I've used Pinnacle Studio and Premiere Elements. I'm trying to decide between Premiere Pro Suite w Cinneform, Vegas, or If it really is that superior, getting a Mac and going to FCP. FCP was on a mac at compusa, I played with it for a while, and from what I could see, it seemed very similar to Adobe Premiere. I'm only doing dv right now, but I need a new system anyway, and I'll be switching to HD within a year. Because my computer is full and slow, I have not yet downloaded the vegas trial verson yet. I'm looking for a good feature set and the best quality of encoding for DV d output, and hopefully soon HDDVD output. What works best for deinterlacing and going to progressive output? Thanks for your input.

Also in reference to these NLE's, it seems reading in the forum, that they all have their bugs/issues. I never upgrade to Pinnacle Liquid cause I got so tired of the crashes and freezes I had with Pinnnacle Studio 9. Seems like Liquid has some inconsistencies to it as well. The trial version of PremierePro, and Premiere Elements seem to be rather bug free, even on my old slow system (I'm going to order a dual core system :) or a G-5, but I'm kind of use to WinTel, and playing with a Mac in the store, although neat, has a few things I find awkward-too small buttons for minimize/expand/close, etc.. I don't recall if Premier has multi-camera support? Does Vegas? FCP does, and itsupports the MPEG4 output that will be required by HD-DVD's when they come out.

I have been using Eduis Pro3 , which is very stable , great quolaty , and very fast .and eazy to leaner, As with every thing , it is not prefect , it is not as feature rich like ADPPro or Vegas or FCP and some people do not like the interface , it also gives you RT out put and HDv Editing from the package with no speial card.

Thanks Gavin for the reply. I initially had Edius in my "pool" of NLE's to study, but several people on the forum did not like the feature set and workflow of Edius. Also, it looked to me like you needed the NX - ? package that brought the price up to $1995-unless you'd be trading in from a competing product. Do you not need Edius Nx for HDV? Just wondering too, what kind of machine you have? Mine is a 3 year old AMD Athlon XP 2000, 1 gig of pc2700 ram, 2 hard dives 120+160g. It still has enough power for everything else that I use it for, but deffinitely not enough for video. From what I've read, I guess the dual core cpu's are the way to go. The ? is Intel, or AMD?

Edius will also work with OHCI for HDV. You do not require the NX card, but it improves performance and provides a route to other add on options. You will need the fastest pc available for satisfactory performance.

NLEs are very much a personal preference. The only way for you to know is to try it and see. If it doesn`t suit your ways or needs then the answer is clear.

If you click, above, on > search > advanced search > key word edius > search titles only, you should find info on the state of play, pre the recent IBC announcements.

Paul,
As David mentioned, it's very much a "suck it and see" circumstance with which NLE you'll end up appreciating most.

There's demo versions of pretty well all the major ones out and about... Mind you, they won't necessarily let you play with your HDV files - but at least you'll get a feel for what's good, bad or ugly about each candidate.

Having said that - I currently use Vegas for the vast majority of HDV stuff I do. I've used Premiere Pro, but found it a little less intuative and FCP is very much like Premiere in look and feel...

So, if you have a PC that's got a 2.4Ghz P-IV or better - with plenty of Hard Disk space, a Gig or so of RAM and a nice big (larger than 17" preferred) monitor set at a minimum of 1280x1024 you should be able to manage fine... unless you want "real-time" editing.

There's other things that are worthy of consideration when choosing an NLE as well: such as; does it integrate with DVD authoring appz, and how extensible is it's architecture for adding 3rd party plug-ins for extra features etc...

Think long and hard, and try to play with as many as you can before you commit the hard cash.

Good Luck!!

I have Edius Pro 3, Vegas 6 and Premiere Pro 1.5.1. For hardware I have a Canopus DVRaptor RT2. For realtime DV editing Edius Pro3 is the clear winner for speed and realtime DV output. For HDV, Edius and Vegas can edit the m2t file from the camera as well as intermediate files while Premiere can only use the intermediate codec. Cropping and motion control is easier to use in Vegas as one can clearly see what is being cropped from the original as well as the result on the preview screen with excellent keyframe control add to that Vegas is the clear winner for audio. Premiere seems to have the best smart render for exporting files, Canopus and Vegas seem to render everything.

My use at the moment is
Edius for DV
Vegas for HDV or keyframe control of effects
Premiere for changes to files and titling ( seems easier to import into Premiere titler for me anyway and export is then super quick.)

