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Media (Apple) Media Businesses Movies Apple

Premiere Back on Mac 161

Posted by CowboyNeal from the back-in-the-saddle dept.
woof69 writes "After dropping OS X support for Premiere some time in 2003, Adobe is bringing it back in the new Adobe Production Studio. The new software includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth, and will be available for Apple's Intel-based computers in mid-2007; an updated version of the Windows suite will ship at the same time. Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"
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Premiere Back on Mac More

Premiere Back on Mac

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  • Cinelerra (Score:3, Interesting)

    by delirium of disorder ( 701392 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @02:53AM (#17470634) Homepage Journal
    How does After Effects and Final Cut Pro compare to Cinelerra [heroinewarrior.com]?

  • not unless... (Score:3, Informative)

    by scapermoya ( 769847 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @02:53AM (#17470638) Homepage
    im good friends with the son of a major hollywood editor, and she has talked about the different systems she uses. final cut (she doesn't use it) is good at what it does, and its deeply embedded in the editing community. I've used premiere for a while (pc user), and it isn't amazing. i doubt this is a threat in the least.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Nirvelli ( 851945 )
      I mostly use Premiere for my video work (which I don't do much of), and on the few occasions that I've used Final Cut, I haven't been impressed.
      Fans of Final Cut always tell me that I just haven't used it enough to appreciate it, but I've never found a fan of Final Cut who has given Premiere a decent try either.
      The bottom line is, people like what they are used to, and for most users of one of the two, they never try the other because it is on a different platform. That might change now that they will bo
    • "Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"

      Obviously a statement from someone that's never used FCP before. If FCP ran on Windows, Premier would have a fight on its hands... and it would lose very quickly.
  • what about a version for the power pc processors?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yakman ( 22964 )
      They've said it's Intel only. Given that by the time it's out (late 2007 at the earliest) anyone that's serious about video editing will have likely moved to the Intel Macs it's not an issue. And if you're just doing it for kicks, then iMovie or your exisitng version of Final Cut isn't going to stop working.

      Eventually even Apple will stop releasing Universal Binaries of their software, probably when they do major rewrites like Adobe is doing. Isn't the new rewrite of Shake Intel only?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )
        Isn't the new rewrite of Shake Intel only?

        Nope, I have Shake 4.10, the currently shipping version, and it's a universal binary. I run it on an intel iMac at home and on my DP G5 at work - the iMac (2Ghz core2 duo) gives an excellent account of itself despite having relatively modest RAM for such an app (2GB), and of course it runs very well on the Powermac.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Yakman ( 22964 )
          I meant the "next" version, not the currently shipping one. I seem to recall reading something that Shake has been discontinued and they're writing a successor from scratch.

          Just Googled it, see this article about the future of Shake [macrumors.com]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jo_ham ( 604554 )
            Ah, I figured this is what you meant.

            Development of Shake has indeed been discontinued - hence the huge price drop of this latest version.

            I am looking forward to what Apple does with this product line, since it is the one app that is deeply, deeply entrenched in the production industry, even more so than FCP which is gaining ground every day.

    • Re:ppc (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vought ( 160908 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:31AM (#17470818)
      Yes, and Framemaker next, please.

      Maybe Adobe's figuring out that the Mac is still a market to be reckoned with...or maybe someone at the VP level grabbed the Premiere product manager and showed him that all his Windows customers were buying Macs to run Final Cut Pro. There are a lot of Dual-G5 owners out here who love FCP, but want Apple to have real compettion - and we're not above trying new tools and adopting them if they are better.

      Hopefully Apple comes out with a decent document authoring tool (not layout; they're different) like Pages on 'roids. Given Frame's anemic sales and upgrade business, maybe they can steal another market and prod Adobe into becoming competitive again.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hcdejong ( 561314 )
        Dunno. I'm a FrameMaker fan (have been using it for 10 years now), but we're currently seeing many documentation groups moving away from FrameMaker and towards applications that have better options for document management.
        When your documentation becomes very complex (e.g. using one set of documents to describe dozens of similar machines), you'll run into limitations in Frame. It'll continue to work, but the author will be too likely to lose track of which configurations a given chunk of text is used for, in

      • Re:ppc (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @09:09AM (#17472622)

        Yes, and Framemaker next, please.

