CS6 is the fastest, so if you don't like waiting around, it is cheap and super fast. You can edit without transcoding, etc.

@Frame if your playback is choppy with an i7 you have a setup issue--check that Mercury playback is enabled in hardware. You only need 12 gb ram, so ram is not an issue, the i7 is not an issue, so it is either your graphics card or the text file that contains the setup info for your hardware. The bottleneck could be that the GPU is not being used, or you aren't running all cores.

When buying a system, make sure you get an i7 with HT enabled (8-12 cores) and a solid GPU like a GTX 650 or better--then your video will fly.

The new color correction in CS6, especially the new three way color wheel, rocks and if you need it, you have Speedgrade as well.

Resizing, panning, cropping: CS6 uses a sophisticated system to resize video, for example for panning, cropping, zooming in post IF you have the render box checked and are using hardware mercury rendering. This is really fast and will give you a noticeable boost in rendering quality. IMHO, one of the most important features. Without this, when you zoom in, you will see your resolution fade more. Combine this a touch of keyed sharpening and it is pretty cool effect.

Yup--just the one box. There is also a Red Giant plugin that does something similar but the CS6 is almost and good and so easy to use.

@DRDave Old fashioned, outdated 32-bit FCP7 flies on my Mac and that´s the point. I wanted to buy a new NLE, not a new Mac after only 1,5 years of use.

Another issue: Loading a project of let´s say 20hrs of footage just becomes slow after some weeks of editing and having maybe 20 different sequences. And after the project is opened, you´ll have to wait again one minute until all media is loaded. What for? When one link was broken and gets reestablished, some supporting database gets written again by PP6, even when the original database is still there,,,

One last thing: VERY, VERY annoying problem with PP6, especially working with DSLR producing identical filenames and timecodes: You cannot rename the original files. Only clip names of course. I moved one project during editing from one drive to another. In PP&, I can move / copy only media files of chosen sequences, never all media files. (In FCP 7 I can) I moved evrything to another drive and PP6 asks for "0005.mts" to start relinking to the new drive. No info about the clipname, to which "0005.mts" is linked. Great. After 4 days of shooting with 2 cards, there are at least 8 files with the name "0005.mts". In FCP7, I would have them probably renamed after the clip names. So no problem with relinking to a backup disk. O.K, FCP7, so this is a little bit off topic.

@DrDave. According graphic cards, why should I be stuck to a desktop, whe a laptop can be enhanced for professional audio /video previewing.

PPpro might be fine for short gigs. It is great that you can throw anything in. Had also a concert during the test phase with material from DSLR, P2, XDCAM, all in a timline without transcoding. When playback was stuttering, i thought it was the many different codecs, until I found out, that even an All-I DSLR Sequence stutterd or a ProRes sequence.

File management is ok for short gigs.Straight off the card if one likes. It is also ok as long as you are stuck to one drive.

But it is very bad for work over months, with DSLR, where you need to make backups and have to organize a hundred hours of footage.

When you have lot of material accumulating over weeks, (like in a documentary) there are too many files sharing the same names. Again no problem when everything goes fine. Very bad, when you want to move ALL your files to another disk or you have a hard disk crash and are forced to continue working with your backup. This is one basic responsebility of an editor. Do backups. Reassure, you can continue working after technical failures. Do not trus time machine or the cloud. Do backups. Give files unique names. Avid did this it automatically from the very beginnings, even thought they could only be opended from the NLE

You can rename clips in any NLE, but renaming the corresponding files from the NLE with one mous click can only be done with FCP7, as far as I know. BTW workin in a timeline i still faster ith FCP7. Click on the spot and do whatever you want. In PP6, the track has to be highlighted. In FCP 7, Click on a segment and render itt . In PP6, set a workspace, when you want to render a file. In FCP you can store effects in any bin you want. In PP6, there is only one place to store presets.

Yoo´ll lose time becuse FCP requires transcoding prior to editing. In PP6 you will loss time becaise there is too many actions to achieve a goal in the timeline.

I just click anywhere on a clip, I never highlight a track. I rename the source file with one click. In fact, I can see why you would find these things annoying, but for some reason they don't seem to happen to me.

If you are running a laptop, just put a cuda card in the mini pci slot. But It's tough to put big fast drives in a laptop. I like to have swappable drive bays.

But it also seems to me that if you are running 2-4 terabytes a month, converting that to a codec is a huge waste of disk space. You have to keep changing disks, whereas working with the original files is very fast and compact. So for high volume, multitrack vid you will save money just on the hard drives. Let's say I store 2 terabytes a month, if I triple or quadruple that with a codec, it won't even fit on one hard drive. And a three-to-four TB harddrive, well, it isn't terribly expensive but it is money and after a while, when you have piles and piles of hard drives, space is really an issue.

Plus, aren't you resampling the video? Why resample?

These are apples and oranges. If you don't want to resample, like the superscaling, like the RT playback, RT effects, multicam, and so on, all running on cheap hardware, I think CS6 (or 5) is good. If you like the Mac workflow, of course, absolutely. Obviously two great platforms.

What would be really interesting is to take a short clip and edit it on both systems, and see which one looks the best.

Anyway, if it works for you, I say, may the GeForce be with you!

Assuming that we are talking about large numbers of files, you can try this http://forums.adobe.com/message/4621639 I guess I'm unclear about what is the problem with renaming, I usually right click and type in the new name. Is the batch renaming feature not helpful? You could rename a whole bunch of files at once. Now if there is a metadata issue, I recommend dealing with that at the camera level. I name all my cameras, name all my cards, and set the default prefix for the clips. That way, when I'm trying to figure it out later with a big pile of cards, it is all labelled, and any metdata carries the same label. Since you are transcoding to a codec, I don't see that that is an issue, however.

You can also look at this article by Richard Keating where he talks about the pluses and minuses of log and transfer, renaming, etc. http://www.videoguys.com/blog/PL/0xce01536f42cad9b555ae6f8cb355819c.aspx He describes working with native files as "miraculous" but also talks about some of the things that FCP does better.

Transitions: if you are applying transitions, you need to specify where you want the transition, I mean, you can't tell the program, apply some sort of transition somewhere. So there are different ways to narrow this down, but you can certainly just drop one on a clip, you don't need to highlight the track.

As far as multiple transitions, there are multiple ways to do that, for example, select the clips and in the Sequence drop down menu you'll see Apply Default Transition to Selection. There are other ways as well.

It seems like you are concerned with reducing the number of clicks, and I can totally understand that. I find it is faster for me to use the mouse+keyboard shortcuts at the same time, so things happen more or less simultaneously. Others use keyboard shortcuts and macros. For me the number of clicks is important, but not as important as the quality of the finished product, the disc space, real time effects and so on, but everyone has their own workflow, and everyone finds different things annoying. For me, I want to apply an effect, like the three way color corrector, and watch it play in real time at full resolution, not watered down resolution. I also can't stand waiting around for the video to render.

Others are annoyed that simple tasks take three or four clicks, and that is, of course, annoying, But macros reduce any sequence of clicks to one stream, so for 99 percent of things, there is a simple work around.

Hey guys, what about audio fades between clips, cutting part of the sound out, replacing it with the desired sound etc., does this work in FCX? Also, what about multi-video tracks playing simultaneously in the a single frame? Finally, is there a quality difference in file exports between final 6, FCP X, and PP6? I guess the only reason I see upgrading is so I can upgrade the OS to 10.6 and get 32 bit color correction....

Thanks!

Justin

@chriscalifano What reasons make you like Premiere Pro and make it a better choice given the cost of FCX?