Final Cut Studio and Adobe CS3
The ideal combination is to have both of these packages, since they both have their strengths and weaknesses. The ideal package would be a mix of the Adobe and Apple products, but this is not likely to be forthcoming.

Premiere vs. Final Cut –
I started my editing career on Premiere, and I used to know version 4 like the back of my hand. But since moving to Final Cut in 1999, Premiere seems to be a clunky and unwieldy tool for cutting video. Premiere does work, but it would seem that Adobe’s designers did their best to make it as awkward as possible to use, and tasks that are easy and intuitive in Final Cut are anything but in Premiere Pro. For audio Final Cut is streets ahead of the Adobe software - in Premiere it is very awkward to change stereo files to linked on unlinked mono files which is a real pain if you are working with material that has very different audio on each channel. In terms of colour correction Final Cut Pro has a far better colour correction filter than the one that ships with Premiere, and the FCS2 package includes Colour, an application that beats anything in the Adobe package hands down.The colour correction filter in Premiere is plan awful to use. Students seem to have a lot more difficulty in learning to use Premiere compared to Final Cut.
Score for cutting video:
Premiere Pro: 3
Final Cut Pro: 9

After Effects vs. Final Cut / Motion / Live Type –
with the Final Cut Studio suite of programs you can accomplish almost everything you can do with After Effects, however two big advantages AE has,  are that it is ideal for painting effects on to video in a way that FCS cannot do, and the After Effects puppet tool is also great for animation -  there is no equivalent for the puppet tool in Final Cut Studio.
Score for fancy effects:
After Effects: 9
Final Cut Studio: 8

Adobe Soundbooth vs. Apple Soundtrack Pro –
in my view there is no comparison – both programs do OK when it comes to sound editing, but the musical possibilities for Soundtrack are far ahead of Soundbooth. Soundtrack also has the Space Designer reverb which is a wonderful tool. Soundtrack does have a little way to go in terms of reliability – hopefully Apple will improve this in future updates.
Score for use in film/video soundtracks:
Soundbooth: 4
Soundtrack Pro: 8

Encore vs. DVD Studio Pro –
Encore lacks some of the high end features of DVDSP, such as scripting and multiple language support (Encore does support multiple languages, but fails when it comes to the complex organisation required of a multiple language DVD). DVDSP also uses the "Inspector" context-based window concept that saves a lot of screen real-estate. DVDSP's themes are more elegant than those which ship with Encore - Encore has a wide variety of themes, but they seem pretty cheesy to my taste.  Encore does win however when it comes to integration with Photoshop, which is seamless. Unfortunately Encore running on a Mac seems to be very unstable - you can expect frequent crashing, making it very frustrating to use.
DVDSP:8
Encore:4

Conclusions:
Assuming you can only buy one package:

If your work is heavily effects based – such as making TV commercials – then the Adobe suite is probably better, but there's not much in it. The current student pricing for CS4 makes the package one of the great software bargains available at the moment, although the student version doesn't not ship with printed manuals.

If your main interest is in filmmaking then Final Cut Studio is clearly better. The workflow and ease of use of the Apple software is significantly better in terms of filmmaking.

However, FCS really needs Photoshop (preferably Photoshop extended) as a companion. When you take that into account the decision really comes down to dollars. Since Adobe does some good prices on bundles that include Photoshop along side After Effects and Premiere you need to weigh up the cost of FCS2 plus Photoshop compared with the relevant Adobe bundle. In my opinion the Apple software is better overall, but the Adobe bundles work out significantly cheaper.

But perhaps to put things in perspective it’s worth noting that five years ago, either package would have been like mana from heaven - far more advanced than anything ever seen at the price that either system come at now.

All materials © 2006 Phil Davison
All rights reserved.