Editing software compared.

Kevin Shaw · February 18th, 2005, 02:52 PM

<<<Technically you are correct. But from a practical point of view, any corrections or special effects that you apply to the captured video must be processed in some manner to display on an external monitor. This is, in essence, "rendering" the video for preview purposes. This "preview rendering" may not be as full or complete as the actual rendering done to output your final video to file.>>>

For what it's worth, Canopus Edius offers extensive real-time DV editing capabilities with no rendering required on sufficiently powerful computers, and I believe the same can be said for Adobe Premiere Pro. Canopus even offers real-time HDV editing with real time HD monitoring using their NX or SP hardware cards, and Adobe is looking into offering similar HD monitoring support. Based on my own experiences with Liquid Edition and what I've read about Sony Vegas, neither of these products deserves to be described as a true real-time editing solution, although both have clever strategies for dealing with their lack of real-time output ability. And ultimately no editing solution can deliver full quality output under all circumstances for complex projects, so it's all relative in that sense. But for basic editing tasks, there's no comparison between real time "previews" and actual real time editing. If you have to render to view a simple color correction or basic PIP window at full quality on your external monitor, that's not real time editing.

Derek Lee · February 22nd, 2005, 12:51 PM

Which program will let let me use reverse playback and color isoloation? i.e. a pleasantville effect of black white with one object in color?

Glenn Chan · February 22nd, 2005, 03:42 PM

Final Cut, Vegas, and Premiere Pro will do the Pleasantville effect. Final Cut is slightly better than Vegas at this, which is slightly better than Premiere Pro. In Final Cut you can get good chroma smoothing filters (i.e. the built-in 4:1:1 color smoother, or Nattress' excellent G Nicer) which you can think of as upsampling the color information. Vegas has chroma blur, and I don't think Premiere has anything like it (but I could be wrong... I don't use it). Final Cut's secondary color corrector (3-way CC) has a softness setting, which blurs the mask from the secondary qualifiers/controls. Vegas can be hacked to do the same thing, but it takes lots of button pushing. Not sure about Premiere.

Combustion (compositing/effects program) will also do it. I'm not sure about After Effects or Avid.

Reverse playback: Final Cut and Vegas and Combustion have velocity/time remapping.

The other programs will at least do reverse speed (set speed, can't change it).

Richard Alvarez · February 22nd, 2005, 04:10 PM

Avid has "timewarp" effects and variable speed forward, fixed speed in reverse. You can use the speedramp plugin, and get variable speed in any direction.

The 'pleasantville' effect can be done, theres a tutorial on the web for it, though I've never done it.

Christopher Lefchik · February 22nd, 2005, 04:31 PM

Just a correction to an earlier statement that Premiere Pro/Matrox RT.X100 "need to create pre render clips to give u that "realtime" output." This isn't true. As long as the effect(s) used are within the limits of the RT.X100 system, it's pure real-time, no rendering required. For me, this is especially nice for color correction, which for a professionally done job really needs to be applied to every clip. For an hour long production this saves a lot of time. I can color correct every clip and instantly see the output in full quality on my TV monitor. The Matrox also has a real-time "Pleasantville effect" as well.

One feature I've come to appreciate very much in Premiere Pro is the multiple timelines available in one project. I can't say how much I'm using and enjoying this feature. For instance, in the current project I'm working on I have about eight or so hours worth of footage. I put the clips from each tape on their own timelines within the project. I have several other timelines for various aspects of the project as well.

Another very nice feature mentioned earlier is the integration with After Effects. I can edit a project and get the timings correct for each clip and the piece overall (much easier to do in an editor rather than After Effects) and then import the project, complete with slow motion effects, dissolves, etc., into After Effects. One can now copy clips from Premiere directly into AE while both apps are running.

Of course these features don't appeal to everyone. But that's what's nice about having so many choices - there is almost sure to be a NLE to suit every editor.

