Editor Purchasing Advise

Hero4Hyrule · Post by **Hero4Hyrule** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:17 am

I am planning on purchasing editing software soon and have narrowed it done to Adobe Production Studio Premium. My question is concerning whether or not to get the Production Studio or the Video Bundle. The Video Bundle is essentially Production Studio with Flash Professional. After some research, it seems the only thing Flash will allow me to do is export my video into the Flash program and render it using the Flash Video codec. I currently have no plans to do any kind of web design, but who knows what the future will bring. The Video Bundle ($2,099) is $400 more than the Production Studio ($1,699). Flash Professional is $700 standalone, so it is a definite deal to get it in the bundle assuming Flash is something I want/need. I am currently working exclusively with AMVs (because it's fun =P) but do plan on branching out into live action and whatever else I can get my hands on. The money is not really an issue with me, but I don't want to spend $400 if I'm not going to use it.

Now for my questions. Does anyone know more about Flash and how it can be utilized with video? Is this Flash codec worth anything? And even though I have every intention of sticking with Adobe, I am curious as to your impressions of Adobe editing software over other brands?

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:32 am

Well, flash is great for vector graphics and animation, but is mainly for the web. If you are only interested in video stuff, I think it honestly won't be of much use to you. However, this comment is coming from someone who has never used Flash...

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:44 am

Oh, as for your other question, I think adobe stuff is very good for the most part. After Effects has got to be one of my favorite programs ever--it's just a ton of fun to play around in and see what you can make with it. Adobe Premiere Pro... I honestly have to say I don't like this program. I stick to the older Premiere 6.5. Pro just doesn't work out for me, for numerous, numerous reasons that I don't have time to get into again at the moment. A lot of people do use Pro and don't complain about it toooo much though. The Adobe Encore DVD authoring software is very nice. It's extremely easy to work with. The only time I used it though, I spent a week trying to get it to actually build my dvd, because it was crashing and giving me cryptic error messages that gave me no clues as to what the problem might be (turned out my video bitrate was too high). Assuming you don't run into any similar problems, it really is an awesome DVD authoring program. As for Audition, I don't do a whole lot of audio editing, so I can't comment much on it. It does look like a good, solid audio editor though. The rest of the stuff... yea, it's all pretty good.
Adobe stuff all integrates together quite nicely, so having an all-Adobe workflow is nice. The programs also look and feel somewhat similar for the most part, so concepts learned in one app often apply in another.

AMV_4000 · Post by **AMV_4000** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:02 am

Zarxrax wrote:Oh, as for your other question, I think adobe stuff is very good for the most part. After Effects has got to be one of my favorite programs ever--it's just a ton of fun to play around in and see what you can make with it. Adobe Premiere Pro... I honestly have to say I don't like this program. I stick to the older Premiere 6.5. Pro just doesn't work out for me, for numerous, numerous reasons that I don't have time to get into again at the moment. A lot of people do use Pro and don't complain about it toooo much though. The Adobe Encore DVD authoring software is very nice. It's extremely easy to work with. The only time I used it though, I spent a week trying to get it to actually build my dvd, because it was crashing and giving me cryptic error messages that gave me no clues as to what the problem might be (turned out my video bitrate was too high). Assuming you don't run into any similar problems, it really is an awesome DVD authoring program. As for Audition, I don't do a whole lot of audio editing, so I can't comment much on it. It does look like a good, solid audio editor though. The rest of the stuff... yea, it's all pretty good.
Adobe stuff all integrates together quite nicely, so having an all-Adobe workflow is nice. The programs also look and feel somewhat similar for the most part, so concepts learned in one app often apply in another.

.... i agree 100% with this!
AE is tons of fun, Premiere Pro is a pain to us older editors who are used to 6.5/6.0/5.5/5.0.... but then again it can be useful to someone who is new to editing... Encore is good for dvd authoring, never touched audition... but lemme just say this... Look EVERYWHERE for the programs you want... sometimes you may find good deals on them.. and i have used flash before... If your doing websites, Dreamweaver is pretty good *not use if thts in the bundle* and flash itself... kinda a waste of time when you have after effects... truth be told, last version of flash that i had... i found out that i could do everything and more, and do it better in AE... its all about being creative isnt it? but hey, if you want it get it, if you got the money... go for it!

