Editing Program similar to Premiere

Tim Frank · February 16th, 2004, 05:58 PM

I'm looking for an editing program that's similar to Premiere 6.0/6.5/Pro. Now the thing is that I like PRemiere Pro, however my colleauge refuses to work with it and says if we end up purchasing an Adobe product to use for our editing purposes we'll be buying Premiere 6.5.

The only other progam I've found that even appears to edit in the same way as Premiere is Final Cut. But here are the pro's and cons of each thing why I don't want to use them:

Avid DV/Pro
Pro: GREAT System, it has to be good if they edit movies on it!!

Cons: Completely different style of cutting and editing into one final project - Can only use on one computer at a time with the USB Key.

Vegas Video:
Pros: Comes with DVD Software, I hear its stable

Cons: Different style of editing also...I can't seem to figure it our any more than I can Avid.

Final Cut Pro:
Pros: I'd go with it in a heartbeat if it was on PC...but since its not its stable and it has a very similar style to Premiere, probably with more features and effects on it also

Cons: Expensive system to setup. I don't own a mac to play around with it for awhile like I have for Avid and Vegas...so if we went Mac it would cost more and we're stuck with it!!

Premiere:
Pros: I know how everythign works on it...I like it
Cons: Not as stable...especially with versions before Pro and there's no way I can get my partner to use Pro (don't know why but he's tried it and says he won't).

Now...I don't really feel like learning a whole new setup for editing. I like the way Premiere has done it and I've heard before that it either works for you or it doesn't...there's not really an inbetween, and that's exactly the point I'm at right now.

Can anybody give me any compelling reasons to turn one way or another? If I could find a video tutorial on how to perform simple edits maybe I could start leaning towards Vegas or Avid...however I can't so I've just ruled those two out. Any suggestions, comments would be greatly appreciated!

Tim

Adrian Douglas · February 16th, 2004, 06:35 PM

Get a new partner and stay with Premiere!!!!

Have you looked at Pinnacle Liquid Edition. Again, it's a different style of editing but it's a good app and pretty stable. Ulead havae Media Studio Pro but it's more of a consumer product. If you were to purchase a Canopus DV card like the Storm2 you'd also have Edius which is Canopus's own NLE and reportably quite good. With the Canopus card you coulld also have Premiere there if you wanted to cut something with it.

Tim Frank · February 16th, 2004, 06:38 PM

What would something like a Canopus DV Card help me with? Is it just like a piece of hardware that will speed up the rendering and program for editing DV itself? I'd really just rather stick with Premiere Pro, but I've tried and tried to get my partner to switch...his only reasons are its unstable, everthing he tries to do crashes on him.

Glenn Chan · February 16th, 2004, 07:19 PM

Final Cut is unstable for some folks too, and it isn't stable without patches. Premiere Pro crashes pretty quickly on my computer doing basic stuff. Vegas may have crashed once on my system (it stopped responding, I didn't wait and closed it down by accident). Most Vegas users don't get any crashes with it- you'll be hard pressed to find frustrated users on Vegas forums as opposed to Adobe and FCP forums.

Premiere 6.5 is very frustrating.

I don't know... choose the NLE that fits you the best. A lot of them have demos. To figure out Vegas, go print out the shortcut keys list stickied in the Vegas forum. FCP is similar to Premiere, but it can still be unstable and Macs are kinda expensive.

Bryan McCullough · February 16th, 2004, 07:40 PM

I can understand why some people don't like Premiere, but I can't for the life of me understand how someone could prefer 6.5 over Pro.

I've been with Premiere since 4.1 (I think) and Pro has been the single greatest version jump I've ever seen in this line. It's really heads above what they've done in the past.

Mostly because it's a lot more like FCP now. ;)

I'm sticking with Premiere for the time being because of Adobe Encore. There's not a huge level of integration between Encore and Premiere that's of value, but I love Encore and it's just easy to stick with the Adobe suite.

I'm seriously considering an Avid workstation for the next upgrade.

Tim Frank · February 16th, 2004, 08:13 PM

Yeah, I love Premiere Pro over 6.5, but he thinks its unstable. I did think it was just the comptuer he was using but then we formatted and he "claims" it still crashed, however Premiere Pro has been very reliable and user friendly for me.

