If you’re a pro video editor, chances are good that you use Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro. Those aren’t the only options—there’s still some competition from the likes of Avid, Cyberlink, and Magix—but most of the editing world falls into the Apple and Adobe camps. Both are remarkable pieces of video editing software, though there are important differences. Here, we’ll consider the many aspects of choosing high-end video editing software.
Note that throughout this comparison, in each section we first summarize how Adobe Premiere Pro fares and then discuss Apple Final Cut Pro. The order is solely based on alphabetization of the product names. We’re just comparing features, ease of use, and power—not popularity.
When the 64-bit version of Final Cut Pro (then called Final Cut Pro X) was released in 2011, it lacked some tools that pros needed, prompting a market-share shift towards Premiere. But all of the missing elements have long since reappeared in later Final Cut releases—often in ways that improved on the standard tools. Both applications are eminently suited to the highest level of movie and TV production, each with extensive plug-in and hardware support ecosystems.
The intention of this comparison is not so much to declare a winner as to point out the differences between the two apps and the strengths and weaknesses of each. The goal is to help you make a decision based on what’s important in your professional or hobbyist video editing projects.
If you beg to differ or strongly agree with the points made along the way, feel free to chime in via the comments section at the bottom of the article.
Pricing
Adobe Premiere Pro: Adobe’s pro-level video editor requires an ongoing Creative Cloud subscription. There are three basic options: an annual plan paid up front, which costs $239.88 (working out to $19.99 per month); an annual plan paid monthly, for $20.99 per month; or a month-to-month plan, costing $31.49 per month. There are additional student and business pricing tiers. If you want the entire Creative Cloud suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, and a raft of other Adobe creative software, you need to pay $52.99 per month. The subscription not only gets you program updates, which Adobe delivers semiannually, but also 100GB of cloud storage for syncing media.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple’s pro video editor costs a flat, one-time price of $299.99. That’s a massive cut from the price of its predecessor, Final Cut Pro 7, which took a thousand-dollar toll on users. It’s also a much better deal than Premiere Pro, since in less than a year and a half, you’d spend as much on Adobe’s product and still have to keep paying. Furthermore, that $299.99 for Final Cut includes feature updates. Note that Final Cut Pro (sometimes referred to as FCP) is available from the Mac App Store, which handles updates and lets you install the program on multiple computers as long as you’re signed into the same Apple account.
Winner: Apple Final Cut Pro
Platform and System Requirements
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro runs on both Windows and macOS. The online user guide states that it is the company’s policy “to support the current and the most recent previous version of each operating system.” For the moment, that means Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit) version 1903 or later with:
- an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU, or AMD Ryzen 1000 Series or newer
- 8GB of RAM (16GB or more is recommended)
- 8GB of hard-disk space
- a 1,280-by-800-pixel display (1,920-by-1,080 or larger recommended)
- a sound card compatible with ASIO protocol or Microsoft Windows Driver Model.
On macOS, you need version 10.14 or later with:
- an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU
- 8GB of RAM (16GB or is more recommended)
- 8GB of hard-disk space
- a 1,280-by-800-pixel display (1,920-by-1,080 or larger recommended)
- a sound card compatible with Apple Core Audio.
The program runs on the new Apple Silicon M1-based Macs, but only via Rosetta 2 and not as a native application.
Apple Final Cut Pro: As you might expect, Apple’s software only runs on Macintosh computers. It requires macOS 10.15.6 or later, 4GB of RAM (8GB is recommended for 4K editing, 3D titles, and 360-degree video editing), and a Metal-capable graphics card (1GB VRAM is recommended for 4K, 3D title, and 360-degree editing). For VR headset support, you also need SteamVR. Final Cut Pro runs smoothly on Apple Silicon M1-based Macs as a native application.
