I'm upgrading my computer this weekend with Intel i7 920, 6gigs DDR3 1600, ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard, BFG 260 GEFORCE 896 ram, 150 gig WD Raptor System Drive, 300 Gig Seagate Applications Drive, 1TB G-tech ESATA external in software raid for video, ESATA Blue Ray burner, DVD CDRW Burner, on board sound (it's decent on this MB) but may install sound card?

OS- Vista Ultimate 64bit

Option 1: Plan to install Premiere CS4. I would like to use Prospect HD for it's real time and excellent codec, and Blackmagic Intensity card for overlay of time line to an HDMI external monitor, and perhaps later ingestion of 8 bit HD through HDMI once I have a better external raid array.

I'm waiting to see if Blackmagic, Cineform, and CS4 in 64 bit Vista will become a working reality? If so I will buy it right away.

Option 2: Alternative is to install my Matox RTx2 that I had running on my old Machine. They have new Matrox Tools Version that is for CS4 64 bit Vista, and you can overlay with RTx2 through DVI to an external monitor. Problem is that right now Matrox Tools RTx2 appears to be very full of problems with CS4 in 64 bit Vista, and I am not looking for a hair pulling project.

Option 3: Edius 5, with their HD spark card that has just HD out to external monitor. Apparently this all works well with 64 bit Vista. But I don't know Edius that well, and am much more familiar with Premiere, and also will have Photoshop and likely will have After Effects on my machine. Edius has great stability and excellent real time performance, but much less feature rich than premiere.

Any thoughts. . . anyone? Right now I think I'm going to be in a waiting mode more than anything else. There really doesn't appear to be any great option?

I do mostly 20-50 minute documentary on DVD of the history, culture, and genealogy of small villages on Polish Russian Boarder, but will now have Blue Ray option. I use motion video, quite a few stills, transitions, sometimes picture in a picture, etc. Sometimes music in the background and/or narration. I also just play around with video since days of Bravado MJPEG card, just prior to DV.

Tilford

Hi Tilford, I recommend getting Premiere Pro as long as you don't encounter any bugs with it. I say this because I have been a long-time Premiere fan and have never used anything other than it until I installed CS4 and had this weird program+source monitor problem which forced me to switch until I could figure it out. I must say, although some will disagree with me, that I cannot for the life of me use Edius 5 (tried the trial) - the interface, buttons, and inner workings of it give me a headache. Honestly as long as it doesn't crash and works fine, I love to use Premiere more than any other NLE. If you haven't used Premiere before I guarantee it is fairly straight-forward and you should be up and running in no time. Just my two cents.

edit: just realized that matrox is like a tool for premiere, never mind my last comment

Honestly as long as it doesn't crash and works fine, I love to use Premiere more than any other NLE. If you haven't used Premiere before I guarantee it is fairly straight-forward and you should be up and running in no time.
I guess you hit bull's eye, Colin... 'as long as it doesn't crash'... well said.

As far as Edius, I transitioned from Premiere - it took me about an hour to start editing and another day or two to get up to full speed. By far the most stable, wonderful tool, especially with the new features in version 5. Weak on the audio side - that was my main concern as well, especially since I am very proficient in Audition, but any VST plugin works fine in Edius, so that part is solved. Together with Procoder, Edius makes the perfect editor for me. I would love the Photoshop/Audition/After Effects integration of PremPro - but I guess you can't have it all, not at this price level at least.