I guess its just I like dragging all the clips I need down tot he timeline and cutting and moving from there. Even if it's not the most efficient way of doing it compared to maybe Avid, its the easiest for me to see and place the clips in my head and see where I want them to go. At this point I think I'd only go with Avid for the effects it has. I'll see what I can dig up in terms of more tutorials for these other programs to see if I can learn to like them, but I just can't get myself to part from Premiere Pro, even if its not the most stable out of all of them, I haven't had major problems with it.

BTW, one other question. In terms of rendering out files to Mpeg2(DVD), is there any one program that is faster than other? I heard Vegas is not that great for rendering speeds. Premiere Pro takes about how long the clip is for me. That's what we'll mainly be doing though, exporting to DVD.

Tim Frank · February 16th, 2004, 08:17 PM

One other question, does FCP have a lot of effects, or 3D Titles, or anything like that? How do these compare to Premiere? We're doing car dealer commercials...and they tend to like those.

Boyd Ostroff · February 16th, 2004, 08:49 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Tim Frank : Can only use on one computer at a time with the USB Key. -->>>

Actually I don't believe you are allowed to use any of these programs simultaneously on more than one computer. Only difference is that Avid has a way of enforcing this.

Bryan McCullough · February 16th, 2004, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim Frank
One other question, does FCP have a lot of effects, or 3D Titles, or anything like that? How do these compare to Premiere? We're doing car dealer commercials...and they tend to like those.

I can't speak to FCP, but you should really get up to speed with After Effects.

You'll blow them out of the water with all kinds of title effects.

Jed Williamson · February 16th, 2004, 09:02 PM

Here is a similar program

http://www.mainconcept.com/mainactor_v5.shtml

They have a fully functional demo that only has the restriction of watermarking footage.

They must be good programmers, as other companies license the mpg2 encoder (Adobe)

And the super cool thing is you can use it on Linux. So you could create a turnkey system for pretty cheap!

Give them at least a download. It's only $199 for the complete program.

Glenn Chan · February 16th, 2004, 10:02 PM

Quote:

One other question, does FCP have a lot of effects, or 3D Titles, or anything like that? How do these compare to Premiere? We're doing car dealer commercials...and they tend to like those.

If you're looking for lots of effects stuff, you might want to take a look at Edition. It has lots of real-time and renders in the background, so you wouldn't have to render much. It has tons of different effects.

http://www.videoguys.com/edition.html

IMO special effects are usually cheesy and don't make up for a lack of good content. As far as transitions and video effects go, most are really cheesy and not impressive. Well I'll get off my soapbox now...

Tim Frank · February 16th, 2004, 10:36 PM

Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think I'd ever buy a Pinnacle product again. I could never get one to work for the life of me without crashing. Yeah, the effects are cheezy...but we're doing car commercials...the king for cheezy commercials with cheezy effects.

Tim Frank · February 18th, 2004, 12:17 PM

What editing program do you think is best for editing LONG hours of video. We'll be doing 30-hours of total video in one thing, however I was thinking now that once we're done editing it all-toghther its going to have to be broken down into 2 hour sections. We're going to need a program that will handle a significant amount of video in its timeline. Is FCP up to this?

I know Avid is, but I need to figure out how to use it first.

Premiere Pro would be the best for this with their new sequence feature. I can easily break everything down into 2-hour sequences and then add it all-together in the end.
Do you think on a well-built computer, (say 2.8ghz p4, 2GB ram, and a couple 120gb hdd's) would be able to handle that without crashing Premiere. I don't want to be saving every couple minutes scared that I might crash it. I'm also a person that clicks around if a program is frozen...which can end up helping to crash it more in the end.

Once again I think Premiere would be the cheapest route for us to go with simply because we're not buying a Mac, so you save right there. You can add multiple burners to a PC, and we can upgrade the storage as we go. We'd be spending maybe $1000 per comptuer with 2 burners vs, $1800+ for a comparable mac. Not to mention there's the video editing software cost on top of that.

Glenn Chan · February 18th, 2004, 12:56 PM

FCP kind of has an issue with large, complex sequences. Once it starts getting big your FCP project size will grow (~10-30MB) and sometimes you have to wait for a "Preparing Video for Display" window. There are workarounds for it. The one that really works is editing in smaller sequences, and then putting everything together (with nesting, or by cutting and pasting).

No idea about Avid or Premiere Pro.

The NLE you are looking at might have 2 or 4 hour limitations.

