Curious of the pros and cons of premier over other editing programs on a PC, particularly Vegas. I am using a new Vista system, so far have dual core 5000 amd, 4 gigs of ram, two dvi 256 meg ram on an nvidia 8700 and will add a second card to run two dvi one off this and one off the 8700, and on the 8700 I will also run a 42inch 1080 lcd as a means to view direct on a TV instead of monitor only.

I will be editing HDV from a Canon XHA1 and possibly a HV20 as the backup, but mainly the XHA1. And mainly 24p/f but possibly 60i as well.

Should I get a matrox card? does it make a difference? if so how much on board memory is enough? Matrox said they have card that have 128 that would be better than one nvidia at 512? any recommendations?

Anything else I should get up and running? have several drives in a raid, all sata and some firewire externals, plus at the moment have a second firewire card in the system so I can run the camera an drives seperately if needed. I will also be using a firestore most often for download instead of direct capture if that matters.

Thanks for any help, I am coming from a still background and just getting started in this and looking for as much info as I can get.

Stephen Eastwood
http://www.StephenEastwood.com

The major plus Premiere has over anything else is the Dynamic Link with After Effects. The one downside with PP2.0 is that there is not a way to record back to tape on the A1. This problem will be fixed in Premiere CS3.

Sorry I don't have any answers for your other questions. Maybe someone else with more knowledge can add something.

Since you're a photographer, and especially if your editing app is Photoshop, you will feel "home" right away in the Adobe Suite, the interface is very similar across all programs. If the plusses can be compressed into one word, that would be integration - switching your project from one app to another is a huge plus for me. If you have special effects in your plans, than After Effects will be your best friend - most people editing in other programs come to AE anyway when it comes to effects.

Just visited your website - awesome images!

Stephen,

First, I have to say that you must really love women to make them look that good. I would love to have that kind of talent, but it just isn't meant to be.

I recommend looking into getting Cineform Aspect HD if you want to edit HDV with Premiere Pro. Read through the Cineform forum here at DVInfo. I believe that Cineform is the only way to get the 24P material done correctly.

If by Matrox card, you mean a graphics card like the Matrox Parhelia APVe, I have one and like it. You can use it with Photoshop and After Effects as well as Premiere Pro. I use it to display my HDV material on an external HDTV. But your planned method should work just fine.

My drives are set up as folows and work great for me:
OS Drive - 150GB 10,000 rpm
Video Drive - 2 X 250GB SATA 7200 rpm in RAID0 configuration
Scratch Disk - 250GB SATA 7200 rpm

I regularly take the footage off of the video drive and back it up to an external drive after completing projects. Then I defrag the disk.

I do the same after finishing projects. I clean off the scratch disk and defrag.

thanks for the compliments as well.

I am curious why use several programs, does'nt Premeire capture HDV?

And as for after effects does that work with Vegas or as a stand in like it use too? I had years ago aftereffects 4.0 but that was some time ago.

Stephen Eastwood
http://www.StephenEastwood.com

Stephen - does the Matrox card show the source monitor while full screen HD while you are editing? I'm looking for a way to view my edits realtime on my HD monitor in Premiere 2.0 like i do at work on my avid, but premiere doesn't have a breakout box like the adrenaline or mojo for avid....

Why use multiple programs? Well, I have never been happy with using Premiere Pro to edit native HDV. The Cineform plugin provides a great intermediate codec, which by the way, is also available for Vegas. And there is a beta for the Mac.

Cineform Aspect HD adds the scene detect on capture that Premiere Pro is missing. And After Effects likes the Cineform AVI better than native HDV.

When I need native HDV for a tutorial or for direct copy to a DVD-ROM, Aspect HD's HDLink utility does that for me as well.

After Effects can be used with any NLE on either Mac or PC, and is used that way by many people every day. It is just better with Premiere Pro if you buy the entire suite from Adobe - the CS3 suite will be the "Production Premium" and comes with everything you need from start to finish. With the suite you get "Dynamic Link" which allows fantastic integration between the Adobe applications.

Hi,
I too would like to compliment Stephen on his photography, being a photographer myself I really can appreciate his work, the lighting on some shots in the 'folio is superb. Most of my stuff doesn't involve models but I am
certainly impressed with the techniques. Anyway enough of the flattery, I have noticed that you and I are following the same lines, Canon xha1, pp2 software etc, Would you like to swap notes, as we grow and learn about this excting development to our digital world.

What is your main use for the video?

Primarily I am going to be streaming my stuff?

Regards

Darren Shipman.

www.dpix.co.uk
www.digipackshot.co.uk

Premiere interface is easy to use if you are familiar with any other adobe products. so it's very easy to use the production studio because changes in interfaces are minimal to non-existant. its a much faster workflow for me.

how ever the biggest downside to premiere is their compression/encoding software. it straight up sucks. gotta buy other plugins for compression. there goes that workflow i was hoping for.

I think the main benefits that I've noticed are that compared to other applications, Premiere was the one I learnt the most easily. I have a recent version of Vegas, but every time I try to use it, I struggle to work out how it's meant to work. I understand that lots of people get some extremely good results from it, so I'd like to give it a go. But I certainly found Premiere easier to understand.

Mark,

I find your comments on compression interesting. The MPEG2 and WM9 work fine for me. The Quicktime is almost useless though.

Mark,

I find your comments on compression interesting. The MPEG2 and WM9 work fine for me. The Quicktime is almost useless though.

sorry just having a bad day w/ premiere today
mpeg2 often works good for me as well. it's the slo-mo's that always suck.

Well, the good news is that CS3 has much improved slow motion and now has Time Remapping similar to After Effects.

I have a recent version of Vegas, but every time I try to use it, I struggle to work out how it's meant to work.

As a premiere 1.5 user I had the same problem, I tried several NLE's the past months because I was planning to update. Vegas was most definetely the most difficult one to understand. I read many positive reviews about it but found that all what was so easy to achieve in Premiere was just a big frustrating job in Vegas. Vegas is defenitly a very good program but the developers build Vegas with an audio program in their mind with editing features.
Premiere is much more logical and intuitive build, same as fcp or edius pro. As an editor it's much easier to switch between those programs then to go to Sony Vegas. I ordered premiere/encore cs3 yesterday, eventhough its 30% more expensive then the vegas/architect combination it's a good investment for me as I can edit with it without thinking, just like writing or shifting gears in a car. :)

Well, the good news is that CS3 has much improved slow motion and now has Time Remapping similar to After Effects.

werd
i got cs3 already but i was going to give twixtor a try w/ ppro2

If you'd like to see an example of the new time management in Premiere Pro CS3 then go here http://www.adobe.com//designcenter/video_workshop/index.html?id=vid0235

and select the example under Premiere... it does look interesting...