Hi all

Upfront, I'm not trying to start any flame wars here. My design studio is for the first time investing in video hardware and software. Most of the stuff we'll be doing will be for use on the web or DVD.

I'm not an expert on video so I'm just trying to get some useful opinions on the relative merits of Final Cut Studio and Adobe Production Suite. We're entirely Mac based, so we have the choice of either.

Any thoughts and recommendations most welcome.

PS I've posted this exact question on the Apple forums also, just to be fair.

I have no experience with FCP at all, thus can't help you with comparing the two. However, I have used AE, Premiere Pro and Encore from the bundle. After Effects is a wonderful, very powerful tool for all kinds of advanced editing and special fx. Encore on the other hand is a very hacked together DVD authoring application that's counter intuitive and not well documented. Premiere Pro sits somewhere in between (good for rough cuts and lining up audio). Depending on what your needs are you might want to go with a FCP + AE combination- just in case.

I'd go with the Production Studio CS4. I've worked with FCP and FCS, and know plenty of people who work with those apps. Everyone seems happy with it, but I moved away from it years ago as my choice platform, and the Creative Suite has only improved by leaps and bounds ever since.

Things like the fluid workflow between Premiere Pro and After Effects and Encore (GREATLY improved in CS4) are huge time savers. Of course, if I were to go with Final Cut nowadays, I'd have to buy the suite anyway since I work heavily with Photoshop and After Effects. Purchasing those two separately would cost more than the suite itself, so that's a no brainer. I use Ultra a lot (no word if that's actually included in CS4) and OnLocation a little bit when it's appropriate. Additionally, I work in Illustrator on some projects and Flash occasionally as well.

If you were going to choose between the two, and you needed to have After Effects and Photoshop, then you'd be best going with the CS4 suite. If you can get both, I'd recommend at least starting with the CS4 suite, see if it fits your needs and works with you the way you need it to, then purchasing Final Cut only if you find it necessary.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the advice Marco and Christian - much appreciated.

I had one reply on the Apple forums which also seemed to suggest FCS plus After Effects would be a useful combination, although they did say that Production Suite plays much nicer with Flash than FCS does.

I take your point about improvements though Christian. We have zero experience with either suite so probably best if I wait to see what the reviews are like for the CS4 apps (Encore in particular) before making a decision.

Price for Photoshop etc. is not really an issue as we'll be upgrading Design Premium anyway. It's just that the new upgrade pricing appears to allow us to move from Design Premium to the Master Edition for a slightly lower price than purchasing FCS. - I'll bet that's through design (sic) and not luck!

I agree with the Production Premium route. I'm a FCP editor most of the time, but if web is a prime target for you, you'll get better value from the ProdPrem bundle than from FCS.