Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple Offers Discounts to Adobe Premiere Users

Posted by pudge on from the ooo-slam dept.

JHromadka writes "Apple is responding to Adobe dropping future Premiere releases with great deals on Final Cut products. You can trade in Premiere for a free copy of FC Express, or $500 off FC Pro."

10 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Express or Pro? by twocoasttb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, I'm thinking about doing the trade-in deal, as opposed to the $500 upgrade deal. What could I do in Premiere that I couldn't do in Final Cut Express? The marketing stuff doesn't allude to anything...

    1. Re:Express or Pro? by capmilk · · Score: 4, Informative

      With Premiere you can directly record analog video, Final Cut Express only lets you record from digital sources. Apart from that, FCE seems fine for my purposes.
      If anyone could recommend a good recording application, I'd be really glad.

    2. Re:Express or Pro? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      You say the number of layers you can use makes Premiere superior?
      FCP supports unlimited layers with nesting, while Premiere is limited to 99 layers last I checked. (although there's no reason for anyone who has a clue what they're doing to be troubbled by that limit)

      FCP is much more suitable for professional video work than Premiere ever was, hell it's even creeping into the low end of Avid's territory.

    3. Re:Express or Pro? by daviddennis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have never heard anyone defend Premiere before as anything other than awful. I tried it, briefly, and quickly realized that any other video editing program had to be loads better.

      I thought you could do all the layering you would ever want on FCP. From version 1, FCP had "segments", sort of like subroutines of video that you'd already edited. You can easily prepare and combine in any way you wanted with other segments, which is an enormously powerful feature that was only added to Premiere with the advent of Premiere Pro (this new Windows-only version).

      FCP also has extensive keyboard shortcuts that make you a lot more efficient. Again, Premiere Pro brags about this, but FCP did it first.

      Could you give an illustration on something you could do in Premiere that you couldn't do in FCP?

      I know you can do wonderful things in After Effects, although it's about as fast as a drugged slug. But Premiere? You've roused my curiosity :-).

      D

  2. Also avaible for windows.... by quandrum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just noticed this is also available to windows users of Premiere. Might be enough to switch to a 2x2 G5 and FCP.... (okay, I just really want a G5.. mmm)

  3. Memo by Mikey-San · · Score: 4, Funny

    Adobe: "We'd give you the new version of Premiere, but we decided not to write it for you. Sorry."

    Apple: "We'd give you a cut of the business we're about to take from you on our platform, but we decided not to write the check. Sorry."

    Yeah, I know, probably not like that, but still, it was sorta funny.

    --
    Mikey-San
    Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
  4. Ebay! by rumpledstiltskin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a pretty sweet deal when you consider that you can get cheapo versions of premiere on ebay. there weren't any restrictions on version number that I could see from the fine print. just no academic or similarly discounted versions.

  5. Worldwide availability? by Mitz+Pettel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While this page claims that the FCE and FCP offers are "available worldwide", it also says that deliveries "must be made to addresses within the 50 United States or the District of Columbia", and there's no sign of the offer on Apple's UK site. What gives?

  6. Go Apple by runenfool · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Im glad Apple did this as its exactly what I asked our rep for as soon as the Adobe announcement was made.

    Adobe has decided that not only can it not compete with a better product (its competing when its not bundled for free with the OS), but that it wants to push a much more serious rival's media software (WMP).

    FCP is a great reason to own a Mac, and offering free or inexpensive cross grades to FCP from Premiere on both platforms is exactly what Apple needs to do to stay competitive.

    The media technologies are actually the key to the Premiere/FCP battle. Keeping MPEG4 at the front of the game is extremely important to all of us who are interested in seeing open media technologiers (and who don't want another reason to be stuck on Windows). Having Adobe push Microsoft's solution (not saying you can't do anything else - but notice the prominent mention of MS technologies in their PR release for Premiere) is bad for all of us.

    My point? Apple competing hard for open media standards via products like FCP is great for those people who will never use either piece of software.

    1. Re:Go Apple by daviddennis · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's only one catch to your argument: Unlike Photoshop and After Effects, Premiere was hopelessly bad compared to Final Cut Pro.

      Premiere's creators were interviewed at Digital Video Editing.com. I can't link easily to the article since DVE is using frames heavily, but go to the page and read part 1 of the interview. They use corpspeak and evasiveness where they can, but there's no question they were very much aware that Premiere was horribly inferior to Final Cut, in feature set, user interface and pretty much everything else.

      The situation with Photoshop and After Effects could not be any more different. Both are applications beloved by their users, that have received quality updates. As a result, sales are split about 30/70 Mac/PC, instead of Premiere's 10/90 Mac/PC. Because of this, it's profitable for Adobe to produce a Mac version of these programs, especially with the new G5 offering the needed processor oomph.

      In short, I would not call Apple's purchase of Final Cut betraying Adobe. I would consider it Apple's acknowledgement that they needed a high-quality video editing program, and Premiere wasn't going to do the job.

      I really don't think Adobe is going to get rid of Photoshop or After Effects for the Mac, because we tend to be a pretty free-spending market. Isn't it interesting that Macs have something like 5% of the market, but 30% of Adobe sales. That's a nice contribution indeed, that can't be written off lightly.

      D