        As far as I know Framemaker was not cancelled for the Mac, Linux, and Solaris because those platforms were not profitable. It was cancelled because Adobe suffered (suffers?) from a serious case of Not Invented Here syndrome. You'll notice even the PC version is nearly mothballed with few improvements as it just barely keeps up with some of the new technologies on the market. As of a few years ago I was told that Adobe dearly wanted to kill it off, but users were unwilling to switch to their replacements. Of course their replacements were simply pulling a few of the features into InDesign and assuming that would make everyone want to switch. So they didn't want Framemaker, just the customers of Framemaker and they were unable to deliver something else acceptable.

        In my mind the Premier re-release was simply because their is such a demand in video editing for Mac compatibility and they were losing sales left and right not just to people who wanted to use a mac, but to people who worked somewhere where they needed the option to use either. What holds more hope for Framemaker is the merger with Macromedia that might help cure the NIH syndrome Adobe has always had, which in turn could save it on both platforms. Given all the work integrating both product lines, however, I doubt this will be a priority unless they get some real competition.

        Hopefully Apple comes out with a decent document authoring tool (not layout; they're different) like Pages on 'roids.

        This might help, but Apple is in the business of selling Macs, more than anything else. They are unlikely to make such a program cross-platform and as such it would miss a big chunk of the target market and probably not really take off. I think someone like Microsoft could actually do more damage in a hurry and restore competition, but we all know they would immediately try to tie it to other products and undermine that competition. So I'm not really optimistic. This might actually be a job for someone starting with TeX and building an open source, cross platform tool that they intend to use internally (IBM I'm looking at you).

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MidnightBrewer ( 97195 )
        Maybe they figured out that their low-level assembly code, already tailored to the Intel processor, could be married to their already existing OSX front-end code, thus making bringing it over to OSX relatively easy to do.

        As for competition? Hardly. Premiere is already a mediocre program on Windows. I doubt it's going to suddenly get better just because it runs on OSX.

        • Maybe they figured out that their low-level assembly code, already tailored to the Intel processor, could be married to their already existing OSX front-end code, thus making bringing it over to OSX relatively easy to do.

          More likely they noticed that the mac market had doubled since they made the decision and the mac video editing market had quadrupled and did not want to be left out of it.

          As for competition? Hardly. Premiere is already a mediocre program on Windows. I doubt it's going to suddenly get

  • Switchers? (Score:5, Informative)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:01AM (#17470674)
    I can't imagine that too many people would switch to this from Final Cut Pro.

    And for those wondering, this will NOT be a Universal Binary. It has been built from scratch and will only run on Intel-based Macs.

    Adobe's press release [adobe.com].
    • In immediate practical terms it probably doesn't matter, but I have to say I have difficulty understanding why they wouldn't make it a Universal Binary.

      It is not as if they would have to maintain two versions of the code. The primary area where you have to be careful when writing cross-processor code is in binary interfaces (e.g. binary file formats) where you must use endian-safe methods of writing multi-byte words. But this is just good practise anyway.

      In fact, building and running code on a variety of pl

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Not quite. The PowerPC processor uses AltiVec (Velocity Engine in some documentation) for vector processing acceleration, while Intel chips use some revision of SSE. The new Intel Macs use Core processors and OS X for Intel specifically uses SSE2 and 3 capabilities for doing fast computations.

        Programs like Premiere and other media applications do quite a bit of this type of computation so Adobe would need to write their code using both APIs.

        Re: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performan ce/Conceptua [apple.com]
      • Disregarding assembler or SSE/AltiVec differences, there's a huge reason not to: the QA cost. Supporting PPC would effectively double the time/manpower required. If you assume most of the target audience will be using the highest of high-end machines, there's no point in supporting a dead architecture.

