Does Premiere kind of suck or is it just me?

[kearlywi]

Ok now that I have everyone's attention :

After using Premeire about 75 hours over the last 2 months, I'm finding that many of the effects that I want to use are either impossible, or are pulled of sloppily. Namely the effects I want to use are ones that layer one peice of another. This can sometimes be done nicely, for example if Im just putting a non - animated peice over and animated one (because I can modify that non animated frame in photoshop). But what happens if I want to take a clip of a character, who is animated, over another animated character (and I dont mean using opacity bands). In this case I would have to export out each damn frame and mod each one so that the background would be transparent. This would be difficult to do over the course of an entire amv, so is there an easy way to pull this off in less than an hour?

also how can i show a clip below another clip with a moving window. I can make a box in the corner of a clip which can then be made transparent, but can I get that box [or shaped area] to move around showing the clip underneath? (without actually having either of my clips moving, only the transparent area moves).

Also, how can I delete all my old preview files from my previous AMV (or do I need to? [do they delete themselves])

Thanks for your help in advance, I don't mind if you send me links, I'm not afraid of investing time reading longwinded guides. And I dont think premiere sucks, its just that I've found its abilities limited (so far) and it doesnt seem like the type of program one would use to create an effects masterpeice like Rahzephon-Euphoria (which wasnt made on premiere from what I understand.) Its still a solid program.

What would you all say is the BEST editing program for effects (like the ones used in "Rahzephon-Euphoria"?

[Zarxrax]

Yes, Premiere sort of sucks. No, theres no way to do effect like you want in under an hour. Believe it or not, it actually requires you do the work. Not sure about your next question... As for the preview files, go to My Documents folder, Adobe\Premiere\Adobe Premiere Preview Files\ and delete junk from the old projects. For my effects needs I use Adobe After Effects.

[turboneko]

I am not 100% sure but yet pretty much sure that every single effect in Euphoria was made in Premiere and/or Photoshop (I was able to duplicate most of them, just for the fun of it ).

If you use your imagination, creativity in the use of the standard transitions and, sometimes, *lots* of manual work then you can do pretty much everything.

If you want to have more advanced tools than the ones that Premiere offers, then switch to After Effects that looks ideal for the type of compositions you want to make (but greatly lacks the ability of doing frame accurate editing and beat synchronization -> for that you should still use Premiere).

In any case, as Zarxrax pointed out, whatever program you use it can make your life simpler or harder... but certain tasks (e.g.: extracting a character from a background) still require a lot of manual work.

Hope this helps.

[TaranT]

I am not 100% sure but yet pretty much sure that every single effect in Euphoria was made in Premiere and/or Photoshop...

I don't think so...
But you're probably right. They could have been.

[Scintilla]

I am not 100% sure but yet pretty much sure that every single effect in Euphoria was made in Premiere and/or Photoshop (I was able to duplicate most of them, just for the fun of it ).

I'd heard that all those effects were made in MS Paint and some Magix or somesuch editing program... who knows for sure what was used?

[kearlywi]

Yes, Premiere sort of sucks.

Unfortunately, after working with premiere for such a long time I have to disagree with the assumption that all those effects could potentially be done in premiere. Even by exporting frames one at a time its scarcely possible to layer the way he did without getting messy (in premiere). I have had to do several things frame by frame, and I'm not afraid to work, however I want to have fun. Having to pull 1500 frames and make the same areas transparent over and over again because a computer program can't pull of that particular job, is to me work for Monkeys. I am really disapointed to hear that there isnt a basic "extraction" type tool for video clips. If there was such a tool on a different video editor, I would buy it.

Your advice helpful, despite being dissapointing.

[Ashyukun]

I have heard rumors of there being software to 'knock out' characters and such from stills (and as an extension, video)- but I have no doubt that they likely cost in the vicinity of what some of us who work full-time professional jobs make in a year. Masking out characters- accurately and so it looks good- is no easy task if they weren't initially filmed to do so (i.e., blue or green screen). Especially when they're moving. Not to be too crass, but- if you don't want to put in the time to do a certain effect- just don't do it. The few videos I've made that have involved masking and rotoscoping characters from different shows together have taken considerable amounts of time. I forget exactly how much time Vlad spent on Transcending Love- but I'm sure it makes the time I've spent look like a tick of the stopwatch. Masking and rotoscoping characters is less of an effect than it is an art, and require many things- not the least of which are time and patience. You're not going to jump in and make a 3 minute video of Lina Inverse and Shinji dancing together in a week.

