Jason Butler

Originally Posted by Jason Butler

I do lots of web dev work use lots of Adobe products like Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc... I've used older versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects for a few jobs. For my video editing I've used FCP from version 5 to 7.

FCP is stagnating. I'm really impressed with the new direction FCPX has taken and I'm very interested to see where it ends up. I do think it's the future. But I haven't bought it.

What I have bought is the new Adobe Creative Cloud suite which is basically a €60 inc VAT per month lease for all of the Adobe software including some cloud features. I could never justify dropping the €3000 plus in one go and if you don't make at least €60 per month using the software then you need another career.

It's made me more legal as I would use pirated copies of software I didn't use that often (e.g. AE) whilst paying for those I did use a lot (e.g. Fl). Now I'm all above board and up to date with all the latest versions of the software (as long as I keep paying the subscription).

To me it makes sense to integrate the media management tool with photo editing tool with the vector graphics tool with the video editing tool with the compositing and effects tool with the grading tool and the export tool. So it makes sense to move to Adobe and turn my back on FCP. There's even a new Adobe scriptwriting / production management tool called Story to you can go from script to finished film in an integrated workflow. Haven't tried it yet!

This probably feels a bit like an advert! But I'm wondering if there's other independent editors thinking of leaving FCP and moving to the Adobe suite and if you signed up for Creative Cloud? Have you used the new tools Prelude and Speedgrade yet? Anything new and wonderful in CS6 you spotted?

What will you miss from FCP? Or why are you staying put?

I'm looking forward to not having to transcode AVCHD footage before editing for starters.