An Open letter to Jonathan Morrison, MKBHD and other Final Cut users regarding Premiere Pro

So I want to begin by saying that this post is in no way an attack on Jonathan or Marques or other Final Cut Pro users. I do have respect for the passion of making videos and the technology that they review, and being told from others, I've heard that you guys are very nice people.

Now that being said. We need to talk.

For many years there have been countless videos regarding speed tests between Final Cut Pro Ten (I'll refer it to FCPX) and Premiere Pro CC (I'll refer it to Premiere from now on). Which if you didn't know FCPX beats Premiere every single time in render times (especially if you use Premiere on a Mac, which I'll get into detail later). Yet for some reason there are still a vast majority of editors (especially in the indie film market) that continue to use Premiere. And in this blog I'll break down why there are many reasons to use Premiere over FCPX.

1. Communication with their users is the BEST in the industry.

For many years now Adobe with its goal TO CONTROL THE UNIVERSE (gain the majority of the post production market) had invested in a team of people to communicate with it's users and has direct contact with their high end (hollywood) editors and if there is a feature that we want, we will get it.

When Apple switched from Final Cut 7 to 10 and immediately ended updates and support for FCP7, Adobe quickly realized that with the chaos (and there was CHAOS) they picked up the pieces by creating a whole new interface with Premiere CS5.5 that was similar to FCP7 and included a keyboard shortcut preset for FCP7 (they do this for Avid Media Composer as well and can be found in the latest version).

Examples of added features requested from editors:

Improved Title Tool (kind of like Photoshop)

Dynamic link with After Effects and Photoshop

Edit After Effects titles in Premiere regardless if After Effects is installed or not

Background rendering to a mezzanine codec with Media Encoder (to Cineform, DNxHD, or even ProRes), yes this will actually render and replace your clips seamlessly in the background and will be used for faster export renders.

If Apple really did want to listen to it's professional user base (which shrinks EVERY DAY) they wouldn't have killed FCP7 in the first place.

(Hey Adobe if you are reading this, add spell check to Premiere in the similar way that Microsoft utilizes spell check in Excel)

2. Utilizes Nvidia CUDA core technology.

For a long time I have owned ATI/AMD graphics cards and they have worked great for many years but my Radeon 260X was getting slow for me and I was ready for an upgrade. so I did my research and discovered that Premiere LOVES Nvidia gpus especially their CUDA core technology. So I bought a 1050ti for my Dell Optiplex 7010 (for more than it's worth, thanks crypto-miners) and other than playing games, my rendering times for videos has decreased quite a bit. Note that since 2015 Macbook Pro and the 2013 Mac Pro Apple has been using AMD gpus, meaning that Premiere can't utilize CUDA technology, and is slower using OpenCL.

I don't know if it exists or not but someone should do a export comparison between a Mac running FCPX and a PC (with equivalent specs but with a Nvidia gpu) running Premiere and see how the rendering time goes.

3. Premiere's versatility.

Premiere's versatility with many different kinds of hardware is considered the best in the industry.

Premiere can work with workflows which hardware is scalable, modular, and even non-proprietary for the editing workstation, ingest server, rendering server, and storage server. You don’t need to buy an Avid Nexis (previously known as an Isis server) for rendering and network storage.

5. Timeline Workflow

Although this is more of an editor style of choice regarding workflow, Premiere utilizes a traditional timeline that editors have been using for the last 30 years. I've tried FCPX magnetic timeline, I hate it.

6. Many editors (including me) still consider Final Cut Pro X, iMovie on steroids.

Yes even after all these years I still consider FCPX "iMovie on steroids". The chaos that was created from the change that many professionals eventually changed their editing platforms, a good example is the youtube channel Film Riot, they eventually changed to the Adobe Creative Cloud workflow and now do tutorials on Premiere and After Effects.

The point is that rendering times is NOT the "be-all, end-all" of editing, that’s why when FCPX users contently boast about render times, it’s something I (and many other Premiere users) take offense.

If someone were to complain that if they are always taking to long to edit video then maybe it's time to look at how you edit and your workflow. Fortunately there are many "tips and tricks" and even "features you didn't know" videos on YouTube

"If you are a Premiere user, buy a Windows laptop" - Dave Lee

What's interesting is that there are many users who get exposed to FCPX yet not switch, and it might be some of the reasons listed above. Even MKBHD (Marques Brownlee) tried to make Sara Dietschy switch to FCPX, PURELY BASED on export times.

Now (fortunately) she continues to use Premiere and there are many others who continue to do so and continue to improve the post production industry.