Winner: Adobe Premiere Pro
Timeline
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro uses a traditional nonlinear editor (NLE) timeline with tracks and track heads. Your timeline content is called a sequence, and you can have nested sequences, subsequences, and subclips for organizational help. The timeline also has tabs for different sequences, which can be helpful if you’re working with nested sequences. Longtime video editors are likely more comfortable with this than with Apple’s more inventive trackless Magnetic Timeline.
Adobe’s system also fits with some pro workflows in which the tracks are in an expected arrangement. It works differently from consumer video editing apps, however, because it automatically separates a clip’s audio track from its video. The timeline is very scalable and offers the usual ripple, roll, razor, slip, and slide tools. The UI is extremely configurable, letting you undock any and all panels. You can show or hide thumbnails, waveforms, keyframes, and FX badges. There are seven preconfigured workspaces, including Assembly, Editing, Color, and Titles, compared with Final Cut’s mere three.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple’s innovative trackless Magnetic Timeline is easier on the eyes than the traditional timeline interface, and it offers several editing advantages, such as connected clips, roles (descriptive labels such as Video, Titles, Dialog, Music, and Effects), and auditions. Instead of tracks, FCP uses lanes, with a primary storyline that everything else attaches to. This makes keeping everything in sync easier than in Premiere. Auditions let you designate optional clips or takes for a spot in your movie, and you can group clips into compound clips—roughly the equivalent of Premiere’s Nested Sequences.
The FCP interface is less configurable than Premiere’s. You can’t split panels off into their own windows, except for the Preview window, which is very spare in the control department—the only options are Play and Pause. Premiere offers a lot more here, with buttons for Step Back, Go to In, Go to Previous Edit Point, Lift, Extract, and Export Frame. Final Cut only offers three prebuilt workspaces (Default, Organize, Color & Effects) compared with Premiere’s seven.
Winner: Tie
Media Organization
Adobe Premiere Pro: Like a traditional NLE, Premiere Pro lets you store related media in bins, which are similar to folders. As with folders, you can have bins within bins. You can also apply color labels to assets, but not keyword tags. The Libraries panel lets you share assets among other Adobe applications such as Photoshop and After Effects.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple’s program has events, libraries, roles, and keyword tagging for organizing your media. The library is the overarching container that includes your projects, events, and clips, and it keeps track of all your edits and options. You can also manage storage targets and perform batch clip renaming.
Winner: Apple Final Cut Pro
Media Format Support
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro supports pretty much any media of any level of professionalism you throw at it, and any media for which you have codecs installed on your computer. That even includes Apple ProRes. The software supports working with native (raw) camera formats including those for ARRI, Canon, Panasonic, RED, and Sony. There’s not much video you can create or import that Premiere can’t support. It even supports XML exported from Final Cut.Apple Final Cut Pro: Final Cut now supports the HEVC codec used by many 4K video cameras and Apple’s own iPhones. Like Premiere, Final Cut supports native formats from all the major video camera makers, including ARRI, Canon, Panasonic, RED, and Sony, as well as a slew of video-capable still cameras. It, too, supports XML import and export.Winner: Tie
Audio Editing
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro’s Audio Mixer shows pan, balance, volume unit (VU) meters, clipping indicators, and mute/solo for all timeline tracks. You can use it to make adjustments as the project plays. New tracks are automatically created when you drop an audio clip in the timeline, and you can specify types like standard (which can contain a combination of mono and stereo files), mono, stereo, 5.1, and adaptive. Double-clicking the VU meters or panning dials returns their levels to zero. The audio meters next to Premiere’s timeline are resizable and let you solo any track. The program also supports hardware controllers and third-party VSP plugins. If you have Adobe Audition installed, you can round-trip your audio between that and Premiere for advanced techniques such as adaptive noise reduction, parametric EQ, automatic click removal, studio reverb, and compression.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Audio editing is a strength in Final Cut Pro. It can automatically fix hum, noise, and peaks, or you can manually adjust these, if you prefer. Over 1,300 royalty-free sound effects are included, and there’s lots of plug-in support. One impressive trick is the ability to match separately recorded tracks. For example, if you shoot HD footage with a DSLR and record sound simultaneously on another recorder, Match Audio aligns the sound source. Support for Apple Logic Pro plug-ins give you even more powerful sound editing options. Finally, you get a surround-sound mixer to locate or animate 5.1 audio, and a 10-band or 31-band equalizer.Winner: Tie
