The Best Video Editor in 2025: Premiere vs Final Cut vs Resolve

Summary

Choosing the best video editing app in 2025 greatly depends on your specific project needs and personal workflow. Tyler Stalman examines the top contenders Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Da Vinci Resolve by dissecting their strengths and addressing their weaknesses. Premiere still holds its position as the industry standard with vast third-party support and flexibility, but its subscription model and stability issues are notable drawbacks. Final Cut Pro boasts speed and smooth integration in Apple's ecosystem, yet it falters with fewer color and audio tools and lack of collaboration features. On the rise, Da Vinci Resolve offers powerful free tools and integrates comprehensive color grading alongside audio features in a single app, though it struggles with the same standardization in video editing as Premiere. With differing strengths, the decision boils down to what suits your workflow and budget best.

Highlights

• Adobe Premiere's flexibility and cross-platform capabilities make it an industry staple. 🌍
• Final Cut Pro excels in speed, essential for quick editing tasks. ⏩
• Resolve offers unmatched color grading capabilities, even at a free price point. 🎨
• Adobe's seamless Creative Cloud integration supports extensive team collaborations. 🖥️
• Final Cut's intuitive design and magnetic timeline streamline the editing process. 🧲
• With Resolve, editors can tap into deep color grading tools without leaving the app. 🖌️

Key Takeaways

• Adobe Premiere remains the industry standard but has stability issues and a costly subscription model. 💼
• Final Cut Pro is the fastest editor with seamless Apple ecosystem integration, yet lacks advanced color tools. 🍏
• Da Vinci Resolve offers a robust free version with excellent color grading, yet is still growing in video editing popularity. 🎨
• All three editors have unique AI tools enhancing modern video editing capabilities. 🤖
• Final Cut's speed and simplicity make it ideal for quick content creation, especially for YouTube. 🚀
• Resolve continues to impress with frequent updates and powerful built-in tools like Fusion and Fairlight. 🔧

Overview

In 2025, the debate between Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Da Vinci Resolve continues to dominate video editing discussions. Each platform carries its unique strengths tailored to different editing environments. Adobe Premiere is renowned for its flexibility and extensive user base, making it an industry favorite, especially within large teams and agencies. Its regular updates and profound integration with Adobe's Creative Cloud are noteworthy, despite frequent stability issues and the perpetual cost of its subscription model.

Meanwhile, Final Cut Pro holds its throne as the swiftest editing suite with seamless integration across Apple products. Its intuitive design and magnetic timeline make it a favorite among YouTube creators and quick-paced production environments. However, its limitations in advanced color correction, audio tools, and collaboration features do stand out. Still, for those embedded within Apple's ecosystem, its $300 one-off price remains an attractive option.

