Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2006

[Devin Kelley]

One thing I've always liked about Sony Vegas over Premiere in past iterations is the ability to keyframe and animate every setting for any component. Due to compatibility and some of the nice advancements of Premiere 2.0 I'm heavily considering moving back to it as my primary NLE. There's some pretty good keyframing/animation features in Premiere 2.0 concerning effects, but I don't see that text itself can be keyframed, not even to accomplish something as simple as a slow expansion of tracking for a text element (I can zoom the scale of the whole text objects, but can keyframe any detailed text settings). Am I missing something? Or am I going to have to create it in After Effects or Borix Red? I'd really like to be able to do something as simple as this right within Premiere itself. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wachter

First the viewing screen is extremely gittery...i know its not the footage. Some times it seems worse than others....

That may well be the real-time preview. Depending on the amount and type of effects, Premiere dynamically adjusts the quality of the real-time preview to keep up a workable frames per second.

Originally Posted by Ryan Wachter

Second, when exporting as an avi it works but when trying to do it as a quicktime file it sends sudden error as soon as its done and then just stops...

If you did a search on the error message you might find a solution. You could also try uninstalling and reinstalling QuickTime.

[Geoff Murillo]

Hi,

I'm getting ready to shoot a short film with a professional Sound Mixer recording audio on an external recorder.

What is the best way to sync audio in Premiere Pro 1.5 to be able to edit?

Or should I save myself the headache and upgrade to Premiere Pro 2 to be able to sync audio with the multicam feature?

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Geoff Murillo

[Lloyd Coleman]

Lars,

The Auto adjustments look at each frame and make adjustments to that frame. When the conditions are changing like you describe each frame gets a different adjustment. As you watch the adjusted movie, you can see the flicker because each frame has a different adjustment applied to it. To avoid this, the Auto adjustments have a 'temporal smoothing' adjustment. If you set a number in this adjustment then Premiere will look not just at a single frame, but several frames each side of the frame it is adjusting and make a correction based on several frames. This will make the adjustments smoother over time and avoid the flicker you are describing. There is also a check box called 'scene detect' if you check this box Premiere will not take into account when a scene changes and not apply correction from the adjacent scene to the current one.

The Color, Contrast and Levels adjustment have some overlapping effects. Usually chosing only one will do what you need to do. I would only apply more than one if you see that it helps. This will keep the adjustments from working against each other and make your render times quicker.

Good luck.

[Lars Siden]

Lloyd ,

Thank you! Great input! Will check these settings ASAP

Regards,

Lazze Z

[Devin Kelley]

Given the price comparisons versus functionality strictly for the standalone NLE’s themselves, there's no contest; Vegas wins out. But let's expound upon that further. I’m just going to weigh all the options streaming through my head in writing, so bare with me. Keep in mind this is all from the perspective and experience of a single individual (me), so if anyone has further commentary or corrections, have at it. First, let's take a look at some numbers:

Premiere Pro 2.0: $849.00
After Effects Pro 7.0: $999.00
Production Studio Premium: $1699.00
Vegas 6.0: $449.95
Vegas + DVD Production Suite: $674.96
Boris Red 3.0: $1495.00

When doing a direct NLE to NLE comparison, removing effects products from the equation, with the ability of Vegas for rudimentary compositing and the capability of animating/keyframing every single aspect, it’s simply much more powerful than Premiere for much less cost, even when considering the greater wealth of plug-ins that are developed for Premiere over Vegas.

But once you throw an effects package into the mix that all changes, and price versus value shoots up the other direction with Premiere pulling ahead. For example, a Vegas + DVD Production Suite/Boris Red 3.0 combination would cost a total of $2169.96, which is significantly more than $1699.00 for Production Studio Premium, which would include a comparable toolset (including DVD authoring and sound editing).

Focusing on effects packages for a moment, it cannot be ignored that Boris Red doesn’t work as well with Vegas as it does with Premiere since Vegas architecture only allows a selected frame to be carried over (meaning that for Vegas, Boris cannot be used for any effect needing to change over time, such as tracking, stabilizing, etc. – the effect can only be applied equally across the entire clip). This gives Premiere even more leverage from an advanced effects perspective, despite its less comprehensive options for self-contained animation/keyframing.

On the other hand, Boris is arguably more powerful in a number of ways than After Effects, with certain native effects such as rain, snow, fire, etc. Those could be considered minor omissions from After Effects, especially given Red’s higher cost, but I've found that the tracker/stabilizer in Boris is much more effective than the one in After Effects, producing much better results. Furthermore (this one’s going to hurt where it counts), dynamic link is a step in the right direction, but Boris Red actually integrates better with Premiere than After Effects, being merely an effect that can be applied to a clip like any other effect.

So purely from a functionality standpoint, since Boris Red actually integrates better with Premiere than After Effects and includes more complex and advanced special effects natively, all with better results, the argument could be made that the best combination of an NLE with an effects package would actually be Premiere with Boris Red. But then again, there’s the price; Boris is much more expensive. Although, for a professional cost won't be as much of an issue. They're going to go with what works best for them.

