Premier vs Final Cut Pro

They are both NLE: they used for video editing. But they are very different in several ways. Premiere is similar to legacy FCP, using a track based approach to editing. FCP (sometimes referred to as FCP X to distinguish it from the legacy versions) uses a clip based approach.

Premiere Pro is provided as a subscription, so you pay a monthly fee to Adobe. FCP is a one time purchase. I bought it the day it came out in 2011 and have enjoyed free updates ever since.

There is also a trial version of FCP that you use for 90 days and it is nearly completely identical to the paid version. It does not imprint any watermarks or things like that. I don’t know if there’s a trial version of Premiere.

Premiere does offer a free trial lasting a very generous 7 days but after that it will cost approximately £20 per month as opposed to FCP X's one time purchase price of £300.

So after 15 months you will have paid as much as buying FCP X outright and you will still be paying for evermore.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to see which is the better financial choice.

However, there are a number of free alternatives to both FCP X and Premiere Pro available for download.

I am not talking about pirated copies of the aforementioned apps but completely legal Open Source professional quality video editors created by thousands of enthusiasts collaborating worldwide.

One of the best known is Shotcut but there are many others if you do a Google search.

https://shotcut.org

They are both used for the same purpose, namely editing films/videos but some of their features work differently.

There are great debates as to which is better but as with most things in life it comes down to what suits you.

If you Google the question or search on YouTube you will find all the main pros and cons discussed at length.

Suffice it to say that both editors can produce the highest quality product . . . . as indeed can iMovie albeit with a more limited range of options.