Transitioning: FCP to Premiere Pro “Gotchas” Part 1
By Walter Biscardi on September 11th, 2011
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!
Tagged with: Adobe, Apple, FCP, FCPX, Final Cut Pro, PPro, Premiere Pro, Tutorial, Video Editing.
31 Responses to “Transitioning: FCP to Premiere Pro “Gotchas” Part 1”
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LouB says: September 11, 2011 at 7:44 pmWalt,
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 …
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Walter Biscardi says: September 11, 2011 at 7:56 pm
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.
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wpersing says: September 17, 2011 at 12:36 am
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?
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Walter Biscardi says: September 18, 2011 at 3:07 pm
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.
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LouB says: September 11, 2011 at 8:06 pm
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 11, 2011 at 8:37 pm
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.
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LouB says: September 11, 2011 at 9:29 pm
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 12, 2011 at 11:24 am
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.
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LouB says: September 17, 2011 at 4:54 pm
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 18, 2011 at 3:06 pm
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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wpersing says: September 17, 2011 at 12:45 am
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.
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Bart Walczak says: September 11, 2011 at 9:28 pm
On separating audio channels, check Fill Left and Fill Right effects, also in tracks effects in the mixer.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 12, 2011 at 11:14 am
Awesome, thanks for the reply!
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Bart Walczak says: September 12, 2011 at 9:07 pm
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 12, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Very nice!
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The Noble Robot says: September 12, 2011 at 1:44 am
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).
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Walter Biscardi says: September 12, 2011 at 11:14 am
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.
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The Noble Robot says: September 12, 2011 at 9:25 pm
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 12, 2011 at 11:08 pm
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.
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Jmcontra says: September 13, 2011 at 2:55 am
Protools handels this rather well, It’s sorta a merging of track level and clip level systems.
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Jmcontra says: September 13, 2011 at 3:02 am
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.
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Walter Biscardi says: September 13, 2011 at 10:32 am
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 t
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