    • Re:Switchers? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by solios ( 53048 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @07:02AM (#17471806) Homepage
      Not from FCP. Maybe from FCPE or iMovie. It'll be easy for Adobe to inject the app back into the Mac world - many people use Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects with all kinds of video work.

      The fact that it's not a UB is a big setback - just about everyone I know who does video on a Mac is still on PPC. Why? Because all the coder and sysadmin kiddies with the macbooks make about two to three times the cash that we do.

      That and there's a huge variety of workflow software that's still either PPC or has yet to be updated to UBs.
      • The fact that it's not a UB is a big setback - just about everyone I know who does video on a Mac is still on PPC. Why? Because all the coder and sysadmin kiddies with the macbooks make about two to three times the cash that we do.

        Universal Binary refers to a program which includes both PPC and Intel code and can therefore run on both platforms. "Non-UB" does not mean "PPC-only", it means "either PPC-only or Intel-only". And in this case Premiere is going to be Intel-only and therefore will not run on you

      • That and there's a huge variety of workflow software that's still either PPC or has yet to be updated to UBs.
        Yes, and this is being released at the point where most of that software is scheduled to become Intel native. I'd wager you'll see a LOT of people move to nice shiny Mac Pro's in the second half of this year.
  • It was about time, really.
  • from TFA
    The company did not announce pricing.
    I seriously hope they have a student version of the suite that would be very awesome and helpful! Most students I know end up buying the "education" discounted version.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by IAmGarethAdams ( 990037 )
      I must know a completely different type of student to you. The students I know all get the "extra discounted" version available from all good P2P networks. When I was involved in student TV we made sure our copy was legal, but outside of that I don't know anyone at uni who paid for video editing software

  • Not the best but "good enough" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:27AM (#17470794)
    It's a little surprising they went through the effort, but there will be some who will use Premiere either because a) that's what they know, b) they're primarily designers who will have it with the bundle and will see it as a "good enough" alternative to paying $1000 for Final Cut Pro, or c) they will use it as a supplement to After Effects. The latter is actually a pretty strong selling point for some, as After Effects is still a very viable app (though a true bitch to learn) and has a strong professional following and Premiere naturally integrates with it much better than FCP.

    Final Cut's competition isn't really Premiere at this point anyway, it's Avid. Most editors use one or the other depending on their training and place of employment (FCP tends to be for the self trained, small production houses etc. though that is changing, Avid for major houses and television/movie productions as it has been the standard for over a decade and many if not most pro editors- particularly those who learned to edit *gasp* film- prefer to work with it)

    Having worked with all three-- Premiere, FCP and Avid-- I can safely say that Premiere is the weakest of the three but is more than "good enough" if you're not cutting The Lord of The Rings. As I said it may get use just because the owner purchased the suite for Photoshop and hey, it's there.
    • Having worked with all three-- Premiere, FCP and Avid-- I can safely say that Premiere is the weakest of the three but is more than "good enough" if you're not cutting The Lord of The Rings. As I said it may get use just because the owner purchased the suite for Photoshop and hey, it's there.

      It may, but how many film editors are looking to switch at this time of day? This marketing method makes Premiere look like the toy in a box of cereal: cheap, flimsy, fun to play with for a few minutes, but tossed as

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by solios ( 53048 )
      The problem with "good enough" is that most graphics and video professionals consider the current crop of pay-soft to be just that. FCP is "good enough." After Effects is "good enough." Photoshop CS2 is "good enough" - older versions are "better than," depending on what bit Adobe's recently changed just to piss you off.

