hi there
Ive used Premier and Final Cut Pro.
I still use both - I find each one is good for different things, but I mostly use Final Cut Pro.
Im not very interested in codecs, and project settings and so on. FCP seems to deal with this stuff for you much more than Premier.
Also I like the different resolution rendering option in FCP, which means you can view something much more quickly, to see if it works.
I generally find FCP much quicker to render and to play back than Premier.(on my systems- Ive run Premier and FCP on the same MAC and FCP is actually FUn to use, Premier was shit. However Ive also run Premier on a PC which worked fine)
FCP deals with render files in a much neater way than Premier - It locks the renderfiles to the clip, rather than the timeline - which premier appears to do. So if you move a clip in premier you lose the rendering, whereas in FCP, it retains the rendering.
I think Premiers bluescreening and compositing functions are nicer to use than FCP's, and Premier seems to have absolutley every filter I can and cant think of, FCP doesnt have as many, and are not as intuitive to use as Premiers - although you can get some suprising results with FCP.
I think I prefer Premiers audio editing bits and bobs as well, but havent done an awful lot of audio editing on fcp.
Each has Pros and Cons - but the majority of my personal editing is done using FCP, purely because with the setups that I have, I find it runs 100% better, and is actually fun to use. I find Premier quite slow and ponderous to use.
This is not a PC vs MAC debate - I couldnt care less what anyones elses preferences are. THese are simply my experiences.
Good luck