Week points ( from my perspective)

Edius Pro 3 , keyframe control, track mattes
Premiere, m2t support, cropping interface, realtime performance
Vegas 6, rendering is painfully slow. realtime performance

Between them all I have what I want----except none of them have all that I want in one package!!!!!! Edius is the closest and the one I use the most.


Ron Evans

I'm trying to decide between Premiere Pro Suite w Cinneform, Vegas, or If it really is that superior, getting a Mac and going to FCP.
All of the NLEs mentioned in this thread are very good in their own right. However, I see that you are considering the Adobe Video Collection (I believe that is what you mean when you said Premiere Pro Suite), and with this package you get more than the some of its parts. You get not only Premiere Pro, but After Effects for compositing/visual effects, Audition for audio editing/effects, and Encore DVD for DVD authoring (and with the Pro collection Photoshop for graphics/image editing, and After Effects Pro). The integration between the Adobe programs is great; no other software publisher has come anywhere close to it in the video editing arena. You can import whole Premiere Pro projects into After Effects with all the clips and edits preserved for adding effects, paste individual clips back and forth between Premiere Pro and After Effects, create motion menus in After Effects for Adobe Encore DVD, and then export a still of that menu from After Effects as a Photoshop file with layers (an important part of the motion menu that will be needed in Encore DVD). You can export an avi or MPEG-2 file from Premiere Pro with chapter points for DVD already embedded that Encore DVD recognizes, and create/edit DVD menus in Photoshop for Encore DVD.

I don't recall if Premier has multi-camera support? Does Vegas?
Premiere doesn't have a built in feature for multi-camera editing, but it is still possible to edit multi-camera shoots with it. I've done it. There is also a third-party Premiere Pro plugin called MultiCam (http://www.unitedmediainc.com/multicam/) that can be purchased for multi-camera editing. As for Vegas, there is a multi-camera editing script available.

FCP does, and itsupports the MPEG4 output that will be required by HD-DVD's when they come out.
You can export H.264 MPEG-4 video from Premiere Pro (albeit in the .mov format), so long as you have the free QuickTime 7 player installed. As for high definition DVDs, it will still be a little while after such DVD burners are introduced until the price of the burners comes down out of the stratosphere, and we have DVD authoring software capable of authoring such DVDs. And even further until high definition DVD players reach any kind of significant audience penetration.

If you were only considering Premiere Pro on its own compared to the other NLEs, I'd say any of them would be a great choice. However, when you throw in the Adobe Video Collection with all the features and capabilities it brings to the table that changes the whole equation.

You would be mistaken to assume that Studio's issues would be in Liquid. Liquid has had a different development team from Fast (whom Pinnacle bought) in Germany. In fact, Studio 10 will be based on the Liquid engine. Liquid is very stable on my homebuilt dual Xeon with a ATI 9600XT card (video cards matter for Liquid as it uses the GPU).

Liquid also edits the raw Sony format and does not have render it first to M2T like some of the editors do.

I switched from Studio 8 to Liquid 4.5 and have not looked back. I also did it for a song as the Studio to Liquid upgrade is occasionally a real deal.

Liquid does multi-cam up to at least 9 cameras (or is it 14?). Liquid automatically saves changes 30 times a second. If a crash were to occur, any changes are not lost. Liquid also renders in the background, so you can preview most effects and continue editing without waiting for a render. I have seen unrendered GPU effects play in realtime before they are finally rendered because of the way Pinnacle uses the GPU on the video card.

Avid has announced continued support and further development of the Liquid series.

FCP does, and itsupports the MPEG4 output that will be required by HD-DVD's when they come out.

Future HD DVD players will supposedly support both MPEG2 (HDV) and MPEG4 video formats, so all the fuss over MPEG4 is arguably over-rated. Plus the H.264 output format emphasized on Macs turns out to be a poor solution for computer-based playback, because the hardware requirements for displaying these files on PCs are extreme compared to the more efficient Windows Media codec. So if you want to distribute HD video today then Windows Media on red-laser DVDs is a good choice, and when blue-laser players are shipping then we can simply distribute HDV directly at full quality.

By the way, I'm currently using Canopus Edius Pro 3 to edit HDV on a computer with an Intel dual-core processor running at 3.0 GHz. The output encoder in Edius seems to do a good job of rendering both standard DVDs and progressive-scan HD files from HDV material.

I strongly recommend the Adobe Video Collection suite, which inlcudes PPro, Encore, Audition and After Effects.

I've been a Premiere user and will not change simply due to the simplicity and interoperbility between the aps.