      I thought AE was incredibly easy to learn, but I'd already had a few courses in 3d Studio MAX. AE is a combination of MAX's track view (you want to talk about a pain in the ass? THAT is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rduke15 ( 721841 )

      Most editors use one or the other

      In fact, all (about a dozen) editors I know use both (FCP and Avid). Some prefer FCP, and others prefer Avid. The choice for each particular project depends on many factors, in which the editor's personal preference usually doesn't count much. The production company or director may have their own editing room with an Avid or FCP in it, or they may get a good renting deal for one or the other. In the best case (not too often), the choice is made knowingly to ease the global w

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by daviddennis ( 10926 )
        The price of that bundle is pretty much giving away Premiere Pro when you consider the cost of Photoshop, After Effects and the other programs in the bundle. From a marketing point of view, it was important for them to get Premiere back to the Mac, since without that there is no "all inclusive" bundle.

        In the Mac world, the Premiere brand name may have been mortally wounded by version 4.2, which was out forever and was excruciatingly bad - the interface was awful, it had horrifying sound sync problems, etc.
    • My understanding is that Premiere has a bigger installed base than FCP, from what I heard from Adobe reps, about three quarter of a million, vs. half a million that Apple was tooting this year at NAB2006.

      After Effects is harder to learn, but it's a more sophisticated program. I know a guy that makes his money using After Effects + FCP and I've seen numerous hints that he's not alone in this either.
    • They aren't going for exactly the same market - they're more competing with Final Cut Express. Premiere has always been significantly cheaper than FCP, and from what I understand you get what you pay for, but it isn't necessarily a bad product.

      I know local TV stations and educational programs often used to use Premiere because it allowed them to be cross platform, was good enough, and was cheaper.

      I don't know that Premiere was ever really as big in the movie space where FCP really makes its mark.

      Now, after

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noewun ( 591275 )

      Final Cut's competition isn't really Premiere at this point anyway, it's Avid. Most editors use one or the other depending on their training and place of employment (FCP tends to be for the self trained, small production houses etc. though that is changing, Avid for major houses and television/movie productions as it has been the standard for over a decade and many if not most pro editors- particularly those who learned to edit *gasp* film- prefer to work with it)

      FCP has made huge inroads in TV productio

  • I hope you're kidding (Score:4, Informative)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:33AM (#17470822)
    Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?

    The simple answer is no. I bought my Mac specifically for Final Cut because Premiere was such a miserable editor. I cut a feature on Premiere and easily lost 1/3 of my time to crashes. I haven't used the latest versions but the one I used, 5.5, was lightyears behind Final Cut Pro. If you asked me to cut another film on Premiere I'd rather work fast food than do it. Final Cut is a joy to work with. They are porting Premiere back to Mac because they are loosing ground to Final Cut but what they don't understand is it isn't the Mac OS people are after but Final Cut itself. Don't even bother porting it because editors that have switched are lost forever. Better to make it more stable and add features. Anyone one on Final Cut isn't likely to switch. Why go back to a Yugo when you already own a Ferrari. I'm sure there are Premiere fans that will boast of it's stability. If you're happy have fun. Personally I'm thrilled with Final Cut and would never use Premiere for any reason. It made my life a living hell so if they are loosing customers it's their own fault for putting out such a lousy editor.

    • I would have to agree with you. My first video editing experience was with Premiere 5 on OS 9 and I was very fond of it. When OS X was released and Adobe came out with carbonized version 6? iirc, that's when I abandoned it. Ton's of crashes and instability. Making the move to Final Cut wasn't an easy one due to the familiarity that I had with Premiere, but now that I know Final Cut there's very little chance of me switching back. I will probably buy the suite for the other app's and at least try it, but I t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zootm ( 850416 )

      That's quite an old version of Premiere though; I'm not sure that you can so validly hold comparisons made with such an old version of software. You seem to hold that your comparison is as relevant now as it was when you made it, which seems very unlikely. I mean, the current series of the software started again at 1.0 for what would have been Premiere 7.0 in mid-2003, so your comparison was probably made with a piece of software that's had about 5 years of development on it since you used it...

      I'm not say

      • "What worries me is that (especially in software) comparisons made on such archaic versions of a product are almost never relevant to the current one."

