Re: Thank you Apple - and don't change course. Please

[Carsten Orlt] "A lot of discussion here is also about native format support. I understand if you have fast turnarounds you like the fact that nothing needs to be transcoded initially (eventually it will). When you work for month on a single project I couldn't care less about a few nights the computer humming away to get footage transcoded. Again exactly what FCPx does best. Ingest fast to get going and transcode in background. So mercury engine is cool but not necessary."

As Greg already pointed out the Mercury Playback Engine is not what gives Adobe Premiere Pro it's capabilities, it was there before the MPE came into existence with CS5. Apple actually called out in its announcement that they are 'resolution independent', something that Adobe said around the CS3 timeframe and actually goes back to the complete re-write that became Premiere Pro 1.0 (as opposed to Premiere).

The key difference between FCPX and Premiere Pro in this case is that FCPX still encourages you to transcode, though you can turn it off. Premiere Pro fundamentally believes in editing real-time natively all the time. You don't HAVE to convert your footage ever. You can transcode if you wish, but we strive to make that a non-issue from an editorial perspective.

That said, with an iffy (read old) computer and highly compressed temporal footage (think DSLR and AVCHD), your experience in an all native edit might encourage you to convert your footage, which of course both FCP X and Premiere Pro (and many others) can do.

Hope this clarifies,
Dennis - Adobe guy