I’ve recently moved from Final Cut Pro because I want the speed boost of 64bit. Those with a NVidia CUDA enabled card will also get real-time FX editing with no timeline rendering.
Apple need to add both of these new computing technologies to Final Cut Pro 8 in 2011 but until then I am very happy with Premiere CS5. Good UI, very similar to use, in some ways better to use. But the performance leap is certainly beyond doubt.
I am also avoiding the Quicktime gamma issues and time spent transcoding AVCHD in Log & Transfer. With DSLR footage, even the hacked 44Mbit AVCHD of the GH1 you can edit direct from the card in 64bit, immediately.
There are a few quirks which you have to fix to get it to work with the hacked GH1. I am also throwing in a short introduction to Twixtor, because that has a quirk as well as you’ll see in the video. The slow motion is great, but the in-point of the clip on the sequence is ignored. So if you slice a clip half way through to go from 100% speed to, for example, 10%, the 10% slice will start again at frame 1 of the original media clip as it appears on the card, ignoring your edit! The video shows you a work around, and also how to pad out short (i.e. 5 second) clips when they are slowed down, so that the clip can last longer in slow motion mode with Twixtor. Unlike the usual clip rate changes, Twixtor does not change the duration of the clip, only the ‘virtual frame rate’.
Both Premiere CS5 and Twixtor are both worth your attention. They’re fantastic pieces of software.