Finally, Da Vinci Resolve is swiftly becoming a formidable contender with its exceptional color grading and free access features. It bridges the gap between advanced functionality and cost-effectiveness, boasting an impressive array of creative tools housed within one suite. Although it may trail behind in video editing popularity compared to Premiere, its dedication to frequent updates and cross-platform versatility makes it a loudly growing favorite among new editors.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Video Editing Apps The chapter discusses the difficulty of choosing the right video editing app due to different project requirements. It highlights the challenge of learning new software once you're accustomed to one. The chapter focuses on the top three video editing apps: Adobe Premiere, Apple's Final Cut Pro, and Blackmagic's Da Vinci Resolve, mentioning that each can be a good choice depending on the user's needs. The speaker reveals a personal preference for Final Cut Pro, with additional color grading done in Da Vinci Resolve, and has experience editing with Adobe Premiere.
• 00:30 - 03:30: Adobe Premiere Pros This chapter discusses the advantages of using Adobe Premiere as a video editing software. The primary benefit highlighted is that it is the industry standard, meaning it's widely used among professionals, which can be advantageous for job seekers aiming to work in agencies or larger teams. Moreover, Adobe Premiere's cross-platform compatibility allows it to function seamlessly on both Mac and Windows operating systems.
• 31:30 - 33:30: Adobe Premiere Cons Adobe Premiere is highly flexible, offering limitless ways to arrange its interface to suit personal editing styles, which can lead to a messy workspace. The software provides numerous editing options, enhancing user experience by allowing diverse editing approaches. Details about the cons of this flexibility will be discussed further.
• 03:30 - 06:30: Final Cut Pro Pros The chapter explores the flexibility and collaborative features of Adobe's editing tools, particularly focusing on Premiere. It highlights the ability to select clips, apply colors, and mix audio in various ways. A key point is the collaboration potential offered by Adobe, as users can work on the same project, leveraging tools like team projects and the integration of the creative cloud suite for seamless web syncing. The emphasis is on the adaptability and connectivity Adobe provides for both online and offline project assembly.
• 33:30 - 37:30: Final Cut Pro Cons The chapter discusses the disadvantages of Final Cut Pro, particularly highlighting the subscription model. Despite the monthly fees, there is an upside with frequent updates and unexpected new features, which act as a reward for continuous payment. The narrative also praises Premiere for its industry standard status, which encourages extensive third-party support and early release of new tools and plugins.
• 06:30 - 09:00: Da Vinci Resolve Pros The chapter discusses the advantages of using Da Vinci Resolve for video editing. One of the highlighted benefits is the strong online community that provides ample resources, tips, and support for beginners. Although there is some emphasis on the seamless integration with Adobe's Creative Cloud suite when using Premiere, the chapter suggests that this is not a significant advantage since Da Vinci Resolve offers built-in solutions for effects and tasks that would typically require Adobe After Effects or Audition.
• 37:30 - 40:30: Da Vinci Resolve Cons The chapter discusses the disadvantages of Da Vinci Resolve, focusing on its integration features which are considered less important compared to other aspects such as speed in video editing. The author emphasizes the significance of speed in video editing, particularly when using Final Cut Pro, which is known for its quick editing capabilities. The speed advantage is highlighted as especially beneficial in the context of producing YouTube videos.
• 40:30 - 48:00: AI Tools in Video Editing In this chapter titled 'AI Tools in Video Editing,' the focus is on the advantages of using Final Cut Pro for video editing, especially in high-volume environments such as commercial and social media settings. The speaker emphasizes the need for speed in editing due to the lack of time for detailed edits and how Final Cut Pro's interface facilitates faster editing. Additionally, its optimization for Mac hardware, being an Apple product, is highlighted as a significant benefit.
• 48:00 - 53:30: Pricing and Conclusion This chapter discusses the stability and performance of the video editing software Final Cut. Historically known for its stability and efficiency, recent updates have led to a decline in stability, causing more frequent crashes especially at launch. The speaker notes that these could be due to specific bugs that arose after a major update. However, they still recognize the software as effective for beginners who are new to video editing.

