumer market is much larger, it is what has made them one of the richest companies in the world and quite honestly it’s the much better path for the company. Like the Apple rep said at our July Atlanta Cutters event, everyone in the room demo’ing their product was doing so on a Mac. And that’s really all that Apple cares about. You can use whatever software you want to use, as long as the hardware is the Mac, that’s fine.
Transitions are added simply by placing the playhead (cti) at the cut point and pressing command-D (for video) or shift comman-D (for audio). The default transition and transition time that is set in preferences will be executed. Don’t want the default transition? - go to effects, transitions, and drag the transition you want over the default in the timeline.
If you have multiple tracks at the cut point, select or deselect the ones you want the transition at.
On separating audio channels, check Fill Left and Fill Right effects, also in tracks effects in the mixer.
Awesome, thanks for the reply!
Also, there is a nice shortcut that I recently discovered - shift+click on audio/video track header to select/deselect all of them. Comes in handy.
Very nice!
For Gotcha #5, in PPro you actually can write audio keyframes at the clip level during playback.
Select the clip in the timeline, play the timeline, and use the Level slider in the Effect Control panel (instead of using the Audio Mixer).
Very nice, thanks!
But we are putting in a request for the Clip level keyframing using the Mixer because obviously that would be a LOT faster and you could do an entire timeline in one pass per track.
True, but changing how the Mixer works would probably interfere with the automation features, and it would break the metaphor that Premiere uses to handle audio.
It would be nice to be able to toggle a “clip mode” (with obvious UI clues so you don’t forget which mode you’re in) although I can’t imagine too many practical use cases where it wouldn’t be just as fast to use either clip sliders or track keyframes (if you’re mixing live you’re clearly in a hurry, and your edit is probably locked, and if you’re not in a hurry, you’re probably mixing one clip at a time anyway).
But of course, more options are always better.
What we need is the option to either go Track Level or Clip Level with the changes.
In particular when I’m doing a quick mix for a client on a rough cut, would be great to just ride the sliders and yet still be able to keep all of my levels for further adjustment on a final mix.
I don’t want Adobe to abandon Track Level keyframes by any means, they are a very good tool to keep, just give us the option to switch that over to Clip Level if at all possible. Much faster than going through each clip and doing it manually.
Protools handels this rather well, It’s sorta a merging of track level and clip level systems.
Gotcha number 1 isn’t as bad as you think. You can change that setting on a clip by clip bases after you import them, as long as the clip isn’t in any timeline yet.
If you right click and select Modify > Audio Channels… you can change these settings as well as the mapping of stereo channels. And of course you can do this to more then one clip at a time.
No, Number 1 is not bad at all once you understand it, but it’s a major “gotcha” for those coming from FCP. We’re not used to having limited controls of anything once it’s in. In FCP you can change tracks / clip properties at will while working in a project.
I learned about Gotcha 1 after I had already edited a 10 minute project. Had to delete all the media and re-import to make it work because I had over 100 edits in the timeline. HUGE gotcha at that point.
That was the point of my video, from the FCP editor’s perspective, you need to understand a few things about this app. In most ways it’s a very natural progression. In other ways, the app will bite you if you don’t take the time to understand the differences in functionality. Overall very very excited about where Adobe is going with the entire suite.
Right-click on a clip with audio in the Project window and select Modify»Audio Channels…
If the clip hasn’t been used in a timeline yet you should be able to choose from the Track Formats you chose in the Preferences window. I think you can even choose Mono and enable or disable individual channels.
If you’ve already used the footage try duplicating the footage and then reach for Modify»Audio Channels…
Great post btw, love to see editors of all stripes trying out competitor’s products. As a Premiere user for awhile there’s some functionality from FCP we’ve been dying to have that we’ll probably see now that the FCP crew are dipping their toes in the Adobe waters!
Hi, Your feedback links on the Gotchas do not function. (page not found) I had already submitted my thoughts on integration of SpeedGrade (which I own and use) into the CS family of Adobe products but I thought you may wish to know about these non-functioning links.
cheers
Much obliged for the heads up. I’ve tried to fix them three times and they still won’t work so I just deleted them. You can find them easy enough on Adobe’s website.
This is sort of a gotcha… maybe just a missing feature or a feature I’m missing:
How can I monitor audio levels of clips in my source monitor? The mixer is sweet, but so far I can only see audio levels for things in my program monitor/timeline…
Also, is there a setting to allow the playhead to continue playing when clicking around in a clip/sequence? At present, playback stops whenever you click, and you have to start playback again manually. Not so in FCP. Generally this is not a big deal, but I liked auditioning music tracks and spot-checking audio levels/mix by clicking around, and this makes it take a little longer.