J Michael · February 18th, 2004, 02:24 PM

<<<--
Actually I don't believe you are allowed to use any of these programs simultaneously on more than one computer. Only difference is that Avid has a way of enforcing this. -->>>

I just researched this issue for non-simultaneous use on different machines. With Vegas if you want to use the software on a different machine you will have to re-register it. With Avid you should be able to have non-simultaneous use on multiple machines by moving the key.

February 16th, 2004, 05:58 PM	#1
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	Editing Program similar to Premiere - FCP?? I'm looking for an editing program that's similar to Premiere 6.0/6.5/Pro. Now the thing is that I like PRemiere Pro, however my colleauge refuses to work with it and says if we end up purchasing an Adobe product to use for our editing purposes we'll be buying Premiere 6.5. The only other progam I've found that even appears to edit in the same way as Premiere is Final Cut. But here are the pro's and cons of each thing why I don't want to use them: Avid DV/Pro Pro: GREAT System, it has to be good if they edit movies on it!! Cons: Completely different style of cutting and editing into one final project - Can only use on one computer at a time with the USB Key. Vegas Video: Pros: Comes with DVD Software, I hear its stable Cons: Different style of editing also...I can't seem to figure it our any more than I can Avid. Final Cut Pro: Pros: I'd go with it in a heartbeat if it was on PC...but since its not its stable and it has a very similar style to Premiere, probably with more features and effects on it also Cons: Expensive system to setup. I don't own a mac to play around with it for awhile like I have for Avid and Vegas...so if we went Mac it would cost more and we're stuck with it!! Premiere: Pros: I know how everythign works on it...I like it Cons: Not as stable...especially with versions before Pro and there's no way I can get my partner to use Pro (don't know why but he's tried it and says he won't). Now...I don't really feel like learning a whole new setup for editing. I like the way Premiere has done it and I've heard before that it either works for you or it doesn't...there's not really an inbetween, and that's exactly the point I'm at right now. Can anybody give me any compelling reasons to turn one way or another? If I could find a video tutorial on how to perform simple edits maybe I could start leaning towards Vegas or Avid...however I can't so I've just ruled those two out. Any suggestions, comments would be greatly appreciated! Tim

February 16th, 2004, 06:35 PM	#2
Adrian Douglas Trustee Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Chigasaki, Japan. Posts: 1,660	Get a new partner and stay with Premiere!!!! Have you looked at Pinnacle Liquid Edition. Again, it's a different style of editing but it's a good app and pretty stable. Ulead havae Media Studio Pro but it's more of a consumer product. If you were to purchase a Canopus DV card like the Storm2 you'd also have Edius which is Canopus's own NLE and reportably quite good. With the Canopus card you coulld also have Premiere there if you wanted to cut something with it. __________________ Adrian DVInfo.net Search for quick answers Where to buy? From the best in the business...DVInfo.net sponsors

February 16th, 2004, 08:49 PM	#8
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,802	Re: Editing Program similar to Premiere - FCP?? <<<-- Originally posted by Tim Frank : Can only use on one computer at a time with the USB Key. -->>> Actually I don't believe you are allowed to use any of these programs simultaneously on more than one computer. Only difference is that Avid has a way of enforcing this.

February 18th, 2004, 02:24 PM	#15
J Michael New Boot Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Atlanta Georgia Posts: 16	Re: Re: Editing Program similar to Premiere - FCP?? <<<-- Actually I don't believe you are allowed to use any of these programs simultaneously on more than one computer. Only difference is that Avid has a way of enforcing this. -->>> I just researched this issue for non-simultaneous use on different machines. With Vegas if you want to use the software on a different machine you will have to re-register it. With Avid you should be able to have non-simultaneous use on multiple machines by moving the key.

February 16th, 2004, 06:38 PM	#3
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	What would something like a Canopus DV Card help me with? Is it just like a piece of hardware that will speed up the rendering and program for editing DV itself? I'd really just rather stick with Premiere Pro, but I've tried and tried to get my partner to switch...his only reasons are its unstable, everthing he tries to do crashes on him.

February 16th, 2004, 07:19 PM	#4
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Final Cut is unstable for some folks too, and it isn't stable without patches. Premiere Pro crashes pretty quickly on my computer doing basic stuff. Vegas may have crashed once on my system (it stopped responding, I didn't wait and closed it down by accident). Most Vegas users don't get any crashes with it- you'll be hard pressed to find frustrated users on Vegas forums as opposed to Adobe and FCP forums. Premiere 6.5 is very frustrating. I don't know... choose the NLE that fits you the best. A lot of them have demos. To figure out Vegas, go print out the shortcut keys list stickied in the Vegas forum. FCP is similar to Premiere, but it can still be unstable and Macs are kinda expensive.

