Adobe made a very smart move on Wednesday offering disgruntled Final Cut Pro users an easy way to switch to Premiere Pro for their video editing needs. I sat down with Premiere’s product manager to discuss the market and what’s happening with Premiere Pro and what effect Final Cut Pro X has had on its business.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Many Final Cut Pro users have complained that the latest version of the app is not that useful for professionals. This misstep has given Adobe an open door to show users Premiere Pro. While Adobe has taken advantage of the opportunity, the company said they are just expressing their strengths.

“We’re not changing anything on the back of what’s happened in the past couple of weeks [with Final Cut Pro],” Al Mooney, Product Manager, Premiere Pro at Adobe Systems, told The Loop. “As a result of this more people are trying Premiere Pro, and that’s great.”

Yesterday I pointed out that Adobe posted video tutorials and documents to help Final Cut Pro users switch to Premiere. The results have been good for Adobe, but Mooney pointed out that people have been switching for some time.

“This isn’t the beginning of people switching, we’re just stepping it up,” said Mooney.

When asked specifically if more customers were contacting Adobe after the release of Final Cut Pro, Mooney said, “absolutely, it’s been really striking.”

Mooney said that Adobe is looking at more than just offering users the short term benefits with its latest push. The company is showing users that the Premiere Pro platform is something that can fill all of their editing needs from now on.

“This is not just a marketing push,” said Mooney. “We’ve been making a real effort to ensure that the learning curve with Premiere Pro is shallow. The application uses fundamental, established paradigms. We want it to be an intuitive app.”

Adobe says its seen growth from less than 1 million seats of Premiere Pro in 2006 to 2.3 million in 2010. Mooney credits Adobe’s pro users, but also the amount of new people that are coming into the video editing space, for the growth.

“We have been doing this for a long time,” said Mooney. “During the process of building the application, we have been talking to editors to find out what they need. Part of our strength is that we listen to our customers and build products to solve their problems.

“You have to innovate as well as solve problems. You have to do both,” said Mooney.