One HUGE problem (gotcha) I have with the current Icon View is that you can’t automatically re-organize the clips into anything that makes sense! I bring in clips in order (name and timecode) and can organize them how I like in List View. When I switch to Icon View….. I see groups of organized footage but in a nonsensical order… like clip 30-55 followed by 10-25, then 82-91, 56-75… and so on. I see no option to re-organize the clips in bin view
The only fix I’ve found so far was a suggestion to organize the clips how you want them in the Finder, then bring into the bin with Icon View already active. This appears to keep them in order in Icon View. You can organize any other way you want in List view and it won’t affect Icon view… which is sorta silly IMO
Getting back in touch with Premiere has been interesting… and nice. Some great stuff and I’m encouraged that Adobe IS listening and will deliver the product we all hoped FCP would turn into.
[anybody else miss being able to drag commands from the “tool list” into the bars above the individual windows? I do…:( ]
Yeah, I’m looking into how to re-organize the clips in the bins as well, there has to be a better way. I just haven’t found it yet. I’m sure it’s in Richard Harrington’s book, but I have not hit that chapter yet.
The audio rubberband issue reminds me of a feature I liked in Sony’s short-lived XPRI editing system. There wasn’t a separate audio mixer for the timeline vs the individual clips, but there was a button on the timeline that toggled whether the rubber bands were attached to the sequence or to the clips. It was definitely a big “gotcha” for me when I learned that system, but once I found the toggle feature, it made me glad for the flexibility.
The track-selection method for insert and overwrite edits is the same as the XPRI as well, but with a key difference that does make less sense. It’s good flexibility because it allows you to replace portions of an edit with new content without having to manually delete the old content - say, if the old content had more audio tracks than the new content, or if there was a graphic overlaying a video that didn’t apply to the new clip. However, on the XPRI, an insert or extract edit would only shift clips on the selected tracks, which I really liked. To me, if Adobe adds that functionality, then track selection makes much more sense.
Thanks for the tips!
Wow, I haven’t heard the name XPRI in a long time! Thanks for the trip down memory lane…..
Walter,
You still needed to purchase SEPARATE HARDWARE to digitize anything other than DV, DV50 or DV100.
Which falls under the “Apple didn’t supply APIs to 3rd party vendors” catagory. Which doesn’t make it forgivable. But you can’t install FCPS3 and have the functionality you need RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. I know the solutions now are hardly satisfactory and I know that waiting might not be an option, but the functionality for anything other than Firewire capture was NEVER there!!
The color correction controls in FCPX are very powerful and are MUCH more than just a LOOKS program. There are individual color selection controls. Multiple masks with soft edges. Inside/outside corrections. The scopes are real-time and accurate. You have the ability to do primary and secondary corrections. Its MUCH more than selecting a look if you dig a bit.
But I get that a lot of guys aren’t doing any digging. When you look how long this took to arrive and how much focus Apple has put on mobile devices the last 4 years I get that its easy to just look on the surface, focus on the big things that are missing and then walk away. But lets be a little objective in the criticism. Remember why we chose Apple in the first place. Because Avid was terribly expensive and horribly outdated (and still is) and Adobe could hardly do anything to grab our attention outside of AE.
I am pleasantly surprised with Premiere 5.5. Partially because FCP7 is so old at this point and partially because I never opened Premier before and didn’t expect it to be this good. But I am under no false impression that Adobe isn’t going to charge me a fortune for every upgrade every year with minimal feature improvements.
Every NLE requires separate hardware to capture anything other than Firewire. Media 100, Avid, Adobe, Quantel, Edius, Grass Valley, Vegas, you name it. They all require hardware to capture anything other than Firewire. Either you buy their own hardware or you buy a third party hardware to make that capture. There’s no way around using hardware, either a card or a box, if you want to connect to an analog or digital video / audio source.
So when I purchased Final Cut Pro 1.2.5 I knew that I required additional hardware to capture from the BetaSP and DigiBeta sources that we were using at the time in addition to DVCAM. So I purchased a Pinnacle CineWave card to pair up with Final Cut Pro 1.2.5. Currently we run the AJA Kona boards with Final Cut Pro 7. So, yes, absolutely, you can capture from any source paired with the correct hardware right out of the box. You control that hardware from within the application.
I doubt there is anyone who purchases Final Cut Pro for use with VTRs that is not instructed to purchase some sort of hardware to go along with it. When you install FCP 7 along with that hardware’s software, you are ready to operate your system immediately. So I call that being able to work with Studio 3 right out of the box.
People seem to think I’m among the folks who returned FCP X for a refund. Nope, it’s right here and I have “dug around in it” quite a bit. The color correction tools are not nearly as powerful as Apple Color. MB Looks 11 is better for color grading than what Apple has in X in my opinion. The scopes are quite accurate in Color. The scopes on my Flanders Scientific monitors that are in all of our suites are realtime and accurate as well.
I really have no idea what Apple was thinking with this new color grading tool other than too many people whined about Color being “too hard” so they had to simplify it.
Adobe has one of the best upgrade pricing plans I’ve ever seen. When I upgraded to the first Creative Suite bundle, they allowed me to get an upgrade price twice, using my After Effects license for one and then my Photoshop license for the second. That’s one app upgraded to a Bundle, twice. The upgrade pricing is right in line with the caliber of the apps that you get.
I’m going to stop this discussion now because it’s gone so far off topic it’s not adding anything to the original discussion. I wish you the best as you move forward.