February 16th, 2004, 07:40 PM	#5
Bryan McCullough Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Richardson, TX Posts: 842	I can understand why some people don't like Premiere, but I can't for the life of me understand how someone could prefer 6.5 over Pro. I've been with Premiere since 4.1 (I think) and Pro has been the single greatest version jump I've ever seen in this line. It's really heads above what they've done in the past. Mostly because it's a lot more like FCP now. ;) I'm sticking with Premiere for the time being because of Adobe Encore. There's not a huge level of integration between Encore and Premiere that's of value, but I love Encore and it's just easy to stick with the Adobe suite. I'm seriously considering an Avid workstation for the next upgrade.

February 16th, 2004, 08:13 PM	#6
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	Yeah, I love Premiere Pro over 6.5, but he thinks its unstable. I did think it was just the comptuer he was using but then we formatted and he "claims" it still crashed, however Premiere Pro has been very reliable and user friendly for me. I guess its just I like dragging all the clips I need down tot he timeline and cutting and moving from there. Even if it's not the most efficient way of doing it compared to maybe Avid, its the easiest for me to see and place the clips in my head and see where I want them to go. At this point I think I'd only go with Avid for the effects it has. I'll see what I can dig up in terms of more tutorials for these other programs to see if I can learn to like them, but I just can't get myself to part from Premiere Pro, even if its not the most stable out of all of them, I haven't had major problems with it. BTW, one other question. In terms of rendering out files to Mpeg2(DVD), is there any one program that is faster than other? I heard Vegas is not that great for rendering speeds. Premiere Pro takes about how long the clip is for me. That's what we'll mainly be doing though, exporting to DVD.

February 16th, 2004, 08:17 PM	#7
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	One other question, does FCP have a lot of effects, or 3D Titles, or anything like that? How do these compare to Premiere? We're doing car dealer commercials...and they tend to like those.

February 16th, 2004, 09:02 PM	#10
Jed Williamson Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 175	Here is a similar program http://www.mainconcept.com/mainactor_v5.shtml They have a fully functional demo that only has the restriction of watermarking footage. They must be good programmers, as other companies license the mpg2 encoder (Adobe) And the super cool thing is you can use it on Linux. So you could create a turnkey system for pretty cheap! Give them at least a download. It's only $199 for the complete program.

February 16th, 2004, 10:36 PM	#12
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think I'd ever buy a Pinnacle product again. I could never get one to work for the life of me without crashing. Yeah, the effects are cheezy...but we're doing car commercials...the king for cheezy commercials with cheezy effects.

February 18th, 2004, 12:17 PM	#13
Tim Frank Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: TN Posts: 166	What editing program do you think is best for editing LONG hours of video. We'll be doing 30-hours of total video in one thing, however I was thinking now that once we're done editing it all-toghther its going to have to be broken down into 2 hour sections. We're going to need a program that will handle a significant amount of video in its timeline. Is FCP up to this? I know Avid is, but I need to figure out how to use it first. Premiere Pro would be the best for this with their new sequence feature. I can easily break everything down into 2-hour sequences and then add it all-together in the end. Do you think on a well-built computer, (say 2.8ghz p4, 2GB ram, and a couple 120gb hdd's) would be able to handle that without crashing Premiere. I don't want to be saving every couple minutes scared that I might crash it. I'm also a person that clicks around if a program is frozen...which can end up helping to crash it more in the end. Once again I think Premiere would be the cheapest route for us to go with simply because we're not buying a Mac, so you save right there. You can add multiple burners to a PC, and we can upgrade the storage as we go. We'd be spending maybe $1000 per comptuer with 2 burners vs, $1800+ for a comparable mac. Not to mention there's the video editing software cost on top of that.

February 18th, 2004, 12:56 PM	#14
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	FCP kind of has an issue with large, complex sequences. Once it starts getting big your FCP project size will grow (~10-30MB) and sometimes you have to wait for a "Preparing Video for Display" window. There are workarounds for it. The one that really works is editing in smaller sequences, and then putting everything together (with nesting, or by cutting and pasting). No idea about Avid or Premiere Pro. The NLE you are looking at might have 2 or 4 hour limitations.