Adobe Video Collection Pro at DVinfo.net

Julian Kehaya · September 30th, 2005, 05:45 PM

Does anyone use Adobe Video Collection Pro? I am thinking of getting it but would like to hear from someone who uses it. Just a brief review or something...pros/cons omething like that. Or if you recommend some other program that would be helpful too.

-Julian

Matt Brabender · September 30th, 2005, 06:22 PM

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Pros:
As a single purchase, one stop shop media production suite, it' very good. Powerful, easy to use and it all links together very well. No cross manufacturer conflicts.
Value for money - you get a lot for your dollar.
Learning curve - once you learn one Adobe program, you'll be able to almost guess your way through the others.
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Premiere is a great program if not a little messy - lots of twirl down menus inside twirl down menus, but there's plenty of power there and you'll be hard pressed to push it's limits. After Effects is fantastic - not as clunky as premiere and almost on par with combustion with the addition of a few plugins. Encore ... hmmm - I think it's rubbish but a lot of people love it so ignore my view on it. Audition is an excellent, simple to use audio editor and works beautifully with the rest of the suite.
Photoshop = must have no matter what nle you choose.

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Cons:
Buying the entire suite locks you into the Adobe worflow - I do really like Adobe products but it would drive me nuts to work with them all day. If you buy the suite and find you prefer to work with a different style, you've just spent a lot of money on frustration.
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I would try to demo some other packages to see which feels more intuitive to you. If I had to choose a single line of software products, I'd choose Avid Xpress Pro HD, Combustion, Nuendo (just got this - awesome), DVD Lab Pro and Photoshop - but then to buy all that seperately compared to the Adobe suite costs a fortune.

Jimmy McKenzie · September 30th, 2005, 08:19 PM

If you are an Wintel motion graphics creator, then this is the most powerful, integrated, do everything product you can get for 2 grand. The only gap is web delivery where other adobe products pick up the void.

If you go this route, spend the needed time downloading and creating with after effects. Plenty of power to create and bounce between apps.

When your workflow follows multiple pixel aspect ratios, the flexibility to move from motion to raster still to 3d layers is quite smooth. Just don't rely on small hard drives.

Then again some folks here like Vegas too....

Julian Kehaya · October 1st, 2005, 02:39 AM

wow thanks for fast replies. I'm really excited to get something soon. I'm really tired of the free version of Pinnacle 8 that came with my Radeon9600 allinwonder. I just recently upgraded my system a little. now with 1gig RAM, a 200mb extra HD, firewire card, and MagiX delux 10 for making music for webcontent and stuff like that. How much hard drive space do most people who are making a feature length DVD use? i figure 200 mb is 12hours or so of raw DV though i doubt that is enough to cover a really large project so i know i will need more in the future. Maybe even 10gigs of harddrive? Here is a little sample of something i just threw together tonight. The music in the clip i made entirely with Magix. Still using pinnacle 8 for editing, and GIMP and MS paint for photo/title editing.

http://media.putfile.com/bbbarrel33

sorry about the music. I just made it in about 5 minutes. Hopefully i will be able to produce better quality work for my website when i get that going so people can sample clips from projects i am working on.

Noah Yuan-Vogel · October 2nd, 2005, 02:12 PM

I assume by 200 mb you mean 200 GB, but im not sure what you mean by 10 gigs of harddrive. Depending on your shooting ratio, 200GB could be enough to shoot a full length movie, but for example i usually render out to a digital master in a lossless format (like huffyuv) and use a lossless format when going between after effects and premiere. But then not everyone cares about avoiding generational loss when rendering out effects from dv to dv. But nowadays harddrive is very cheap. We also used about 300GB on the last short (20 min) DV project I did, but then there were quite a few visual and sound effects and an amazingly high shooting ratio. But to be safe id recommend more than 300GB for a feature length project. And then there's drive speed...