Regards,
Elie

I sure appreciate everyones comments. Yes I did mean the Adobe Video Collection-couldn't remember the full name :) I also meant the Vegas+DVD suite. It seems everyone is happy with pc versus Mac, and I think that would be my pref. over all as well. I have 2 500g Maxtor Sata drives sitting in boxes here. I'm thinking of adding 2 more for the new system plus 2 of my IDE drives for backup. I'm also figuring 2gig of ram. I'm still not sure which CPU to go with, any ideas?
I'm impressed with all the Edius supporters out there, didn't know there were that many out there using it; also, it seems Edius may have a bigger following outside of the US. My experience with the PPro demo/tryout was that it was relatively easy to figure out. Two things I didn't like; 1. when previewing, the current time indicator on the time line scrolls out of view, pinnacle studio would keep moving the timeline so that the current time indicator was on screen. 2. When using filters, it seems there's a lot of redundant mouse clicking: ie Click on contrast+brightness, and you have to click a down arrow for each Cont. + Br. to get the slideres to display for adjustment. Not a big thing and there may be short cuts I'm not aware of. Surprised there's not mre Vegas suporters out there. One Vegas users eluded to the need for PPro to use Cineform, but I've read that Vegas is agonizing slow to do HDV without the cineform codec as well. Finally, to the Liquid user, it is tempting cause of the cheap upgrade, but I have dual monitors, and I think Liquid kind of locks you into a 4x3 single display-again I could be totally wrong on this. Is the Title Deko pretty similar to the one in Studio? That seems a bit limiting. Thanks Again everyone for your help and opinions - PK

for more info on Vegas, Avid, Liquid & Edius check out our NLE round-up article
http://www.videoguys.com/Shootout2005.html

Gary

PK, I cannot comment on the 16:9 on duals. I only have a standard 20" CRT and have not run it on 2 heads. You could ask over in the support board for Pinnacle Pinnacle Pro discussion board (http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_forums.asp?WebboardID=14&SectionID=85&lng=1)

We'll thanks for everyones help and ideas. I have the following on my wish list at Newegg, ready to order tomorrow: AMD64X2-4200, 2gigs Corsair XMS Ram, Asus A8N-SLi Premium Mobo, BFG Nvida 7800GT video card, 2-250g Maxtor SATA hard drives, dvd burner, CoolerMaster Stk Case, and I will also use 2- 160g IDE drive that I currently have for backup. I just have one video card, could pickup a second for the SLi, but I hear those are kind of tricky, and not needed for video editing. What's everybodys opinion of this system, and what would YOU change? (and why).

My only hesitation is I see Apple now has the G-5 with dual 64 bit dual core processors at 2.5ghz for only $3200. Any info on how those are performing? Or links to test reports? I don't think you could get a dual AMD Opteron, or Intel Xeon system for $3200!

I accidently posted the above on the NLe thread vs the pc hardware one. Please Feel free to answer above ?? as well as below ??

My Panny GS-400 footage looks as good as a commericial DVD on a the 32" Sony upstais. However, on the 123" front projections system it looks washed out and not as sharp as a regular DVD movie.
I've also noticed that with Premiere Elements, the straight DVD (no image adjustment) looks inferior to the tape played in the camcorder hooked up to the firewire input of a component DVD recorder. It isn't as clean or sharp, and has less "punch." If I play extensively with every cut - sharpening, color correcting, brightness/contrast. etc. I can make it look closer to commerical DVD quality; However, with either Premier Elements or Pinnacle Studio 9.4, they freeze after 7-8 hours of rendering a 1 hr DVD.
I actually think the Pinn Studio 9 dvd encoder might be a tad better. Is the encoding quality of Premier Elements the same as the Full Adobe Premier, or Encore?

Is their much of a difference in output quality between Vegas+DVD, Adobe PPro/Encore, Pinnacle Liquid, Edius, or the Apple Final Cut Pro Suite? Which is Best?

I know, none are perfect, but before I fork out $$$, I'd like to figure this out. I think my 4yr old computer lacks the horsepower to demo any of the serious software above:(

I sure would appreciate anyones input on this:) Thank you for you, I assure you it is most appreciated.

Edius includes ProCoderExpress for encoding output. PCE is not as fully featured as ProCoder2 but it will give you several output options and excellent DVD quality. ProCoder enjoys a very good reputation.

Canopus is expected to release an add on product, called Speed Encoder, towards the end of the year in order to take advantage of the latest fast mobos. Initial reports are that this will offer big improvements in encoding tiimes.

Re your system compatibility, it may be wise also to check the relevant nle user forums to see if there are any issues with your new spec.