I must have received 20 links to Robert Hardy's article published by No Film School talking about the massive quality difference between Premiere and FCP X: nofilmschool.com/2014/09/massive-difference-export-quality-fcpx-and-premiere-pro

This article implies that Premiere does not have the same output quality as Final Cut Pro. This is probably not correct. The article compares oranges to tennis balls and fails to understand how Premiere or Final Cut output compressed images. The test is wrong, the implication is wrong and the conclusion is wrong.  Or, maybe, the conclusion is right. But not because of the screen shots they used to evaluate the images.

First, Premiere does not output an H.264 file. It sends all project media to Adobe Media Encoder (AME) for compression and output. So, the headline needs to read: "Adobe Media Encoder does not compress low-light media properly when using H.264." (Actually, since it was comparing H.264 output, Final Cut doesn't compress that format either. It uses the compression engine underlying Compressor. So, the article would have been more accurate to compare image output between AME and Compressor; but it didn't.)

Image quality varies as compression settings vary. My tests have shown that default compression settings on AME and Compressor vary widely. So, using the default settings will generally lead to different results between the two applications.

When outputting from Premiere or Final Cut, ALWAYS output as a master file at a quality that matches your project settings. Did the writer compare master file output?  Were the projects edited using the same source media? Was one project edited using ProRes and the other using H.264?  Differences in edit quality would affect image quality.

One other point. Adobe Media Encoder defaults to single pass encoding for H.264 files because this allows it to leverage the hardware acceleration built into most Macs for video compression. However, while 1-pass encoding yields faster speeds it also generates bigger files and poorer image quality.

What I would like to have seen were screen shots of the master file exported out of Premiere and Final Cut, where the same settings were used for the actual edit, then compare the low-light quality of the master file.

Compressor was infamous for creating gamma and color shifts during H.264 compression - an error that Apple corrected only this year. These errors were far more obvious than the minor artifacting pointed out in this article.

The test needs to compare between equals. Once we know the master file is good, or not, we can then make a second comparison between the compressed file. The author may be right in his conclusions, but, there are too many unknowns in this test to make the blanket statement that the output from one software is better or worse than another.

Last week, my webinar covered how to create moves on stills using either Adobe Premiere Pro CC or Apple Final Cut Pro X. Stills that move are at the heart of almost every documentary. Whether it is animating old photos, or creating excitement when only stills are available, we often need to make still images move.

In this webinar, I illustrated how to size stills for video, how to animate stills using keyframes in Premiere Pro CC. Then, I showed the same process of keyframe animation in Final Cut Pro X, following by a detailed look at creating the Ken Burns effect. Then, I included a special Photoshop technique that adds depth of field and 3D movement to stills which creates some amazing results!

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