Julian Kehaya · October 2nd, 2005, 07:35 PM

yeh, sometime in the middle of the night yesterday i was thinking... did i say 200 mb? that makes no sense at all... i meant 200 gigs. then i was gunna say 10terabyts i think. I'm pretty new to everything and i don't currently have access any good lossless formats right now. I guess i just assumed most people used raw dv format. goo to know i don't really need a ton of space. Right now i have a 200 gig HD in addition to my main 40gig one. Would you recommend getting more for project that would result in a 1-2 hour dvd?

sorry for the confusion

-Julian

Matthew Ebenezer · October 16th, 2005, 08:50 PM

Hi Julian,

I'd recommend going for more storage than 200Gb. With the price of hard drives so cheap it'd be well worthwhile having more space to play with. Nothing is worse than running out of space part way through a project.

The last full-length (1.5 hours) DVD we did was probably over 400Gb. It was an 10 camera live concert (1 hour) plus extras (.5 hour) so a single camera job will be less. Most weddings we've done come in at under 100Gb worth.

It's also well worth thinking about what you're going to do with all that footage once you're finished. My main editing system has 1TB and my backup/archive machine has 1TB as well. It's a great feeling to be working on a project and think ... "Now, where was that great shot I had of xxxxx ... it'd go great here" and being able to lay your hands on it. You may not need that amount of space but it's worthwhile thinking about how you're going to archive stuff - whether it's DVDs or hard drives etc ...

I also use the Adobe Video Collection Pro - and I love it. The ability to transfer files between the different applications is great. i.e. Create a menu in Encore, edit it in Photoshop, and then return to Encore with all changes coming across. Same with working with PSD files in Premiere, edit them in Photoshop and the changes come right across. No having to save and re-import etc ...

All the Adobe Collection products by themselves are excellent.

Total Training (www.totaltraining.com) offer fantastic DVD training on the Adobe Collection as well. I've purchased the full set and swear by them.

Hope all that is of some help,

Matthew.

Julian Kehaya · October 17th, 2005, 10:06 AM

thank you so much.

-Julian

September 30th, 2005, 05:45 PM	#1
Julian Kehaya Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wilmington, NC Posts: 28	Adobe Video Collection Pro Does anyone use Adobe Video Collection Pro? I am thinking of getting it but would like to hear from someone who uses it. Just a brief review or something...pros/cons omething like that. Or if you recommend some other program that would be helpful too. -Julian

October 1st, 2005, 02:39 AM	#4
Julian Kehaya Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wilmington, NC Posts: 28	wow thanks for fast replies. I'm really excited to get something soon. I'm really tired of the free version of Pinnacle 8 that came with my Radeon9600 allinwonder. I just recently upgraded my system a little. now with 1gig RAM, a 200mb extra HD, firewire card, and MagiX delux 10 for making music for webcontent and stuff like that. How much hard drive space do most people who are making a feature length DVD use? i figure 200 mb is 12hours or so of raw DV though i doubt that is enough to cover a really large project so i know i will need more in the future. Maybe even 10gigs of harddrive? Here is a little sample of something i just threw together tonight. The music in the clip i made entirely with Magix. Still using pinnacle 8 for editing, and GIMP and MS paint for photo/title editing. http://media.putfile.com/bbbarrel33 sorry about the music. I just made it in about 5 minutes. Hopefully i will be able to produce better quality work for my website when i get that going so people can sample clips from projects i am working on. Last edited by Julian Kehaya; October 1st, 2005 at 04:19 PM.

September 30th, 2005, 06:22 PM	#2
Matt Brabender Major Player Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 230	--------------------------------------------------------------------- Pros: As a single purchase, one stop shop media production suite, it' very good. Powerful, easy to use and it all links together very well. No cross manufacturer conflicts. Value for money - you get a lot for your dollar. Learning curve - once you learn one Adobe program, you'll be able to almost guess your way through the others. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Premiere is a great program if not a little messy - lots of twirl down menus inside twirl down menus, but there's plenty of power there and you'll be hard pressed to push it's limits. After Effects is fantastic - not as clunky as premiere and almost on par with combustion with the addition of a few plugins. Encore ... hmmm - I think it's rubbish but a lot of people love it so ignore my view on it. Audition is an excellent, simple to use audio editor and works beautifully with the rest of the suite. Photoshop = must have no matter what nle you choose. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Cons: Buying the entire suite locks you into the Adobe worflow - I do really like Adobe products but it would drive me nuts to work with them all day. If you buy the suite and find you prefer to work with a different style, you've just spent a lot of money on frustration. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I would try to demo some other packages to see which feels more intuitive to you. If I had to choose a single line of software products, I'd choose Avid Xpress Pro HD, Combustion, Nuendo (just got this - awesome), DVD Lab Pro and Photoshop - but then to buy all that seperately compared to the Adobe suite costs a fortune.