Motion Graphics Companion Tool
Adobe Premiere Pro: After Effects, Premiere’s stablemate in Adobe Creative Cloud, is the industry-standard motion graphics tool. Needless to say, it dovetails smoothly with Premiere Pro. That said, it’s harder to master than Apple Motion, which has added many of AE’s capabilities in recent versions. It’s the tool to learn if you’re interested in a professional video editing career.Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple Motion is also a powerful tool for creating titles, transitions, and effects. It, too, supports a rich plug-in ecosystem, logical layers, and custom templates. Motion is also easier to learn and use and is probably a better fit if you use FCP as your primary editor. Even if you don’t, it’s only a $50 one-time purchase.Winner: Adobe Premiere Pro
Output Options
Adobe Premiere Pro: When you’re done editing your movie, Premiere’s Export option offers most formats you’re likely to want, and for more output options you can use the Adobe Encoder, which can target Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, DVD, Blu-ray, and loads of devices. Encoder lets you batch encode to target multiple devices in a single job, such as mobile phones, iPads, and HDTVs. Premiere also can output media using H.265 and the Rec. 2020 color space.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Final Cut’s output options are comparatively limited unless you add the companion application, Apple Compressor. The base app can, however, export to XML and produce HDR, wide-color-space output including Rec. 2020 Hybrid Log Gamma and Rec. 2020 HDR10. Compressor adds the ability to customize output settings and perform batch output jobs. It also adds DVD and Blu-ray menu and chapter themes, and can package movies in the format required by the iTunes store.
Winner: Tie
Performance and Render Time
Adobe Premiere Pro: Like most video editors these days, Premiere uses proxy views of your video content to speed up apparent performance, and we didn’t encounter any lag while testing normal editing operations. The software takes advantage of graphics CUDA and OpenCL hardware acceleration and multicore CPUs with its Adobe Mercury Playback Engine. Adobe made a push to improve rendering performance for H.264 and HEVC in the latest program update as of writing, version 15.1.
On our rendering tests, Premiere easily bested Final Cut Pro. We used a 5-minute video composed of mixed clip types, including some 4K content. We added default cross-dissolve transitions between the clips and output to H.265 1080p 60fps at a 20Mbps bit rate. The tests were run on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 3.1 GHz Core i5 CPU and 8GB RAM. Premiere took 2 minutes, 31 seconds to complete the rendering, compared with 3 minutes, 55 seconds for Final Cut Pro.
On a Windows speed test using the same set of mixed content and transitions, Premiere Pro took 1 minute, 40 seconds, which isn’t bad, though high-end prosumer software from CyberLink and Corel was a bit quicker: CyberLink PowerDirector took 1 minute, 32 seconds and Corel VideoStudio took just 1 minute, 12 seconds to render the same project.
Apple Final Cut Pro: One of the primary goals of Final Cut Pro is to take advantage of 64-bit CPU and GPU capabilities, something that earlier incarnations of Final Cut couldn’t do. Our rendering test consists of a 5-minute project composed of mixed clip types, including some 4K content. We added the same variety of transitions between the clips and output to H.264 1080p 30fps at a 15Mbps bit rate.
Final Cut Pro finished rendering the project in 3 minutes, 55 seconds, while in recent testing Premiere Pro beat that significantly with a time of 2 minutes, 31 seconds. The new macOS version of PowerDirector took just 57 seconds for the render. However, exporting in Final Cut happens in the background and you can continue working in the program. Premiere locks the app during exporting. You can get around this in Premiere by using its accompanying Media Encoder app and choosing Queue in the Export dialog.
