Curious about which editing software Hollywood uses?

The final stage of making a film involves post-production. If you go to YouTube, you will see that most of the people out there will cover one of three editing software. Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro. Now, if you are a YouTuber or a freelancer, it’s fine. But not in Hollywood.

Even though Adobe Premiere Pro is extremely popular, it is far from the final choice. Photoshop has no good alternative, but After Effects is losing ground fast to Blackmagic Fusion, despite the added complexity of a node-based workflow. Premiere Pro is extremely easy to work with, but is absolutely not stable, which is why nobody uses this thing for editing Hollywood films.

Final Cut Pro X became a popular choice due to its simplicity, performance, and stability. But it has lost ground to Davinci's resolve because it is available both on Mac and Windows, so switching OS platforms for editing is not nearly as painful. And the free version of Resolve has so many features for $0. And Resolve’s color capabilities remain unparalleled.

Avid Media Composer Timeline

What Hollywood actually uses is Avid Media Composer. It is extremely stable and has audio tools similar to those in Avid Pro tools The UI is terrible, and has limited support for Video codec. But, it is the standard editing software for Hollywood.

In my experience, when it comes to learning this software, however, it is a little harder to transition to resolve. But Final Cut and Avid are not that difficult to understand. However, I will say that, of all these, Premiere Pro and Final Cut are the easiest to learn. If you are just starting, both are much better options compared to more entry-level solutions Like Camtasia Studio.

Written by: Ambar Chakrabarti (Post-Production Head Camera7 Productions)