September 30th, 2005, 08:19 PM	#3
Jimmy McKenzie Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Waterloo Ontario Posts: 721	If you are an Wintel motion graphics creator, then this is the most powerful, integrated, do everything product you can get for 2 grand. The only gap is web delivery where other adobe products pick up the void. If you go this route, spend the needed time downloading and creating with after effects. Plenty of power to create and bounce between apps. When your workflow follows multiple pixel aspect ratios, the flexibility to move from motion to raster still to 3d layers is quite smooth. Just don't rely on small hard drives. Then again some folks here like Vegas too....

October 2nd, 2005, 02:12 PM	#5
Noah Yuan-Vogel Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: New York City Posts: 613	I assume by 200 mb you mean 200 GB, but im not sure what you mean by 10 gigs of harddrive. Depending on your shooting ratio, 200GB could be enough to shoot a full length movie, but for example i usually render out to a digital master in a lossless format (like huffyuv) and use a lossless format when going between after effects and premiere. But then not everyone cares about avoiding generational loss when rendering out effects from dv to dv. But nowadays harddrive is very cheap. We also used about 300GB on the last short (20 min) DV project I did, but then there were quite a few visual and sound effects and an amazingly high shooting ratio. But to be safe id recommend more than 300GB for a feature length project. And then there's drive speed...

October 2nd, 2005, 07:35 PM	#6
Julian Kehaya Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wilmington, NC Posts: 28	yeh, sometime in the middle of the night yesterday i was thinking... did i say 200 mb? that makes no sense at all... i meant 200 gigs. then i was gunna say 10terabyts i think. I'm pretty new to everything and i don't currently have access any good lossless formats right now. I guess i just assumed most people used raw dv format. goo to know i don't really need a ton of space. Right now i have a 200 gig HD in addition to my main 40gig one. Would you recommend getting more for project that would result in a 1-2 hour dvd? sorry for the confusion -Julian

October 16th, 2005, 08:50 PM	#7
Matthew Ebenezer Major Player Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Toowoomba, Australia Posts: 370	Hi Julian, I'd recommend going for more storage than 200Gb. With the price of hard drives so cheap it'd be well worthwhile having more space to play with. Nothing is worse than running out of space part way through a project. The last full-length (1.5 hours) DVD we did was probably over 400Gb. It was an 10 camera live concert (1 hour) plus extras (.5 hour) so a single camera job will be less. Most weddings we've done come in at under 100Gb worth. It's also well worth thinking about what you're going to do with all that footage once you're finished. My main editing system has 1TB and my backup/archive machine has 1TB as well. It's a great feeling to be working on a project and think ... "Now, where was that great shot I had of xxxxx ... it'd go great here" and being able to lay your hands on it. You may not need that amount of space but it's worthwhile thinking about how you're going to archive stuff - whether it's DVDs or hard drives etc ... I also use the Adobe Video Collection Pro - and I love it. The ability to transfer files between the different applications is great. i.e. Create a menu in Encore, edit it in Photoshop, and then return to Encore with all changes coming across. Same with working with PSD files in Premiere, edit them in Photoshop and the changes come right across. No having to save and re-import etc ... All the Adobe Collection products by themselves are excellent. Total Training (www.totaltraining.com) offer fantastic DVD training on the Adobe Collection as well. I've purchased the full set and swear by them. Hope all that is of some help, Matthew.

October 17th, 2005, 10:06 AM	#8
Julian Kehaya Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wilmington, NC Posts: 28	thank you so much. -Julian