Comparison of the NLE Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro

In my time being an editor, I have worked with a variety of different NLE software, including Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer and loads of smaller amateur software. Since I am a photographer, I have worked a lot with adobe software like Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, Illustrator and InDesign etc. I‘m used to working with the Abobe Workflow, shortcuts and interface that makes the editing process in Premiere Pro an easy and effective task for me personally.  For the TVP course we have been taught Avid Media Composer, but the workflow just comes of as quite difficult to work with for me compared to Premiere Pro. This is a review on some of the things I find useful when using the different software.

Pros and Cons of Premiere Pro

Pros:

·      Working with Adobe Premiere Pro provides a good, fast and effective workflow combined with a beautiful interface.

As previously explained, I am very used to working with the Adobe interface. This includes shortcuts and UI design. The UI is build up, almost like a dark room where you develop film. In general adobe started changing the UI of the software towards the CS series, where Photoshop went from being a grey UI, to become an almost black one. The most characteristic change of a NLE UI being upgraded can be seen in the move from Premiere Pro CS2 to CC.

Final Cut Pro 7 grey interface

Final Cut Pro X dark interface

·      Premiere Pro offers a complete copy of shortcuts and workflows from other NLE’s such as Avid Media Composer and Premiere Pro.

As seen in the above picture, Premiere Pro has the ability to customize the workflow to users of Media Composer and Final Cut. This means that you as a user are able to integrate your previous workflow, if you’re jumping right in to Premiere as a Final Cut or Media Composer user.

·      Premiere Pro CC offers a wide import option. For example the CinemaDNG, ARRI Alexa and RED RAW files can be imported straight into to the edit workflow. This saves you time from transcoding.

Though it’s not preferable, it is possible to import RAW CinemaDNG and RED R3D footage directly in to Premiere Pro. Alternatively this workflow can be used to generate proxies, and in the online process just replace the proxies with the RAW files. Even though you would need a really powerful computer to play back the RAW files in realtime, editing straight in the non transcoded files is an option, and would save you the time and effort it takes to generate proxies.

·      Premiere Pro provides a wide variety of exporting options.

From Premiere Pro you have the ability to export in a vide variety of formats. If you work across different NLE platforms, for example Media Composer, you are able to generate proxies in DNxHD format varying from the DNX 36 to the DNX 440x formats. 

Cons:

·      Premiere offers a very mouse-controlled workflow, which excludes the use of shortcuts.

For me as an editor, it is important to have a vide range of shortcuts to relate to. From personal experience with Premiere Pro, I get the feeling that the shortcuts are very limited. If you’re used to working in Media Composer, you could shift the workflow to integrate the Media Composer shortcuts, but if you’re not you will have to get used to using a mouse quite a lot.

·      The software is very easy to hack.

All of the adobe software’s are highly popular, and therefore you get a lot of hackers cracking the programs. As a response, Adobe offered an alternative. You “rent” the software through Adobe Creative Cloud, and if you sign up for a year, you can get the whole pack for as low as roughly 400£ a year or 30£ a month (www.adobe.com).

Pros and Cons of Media Composer

Pros:

·      Media Composer offers RTAS sound plugins

The RTAS sound plugins are used through AVID software, and offer a great indexing of your plugins combined with a fast interface. Only avid software supports the format, but it’s definitively worth using! 

·      The software offers a wide range of shortcuts

Unike a lot of other NLE’s I’ve worked with, Media Composer offers shortcuts for everything! You would be able to cut a film/video in much faster, if you incorporate the shortcuts into your workflow!

·      Avid Software is the industry standard

If you get a well-paid job in the industry, you need to be familiar with Avid’s software. Media Composer and Pro Tools are industry standard software for Video and sound, mainly because of their flexibility and ability to combine the software with special hardware that boosts the performance significantly!

·      The autosave feature.

When working with Media Composer, you don’t need to save your project! When I have been working with Premiere, I somethimes experience crashes, and even though there’s usually a backup file for the project, this is not always the case! Media Composer saves all changes you make automatically, and you therefore don’t need to worry about loosing your project!

·      Media Composer has a vide variety of export formats 

You can export in all formats from Media Composer. This is a nice feature if you’re planning on going back in time – but the main reason why I think this is good is because you don’t have to feel limited. There is only one problem – to acces the different formats you have to open up a lot of windows! If you didn’t know what you were doing, you could end up messing up your export format easily!

Cons:

·      The UI was not made for easy access

The user interface is clearly made for pro users! It is not easy to access features if you’re a beginner, and the way that it’s organised will make sense to pro users, but not for beginners.

·      Any mouse gestures are hard to access. Not made for beginners.

Again, if you’re a beginner you will have a difficult time editing with Media Composer. Mouse gestures have to be turned on with the click of a little red arrow (I know, it makes no sense..). After you switch it on, you will have full control over the mouse gestures.

Conclusion

Both editing softwares provide a good workflow for fast editing. Avid Media Composer is in it self a better piece of software to use if you are doing offline editing, provided that you take the time to learn all the shortcuts and the edit flow. Media Composer comes off as quite old school to work with, in terms of how the interface is organised, but this will on the other hand give you a fully customisable workflow. If you want to cut films with Media Composer, make sure you have at least two screens to work on; The interface takes up a lot of space, and if you’re working on a small screen, you will not be able to see the video-stream properly.