The Best Video Editor in 2025: Premiere vs Final Cut vs Resolve Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Choosing the right app for editing video is tough. It all depends on which projects you're working on. And once you've mastered one, it's hard to learn the others. So, today we're going to go over the top three biggest and best video editing apps out there. Adobe Premiere, Apple's Final Cut Pro, and Blackmagic's Da Vinci Resolve. They can all be a good choice. Just depends what's right for you. To lay my cards on the table, I'm primarily a Final Cut Pro editor that does a lot of color grading in Da Vinci Resolve. I did edit full-time in Adobe Premiere for a few
• 00:30 - 01:00 years, but that's a little while ago now. So, I have a little bias there that it's the one that I use the least today. We're going to be doing this with some pros and cons lists starting with Adobe Premiere pros. So, the best thing about it by far is that it is the industry standard. You will find the most people working in Premiere. And if you want to get a job at an agency or you'll be working with a bigger team, it's most likely that that's probably what they're using. Premier is crossplatform. So whether you're working in a Mac or Windows environment, you can bring your
• 01:00 - 01:30 video editing software with you. And I describe one of Premier's defining characteristics that it's very flexible. Like you can kind of just do whatever you want in there. And that's seen in the interface, dragging different components around the screen is virtually limitless. You can arrange things however you want and really scale the app to the exact style of editing that you're into. That can also make things messy, but we'll get to the cons later. and not just the interface, but all of the decisions you make in your edit. Adobe allows you a lot of different ways in to that style of
• 01:30 - 02:00 editing. So, from how you select your clips to how you apply colors and mix your audio, there's a lot of ways to do it. Adobe is very flexible. Premiere is also great for collaboration. This is part of why teams and agencies pick it up because you can work with other people on the same project with things like team projects and the whole creative cloud suite can integrate a lot of different web syncing together. So there are various tools to bring projects together online and offline. It's again about the flexibility with Adobe and it also say that they are a
• 02:00 - 02:30 fast-moving company. Whether you like paying the monthly subscription or not, it does mean that they keep bringing out updates. A lot of the times things nobody's expecting. They have interesting surprises every year. So as you keep paying month-to-month, there is usually a little reward when they make a new announcement and there's some crazy new feature you never expected. Being an industry standard means there's amazing thirdparty support for things like plugins and different tools that all work within Premiere. And when something is released for the first time, it often comes out for Premiere. And along with
• 02:30 - 03:00 that, there's a huge community online to learn more about editing. Just a lot of tips and tricks floating around, people supporting each other, and that really helps when you're getting started. And Premiere's final pro is actually something I would deemphasize, and that's the integration with the Creative Cloud suite. Like a lot of people say, well, it works directly with After Effects and Audition, but it's actually not much more difficult, even in Final Cut to also be integrating with those apps. You don't need to use the Adobe roundt tripping to do things like special effects. And Resolve has their own solutions built in. So, yes, there
• 03:00 - 03:30 is cool integration, but I don't think it's actually that important. And now, the app that I'll be editing this video in and most of my others, Final Cut Pro, and it's pros list. Now, the most important thing to emphasize here is speed. It is by far the fastest place to cut video. And remember that as we tally up these pros and cons, each one isn't worth as much as the others. This speed thing is worth a lot, especially in the environment that I work in. Things like YouTube videos, we do a lot of
• 03:30 - 04:00 commercial social media stuff at high volume. We just do a lot. And spending a really long time on specific edits is not a luxury we often have. So, if you're in one of those environments, that's one of the best reasons to consider Final Cut Pro. So, in addition to the speed of editing, and by that, I just mean the way the interface presents you with clips and allows you to cut them, like you move more quickly as you edit it. But on top of that, it's also very well optimized for Mac hardware. Because it's written by Apple, you can always guarantee that it's going to be
• 04:00 - 04:30 running as fast as the hardware you're using can possibly handle. Historically, it's also been the most stable of the three. Generally, I don't have a lot of crashes at all. It's not something I worry about until Final Cut 11. It's actually become less stable for me. I've had more crashes. Specifically, one just when I launched the app, it spins often. So, I don't know, maybe there's just some specific bugs that need squashing since that big update. Usually, it runs really well, though. Usually, if you're new to editing video, it's probably
• 04:30 - 05:00 going to be the fastest of the three apps to pick up. The learning curve is not as steep as the others. The only thing to keep in mind is because it works quite different from Resolve and Premiere, the skills don't really translate. Like it's less traditional with its magnetic timeline, you kind of get addicted to that timeline cuz it's so easy to use. Just be aware that it's not the standard. So when you go somewhere else, it might be different. Now, I know look and feel isn't everything, but Final Cut is nice to look at. Like it just feels good to be in there, and it depends on your
• 05:00 - 05:30 sensibilities. features I'm using every day are right in front of me and the more complex stuff is a little more buried in the menus so I don't have to look at it all the time. Final Cut also has excellent third-party plug-in support. I've done some videos about the ones that I use. And by far the best developer for this is Motion VFX. I talk about them often. There's a link in the description below to some of the plugins I use all the time. But this will also come up in my cons list because you got to pay for them. It adds up. So keep that in mind. And finally, if you don't