Winner: Adobe Premiere Pro
Color Tools
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro includes the Lumetri Color tools. These are pro-level color grading features that formerly lived in the separate SpeedGrade application. The Lumetri tools support 3D lookup tables (LUTs) for powerful and customizable looks. The tools offer a remarkable amount of color manipulation, along with a great selection of film and HDR looks. You can adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and black point—all of which can be activated with keyframes. Saturation, Vibrance, Faded Film, and Sharpen adjustment presets are also available. Most impressive are the Curves and Color Wheel options. There’s also a very cool Lumetri Scope view, which shows the current frame’s proportional use of red, green, and blue. The program includes a workspace dedicated to color editing.
Apple Final Cut Pro: In response to Adobe’s impressive Lumetri Color tools, the latest Final Cut update added a color wheel tool that’s darned impressive in its own right. Color Wheels show a puck in the middle that lets you move an image towards green, blue, or red, showing the result on the side of the wheel. You can also adjust brightness and saturation with the wheels, and separately control everything (with the Master wheel), or just shadows, midtones, or highlights. It’s a remarkably powerful and intuitive set of tools. If wheels are not to your taste, the Color Board option shows a simple linear view of your color settings.
The Color Curves tool lets you use multiple control points to adjust each of the three primary colors for very specific points on the brightness scale. Luma, Vectorscope, and RGB Parade monitors give you incredible insight into your movie’s color usage. You can even edit a single color value using a dropper. Final Cut now supports color LUTs from camera manufacturers such as ARRI, Canon, Red, and Sony, and custom LUTs for effects. These effects can be combined with others in a stacked arrangement. Color scopes adapt to HDR editing, as do the color editing tools. Supported formats include Rec. 2020 HLG and Rec. 2020 PQ for HDR10 output.Winner: Tie
Titling
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere offers Photoshop-like control over title text formatting, with a vast number of fonts and adjustments such as kerning, leading, rotation, shadow, stroking, and tracking, just to name a few. But for 3D manipulation, you need to head to After Effects.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Final Cut includes strong 3D title editing with keyframe motion options. You get lots of control over title overlays, with 183 animation templates. You edit text and position and size the titles right in the video preview; there’s no need for an external title editor.
Final Cut’s 3D Titles offer eight basic templates and four more cinematic ones, including a cool 3D Earth choice for your sci-fi projects. There are 20 font presets, but you can use any style and size you like. Materials such as concrete, fabric, and plastic can give your titles any texture you desire. You also get a bunch of lighting options. For maximum control, you can edit the 3D titles in Motion, Apple’s $49.99 ancillary 3D animation editor. Extrude 2D titles into 3D by tapping the 3D Text option in the Text Inspector, and you can then position and rotate the text to taste on three axes.
Winner: Apple Final Cut Pro
Complementary Apps
Adobe Premiere Pro: Aside from the Creative Cloud apps that work smoothly with Premiere, including After Effects, Audition, and Photoshop, Adobe offers the Premiere Rush mobile app that you can import projects from. Another app, Adobe Capture, lets you snap images for use as textures, colors, and shapes for use in Premiere.
For social video creators and anyone who wants to start shooting a project on a mobile device, Adobe Premiere Rush app smooths the workflow between shooting and editing. It syncs projects shot on the mobile device with desktop Premiere Pro, and simplifies sharing to social targets.
Maybe most important for professional use are lesser-known Creative Cloud apps such as Prelude (for metadata ingest, logging, and rough cuts). Adobe Character Animator is a nifty newer app that creates animations you can bring into Premiere, including animations based on live actors’ face and body movements.
Apple Final Cut Pro: In the latest update of Final Cut Pro, Apple has made it a snap to import projects from iMovie on an iPhone into the pro editor. The already-mentioned Motion and Compressor sibling applications, along with Apple’s high-end sound editor, Logic Pro, do enlarge the program’s capabilities, but those can’t compare with Premiere Pro’s Photoshop and After Effects integration.