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:31 am

So I shouldn't considder discontinuing my use of 6.5? ^^

I do have to admit, I like A/B editing. >.>

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:12 pm

DJ_Izumi wrote:So I shouldn't considder discontinuing my use of 6.5? ^^

I do have to admit, I like A/B editing. >.>

For someone who has After Effects at their disposal, I don't really see any reason to change from 6.5. Pro has quite a few more features than 6.5, but honestly I couldn't care less about any features it might have. For anything more complex than simple cuts and fades, I'm taking it into after effects anyways.
Now that I have some free time, I'll point out all the problems I see in Premiere Pro that weren't problems in 6.5:
1. Pro thinks it can play stuff in realtime instead of rendering, even when it obviously cant. Its incredibly annoying to try and preview your work, but its just playing back a choppy clip where you cant tell whats going on. Why the heck isnt there an option to make it always render prevews?
2. Maybe it only happens with me, as I've never really heard anyone else complain, but premiere pro constantly freezes up on me for well over 10 seconds at a time... over and over again. I cant work when the editor is not responsive.
3. Its just SLOWER than 6.5. Scrub over the timeline in both 6.5 and Pro, and you can see that 6.5 is way more responsive than Pro. Pro feels sluggish and laggy.
4. Audio scrubbing is degraded from 6.5. When you scrub over some audio, its just harder to make out. It sounds less smooth and more broken up.
5. It makes you "conform audio" for every clip you import that has audio. This can take a long time and eats up a ton of disk space. Most of the time, I don't even plan to ever use the audio that is present on the clip. To work around this you have to process your video files through virtualdub or something first, and save them without audio.
6. The export is buggy as hell. I can't export out to codecs like huffyuv or lagarith, and I'm stuck just going uncompressed.

Of course, to be fair, I guess I could point out the main problems I have with 6.5 as well: 1. Doesn't support 23.976 framerate. Thats pretty much it

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:40 pm

I think I can refute some of those premiere pro problems...I think.

counter 1: maybe this is done in other versions (I dunno, I've only used pro 1.5) but pro does render previews. whenever you make a change to a section on the timeline, there is a section between the timeline marks (the individual tick-marks) and the video layers that changes from green to red.

when you preview, pro only renders the portion that has changed since the last preview (and then saves it a s a preview file in pro's program file). So when you press enter, you're watching pre-rendered files.

I have come across problems with pro not previewing smoothly before, but that usually only happens when I have another high-memory program open.
the program also seems to slow down sometimes when I try to go from one section of my vid to another (I assume that's due to it loading the effects and preview pics/wavefrom).

for #2, it just might be your system. things like using clips stored on an external drive can slow premiere down (same thing with a horribly fragmented HD, it takes extra time to get all of the info), age of the drive(s) and thier interface types (IDE, SATA) and other things can also lead to slow/no performance

since I haven't worked with 6.x I can't offer anything for #3 and #4.
I've never had to deal with #5, and #6 is true, the export sucks. I have to export uncompressed RGB if I don't want any garbage frames.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:57 pm

Kariudo wrote: counter 1: maybe this is done in other versions (I dunno, I've only used pro 1.5) but pro does render previews. whenever you make a change to a section on the timeline, there is a section between the timeline marks (the individual tick-marks) and the video layers that changes from green to red.

It renders previews if the frame is sufficiently complex, meaning if you have multiple clips on-screen at once, or if you have effects/motion or something. If you simply have a single clip down with no modifications, it wont render it.

AMV_4000 · Post by **AMV_4000** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:29 am

your amv hell CE video about why premiere pro sucks says it all...

and pro is a waste of time and money if your getting after effects... get premiere 6.0 or 6.5 and save a headache..

Hero4Hyrule · Post by **Hero4Hyrule** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:19 am

Thank you all for you help.

After some more thought, I am about 90% sure that I will get the Video Bundle. I don't currently have plans for web design, but like anything else, I will probably see something shiny in Flash and end up loving it. Plus, my wife is into web design and I'm sure she will find a way to utilize it.

I have only ever worked with Pro 1.5, so I think it is good that I don't know what I am missing. I have not had any problems with it. Once I changed the preview codec to something less hardware intensive, it ran like a champ. The only audio problems I had were effects based that I won't have with Audition. The only problems I have ever had with Pro were via the trial version. That one crashed constantly, though I think that was due to the hardware heavy preview codec and I couldn't export for nothing with that. Full version worked great. As far as comparison to 6.5, again, I won't miss what I never knew.

Thanks again.