• 05:30 - 06:00 already know, the Apple ecosystem is very comfortable to work within. There's also the iPad app, which has great multi-cam recording, and then you can take those files and transition right to your Mac. I've done some videos about that in the past. And also Final Cut camera for the iPhone. All of it works well together because, you know, it's Apple stuff generally. That's what they do best. Now, Da Vinci Resolve, why is it the big upandcomer that you hear so much about, so many people are switching to, and even me, I consider moving away from Final Cut to use it? Well, first of all, if you don't already know, it is
• 06:00 - 06:30 the worldclass color grading tool. That's what it was before it was a video editor. I've been using it when you couldn't even cut videos in it because the color tools are incredible. That's why I still open it all the time because there's things you can do in that app that not only you can't do in the other video editors, but I can't even do in Photoshop or Lightroom or Capture 1. Resolve has incredibly powerful color tools. They are deep. We will not go into all the details here, but just take my word for it. There's more than you
• 06:30 - 07:00 will ever have time to learn. And of course, the other big headline feature is it can be free. You can get most of all of the tools you need with the free version of Resolve. Everything else we talk about here, I'll be referring to the paid studio version. It's not that expensive. I think it's worth it, but you can get started and work for years just using the free one. It has most of what you need. Similar to Premiere, Resolve is also cross-platform, but it takes it up to the next level. It also runs on Linux, and the iPad app is the
• 07:00 - 07:30 same as the desktop app. That's pretty amazing. The release schedule is wild. The amount of new features that come to Resolve makes me so jealous as a Final Cut Pro user, but it it's great. They're pushing the industry forward, setting the bar higher, and I just love to see it. And you know how I said Premiere is customizable, but that makes it messy. and Final Cut is really well organized, but that structure is sometimes limiting. I think Da Vinci finds the best balance between the two of them. You can't move windows around quite as
• 07:30 - 08:00 much and customize all the way as Premiere and because of that, it always looks a little bit better and you know where to find things. They're always in the same place. I primarily work on the Mac, so that's where I've done extensive speed tests between these apps. And Blackmagic really optimizes this software on the Mac pretty much to the same level as Final Cut Pro. Like they're not quite a parody. I feel like Final Cut will always get there first because they know which features are coming. But in general, things like export times and playback are just as good in Resolve as they are in Final Cut
• 08:00 - 08:30 Pro. If you want to do VFX in compositing with Premiere or Final Cut, you need external additional apps. With Resolve, it's all built in in the Fusion panel. I am not an expert at using it at all. And there's also the fair light panel which is the audio mastering tools that are professional level and you know with Final Cut Pro or Premiere you either need to move out to ProTools or Audition to do real mastering but here in Resolve you can do it all internally. Blackmagic also offers collaboration
• 08:30 - 09:00 tools so you can work on the same project with a team remotely. And finally what I think is a good reason to choose Resolve is that it is the fastest growing of the three. It just has momentum behind it. I think a lot of new editors are picking up and I think it's going to be much bigger in the future. I bet eventually it will dethrone Premiere. And whichever of these apps you edit your video with, sometimes you just need more footage that you can't film yourself. That's where the sponsor of this video comes in, Art List. And they have some amazing new features I want to show you today. By now, you must
• 09:00 - 09:30 already know that Art List already has all the creative assets you need like music and sound effects and footage. But their latest edition, AI image and video generation, really is a step forward. I've been playing with these all week, and they have the highest quality generative models with curated visual styles. I'll start by showing you how it works. You choose something from their style catalog, and you describe an image, cuz we're going to create an image before the video. Let's say I want a cat taking a photo with a retro camera. Now, with prompting, you want to
• 09:30 - 10:00 be specific, and I don't want to type that much more. So, I'm going to click enhance. And art list is going to fill in the blanks and make this much more detailed. Of course, I can go in and say add a specific detail or remove something if I want, but that's pretty close. So, I'm just going to say generate. And while this generates, just keep in mind this is all covered by the Art List license. So, other image generation models or video models, you got to read the small print to know what you can and can't do with them. Art List has you covered like they do with all of their other creative assets. Once we have a still image we're happy with, we
• 10:00 - 10:30 just click animate. And again, Artlas suggests the prompt, so we don't have to do a lot of typing. You can modify it if you want. But then we can select our duration of five or 10 seconds and set our resolution as high as 1080p. Then click animate and wait for the magic. And of course, it's already part of the extensive artless catalog. So I can add sound effects, music, and you can pair them together to tell whatever story you need. And then try that prompt with another style. There's infinite room for creativity. But maybe best of all, you can try it all free today. Check out the link in the description below. And thanks again to Art List for sponsoring
• 10:30 - 11:00 this video. But as good as any of these apps are, the more you use them, the more you'll find things that drive you crazy. Let's go over the cons list. First, Premiere. App stability has been a problem with Premiere for years. It crashes, has random bugs. It is very old code that is running there. I keep hearing from full-time users that it gets better, and it keeps getting better, but generally, I think you'll have more problems with Premiere than either of the other two apps. Also, along with all that flexibility comes a
• 11:00 - 11:30 complicated app. It can take a long time to really learn how to use it and feel comfortable in there. And even when you do, things are generally just messier. Like, it doesn't feel quite as clean as the other two. And I think for a lot of people, the biggest issue would be the subscription pricing. You have to pay every single month. Let's round it to about $30 depending on the package. And that really does add up over time. This doesn't really bother me that much, although it is a consideration. If you are doing work in your video editing, you have to be able to afford $30 a