That said, I think you're trying to make Premiere do a bit too much. Premiere is an excellent non-linear video editing program. However, it is not (at least as of 6.5, Pro is a different beast from what I hear) designed for doing a lot of effects that we like to use. Look into getting After Effects. It makes it much easier, IMO, to do masking and the likes and to composite characters and scenes together. Note- I said 'easier'- it still takes a lot of time and work to do. There's a reason Adobe tends to sell Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator as a bundle- they're made to work together, and with them- and a lot of time, patience, and imagination- you can make just about anything you want.

[Flint the Dwarf]

I am not 100% sure but yet pretty much sure that every single effect in Euphoria was made in Premiere and/or Photoshop (I was able to duplicate most of them, just for the fun of it ).

I'd heard that all those effects were made in MS Paint and some Magix or somesuch editing program... who knows for sure what was used?

Yup, MSPaint and Magix Music Maker Deluxe.

[jonmartensen]

Oh noes, there's not a magical program to do all my work for me!

[Corran]

But what happens if I want to take a clip of a character, who is animated, over another animated character (and I dont mean using opacity bands). In this case I would have to export out each damn frame and mod each one so that the background would be transparent. This would be difficult to do over the course of an entire amv, so is there an easy way to pull this off in less than an hour?

\

There really isn't an easy way to do this. AE is probally easier but this isn't what I'm here to tell you anyways.

also how can i show a clip below another clip with a moving window. I can make a box in the corner of a clip which can then be made transparent, but can I get that box [or shaped area] to move around showing the clip underneath? (without actually having either of my clips moving, only the transparent area moves).

To do this you first you need to create a grayscale image(It doesn't have to be grayscale but if your just going for plain transparency grayscale is what you need.) in an image editing program. This image will have whatever shapes you make for the transparency may it be a box, circle, happy face, gun, etc (centered in the image) and will be larger than the video's resolution(ideally, doesn't have to in be unless you are panning the image with motion settings. That way when you pan you have enough image visible throughout the pan. (I hope that makes sense to you )). Whatever 'color' (white or black) you decide to use for the background or the object/s doesn't matter because of an option called reverse key which I will explain in a little bit. (BTW Pure white and pure black will either be transparent or opaque where as grays will be translucent.)

Once you save your image into a format that Premiere can work with, import the file and tell premiere to keep it's aspect ratio. I believe you can do this by right clicking on the image, going to video options, and clicking maintain aspect ratio.

Next drop your background footage into a superimpose track. (Tracks 2 and higher in A B editing mode). Drop your foreground footage in the next higher track. Finally drop the image you made into the track above your foreground clip. Right click your foreground footage, go to video options and select transparency. Click on the available transparency modes and select video matte( I believe it is called something like that I can't remember right now... It should be the last one on the list. Image matte may work in this situation also but if you see what I'm talking about select that first anyways)

Select ok to accept the changes and close the tranparency options window. While holding the alt key, scrub the timeline to preview the clip without rendering. If the right areas are transparent you can go ahead and apply motion settings to your image clip and have fun. If the areas you want transparent are opposite what your seeing go back into the foreground clip's transparency options and select the 'reverse key' option and hit ok.

Also, how can I delete all my old preview files from my previous AMV (or do I need to? [do they delete themselves])

This is very simple. First go to the directory that you've been saving your project file to. You should see a folder titled something like 'Premiere preview files'.(This is the default location, this folder may be somewhere else if you manually changed it in premiere which you should know where if you did.) Next open that folder and delete the folder that corresponds to the project file's name that you used when editing your old project. All preview files associated with that project file are now in your recycle bin or completely gone if you used the shift key in conjucntion with delete to bypass the recycle bin.