        True. But at that time that I switched to FCP there really was no comparison. So I have stuck with it since. Like I said I will buy the suite for the other apps and at least give it a try, but unless they've got some tricks up their sleeves, I will stick with Final Cut which should also have an updated version out at around the same time.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zootm ( 850416 )

          Fair enough, I've not used either piece of software and I know several happy FCP users, so I'll not try to argue that Premiere's "better" in any way. In any case, competition is always a good thing. :)

    • Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?

      The simple answer is no. I bought my Mac specifically for Final Cut because Premiere was such a miserable editor. I cut a feature on Premiere and easily lost 1/3 of my time to crashes. I haven't used the latest versions but the one I used, 5.5, was lightyears behind Final Cut Pro. If you asked me to cut another film on Premiere I'd rather work fast food than do it.... Why go back to a Yugo when you already own a Ferrari... Personally I'm thrilled with Final Cut a

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by stu9000 ( 861253 )
      Premiere Pro 1.0 (PC only) was a direct reaction to Final Cut Pro and it was a lot better than pervious versions. It took a lot from FCP and was even a bit more logical and easier. That said it lacked a couple of power features that kept FCP in the lead IMO. The exciting thing about Premiere Pro on the Mac is its integration with After Effects which is still a terrific program. Being able to cut in PP and then online (finish) in After Effects without having to go through a cumbersome conversion process woul
    • premiere (849$) is cheaper than fcp(1299$). So if you are not in "real" movies (don't do film transfer and import log files) production and just edit videos, premiere should do more than enough for you. As an extra (in production studio) you can edit composition sequences in after effects and see them instantly in premiere.
    • A more apt (or Avid) comparison would be why go back to a Yugo when you already own a Honda?

      For the price, FCP can't be beat IMHO. But it ain't an Avid.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by juiceCake ( 772608 )

      The simple answer is no. I bought my Mac specifically for Final Cut because Premiere was such a miserable editor. I cut a feature on Premiere and easily lost 1/3 of my time to crashes.

      Is the current Mac OS competition for Unix and Linux based operating systems? The simple answer is no. I switched to Linux from Mac OS because with Mac OS I lost a lot of data, removable media drives crashed, and hard drives disappeared. Not to mention, the OS itself didn't have preemptive multitasking. If you asked me to

  • good luck! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by roberthead ( 932434 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:38AM (#17470840)
    Final Cut Studio has a total lock on the video editing software market south of $10k.

    Premiere disappeared from the Mac because it couldn't compete. Speaking as an independent filmmaker, I can't even imagine what Adobe could do to woo me back over.
    • I can't even imagine what Adobe could do to woo me back over.

      How 'bout a free laptop?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      After Premiere disappeared from the Mac Adobe rewrote it (Premiere Pro) to be much, much closer to Final Cut Pro in terms of features. It's pretty nifty now. Just to let you know.

  • Final cut threatened? Not a chance. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:41AM (#17470854) Journal
    There is no chance Premiere will take the market from Final Cut. The installed user-base of Mac video editors all use Final Cut. They're not going to take the time and expense to switch to Premier, when Adobe could decide to pull the upgrade plug at any minute. The only possible result is that Windows-based Premiere users might switch to a Mac. This is only good news for Apple.

  • Competition improves the breed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joetheappleguy ( 865543 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:46AM (#17470876) Homepage
    Final Cut Pro is the best thing to have happened to Premiere, at least as far as Windows users are concerned.

    The last version of Premiere on the Mac (6.5) was a clunky just-good-enough app that contrary to popular belief was not pushed from the Mac market by Final Cut Pro.

    It was Final Cut Express "killed" Premiere - Premiere itself was never competition for Final Cut Pro as Avid systems were it's target. Final Cut Express (FCE) came in at $300 and did just about everything that Premiere did for $700, and for it's target market it mostly did it better and continued to get better.

