Often I will use a higher setting (up to 20,000 kbps), but there are many times especially on longer format projects that I need to keep the bit rate down so it can be shared online, so I kept the settings for this test at 10,000 kbps. Both FCP X and Premiere Pro were set to output a high quality H.264 file at 10,000 kbps. I really wanted to share some screen grabs from this test on my blog so that some of you can see exactly what’s going on here. I ran this same test again using Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder and had the exact same results. So I went back to FCP X and did an output using the exact same settings and there was absolutely no question that the FCP X output looked far better. I even went back and re-exported the file to make sure that all my settings were in place – including checking off ‘Use Maximum Render Quality’, but still I had the same poor results. It was blocky, over compressed, and even the colors seemed a bit off. On a recent project of mine though, I noticed that when using my standard H.264 settings in Adobe Premiere Pro the result of the final product didn’t look quite right. This was especially true up until one of the more recent FCP X updates which seemed to have improved the render and output performance noticeably… But nonetheless because of this difference in speed I got into a habit of compressing my long format video files with Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder (even if I was cutting in FCP X), simply because it was faster. While my preference for straight up editing has largely leaned towards FCP X, I also use Premiere Pro all the time which led me to notice that exports from Premiere Pro generally seemed to be faster than exports from FCP X. Like many filmmakers today, I use a number of different NLE’s and post tools on a daily basis as every project has different needs and requirements. There have been certain settings that have worked really well for me over the years with regards to H.264 compression, but it wasn’t until this year that I noticed a staggering difference in the final quality of the files that I would output from Premiere Pro as opposed to FCP X. To me, FCPX is the closest it comes to actually cutting on film.I’ve always been really picky when it comes to compressing my video files (especially for web), because the image quality of the final product can be made or broken at this stage. I was initially so confused that I almost gave up for three months but one little video on YT saved the day, and I haven't looked back since. I chose FCPX because I was a long-time user of FCP and it seemed like the logical progression. Unfortunately for us-and while these reviews can be useful-by concentrating solely on how fast one or the other can accomplish a particular task reveals nothing of the inner workings of the program, and it tells us nothing as to the way these programs work and how they might fit into our editing mindset. This is a very much harder attribute to quantify in a review and everyone will inevitably have a very different opinion as to how their own choice of platform affects their workflow. What these reviews fail to illustrate is how these tools impact the edit process and how they can help or hinder the actual creative process of editing. What they don't elucidate is the differences in methodology and philosophy.Įditing, as I'm sure no one here needs reminding, is as much art as it is science. Now, all well and good but the problem with these reviews is that they concentrate on the performance of these programs when given a variety of processing and export tasks. Here's the review for your philosophical and intellectual pleasure: The TL DR is that FCPX cleaned PP's clock in all but one benchmark. DPReview recently ran a rather interesting comparison between these two stalwarts running on a variety of different hardware platforms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |