Hatventuring

So, this feels like another Tumblr worthy topic to talk about, and considering we’re going through a pretty major change with our equipment, it’s a pretty good chance to explain how it works right now.

Once again, this is my tumblr, and not representative of the other guys, it’s how I work, and we’re all different to a degree.

Final Cut Pro 7

I’ve used this program to edit almost everything so far, dating back to college (almost a decade ago) so I’m pretty comfortable with it and all the intricate features it has. It’s a super robust piece of kit, barely any other editing programs are superior to it.

I’ve had a decent Macbook Pro for a while that handles all the multicam fanciness we do in our episodes. All in all, It’s very nice to edit with.

If it’s so good, then why would I ever consider changing? Well, for one this program is pretty old now, and the engine it runs on is pretty limited. Final Cut requires specific video/audio formats to run optimally, so that means spending a ton of time converting and compressing everything so Final Cut plays nice.

This is what takes a considerable amount of time. Take Minecraft for example, we record using Fraps at 60fps. About 1-2 hours of footage can reach 400gb, and there’s 3 of us. 3x400gb .avi’s from a Windows machine.

Those 400gb files need to be transferred to my mac, and it needs to be converted into a Final Cut friendly format. Simply moving the files would take hours, and compressing would take twice as long as that, so that’s a day of transferring/compressing already.

Now it’s starting to make sense as to why I’d consider changing editing programs, right?

I know Final Cut X has come out, and I know it has a pretty sweet rendering engine. Problem is, it’s vastly different to Final Cut 7.

They’ve modified the interface and the intricacies that made FCP7 better, in favour of fancier, more consumer style features that feel much more limiting and frustrating for a FCP7 user like myself to get to grips with. And because it’s just so different, I simply wouldn’t have the time to learn it quickly. We all have to make videos every day, and stepping away to teach myself FCPX would seem like a waste of time.

Premiere Pro CS6

So as I’ve mentioned, we record mostly on Windows machines nowadays, simply because every single friggin’ game is on windows. We also record with Fraps or Bandicam, both of which always output a .avi file, something Macs dislike very much.

We’ve also recently all upgraded our PC’s to handle the most modern games so that they run and record smoothly. My PC vastly outperforms my Macbook Pro in terms of spec, so why aren’t I using that for my editing too?

It all makes too much sense; Record on a PC and throw the .avi into a Windows based editing program. None of that faff compressing and transferring files for a whole day.

Why Premiere then? Well it’s becoming the industry standard at least in the USA for one, so it can’t be all bad. But there’ s two other things that enticed me: its compatibility with the rest of the adobe suite, and also its similarities to FCP7.

I’ve used After Effects a ton for making graphics, all of the cam switches and overlays were made using it, so it’d be great to quickly make one of those and drop it into Premiere without much hassle. I also use Photoshop for any still graphics, like thumbnails and logos. Again, dropping these assets directly into the edit without fuss would save a bit more time.

The interface is almost identical to FCP7, albeit with quite a few niggles that aren’t as good, but hey, sacrifices must be made. I can even choose a preset FCP7 keyboard layout so all the hotkeys are the same.

I’m slowly getting used to Premiere, but as I mentioned earlier, I literally can’t stop editing for more than a day to learn it. I have to release videos, and transitioning to Premiere can’t get in the way much.

Migrating a whole series from FCP to Premiere

The ‘From Ashes’ series is the first to take the plunge from my Mac to the PC, and my word there were issues (still are in fact, I should probably be editing instead of writing this…)

Firstly, Premiere doesn’t like 3x400gb videos playing at once. I don’t think a NASA computer would either to be honest, so we still have to do some compression to make it manageable.

Secondly, bringing over all those graphics, overlays, pieces of music from my mac and making it work in Premiere… nightmare.

I’ve got most of it now, but it wasn’t without a massive battle. I’ve had to do all of this today by the way, and get the episode edited too.

To be honest though, it could have gone a lot worse. Premiere is a lot more forgiving with file types and whatnot, so I can throw a variety of things into it and it’ll chug along. Apart from that time it decided to make all the videos green, which made me reinstall everyth-…nevermind.

The main difference with Premiere to FCP7 is it’s distinct lack of third party plugins. We were spoiled for choice with FCP7, and used quite a few effects and transitions that simply aren’t available on Premiere, not without a load of workarounds.

That spinning 3D cube transition we use when we switch perspective? Yea, that’s not so easy to replicate in Premiere, and it took a while to find something good enough to replace it. Hopefully you won’t notice a difference, but I basically had to recreate the transition manually using a 3rd Party piece of kit.

Uh, in conclusion?

I’ve just realised this “informative” tumblr post has gradually devolved into a “lets rage at premieres lack of x and y”. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.