    Adobe went back to the labs, licked their wounds, rolled up their sleeves and Premiere Pro was born. Windows users benefited from finally having a serious, but affordable video editing suite, but by this time the Mac market and in many ways by proxy the Pro video market was solidly split between Final Cut Pro and Avid's solutions.

    Competition is a great thing for customers and just as all pro video editors benefitted from Avid's wake up call from Apple (Avid systems are no longer so expensive that you have to lease them and Avid finally took notice of these gizmos called laptops), Final Cut users will benefit from Apple's increased need to improve the product to compete with Adobe's return.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by woof69 ( 952829 )
      adobe bought out avid some time last year.

      • adobe bought out avid some time last year.

        I had not heard that and Google doesn't come up with anything on the first few pages. Do you have a source? Are you sure you're not thinking of their huge Macromedia acquisition?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by juiceCake ( 772608 )

      Final Cut Pro is the best thing to have happened to Premiere, at least as far as Windows users are concerned.

      As a Windows user I'd say Vegas Video was the best thing to happen to Premiere, and FCP for that matter. We already had a serious but affordable video editing suite (with spectacular sound editing as well.) I hated the old Premiere, like so many others, but the new one looks quite good.

  • Premiere 6.5 was a steaming pile of ass - somewhere slightly above iMovie and very, very far below FCP in terms of functionality - and a collosal pain in the ass to use for capturing. Premiere was always crap in that department, especially for anyone stuck using it on, say, a 601-based PPC... and, much like Quark Xpress, Premiere for OS X didn't change much and definitely had a rushed feel to it - making it even easier for anyone to switch up to software that worked better and offered vastly more functiona
    • Agreed, Premier has its deficiencies. But the lower-end Avids have some fairly restrictive workflow impositions because of the highly stratified nature of Avid's offering (Avid expects all projects to be onlined on a Symphony Nitris, or at least MC Adrenaline, and cripples the rest of its offline product line in various ways).

      Premier on Windows at least has a reason for its existance: it provides an alternative to Avid's proprietory hardware, codecs, Avid 'qualified' computers and Avid storage. So for VFX v

    • Premiere was always crap in that department, especially for anyone stuck using it on, say, a 601-based PPC...

      One thing you might note is that Adobe does not give one tenth of one shit about anyone using a complete piece of shit that was slow and pointless when it was new.

      The new premiere is reputed to be much more like FCP, but I sure haven't seen it.

      I'll probably wind up running it when the division moves to intel powermacs (a day that will suck for me, as I'm continually constrained to Classic f

    • Premier may suck, but there are motion picture companies using it > http://www.adobe.com/motion/superman_returns.html [adobe.com]
  • Older owners of Final Cut can't upgrade to the intel mac other than
    buying a whole new copy. It won't even run under Rosetta, so I will
    definitely consider alternatives before just automatically plunking
    down $1000 for the intel version.

    Maxim

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's not true at all. Apple had a deal where I could "cross-grade" to the Intel version of FCP Studio (from FCP itself, not even the full Studio) for $99. Call a rep at Apple. All you need to do is fill out a 1 page form and send in your DVD of the original.

      What's that? You don't have the DVD? That's what I thought...you weren't using the paid version anyway...

    • Sort of.

      Final Cut 3 was PPC only, and you're right wouldn't run on x86.

      Apple then released Final Cut 3.5, which wasn't just a universal binary of the same app, it had additional features, too. Soundtrack and LiveType are also two components that received quite an overhaul.

      So there is also that to consider.
  • I used to use Premiere before Adobe walked away from the Mac platform. After that, I migrated to FCE, which turned out to be massively more stable, more intuitive and much more versatile. Bearing in mind how much better FCE turned out to be and how little loyalty Adobe showed to it's Mac using customers, there's not the remotest chance that I'll switch back to Premiere.

