Yet Another Which NLE should I get thread

[Glenn Chan]

Ok I'm splitting this thread off the videoguys top10 thread as to not hijack it.

Michael, usually the best approach to deciding which NLE to buy is to figure out what your needs are, and then getting the product that is best for your needs. Three big factors are your computer, your budget, and the kinds of editing you want to do. Each NLE has its own strength and weakness so there is no best one. Vegas for example is very stable, very powerful, has the BEST audio capabilities of any NLE, and is kinda cheap (relatively speaking). Edition on the other hand gives you the most real-time and has background rendering, while Vegas is slow at rendering.

Michael Plante writes in reply...

Ok answers to the questions:

Three big factors are

your computer: Am buying a new computer just for editing. Looking at Pentium 4 3.0 MHz with 800 MHz Front Side BUS with 1.5 Gig RAM kingston.

2 HD one samll for Windows XP professional. The other probably 250 GB Western Digital

Graphics card 128MB probably ATI RADEON 9800 128MB DDR

your budget: For the NLE budget is $1000

and the kinds of editing you want to do: Editing feature length movie off of mini DV panny DVX100 and JVC GY- DV500. The different cameras will NOT be used on the same movie

Your computer: If you haven't bought it yet then you might want to wait until you figure out which NLE you want to use since sometimes that will affect system requirements. Some of the Premiere Pro hardware boards for example are very picky. Also if you choose Final Cut Pro then you'd need a Mac.

Video card: most NLEs can't take advantage of a powerful video card like that one. Video cards have no effect on rendering, and can accelerate real-time effects for some programs like Edition. If you plan on dual monitors (which you should, since it's cheaper than one big one) then make sure you get the right outputs. You can even go triple monitor with some of the Matrox cards.

Feature length movies: Vegas isn't as good with media management as Final Cut, Premiere Pro, or Avid Xpress. I don't know about Edition or the other ones out there. If you need to online on a better system, then Final Cut and Avid will work. Unfortunately I don't cut feature-length films or use most of those NLEs so I can't tell you much about them.

How much raw footage are you going to shoot? DV is 13GB/hour.

Do you need 24p support?

Feature-length movies: Feature length movies are a big undertaking...! $1 milllion would be a small budget for an independent film.

[Michael Plante]

How much raw footage are you going to shoot? DV is 13GB/hour?

10 hours



Do you need 24p support?

Yes

[Mike Rehmus]

Always figure you need about 2-3X the storage that is required to hold the raw footage. Somehow all my projects grow and grow and grow.

[Richard Troost]

and the kinds of editing you want to do: Editing feature length movie off of mini DV panny DVX100 and JVC GY- DV500. The different cameras will NOT be used on the same movie

That's a strong point for Edition, it's so easy to use the footage of two different camera's and, with color editing it's real easy, "match" the differences. But okay, you don't want to shoot with the two camera's for one movie ? (But just think of the possibility's!)

[Michael Plante]

Great info.

I do appreciate all of you taking the time to reply. It has helped me quite a bit.

Thank you.