Re: Premiere Pro gets an update - where's ours?

Here's the difference - when people made the jump from Avid to FCP. FCP was $999 and had many many compositing features that a $50k or 75k Avid lacked. It actually imported layered PS files, and it had compositing modes. It handled larger than 720x486 files. Avid at the time was sorely behind and relied on it's more expensive DS systems or animation programs for those functions. As if editors were supposed to just be assemblers. Plus, Avid had little support for DV. They only had DV input on their inexpensive 25k xpress systems that were hampered with a timeline that was worse than Premiere 4. FCP was allowing one to import DV and Quicktime files natively. Avid had all but given up on the Macintosh at the time. They almost dropped support completely until FCP came out and they did some massive backtracking.

So, the switch to Premiere is just a software and maybe some hardware switch. Almost a personal preference. The big argument being integration, but if people are comfortable with their workflow, that's still a tough sell.

FCP hit a sweet spot in the marketplace selling a variety of features Avid lacked, for at least $25,000 less. What happened is upstarts chose FCP. Freelancers like myself bought it to do small projects. And from there a freelancer base grew and production houses folouirished.

Premiere during that time had an antiquated interface that they updated with Pro, but without Mac support. They had the right price with Pro, but they completely missed the window in the market. Now, Avid has lowered prices and has great mac offerings. They've offered software only solutions and updated their feature set. Basically, FCP kicked them in the rear and they got more competitive. Premiere got to work and is putting out a great system. All 3 are great systems and the price differences are negligible. But Premiere is now the 3rd party in a 2 party system. But 3 is better than 2 for competition and I hope they gain a foothold on the Pro market so FCP gets even better.