DMN Interview Part 1: Talking About Premiere Pro
Page 2 of 3
So in the second half of your question, what have we done to improve that, we knew exactly what the complaints were, and for two and a half years, we've said to our user base, "We're listening to you." And it's been a painful process, not to have released anything in two and a half years. Lots of people out there said "You always say this but we don't see any evidence of it." And that's because we've spent the past two and a half years re-writing Premiere. So finally, it's nice to go out and say, "Told you so." All that feedback we've been getting, all those complaints and the frustration that some people had, and also the good stuff that people liked, we have retained as well. So we really like to think this is a revolution in terms of video editing development in addition to being an evolution. I'd like to think that the stuff people liked about 6.5 has been carried forward, but we've also changed the way the editing application works into a much more professional paradigm, so that moving between applications is much easier, and just getting the results you want in much less time is also much, much easier.
DMN: It looks to me like, from playing with this application all morning, it looks obvious that you're gunning for Final Cut Pro. Are you familiar with Final Cut Pro?
Townhill: A little, yes.
DMN: Many of our readers will say, "I love Final Cut Pro. It's the most wonderful editing application in the world. Why is this better than Final Cut Pro, and what can it do that Final Cut Pro can't do?"
Townhill: Well, I can show you a feature list that puts Premiere Pro ahead of Final Cut Pro. And if you go to Apple, they can give you a feature list which will show Final Cut Pro as ahead of Premiere Pro. I'd much rather talk in terms of generalities, of philosophy rather than, "We do this, they don't do that." It's like statistics -- you can make them read any way you want. The number one thing out of the gate is, it's an Adobe application. That means that it comes from a good, healthy pedigree, and it also means that in terms of integration, for example, lots of Final Cut Pro users are also using Adobe After Effects, they're also using Adobe Photoshop. Of course, Premiere Pro integrates with both of those applications extremely well. The interfaces are the same, the file formats are read the same, so again, we have this whole overarching Adobe message which is very key.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
The second thing is, I think we've improved the toolset to the point where there are some clear differences. One of the things that Adobe has always pushed, whether it's Acrobat software across to Premiere, is the network publishing model, which translates from a Premiere perspective to "edit once, publish many times." So, for example, one of the things you'll find in Premiere Pro is that once you've created a timeline that you're happy with, you actually have a one-stop shop in terms of getting it out onto DVD, VCD, SVCD, the Web, directly into After Effects, audio files directly into Audition, material directly into Encore for authoring. That's something which other editing applications -- and Final Cut is just one example of that -- that others don't do. They usually rely on either a two-step process or a third party application. For example Final Cut has been traditionally bundled with Cleaner. That will allow you to get access to this, but you have to save it out first and then convert the files afterwards. So there are philosophical differences. Adobe's overall corporate philosophy is edit once, publish many times, and that's particularly true inside of Premiere Pro. And then, of course, you get into situations like, Premiere has traditionally been quite good at audio. We've had an audio mixer inside Premiere way prior to Final Cut. Final Cut only recently added the audio mixer into Final Cut 4. And we've put our mixer on steroids now in Premiere Pro.
DMN: I've seen it -- it's very impressive.
Townhill: As well as the sample level editing, we have VST filters. We've pushing very much an open architecture. We're targeting a user base of PC users, which encompasses a wide open market. We're targeting ASIO drivers for hardware support, so we're not tying anybody to any particular proprietary hardware. Interestingly enough, we also work with the EMagic USB device (which has ASIO drivers), which is, of course, from Apple. We also support VST filters, so if you want to walk into Guitar Center or whatever your local music store is, and pick up a copy of whatever filter works for you, or if you just download the free ones from the Web, it's an open architecture model, which underlies the philosophy of Premiere.
So there are many, many differences you can target at a feature level. I can probably provide you with a list if I sit here and think hard enough, but I think a lot of the differences are more philosophical than that. One of the things that Final Cut has traditionally not done very well is real time stuff. It used to put hard limits on where you could go. Now with Final Cut 4 they've eliminated that to some extent. With Premiere, we've been doing that since 6.5. Now with 7.0, we now have, again, another unique difference where you can actually now scale the environment you're working in, so if you're working on a laptop, for example, then you just switch into draft mode and work quarter-rez on the VGA screen. But if you move to a faster machine, if you go the whole way, let's say, dual Xeons with lots of RAM and everything, then you can do full-resolution DV simultaneously to both the desktop VGA and also to your video monitor out the FireWire port. We're unique in being able to do that. So, again, we're really harnessing the platform. We're really open architecture. I think that's probably where the philosophical differences come into play.
Prev 1 2 3 Next
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