Christopher Lefchik · February 22nd, 2005, 04:51 PM

I'd like to clarify the term "real-time" as I used it in my earlier post. Many software editors now describe themselves as "real-time", i.e., they give a real-time preview quality display of your effects/filters. The advantages of a hardware/software combo like the Matrox RT.X100 and Canopus DVStorm2 are that they can give you what I describe as true real-time. The effects are displayed in real-time at full quality on your computer monitor and attached TV monitor, and there's no rendering going back out to DV tape. They can also output in real-time to MPEG-2. Of course there are limitations to the amount of effects that can be used in real-time.

The one exception to this that I know of is Ulead Media Studio Pro, which, with a powerful enough system can output back to tape without rendering effects.

Kevin Shaw · February 22nd, 2005, 11:29 PM

<<<The one exception to this that I know of is Ulead Media Studio Pro, which, with a powerful enough system can output back to tape without rendering effects. >>>

Canopus Edius (versions 2.0 and later) can deliver decent real-time output without special hardware support, and even better results with the DVStorm or Edius NX/SP hardware. Even on my laptop I can have two layers of DV with PIP on one of them plus color correction and audio enhancements and still have it play back at full quality in real time (usually) to both the computer monitor and DV out. Compared to that, anything which requires me to render to get full-quality output just seems irritating, and shouldn't be described as "real time" editing.

James Connors · February 23rd, 2005, 07:49 AM

The one thing I loved about Vegas... I had my first camera, I had the trial of V3 at the time.. within an hour I had footage that looked better than the original and I felt like I "knew" what I was doing in the software.

With Premiere, I'm reading a big book on how to use it before I even start! I want to use Premiere just because its become more of a standard, and it's probably better to know how to edit in Premiere than Vegas when applying for serious work. Its a shame, because I think Vegas has the perfect blend of easy usability and professional output. Now Sony have the rights to it, hopefully it'll become more of a "name".

Christopher Lefchik · February 23rd, 2005, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Canopus Edius (versions 2.0 and later) can deliver decent real-time output without special hardware support

I hope that the other editing programs follow in the same direction. If these two programs (Edius, Media Studio Pro) can deliver true real-time without special hardware support, certainly the others could.

Quote:

Compared to that, anything which requires me to render to get full-quality output just seems irritating, and shouldn't be described as "real time" editing.

I fully agree!

February 18th, 2005, 02:52 PM	#31
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	<<<Technically you are correct. But from a practical point of view, any corrections or special effects that you apply to the captured video must be processed in some manner to display on an external monitor. This is, in essence, "rendering" the video for preview purposes. This "preview rendering" may not be as full or complete as the actual rendering done to output your final video to file.>>> For what it's worth, Canopus Edius offers extensive real-time DV editing capabilities with no rendering required on sufficiently powerful computers, and I believe the same can be said for Adobe Premiere Pro. Canopus even offers real-time HDV editing with real time HD monitoring using their NX or SP hardware cards, and Adobe is looking into offering similar HD monitoring support. Based on my own experiences with Liquid Edition and what I've read about Sony Vegas, neither of these products deserves to be described as a true real-time editing solution, although both have clever strategies for dealing with their lack of real-time output ability. And ultimately no editing solution can deliver full quality output under all circumstances for complex projects, so it's all relative in that sense. But for basic editing tasks, there's no comparison between real time "previews" and actual real time editing. If you have to render to view a simple color correction or basic PIP window at full quality on your external monitor, that's not real time editing.

February 22nd, 2005, 12:51 PM	#32
Derek Lee Tourist Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 1	Which program will let let me use reverse playback and color isoloation? i.e. a pleasantville effect of black white with one object in color?

February 22nd, 2005, 03:42 PM	#33
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Final Cut, Vegas, and Premiere Pro will do the Pleasantville effect. Final Cut is slightly better than Vegas at this, which is slightly better than Premiere Pro. In Final Cut you can get good chroma smoothing filters (i.e. the built-in 4:1:1 color smoother, or Nattress' excellent G Nicer) which you can think of as upsampling the color information. Vegas has chroma blur, and I don't think Premiere has anything like it (but I could be wrong... I don't use it). Final Cut's secondary color corrector (3-way CC) has a softness setting, which blurs the mask from the secondary qualifiers/controls. Vegas can be hacked to do the same thing, but it takes lots of button pushing. Not sure about Premiere. Combustion (compositing/effects program) will also do it. I'm not sure about After Effects or Avid. Reverse playback: Final Cut and Vegas and Combustion have velocity/time remapping. The other programs will at least do reverse speed (set speed, can't change it).

