- Premiere Pro Free
- Hitfilm Express
- Better Than Premiere Pro
- Is Premiere Pro Better Than Sony Vegas
- Premiere Pro Download
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After Effects and Premiere Pro are two of Adobe's flagship post-production apps. But which one do you need for which task? Let's find out.
FilmoraPro is much more affordable than Premiere Pro. You cannot buy Premiere Pro, only subscribe for a recurring fee. Premiere Pro costs $31.49/month or $239.88/year. You can buy a FilmoraPro lifetime plan for $149.99 (one time payment). No, they're not even playing in the same league. LumaFusion is a nice editor, and especially nice considering it does what it does with an iPad, but it's limited to 3 video tracks and 3 audio tracks. It's been around for the better part of 2 decades, which speaks to its reliability as an alternative Premiere Pro editing option. If you're looking to simply cut video, add basic effects and transitions, and 4K resolution movies, then iMovie will give you everything you need.
When you're creating a new project, knowing when to use Premiere and when to use After Effects can make or break your project. They are both extremely powerful programs, that can sometimes perform the same functions, but most of the time, one of them is better at something than the other.
Now the differences between these two programs are pretty apparent to anyone who has used them before. But, if you're new to the suite, it can be confusing determining which one you need to learn for a given post-production task.
Let's take a look at Adobe's two main video production software tools and see what they do — and when to use one over the other.
Premiere Pro Free
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is an NLE (nonlinear editor) with the main function of editing video clips together in a sequence. This is the program that most beginners open to create a simple video with multiple clips and music. It's incredibly scalable — easy to use for beginners, and still powerful enough for a master editor. It's got just about everything you need to complete a professional video: a clip editor, color correction tools, audio programs, and even graphics software.
Tasks for Premiere:
- Editing a video with existing clips imported from a camera.
- Editing audio within your video — Premiere's audio functions far surpass AE's.
- Placing transitions between clips within your timeline.
- Creating/polishing any type of video — short films, music videos, social videos, etc.
Hitfilm Express
Adobe After Effects
Adobe After Effects is a digital motion graphics platform used to create either simple animations or intricate graphics sequences. If you ever hear of a 'motion graphics expert,' chances are they're proficient in After Effects. The program adds motion to layers and assets that you couldn't do in Premiere. Its motion tools are much better than Premiere's, and it's the preferred tool for adding motion to videos, images, and designs. It's a 'hard to learn, easy to master' type of program, but once you get the hang of it, it's essential for creating motion graphics or visual effects for your projects.
Tasks for After Effects:
- Creating motion graphics packages for your projects.
- Adding motion blur and movement to assets and layers.
- Manipulating multilayer sequences that require detailed keyframing.
- Creating title sequences that include keyframe-based animations.
After Effects Vs. Premiere Pro: What's the Difference?
To sum it all up, Premiere assembles all of your assets and creates a final video product, while After Effects is mainly an asset-generation tool. People complete projects in After Effects all the time, though — it's great for creating motion-based social video with only a song bed underneath, or even creating a full animation.
So really, there's no true 'vs.' in this argument. It's kind of like debating PowerPoint and Word — you use them for different tasks, even though they share some similar functions. They are extremely well linked, though — and like many editors, I use them concurrently all of the time. Once you get familiar with both programs, you'll learn how to dynamically link After Effects compositions to your Premiere projects so you can access both assets at the same time. (For more information about dynamic linking, check out the video by Justin Odisho above.)
Better Than Premiere Pro
Looking for more on Premiere and After Effects? Check these out.
FilmoraPro by Wondershare is a much less expensive video editing software alternative for emerging social media editors. It works on both Mac and PC computers and at just $149.99 (Lifetime) or $89.00 (per year), FilmoraPro is a steal and better yet you can also download FilmoraPro for free (it just adds a watermark on the export).
But does the price make it a worthy alternative to Premiere Pro? The short answer is: yes, for editors working on social media videos.
But, lets dive into the details to show all that FilmoraPro has in relation to Premiere.
What FilmoraPro Has
A Familiar NLE Interface
If you're looking for a similar editing NLE (non-linear editing) interface as Premiere, FilmoraPro has it. When I first opened FilmoraPro, I could instantly see that they have a similar UI as Adobe Premiere Pro's. Here is the side by side below:
Customizable Workspaces
Just like Premiere, FilmoraPro also has dedicated workspaces designed for editing, color grading, audio editing, text and titles, effects and more. You can also customize and save your own workspace
Media Panel
The media panel is very similar to Premiere's 'Project Panel.' You can create folders in your media Panel where you can import footage, photos, video and more. You can open clips up in the trimmer and select 'in and out' points to start created your project's selected material.
Timeline Presets
Unlike Premiere Pro, when you open FilmoraPro, a timeline is already open. And it's not called a timeline, it's called an Editor. You can click the gear icon to customize the timeline's frame size and frame rate. You can also select from multiple different types of presets, from Instagram to GoPro.
Timeline Tools
You can customize the track sizes and also rename and insert new video or audio tracks. The edit tools include the selection tool, cut tool, slip edits, rate stretch tool. and most importantly snapping clips together.
In FilmoraPro, you can also customize keyboard shortcuts from the Preferences panel so you can use the same keyboard shortcuts as Premiere.
Playback and Resolution
Unlike Premiere Pro, FilmoraPro doesn't have a render option for playback. You hit play and it will render as best as it can as it playback. You can reduce the playback resolution, but there are some lagging issues with playback. I found it can be delayed and sometime freezes with 2.7k and 4k footage. This could definitely use some improvements since 4k is becoming a standard for editing.
Title and Motion Presets
FilmoraPro comes with great built in title templates that you can edit and customize in your video. And just like Premiere you can purchase more, but instead of from Adobe stock, you can purchase more templates from Wondershare's Film stock library.
Is Premiere Pro Better Than Sony Vegas
Drag & Drop Effects
In my opinion, FIlmoraPro has far more and far better built-in effects than Premiere Pro. It has effects like light leak transitions, films grains, and two tone looks, which Premiere Pro does not come with (you have to buy those separately). You drag and drop effects on the clip or with transitions drag them between clips. It also has a control panel where you can customize your effects, your clip's transform tools, and keyframe as well.
Color Correction & Grading
FilmoraPro also has all the core color effects, including curves, LUTS, vibrance, temperature and more. If you're in the color workspace it also has scopes so you can read color.
Export
You can export a video by using an in and out point in the timeline or by exporting all the content.
What FilmoraPro does not have
Multiple Sequences: You cannot have multiple timelines open at once, you can only work in one timeline at time. With Premiere Pro you can have multiple open.
Adjustment Layers: There are no adjustment layers for applying universal effects to multiple clips at once.
Dedicated Color Panel: It does not have a Lumetri color panel to make universal color grading and correction effects.
Dedicated Sound Panel: It does not have an Essential Sound Panel where you can make universal audio adjustments to any time of audio
No Audio Preferences: It does not have audio hardware preferences to record audio directly into Premiere Pro
Conclusion
Premiere Pro Download
Overall, FilmoraPro gets the job done, but it does need major improvements to it's playback/rendering and it lacks some panels that make it faster to apply color & audio adjustments in Premiere. But, considering it's only $149 it's definitely worth the money.
So what do you what you think from first glance, do you think it is worth it? You can start using Filmora Pro for free with a watermark and if you think it's good fit for your workflow you can purchase a license to remove the watermark.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment below!