    However, it would be foolish to underplay how important the bundling of Premiere with other creative apps might be. A full-time video edi
  • I'm one of those mac lovers people love to flame. However, I love Premiere Pro and use it over FCP on a Windows box. I'm sorry but I do everything else on a mac but *GASP* the user experience with PP is far superior FCP. FCP is a great alternative to Avid boxes but I was never an Avid user. I can work so much faster in PP and it's a GREAT program. I'm happy that I can go back to my mac to use Premiere Pro!

  • A sign of rising marketshare (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @10:38AM (#17474016)
    This is just one indicator of how fast the Mac marketshare is rising - Adobe walked out on OS X in a huff because they didn't like FCP, now they are forced to return by the reality of a rising percentage of video editing switching to the Mac.

    Interesting they went Intel only though, the only real gain I can see is simplification of testing - but they are missing out on a lot of people that still use G5's. Then again, perhaps Adobe sees a larger mass migration to Intel macs when CS3 is released for real.

    • Interesting they went Intel only though, the only real gain I can see is simplification of testing - but they are missing out on a lot of people that still use G5's.

      The real gain I see is that they don't have to support it. Meanwhile anyone who is likely to shell out thousands for an adobe suite is also likely to shell out thousands for a new intel-based mac since it kicks the living shit out of the G5 mac. In cases where I actually have the same app on both (not many cases I admit) the Compaq nw9440 la

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by aftk2 ( 556992 )
      I'm reposting my comment from MacRumors on this subject...

      If I recall correctly, when Soundbooth appeared (along with the accompanying uproar about it being Intel-only) it was revealed that Adobe had either licensed or purchased outright audio technology written, from the ground up, for x86 processors. I imagine they realized this, w/regard to Soundbooth (note: the numbers are purely for an example, they aren't meant to be real-world):
      • It would cost us 0 dollars to not develop a Mac version of Soundboot
  • For all you naysayers who claim Final Cut will not be dethroned, just look at how InDesign took a chunk of QuarkXpress's market. Sure Quark is still out there making a product, but Adobe has given them a run for their money. My agency switched to InDesign about four years ago and hasn't looked back since. And I know of hundreds of other people who have done the same.

    Final Cut is awesome, no doubt. But people like Adobe apps, and if they're already using Photoshop and Illustrator they'll likely be tempted to

    • For all you naysayers who claim Final Cut will not be dethroned, just look at how InDesign took a chunk of QuarkXpress's market. Sure Quark is still out there making a product, but Adobe has given them a run for their money. My agency switched to InDesign about four years ago and hasn't looked back since. And I know of hundreds of other people who have done the same.

      It's pretty amazing to me because I've always considered a suite of adobe products to be far superior to using Quark and a bunch of adobe p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ffakr ( 468921 )
        Personally I've always preferred Quark to PageMaker and InDesign. I find it MUCH more intuitive and functional.

        Quark was dethroned not because InDesign was so superior (IMHO) but rather because of terrible blunders by Quark. Quark was incredibly slow to update at curical periods in their product life. They were Too slow to update when PowerPC Macs became available back in 95. They were too slow to update when Apple moved to OS X. That mistake was huge because people really wanted OS X and Quark was hor
  • I got my start on a beta version of Premiere in 1990, when quarter screen video at 15 fps was "exciting". I stuck with Premiere until OSX came out, as it was incredibly easy and powerful. I've used Avid, and found it to be the least friendly interface for video editing anywhere. I now use FCP, but will absolutely give Premiere another look when it's released. If they can integrate their products the way FCP Studio does, Adobe could seriously give Apple a run for the money. For me, the decision will be based

  • adobe linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mrloafbot ( 739993 )
    I'm still wondering why adobe doesnt make it's own linux system to run it's products. Adobe products are a big reason why people by the computers they do, weither it be a pc or a mac. Adobe is constantly competing with microsoft and apple in the software componets, even more so with microsofts version of pdf. So why doesnt adobe just come out and compete with apple and microsoft completely? Take ubuntu, put all the adobe software on it. and make it for ppc and x86? That would be a killer combo in the creati

  • Why this is important news - education market! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @01:36PM (#17477064) Journal
    The one thing Adobe has done is completely embed themselves in arts education. It's at the point now where cancerous organisations like Art Institute International [artinstitutes.edu] are little more than sock puppets for Adobe's software - and it works the other way as well, AII is Adobe's single largest customer.