• 11:30 - 12:00 month to be considering this. I mean, if you're only looking at free apps, that's kind of like a different conversation, but if you're doing work, $30 every month should not be a substantial investment. So, I'm actually not that concerned about paying Adobe subscriptions, but at the same time, I'm not paying for Premiere right now. And I am happy about that because the other two are pay once and get upgrades forever. Now Final Cut Pro, a downside is that it is the least industry standard of the three. It is not used quite as widely. So you may have less
• 12:00 - 12:30 friends using it. You might find a little bit less support. Ever since Final Cut Pro 7, which was industry standard, changed everything and simplified things. When we went to Final Cut 10, it just became less popular. So, you're kind of using the underdog, which I don't really mind, but it's something to consider. What does drive me crazy is the mediocre color tools available. So, I was going off about how great Resolve is. Final Cut is not that. It has enough. Like, I do the color for most of my videos within it, but that's because I'm creating LUTs and looks and film
• 12:30 - 13:00 emulations in Resolve, exporting those out, and bringing them into Final Cut Pro. And without that workflow, I could not achieve the same looks with Final Cut alone. So, it can get the job done, but not without the support of other apps. Along the same line, the audio tools are pretty bare bones. They are enough to master a basic YouTube video, but you could not do a feature film in them. You'll always need to move out to something more advanced like ProTools. There are no built-in collaboration tools. So, for me, that means I'm just
• 13:00 - 13:30 handing off hard drives and using Dropbox to sync. There are third party solutions, but they haven't really worked for me. So generally Final Cut is better for like small teams of one or two people or solo editors. And maybe the biggest thing that ripples through these other complaints is that Apple's very slow with their releases for Final Cut. Just not much comes out and when it does, it's never enough. They are not nearly as fast as the other two companies and it kind of feels like at some point they will just be left behind. I hope not, but it feels that way. Now the downsides of Da Vinci
• 13:30 - 14:00 Resolve. First of all, I love cutting in Final Cut Pro, and I really dislike cutting in Resolve. It feels clunky. It feels slow. I know some of it is a lack of skill on my part, but I've seen other video editors break down exactly why you can never get to that same speed within Resolve. I hope they keep refining this over time, but it's not all the way there yet. There's also less third-party plug-in support. It is growing. Motion VFX has some, but it's not at the same level yet. And finally, although it is
• 14:00 - 14:30 industry standard for color grading, it's not at the same level as Premiere in the editing space. So those skills you have in Resolve may not translate quite as well when you go to work for an agency or are part of a bigger team. Now, in my notes for this video, I have a lot written about the AI tools available in these various programs, but I'm realizing there is just so much that I don't really have time to go into the full details of all of them. But it's clear at this point that moving forward, AI will continue to play a bigger role in video editing workflows. So, let's just kind of sum up how each program
• 14:30 - 15:00 fits into that. I'd say Premiere generally has the wildest, most chaotic and exciting approach to AI. Things like Generative Extend, where you can make video or music longer are just really ambitious, cool tools that are actually practical and I think editors weren't even looking for. We didn't know this could ever be possible. So, it's amazing to see Adobe pushing those boundaries. There's features like media intelligence where you can search for specific clips with text or use the transcript to actually edit your video. I think those kinds of features will become completely
• 15:00 - 15:30 standard expectations of what your editors can do in the future. Resolve already offers some of it as well, but Final Cut is just way behind on this. They haven't even really tried. But Apple did make a little bit of a push with Final Cut 11. So, they added the magnetic mask, which does a great job of automatically rotoscoping. They have voice isolation that I use pretty often. and it's just a single slider that cuts out a lot of the background noise and their smooth slow motion feature is really impressive. So, they can do this stuff, but then other features like
• 15:30 - 16:00 tracking or transcription is not at the same level as Adobe or Blackmagic. And then Resolve is also doing an amazing job. They sort of seem to be I think the most thoughtful in terms of AI that like the features are immediately practical like not as forward thinking but like oh I could see how I'd use that in my workflow today. So, they've got magic mask for rotoscoping, transcription editing, and also AI subtitles. But then they go further with things like their depth maps and face refinements. And their new multittrack like podcast editor I'm very excited to try, which basically autoedits multitracks. That is
• 16:00 - 16:30 powerful. That saves time that I don't need to be spending all my edits. And also, their voice isolation is excellent. I'd say a little better than Final Cuts. And the last thing to talk about is pricing. So Da Vinci has the clear win here because the free version is so powerful and this is why I think a lot of people are going to be picking it up like when you're in school. That's what you'll learn to edit with and then you just buy the full version and keep editing with it. Like why learn something new? So that is the winner for sure and you keep getting free updates
• 16:30 - 17:00 forever moving forward. The studio version is $300. I think as soon as you have the money available just buy it like no questions asked. Don't try to stretch out using the free version any longer than you need to. Final Cut Pro is also $300. Also worth the investment. I paid for mine like 10 years ago. Still getting free updates. I love that. And then clearly worst of all is Premiere. I mean, you're spending $300 a year. So like this is an ongoing investment. And if you stop paying, you don't have the app anymore. That is a pretty big
• 17:00 - 17:30 downside for virtually anybody. Again, if this is your job, like you just got to pay that bill because it's your job. But if you're just getting started, you're not making money from editing yet, I don't see why you'd choose Premiere. But everybody watching, I'd love to know in the comments like which app are you using cuz I get a sense of what's most popular. But let's get a poll going right now of like what are you guys using right now and do you ever think about switching? So, thanks again for watching, guys, and I'll see you in the next