Why Not... Adobe Premiere?
Over the past decade, I have worked in several editing programs including: Avid, Final Cut Pro, Vegas Video, I even spent a few years as a Smoke/Flame operator. They all have their place but that place is not here, at NeoPangea. For the past couple years, I have been working exclusively in Premiere... yes, that's right Adobe Premiere.
Now I realize it isn't for everyone, but for our work flow, it really is perfect. We aren't a post house with clients over our shoulders all day, although we do produce our fair share of spots and short format work:
- Bell Tower
- COX Communications
- Alabama Credit Union
What it really boils down to for us is flexibility and cost.
We are heavily vested in the DSLR format for most of our interactive and broadcast production needs. We own two 7D's and have been extremely impressed with the output to this point, even for projects involving compositing. In the past the h.264 codec was the only real downside due to transcoding... IN THE PAST. Now with Premiere's Mercury Playback Engine and a relatively inexpensive nVidia Quadro graphics card with CUDA acceleration, we can work with the native h.264 clips.
We also recently have been working with other editors that use Final Cut and Avid exclusively. With Premiere's ability to import XML files we have been able to rebuild those edits in Premiere and then open those edits up in After Effects where we do most of the heavy lifting. Most editors I know need to get their edits into After Effects at some point or another. They have been using plug-ins like Automatic Duck that cost $500 to perform this rather trivial but necessary task, when Premiere can do it for free and seamlessly.
At the end of the day I'm not saying that Premiere is the best, but it seems to be for our work flow and considering it comes included with the Adobe Master Suite or Production Bundle, the cost comparison to other editors is another huge plus.