    The consequences have been enormous - dumps like AII "train" people to use software that "the industry" uses, and the industry uses that software because that's what they learned in school, and they learned it in school because back in the early 1990s, Adobe (and Apple) did one helluva job embedding themselves in every art and design school they could find.

    Macromedia tried to do the same thing, but they didn't have the range of products: they had an image editor for a while, xRes, but it was such a buggy piece of shite, and Macromedia had done such a crap job of getting into schools, that MM decided the thing to do was to switch enemies. Adobe used to be their hated target - they saw the Internet as the next big thing and dumped their graphics orientation for the Web. With a proper panoply of tools (Dreamweaver, Flash) they got their web software into schools, and ceded the graphics market to Adobe.

    Fundamentally, people use what they know, and what they know is what they learn, and that's why Quark Xpress, possibly one of the single most over-rated pieces of software EVER, still has a deep hold in the printing industry. Quark 2 was WAY better than Pagemaker aka, RAGEmaker, and Quark 3 completely blew Pagemaker out of the water. Here is where Adobe's Education strategy started to pay off... Pagemaker was a dud, and the first rev of InDesign was putrid. However, they quickly fixed InDesign, and it is now an extremely competitive product to Quark. Combined with Quark's dramatic expense for minor upgrades, InDesign is now making massive inroads into Quark turf - and the kids coming out of design "schools" have experience using it and know it as a decent product. They use what they know...

    Now: this brings us to Premiere...

    Adobe and Apple were on the skids when Apple cooked up FCP and iMovie. There was zero incentive for Adobe to continue developing Premiere o nthe Mac, and they stopped doing so. That, at the time, Premiere was a buggy piece of shit was not that much of an issue - the Top End was AVID at $150k for a decent set up, and then there was the rest of us... FCP (originally developed by Macromedia and sold to Apple when MM changed their focus to the Web) came in and sawed AVID off at the knees. The lead programmer for FCP was the guy who had developed Premiere for Adobe - Randy Ubillos. With massive infusions of cash from Apple (Jobs didn't care - he saw FCP as a way to sell hardware...) So, Adobe saw this all as one big Bitch Slap. Adobe's response? The Education Angle... people will use what they know, and what they know is what they learn in school...

    If Apple was going to eat Premiere's lunch, then Adobe was going to de-emphasise the Apple platform, and crush FCP from without. How? After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator on the Mac is OK - Adobe defeated MM there. But Premiere ? Windows. Encore? Windows. Soundbooth? Just a repackaging of CoolEdit Pro - Windows only. And sell ALL of that software to Art Schools at a cut rate price...

    Translation: an end run around Apple - a reverse Bitch Slap.

    Problem: It didn't really work. In the Windows World, AVID hadn't surrendered. They used their Cash Cow (Digidesign) to help drag their ailing video editing systems along until they could get a new strategy going. AVID cooked up a pile of new software, all of it superior to Premiere et al. Cost competitive? No, but the UI was extremely similar from the low end to the high end, and with increased integration from AVID into ProTools, there was no way that Adobe could possibly compete with AVID. AVID provided an entry -> pro environment, and was deeply embedded in the industry - recording studios use ProTools, and Hollywoo

  • I'm not going to switch, but Premiere Pro is not bad at all. I'm a professional video editor, and we're outfitted with Premiere Pro at work, since a group engineers (ie: Mac haters) buy all the equipment for the station I work at, but I run Final Cut at home, and have a lot of experience on both. Bottom line is, there's little question that Final Cut is the better video editor, but Premiere still has some large advantages, namely:

    It marries Photoshop and After Effects PERFECTLY, which is a big deal if you

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