The primary intent of this post, however, is not to consider an effects package at all, but rather the native abilities of the NLE’s themselves (Premiere versus Vegas, standalone). From that perspective, Vegas wins by an unequivocal margin, and not a particularly small one, being not only less expensive but much more fully functional when considering its extensive animation capabilities and native, built-in effects. At least from my view and to the best of my experience and knowledge, after the improvements that have been made to Premiere 2.0, any other differences one might mention are merely a matter of semantics, personal preferences, and learning curves. In the end Premiere is so close to being great that I can taste it, but then the disappointment of these few small yet important missing details sets in, which for me really boils down to one thing: the ability to fully animate text and a handful of other configuration settings.

To combat this in the marketplace, or in other words to pull in more converts from Vegas, I would suggest that Adobe tweak Premiere’s design a bit in a near-future iteration to include the ability to keyframe every element under the sun like Vegas does. Why leave any stone unturned? Doing so would not take away from the value of After Effects at all, which would still have a lot of complex compositing functionality not available within the NLE itself, for those professionals who need that capability (then again Boris Red has an edge over After Effects in functionality, so might actually be a better choice for the time being, although you pay more for it, so I suppose it evens out).

For those on a budget and in the market for an standalone NLE (without an effects product in conjunction with it), which I have a feeling comprises a very large percentage if not the majority of consumers out there, Premiere would become a much more empowering, viable and appealing option, even at its slightly higher price than Vegas, if it was at least as fully functional.

As someone who abandoned Premiere three years ago (after many years of use, since version 1.0 back in the 90's, in fact) for Vegas (for the reasons mentioned above, and at the time for native 24p 2:3:3:2 pulldown functionality, which Premiere has since improved on), I would be at least one consumer Adobe would be winning back over (meaning rather than jumping between the two products I’d drop Vegas and stick with Premiere).

[Eric Elliott]

Thanks for the unsolicited software bashing. Would you like to continue with a Mac vs PC rant?

[Ben Freedman]

Well, perhaps you didn't find his post useful, but as a video editor in the same position, I thought his post was thoughtful and interesting, and not just a 'bash'...

I, too, used Premiere until a year or two ago, and am always considering moving back if the workflow supports it.

Best,

Benjamin


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http://www.neo-fight.tv [The "Techno-Debate" Video Podcast]

[Tim Bickford]

Hi-

I'm a XL-2 user normnally, however once in a while when I'm using my Kodak "EasyShare" Z730 digital (still) camera I take a few minutes of video with the video function. The video format is Quick Time (.mov) and 320X240 with a frame rate of 11.61 frames per second. Needless to say the video is very jerky. It looks O.K. when viewed on a PC monitor at 320X240.

Q. What would be the best (cleanest) way to import into P-Pro-2 so that I can get 720X480 at say 24 or 30 FPS? I tried the "interprit footage" function. Assumed a frame rate of 24 in 24P mode - then slowed the footage down approximatly 50% in the time line.

That's the best that I could come up with.

Any thoughts....

Tim

[Lucinda Luvaas]

I'm trying to open a project I haven't worked on since October and every time I try to open it the computer freezes. Premiere asks for four missing files, and I've tried "Skip," Skip All," and not to open preview files, but nothing works. It runs through asking for the files and then once it got up to updating the files or whatever that's called, but the computer still crashed. I assume there's a corrupted file, but not sure.

I've trashed the preferences, run Norton Utilities, tried duplicating the file, I haven't saved it under a different name however, and other than reinstalling the software, I'm not sure what to do next.

When I left this project it was intact, or so I thought-- and saved. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have a backup disc. I do have one that needs to be finalized on my dvd recorder, but I doubt the whole movie is on there.

Has anyone else had this occur? I've never had this happen before.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

lucinda luvaas

[Christopher Lefchik]

In the folder where your Premiere project file is saved check if there is a folder named "Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save." If there is, there should be backup copies of your project that Premiere created.

[Frank Hool]

Maybe theres nothing wrong with those files that are gone but with any of those which still there. Very often it happens when you were playing meantime with codecs. Now some footage are interpreted with wrong/bad codec.
So if i remember correctly then app2.0 uses xml formed .pproj file. You can easily find all related files looking inside .pproj file. Locate them from Your HDD and move step by step to new place.

[Lucinda Luvaas]

Hi Christopher and Frank,

I'm using Adobe Premiere 6.5 and I'm not sure that I can do what you're saying, but I'll check and get back to you. I now use FCP, FC Studio that is, but I wanted to open this project and take parts of it for use elsewhere. I'll let you know soon. Thanks!

Lucinda

[George Odell]

Hello all...

I'm thinking of getting a laptop computer so I can set up a mobile editing system in my van. I use Premiere 6.5 in the office running on desktops with 7200rpm drives and it works just fine.

However, most of the laptops I'm looking at, like the Sony Viao, all seem to use 4200rpm drives for the lower noise, power consumption, heat, etc. I don't think this will create any issues during capture via firewire but has anyone had any experience with using these slower drives for capture??

Thanks!

[Graham Hickling]

Just wondering...has anyone tried Triplehead2go with PPro2?

http://www.matrox.com/mga/offhome/th2go/home.cfm

If so, what are your impressions? One specific question I had was whether video overlay can display on all three screens.