I have been thinking about bailing on Final Cut Pro since the release of Final Cut Pro X, aka iMovie Pro. I was so upset with the new Final Cut software lacking key elements (such as legacy support of old projects) that I demanded my money back from Apple. I got my refund.
Now, I have a decision to make… Do I hold onto Final Cut Pro 7 and wait for Apple to make the proper “Pro” fixes to Final Cut X or do I jump ship?
Back in college, I learned how to edit on an Avid. When I left college, I could not afford Avid products. I used the much cheaper Adobe Premiere 5.1 on my Dell PC. I edited a bunch of projects on Premiere and when I moved over to Mac, I tried out Final Cut Pro. I liked premiere and Final Cut about the same, but my love for Apple hardware kept me on FCP.
But then Final Cut Pro X came out and it left a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, as the NLE wars heat companies like Adobe are offering their products at 50 percent off! All you need to do is type “switch” into the promo box at checkout to save some serious loot.
I downloaded the trial version of CS5.5 a week ago but found that alot of the codecs/presets I needed (like XDCAM or RED) were unavailable. I also found out that some of the plugins were stripped in the watered down trial version. I could still use the nle interface, but I was familiar with it from my early edit days. I really wanted to have a full version with everything included!
I bought the Adobe Production Premium Suite 5.5 today for $850. This includes After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere and other Adobe Products. It also includes native support for Red footage and has a plugin for stabilization called “warp stabilizer”. I will be editing my Red Epic project on Adobe Premiere and earlier today I was wowed by warp. Good bye Final Cut Pro (I plan on editing TimeFest blog on FCP this week, my last project).
If you just want Premiere, you can get the FULL boxed version of cs5.5 for under $400 (until Sept 30, 2011) Click here to buy it.
Around 2pm today I was driving back from a job. I had my Sony SR11 and a cheap tripod in the back of my car. I stopped on some train tracks and decided to shoot a bit of footage. I sent out a tweet and asked if anyone had the full version of Premiere CS5.5. I almost immediately got an answer from a friend in the Netherlands, @igert.
Gert Kracht sent me a private FTP and as soon as I got home, I uploaded the Sony SR11 footage to his server half a world away. He quickly downloaded the file and begun to stabilize the footage using Final Cut Pro X and then Adobe warp stabilizer.
As he was doing this for me, I found a few videos on the internet showing off the warp plugin. I was amazed at how smooth the content was after treatment. Plus, people who had used the stabilizer said that this was the best they had ever used. Warp was very easy to execute, without having to set tracking points or keyframes. The plugin did all the work for you!
Gert ran the footage through a few different settings. He set the parameters for “no motion” and “smooth motion”. He also sent me versions with and without crop. Gert is currently running a very intense pass on the footage (that would tax the processor through the night) and I will post that version full screen and stand alone for you to view on this page later.
T-RECS Timelapse Showreel 2011 #1 from T-Recs (Timelapse Recordings) on Vimeo.
The warp stabilizer is not a replacement for proper camerawork. You will still need to acquire good looking footage using tools like a tripod or dolly/slider. But this plugin is very good and will open doors to creative technique never before possible without tons of post time and processing power.
I plan on doing some “stop motion” timelapses using a method that the T-Recs guys are pioneering in Germany. I am not saying I know how they did their timelapses, but I will try to do something similar using stabilization. Check out the video above.
Big thanks to Gert Kracht for helping me with this test and resulting video blog. I was not going to publish this, since it was just a test for me, but too many of you asked for it! Enjoy.
UPDATE 8/7/11:
I now own Adobe Lightroom 3 and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium retail software. Now it is time to learn it!
I was happy to see all the codecs/presets were in my paid version. Some people have stated (on Twitter) that you do indeed get Warp Stabilizer and all the Red/XDCAM presets in the trial version of Production Premium. I found that NOT to be the case. They were excluded and I was unable to use the trial for my workflow. Here is the list of presets in the FULL RETAIL version of CS5.5:
13 Comments
It looks more ‘stable’ but the quality of the image is completely blown. The FCP X footage has far more of the original quality. Far more bumps too. I tried using FCP X to do a stabilization and had no real success with it. But, it’s $299. I still don’t see how this sells Premiere. This stabilizer feature is After Effects! You can export this movie into any NLE, no? I’ve been using FCP X now for a few weeks and I’m really starting to like it. I think it’s a long way off from replacing FCP 7 for a lot of people who have thousands of dollars in plug-ins but I think it’s going to be a great solution for a lot of indy video makers, dslr enthusiasts, etc.
adobe premiere pro cs5.5 is $100 more than FCPX. So the price is not that far off.