February 22nd, 2005, 04:10 PM	#34
Richard Alvarez Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: San Mateo, CA Posts: 3,840	Avid has "timewarp" effects and variable speed forward, fixed speed in reverse. You can use the speedramp plugin, and get variable speed in any direction. The 'pleasantville' effect can be done, theres a tutorial on the web for it, though I've never done it.

February 22nd, 2005, 04:31 PM	#35
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	Just a correction to an earlier statement that Premiere Pro/Matrox RT.X100 "need to create pre render clips to give u that "realtime" output." This isn't true. As long as the effect(s) used are within the limits of the RT.X100 system, it's pure real-time, no rendering required. For me, this is especially nice for color correction, which for a professionally done job really needs to be applied to every clip. For an hour long production this saves a lot of time. I can color correct every clip and instantly see the output in full quality on my TV monitor. The Matrox also has a real-time "Pleasantville effect" as well. One feature I've come to appreciate very much in Premiere Pro is the multiple timelines available in one project. I can't say how much I'm using and enjoying this feature. For instance, in the current project I'm working on I have about eight or so hours worth of footage. I put the clips from each tape on their own timelines within the project. I have several other timelines for various aspects of the project as well. Another very nice feature mentioned earlier is the integration with After Effects. I can edit a project and get the timings correct for each clip and the piece overall (much easier to do in an editor rather than After Effects) and then import the project, complete with slow motion effects, dissolves, etc., into After Effects. One can now copy clips from Premiere directly into AE while both apps are running. Of course these features don't appeal to everyone. But that's what's nice about having so many choices - there is almost sure to be a NLE to suit every editor.

February 22nd, 2005, 04:51 PM	#36
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	I'd like to clarify the term "real-time" as I used it in my earlier post. Many software editors now describe themselves as "real-time", i.e., they give a real-time preview quality display of your effects/filters. The advantages of a hardware/software combo like the Matrox RT.X100 and Canopus DVStorm2 are that they can give you what I describe as true real-time. The effects are displayed in real-time at full quality on your computer monitor and attached TV monitor, and there's no rendering going back out to DV tape. They can also output in real-time to MPEG-2. Of course there are limitations to the amount of effects that can be used in real-time. The one exception to this that I know of is Ulead Media Studio Pro, which, with a powerful enough system can output back to tape without rendering effects.

February 22nd, 2005, 11:29 PM	#37
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	<<<The one exception to this that I know of is Ulead Media Studio Pro, which, with a powerful enough system can output back to tape without rendering effects. >>> Canopus Edius (versions 2.0 and later) can deliver decent real-time output without special hardware support, and even better results with the DVStorm or Edius NX/SP hardware. Even on my laptop I can have two layers of DV with PIP on one of them plus color correction and audio enhancements and still have it play back at full quality in real time (usually) to both the computer monitor and DV out. Compared to that, anything which requires me to render to get full-quality output just seems irritating, and shouldn't be described as "real time" editing.

February 23rd, 2005, 07:49 AM	#38
James Connors Major Player Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Cardiff, UK Posts: 223	The one thing I loved about Vegas... I had my first camera, I had the trial of V3 at the time.. within an hour I had footage that looked better than the original and I felt like I "knew" what I was doing in the software. With Premiere, I'm reading a big book on how to use it before I even start! I want to use Premiere just because its become more of a standard, and it's probably better to know how to edit in Premiere than Vegas when applying for serious work. Its a shame, because I think Vegas has the perfect blend of easy usability and professional output. Now Sony have the rights to it, hopefully it'll become more of a "name".