Video editing software can be intimidating, especially for beginners. Even more intimidating can be the actual choice between the variety of excellent software available.
The most common first choice for most people is Adobe Premiere Pro. Now while Premier is a top-rated video editing software, there’s another offering by Adobe that puts beginners in confusion. Another popular software called After Effects.
In this article, we bring you a distinction between the two so you can decide which one to use and when.
Adobe Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro, at its core, is a video editing program above else. There are several options available inside of Premiere for you to take complete control of your footage and edit it just the way you want.
Apart from regular trimming clips and repositioning them, there is a lot more to Premiere. You can animate the physical attributes of your clips. You can even add many visual effects, transitions, colour presets, LUTs, animations, titles, text and so on.
Premiere Pro also features a fantastic timeline that makes it extremely easy for anyone to navigate through it while editing footage. If you’re working on a more complex project and have multiple short clips, titles, transitions etc. on your timeline, Premiere makes it easy for you to manage everything.
It also provides numerous file management capabilities for your project files. You can import and keep files in separate bins and colour code them on the timeline. This makes it incredibly easy to identify a particular type of footage when your timeline becomes all spaghetti.
Pros
- Amazing video editing capabilities
- Several templates/ downloadable resources are available in terms of effects, animations, transitions, LUTs and so on.
- Easier to learn for beginners
Cons
- Not a lot of VFX/SFX capabilities
- Mediocre animation capabilities
- Quite expensive at about $239.88/yr
Also read: Cinematography 101: Introduction to colour grading in Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
In layman terms, After Effects is a digital motion graphics, visual effects and compositing software.
That pretty much sums up what After Effects does. It’s a very different software when compared to Premiere as both deal with entirely different parts of video editing. They are often confused as both works in close tandem to the term, video editing. While you can do some of the animations you can in After Effects in Premiere as well, it’s a lot easier and cleaner to do them in After Effects itself. You get a way more detailed timeline that deals with everything in layers and a lot more control over your clips and files.
Also, After Effects has a bunch of tools that make VFX editing a breeze in the park. You can do so much more with the interactive layer based timeline and the composting methods present. You can even create complete animation videos by incorporating Adobe Illustrator in your workflow.
Pros
- Great VFX/animation capabilities
- Easy to create motion graphics, titles or advanced effects
- Cheaper than Premiere at about $135/year
Cons
- Slightly tricky to learn for beginners
- Poor video editing capabilities
Which one should you use?
Our advice would be to use both in close tandem.
Premiere Pro handles all the video editing and After Effects can handle all the animations, VFX, titles and any other motion graphics that your project might need. You can use Adobe Dynamic Link to transfer clips to and fro between the two programs without having to export and import them individually.
Individually, if it is a simple animation, After effects can take care of it. If it is a simple video project, Premiere Pro can take care of it.
Related read: Adobe Photoshop vs Lightroom: Which one should you use when?
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