Has Adobe finally caught up to Final Cut Pro X?
Jason Vong was testing the latest MacBook Pro when he saw an obvious issue with Premiere Pro. It was struggling to keep up with the same timeline on a Windows laptop, and even Final Cut Pro X. This has been a problem for years now and the lack of optimization has caused users to switch to FCPX for the speed boost.
However, halfway through testing, Vong noticed that Adobe had released a new update for Premiere (12.1.2). Sure enough, it works like a charm! This is a wonderful comparison because not only is he comparing the previous version of Premiere Pro to the update, but he’s also testing it alongside two Alienware laptops. It means that we have a sense of how bad it was before the update.
The release notes for the update explains that “hardware-accelerated H.264 and HEVC decoding on MacBook Pro and iMac Pro machines with macOS 10.13 will see performance improvements. For Windows 10 users who have a “seventh generation (or later) Intel Core processors and Intel Graphics enabled” can expect to see a difference too.
As far as other codecs go, both RED and Sony RAW/X-OCN ought to cause less issues. Unfortunately Canon’s Raw Lite from the C200 isn’t included here, although I’ve personally not had huge problems with it.
I’m really relieved to see Adobe getting more out of Premiere Pro on macOS. It paves a future with competition in the market, and means that users like me (who like Adobe’s ecosystem) don’t need to look elsewhere. Of course there’s still eGPU support and a few other items that I’ll be holding out for soon.