Adobe Premiere

[Diver Mike]

I am looking to move on to a more advance DV edit program. I am considering Adobe (complete suite) of whick Premiere is the cornerstone.

Anyone have good or bad experiences with it? Any suggestions for other software for DV editing?

Thanks,

Mike...

 

[drbill]

I pretty much learned mini DV editing with Premiere and find it does a fairly good job on the things I ask of it. I produce a 30 minute cable TV show on the underwater world. It very rarely exhibits any instability (and what it does exhibit could be due to the Windoze platform itself). File intengrity has been fantastic- a concern of mine with any software. I never lose anything I've saved.

It does have a bit of a learning curve depending on how many features you want to use. However, for basic editing purposes it is fairly simple (I say that as one who has used computers since 1967 and wrote my own programs until 1996).

Dr. Bill

PS I use Premiere with a Canopus DV Raptor RT board. Premiere's integration is excellent with that hardware. I have heard some other board products (Matrox and Pinnacle) were less compatible and more sluggish, at least in their early versions.

 

[Genesis]

I looked at Premiere and for my money, Vegas was the better buy.

I've found only one thing I can't easily do in VV that I can in Premiere - garbage mattes. There are ways around it, but they are not "clean".

However, other than that, it rocks. For underwater video where so much post-processing is the order of the day (color correction, etc) it is simply wonderful - and has NO stability problems.

 

[Otter]

drbill once bubbled...
...I use Premiere with a Canopus DV Raptor RT board. Premiere's integration is excellent with that hardware. I have heard some other board products (Matrox and Pinnacle) were less compatible and more sluggish, at least in their early versions.

Dr. Bill, do you use the Canopus board to encode the incoming video to mpeg directly or can it also be configured for rendering and encoding the final product while working in AVI format?

Genesis once bubbled..
...For underwater video where so much post-processing is the order of the day (color correction, etc) it is simply wonderful.

Does Vegas allow you to color correct an entire clip or must you go through frame by frame or ?

Craig

 

[Genesis]

allows you to:

Correct a clip.
Split a clip (an arbitrary number of times) and correct the PIECES.
Keyframe and change the corrections/adjustments based on the keyframes. Splits DO NOT affect the source files (e.g. they are non-destructive to your media pool.)

OR

Put one or more effects on an entire video TRACK, and then do the above from that point based on keyframes.

Any number of effects can be chained together, and you can have effects applied to the track and ALSO effects on individual clip(s) on the track.

Finally, you can have any number of video tracks, and by using opacity, you can "overlay" them as desired.

It is extremely flexible in this regard.

 

[DiveRite-SW]

I'm with Genesis all the way on this one.

Have tried almost every Windows-platform editing software out there, and none have the overall satisfaction-level as does Vegas. A lot have some of the same features or maybe have a couple different gizmos that are way-cool, but buck-for-buck you can't go wrong.

A lot of people moving from prgraom to program, but I've never heard of anyone moving from Vegas to anything else. Once they try it, they're hooked!

Not sure if it still exists, but there used to be a full-feature (but time-limited) trial version on their website. Take a look at their DVD-authoring application, too. Enjoy!


Disclaimer: I don't work for Sony (Vegas's parent company now) nor do I have stock in 'em. I just push what I like!

 

[Genesis]

VV has a demo, but it has limts. It will not render out to MPG format, for example, nor will it play more than 2 minutes continually off the timeline.

With that said, the ENTIRE PACKAGE with the DVD authoriing product can be had for under $400 from AUTHORIZED dealers. Full retail packaging, registrable, no problems. If you just want VV (you already have authoring software or don't need it) you can obtain that for about $250 - again, fully licensed boxed retail versions. Its even less - about $150 - if you can qual for an educational discount.