Hey Guys

I must admit I've been more of a lurker than regular poster over the years, but with the recent purchase of a Canon 600D I'm re-energised by the possibilities with video that this camera presents. I've taken some footage for work but editing is done by a third party. I'm looking at doing some editing for personal stuff and also just because it is fun to learn.

I made a smallish investment in Vegas Video 8 a few years ago, and recently purchased the upgrade to version 11, not realising I needed Windows 7 to run it. (I'm running XP on Dell Vostro 1520 laptop at the mo and because it has a lot of work-related applications, I'm disinclined to upgrade it to Win7 any time soon).

I also have an older MacBook Pro5,3 (mid 2009 I think) with the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo.

My only issue with the camera is that the 1080p files it produces wont even play properly on the Vostro, let alone work with them in Vegas. I have to take the time to downsize them to 720p in Quicktime Pro first before the machine can handle them. I haven't done anything with an NLE on the mac before, not even iMovie.

So now I'm wondering whether I should jump ship so I can use the slightly more powerful MBP, invest in FCP and go through the learning curve required, and perhaps upgrade to a new MBP down the track and keep the Dell for work stuff until it dies, or upgrade to Win7. I realise neither piece of hardware is going to break any rendering records, but I just need them to be useable. SSD and a memory upgrade is still an option to extend their life.

Obviously many of the members here are going to be biased towards FCP, but I'm interested to hear from anyone else who might also be torn between the two applications / platforms for video editing, particularly in relation to 1080p content, and what your reasons were for going one direction or the other?

cheers for your thoughts!

Well, I'm slowly trying to teach myself FCPX, but in the meantime, FCP7 is without doubt the best NLE kicking around. Thats why people were so passionate in their hatred of FCPX when it was launched!

The learning curve isn't so bad - just look at the menus in FCP the same way you look at menus in Photoshop - realise that you can ignore 90% of them when you're getting started...

Thanks Pete - given the cost of FCP X vs FCP 7 I think I might start the learning curve with FCP X and see where that takes me.

It's a prefect time to start, FCPX has become quite stable, and if you've never memorised the keyboard shortcuts of FCP7, then i guess you wont know what you're missing...

I've been working professionally in FCPX since it came out (I made it my personal challenge to persist with it for six months before reassessing whether or not to jump ship). I rarely had to fall back on my FCP7 crutch, and am finding a lot more editors now are saying they are glad I advised them to stick with it and look at it as a long term platform. Do it!

Id have to say Yes and Yes.

The mac is a no brainer in the fact that its built well, stable and you can dual boot both OS's on there. So you won't have to worry about not being able to use application XYZ.

FCPX, once people get over any bias for FCP7 or Premier and their old ways of doing things, they often see how much better FCPX is. Its the little things such as the simple colour correction and background rendering etc that save time.

The only down side being that you want as many cores as you can throw at FCPX, it will use everything you have compared to FCP that would only use 1 of your cores.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I'm going to do a fresh install on the MBP, go up to 8GB of RAM and SSD and lash out on FCP X. Hopefully the old machine can hack it .

Check out Adobe Premiere - free trial is available from the Adobe website. I used it instead of FCPX because FCPX doesn't handle many formats natively (requires transcoding to ProRes) where as Premiere can edit pretty much everything without having to transcode. The UI is much lighter, so it doesn't chug on crappier machines like FCPX does.

Originally Posted by decryption

Check out Adobe Premiere - free trial is available from the Adobe website. I used it instead of FCPX because FCPX doesn't handle many formats natively (requires transcoding to ProRes) where as Premiere can edit pretty much everything without having to transcode. The UI is much lighter, so it doesn't chug on crappier machines like FCPX does.

Hold the presses, an alternative opinion!

A free trial certainly works for me. And if I decided to go the adobe premiere path on the mac, what's the least inexpensive way to purchase it?

Originally Posted by RodB

Hold the presses, an alternative opinion!

A free trial certainly works for me. And if I decided to go the adobe premiere path on the mac, what's the least inexpensive way to purchase it?

I see your Premiere Free Trial and raise it:

Apple - Final Cut Pro X - Trial

Originally Posted by RodB

Hold the presses, an alternative opinion!

A free trial certainly works for me. And if I decided to go the adobe premiere path on the mac, what's the least inexpensive way to purchase it?

I actually purchase Premiere via Adobe subscription model. I don't use the app on a regular basis, just for projects that pop up every now and then. $90-something/month and I can cancel at any time. Nice and flexible.

But if you wanted to use it ongoing, buy it from B&H in the USA , it's about A$510 delivered to Australia for a boxed copy. But CS6 is coming out soon, so I'd just wait until then and buy CS6

Another benefit I found with Premiere is that sharing edits with PC users is way easier. Plus if you want a dedicated video editing rig, a cheap Windows computer with Premiere will run rings around any Mac besides a fully-spec'd iMac/Mac Pro. For under $2k I built an insane workstation with a 10gbit SSD (via a PCIe card) that edited 1080p MXF files with ease. And because Premiere is available on a Mac and Windows, if you decide to edit on the Mac, you don't need to re-learn the app like if you were using Premiere and FCPX.

Originally Posted by decryption

I actually purchase Premiere via Adobe subscription model. I don't use the app on a regular basis, just for projects that pop up every now and then. $90-something/month and I can cancel at any time. Nice and flexible.

But if you wanted to use it ongoing, buy it from B&H in the USA , it's about A$510 delivered to Australia for a boxed copy. But CS6 is coming out soon, so I'd just wait until then and buy CS6

Another benefit I found with Premiere is that sharing edits with PC users is way easier. Plus if you want a dedicated video editing rig, a cheap Windows computer with Premiere will run rings around any Mac besides a fully-spec'd iMac/Mac Pro. For under $2k I built an insane workstation with a 10gbit SSD (via a PCIe card) that edited 1080p MXF files with ease. And because Premiere is available on a Mac and Windows, if you decide to edit on the Mac, you don't need to re-learn the app like if you were using Premiere and FCPX.

You do present a compelling argument. I'm not planning to buy any more hardware right away (I've already spent a fortune on the camera, lens, tripod, filters, mics etc), but I'm interested in the component details of your workstation?

$1800 buys you this:



BYO monitor, keyboard & mouse. Will be faster than any Mac currently available, even faster than the Mac Pro (except the 8 & 12 core models). I wouldn't use Windows as my primary machine, but when you've got Premiere full screen, the OS doesn't matter. Of course, if you could only own/afford one computer to do everything, yeah, go with a Mac

I can't say I've had any issues natively putting stuff into FCPX, I'm certainly not transcoding to ProRes except to proxy when I'm on my MacBook Air.

Premier Pro is great if you don't mind the kludgey old fashioned-ness of it. I cut twice as fast in FCPX than I ever did in Premier or FCP7 once I got used to the workflow. But FCPX does run like rubbish on lower-end hardware (though 0.3 has made vast improvements in this department).

The PC is a great idea if you're looking for raw power, but I've always found that my workflows and preferred applications *outside* of my NLE were so much more work under Windows.

Originally Posted by Arkhum_Eramak

I can't say I've had any issues natively putting stuff into FCPX

All the video I've ever tried editing into FCPX (MJPEG, Canon MXF and AVCHD) is transcoded to ProRes in the background whilst you edit, making the whole thing super slow

Since Apple has released an SDK for FCPX, I expect more plugins from manufacturers for native editing and my #1 gripe with FCPX will be solved. Everything else about it is pretty cool (ignoring the need for a dedicated GPU for proper UI performance).