Winner: Adobe Premiere Pro
360-Degree Editing Support
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere lets you view 360-degree VR footage and change the field of view and angle. You can view this content in anaglyphic form, which is a fancy way of saying you can see it in 3D using standard red-and-blue glasses. You can also have your video track a head-mounted display’s view. Neither program, however, can edit 360-degree footage unless it was already stitched to equirectangular format.
Corel VideoStudio, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Pinnacle Studio can all open the footage without this conversion. You can’t see the spherical view alongside the flattened view in Premiere as you can in those apps, but you can easily toggle back and forth between these views if you add the VR button to the preview window. Helpfully, Premiere lets you tag a video as VR so that Facebook or YouTube can tell it’s 360-degree content. A recent update adds support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets, such as the Lenovo Explorer, the Microsoft HoloLens, and the Samsung HMD Odyssey.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple’s pro video editor recently added a bunch of 360-degree support, though the only VR headset it supports is the HTC Vive. It offers 360-degree titles, some effects, and a nifty Patch tool that removes the camera and tripod from your movie. With Compressor, you can share 360-degree video directly to YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo. Recently, Apple added stabilization for 360-degree video.
Winner: Tie (though CyberLink PowerDirector is ahead of both, with both stabilization and motion tracking for 360-degree content)
Touch-Screen Support
Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere has full support for touch-screen PCs such as the Surface Pro, the large-screen Surface Studio, and the Lenovo IdeaCentre Yoga A940. Using touch gestures, you can scrub through media, mark in and out points, drag and drop clips onto a timeline, and make actual edits. You can also use pinch gestures to zoom in and out. There’s even a touch-friendly view with big buttons for your fingers.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Final Cut Pro has rich support for the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, letting you scroll, adjust colors, trim, choose in and out points, and more with just your fingers. There’s also support for touch on Apple Trackpads, but actually editing by touching the screen is not possible on any current Macs, and it’s likely that even the Touch Bar will be discontinued.
Winner: Adobe Premiere Pro
Use by Nonprofessionals
Adobe Premiere Pro: This one is a tough sell. Premiere Pro is steeped in the tradition of high-end, professional-level software. Ease of use and simplicity of interface are not paramount among its goals. That said, there’s no reason that a determined amateur with time to devote to learning the software couldn’t use it. Adobe has other products more appropriate for hobbyists: Premiere Elements and the mobile-first Premiere Rush.
Apple Final Cut Pro: Apple has made the upgrade path from its consumer-level video editor, iMovie, very smooth. The latest version of Final Cut also eases importing projects you started on an iPhone or iPad, letting you pick up with Final Cut’s advanced tools where you left off with the touch- and consumer-friendly iMovie for iOS app.
Winner: Apple Final Cut Pro
The Final Tally
Apple may have alienated some professionals with its imaginative rethinking of the craft of video editing, but if nothing else, it’s been a boon to prosumers and home video enthusiasts. Premiere Pro’s target audience is the professional editor, though dedicated amateurs can certainly use it as long as they’re not afraid of the learning curve.Intensive enthusiasts may want to bypass both for CyberLink PowerDirector, which is often first with new gear and format support, such as 360-degree VR content.
Both Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro are PCMag Editors’ Choices, as both are remarkably deep and powerful pieces of software that manage to present pleasing interfaces. For our two main professional applications discussed here, the final tally shapes up as follows:
Adobe Premiere Pro: 5Apple Final Cut Pro: 4Tie: 8
As you can see, for most topics, the two apps are at parity. Adobe has a very slight edge, but keep in mind that this is a raw tally with no weighting, and your needs will dictate which aspects matter most to you. If you’re a Windows-only user, you’re going to want to go with Final Cut, for example. As noted at the start, both of these are magnificent pieces of software, and hopefully this piece has shed some light on their relative strengths.