As for the image being “blown” it was shot on a Sony SR11 and I deinterlaced the footage before I sent it off to Gert. The camera already looked soft to begin with.
My next test will be will a better resolution file. I want to try to stabilize a 5dmk2 image sequence in stop motion timelapsing using warp. I am curious to see if the quality of image holds up.
Yea, you can use FCP and After Effects together, but I am interested in the tight integration of Adobe products. Should make things easier. I will let you know when I install it all.
Tom, I know the original footage wasn’t great, but it got noticeably worse to me. And I mentioned the price of FCP X as compared to After Effects & Premiere. It’s not a fair comparison to say that FCP’s stabilization tool is in the same price range of Adobe’s. AE’s warp is clearly the winner.
That said, I looked into After Effects pricing and realized that they have subscription plans for a lot of their tools. If I really needed to stabilize some footage I could ‘rent’ the program for the period I needed it and save a lot of loot!
yea, the subscription plan is a great benefit. i now own a lot of adobe software and i am reading books to figure it out. hope to be an “expert” soon!
by the way, i got the new nvidia 4000 card for my mac pro tower. that thing will scream with premiere and 4k red files!
i will blog about that next. hope it was worth the money. shall see…
Bill,
You can select clips in your premiere pro sequence and send those clips to after effects. So you can do all of your editing and everything with un-stabilized footage, green screen, you name it in premiere. Send the selected clips to after effects, do all the work you want to do in AE, and premiere will automatically update what ever you do in AE in your premiere sequence. You don’t even have to render out from AE. CS5.5 is really a great tool, I’ve been using it a lot for my gigs out here in LA and a lot of major post houses are making the switch because of how it goes between premiere and after effects. It truly is an amazing program.
Still some problems but like everything in this industry.
Will
No doubt, staying inside one family of products is preferable if you like all of the tools in the package. But if someone really preferred FCP7 over Premiere, why not use the tools if you have them? Also, you say you don’t have to render out of AE. I assume you mean export? It must have to render to some temp location still and it gets linked back into your timeline automatically, right?
In my experience rendering/exporting from After effect provide superior results to exporting from premiere.
Typically I like to do my edits first in premiere, usually including some effects clips from after effect via dynamic link. Then bring the entire sequence into AE and color correct and grade. Then export from AE.
Tom, I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done and comments you have posted regarding NLE’s (and your other topics too). Apple has really put a lot of folks on the bubble right now. Do we hold out for the “changes/fixes” we want/need from Apple, or switch to a new product entirely. As you know, there are both pros and cons to FCPX, with the biggest con being our legacy projects can’t be reworked in FCPX. Adobe is very smart with the 1/2 price offers right now and have made a large number of sales because of it. I have both FCP7 and Premiere/After Effects 5, so for now, I’m in a “wait and see” mode for the next 6-9 months.
Mark
Mark, I think you’re doing the right thing and waiting to see. I think it’s funny that if Apple released FCP8 and it was just like FCP7 and included a few new features people would have bought it and Adobe and Avid would have been right where they were before. Instead, FCPX came out and tried to re-think the NLE a little bit and did the one thing that should never be done in Broadcast-ask your users to change. Oddly, ‘Pro’ users are the most stubborn and the least likely to adapt to change. I think that if FCPX had legacy support, and every other missing feature people would STILL be crying about how awful it is simply based on the new interface and some new key commands.
I also use ProDad Mercalli in FCP 7 and in Premiere Cs5. I think it does a better job that the built in stabilizers in Premiere and In FC
I added the list of presets/codecs found in the full retail version of production premium at the end of the blog post above. I was happy to see them, as I said, the trial version did not include RED or XDCAM!
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After reading your post about Adobe’s Warp Stabilizer (and seeing other posts and videos), I decided to purchase it. I tested the effect with a variety of handheld shots, trying to maintain the smoothest motion while filming. I tried to find videos of similar tests but all the videos I come across are shot in a rather documentary type setting. I wanted to display tests that try to mimic dolly, jib, traveling shots. Here is the video link, and thanks so much for all your resourceful information.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyx9Uks3Ch4