Adobe the Bloated

When I started experimenting with video about 5 years ago the first NLE I used was iMovie. Not much of a feature set but a lot of those clips still sell. Last year I migrated to PPCC and a year later I'm seriously wondering about the move.

Learning to use it properly is a serious undertaking, then there are constant bugs to work around, and although it shouldn't matter, it has a 80's kind of look and feel that is just plain ugly. There's this need to go out to all these other programs if you need anything special which is also annoying. "...oh that. Do that in After Affects. That's a Media Encoder problem. Better off in Speed Grade for that."

It bogs me down every time I need something basic. I tried to remove a vignette from a clip I have so I search vignette. Nothing. I look around and this monstrosity of a program can't do that. Okay it can, but only in it's usual convoluted, tweak 50 things method.

What are my other serious choices for Mac user? You guys have been doing this a long time and know this much better than I.

I use the Adobe CC on a Mac and have no issues. The right tool for the right job. There probably isn't one total solution that's all inclusive.

I do most of my stock work in AE, BTW.

I did see a demo of https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve at NAB this year that was impressive. Perhaps try that.

I went from PC using Sony Vegas to Mac and got Final Cut Pro X and I have had a challenge changing to it, especially as I had used Vegas for 5+ years. I like the codecs in FCP-X and there are a ton of plugins for it, I have bought some to defish fisheye for example a one click solution. There are sometimes I could quite easily throw the computer out the window but as my office is on the ground floor it wouldn't really accomplish anything. I have wondered about going Creative Cloud but you get into a routine and change is hard, especially trying to produce volume clips. I'm probably a 1,000 clips down in my port because of changing to the Mac.

Nothing much easier and stable than Edius. Been using it since 2009 with no problems. Came from Adobe Premiere 6.5 which was a mess with computer crashes about every other session. I know today it is vastly improved and has a great reputation but at least for me that bridge has been burned.

There's no doubt that the cost is not in the program, it's in the learning curve.

I use Final Cut X. I have used many other programs over the years and honestly they all pretty much do the same thing (just in different ways). Find a program you like and then stick to it to minimize the learning curve. If you see yourself doing serious editing with crazy effects then premiere pro and after effects is the way to go. That being said, after effects has a very large learning curve. As mentioned, Final Cut X now has hundreds of great plugins that do a wonderful job with different effects and only take a few clicks. If you are not wanting to take the time and energy to learn after effects Final Cut could be the way to go but it all depends on your editing and what kinds of effects you are trying to accomplish. It might be worth seeing what kind of plugins are available that meet your needs. That would give you a good idea of whether or not it is worth switching and having to learn a new program.

One of my favourite one click adjustments in FCP-X is balance colour for stock footage, it quickly takes out any cast and can be easily tweaked if it crushes the blacks too much.

I do most of my stuff in DaVinci Resolve. For compositing I use After Effects. I own the Adobe Cloud but I probably will switch to BMD Fusion when it's available for MAC.

So far I don't sense this big love for Premiere oozing out of anyone here.

I love Premiere, but I'm saying that as a professional editor. It's integration with other Adobe products, particularly After Effects, is awesome and the new features that are continually added with a CC subscription are great.

I sell stock footage on the side and it works as well as any other NLE for the very basic cuts and color correction that may be needed before uploading. It's hard to go wrong with any of the options for this; if you don't color correct or stabilize footage, you could basically use MPEG Streamclip or iMovie to prepare your clips for upload.