I have been in taiwan for about a year and have done loads of filming and have become really interested in filmaking. And would like to know before buying a computer what are the differences both positive and negative between that of premier and final cut pro. For those expert in film editing what are their prefered choices and way?
Here at the office we FCP for more involved projects and iMovie for the light lifting. It’s been years since I touched Premier.
Although I don’t remember hating Premier, after FCP arrived Premier was gone from my application folder in a month or two.
MacCare (Roosevelt Section 5) will be running an iMovie class on Sunday, June 13 at their shop that will cover the basics.
If you’d like to attend the class or make other arrangements to check out FCP, iMovie, DVD Pro, etc, PM me.
Premiere is a powerful program but I don’t consider it very intuitive. However, I use an older version (6.0) and I heard the latest version (CS I think) has had some major improvements.
We used FCP and iMovies at university but I always did my editing at home so I never really became familiar with them. I heard from my more dedicated classmates that FCP is powerful, flexible and (relatively) easy to use.
If you’re planning on buying a new computer, and only using it for editing DV, the Mac is the way to go in my mind.
I’d love to buy a G4 or something but being financially retarded makes this tuff.
Well, PC with Premiere is much cheaper than Mac.
Or you can consider Avid’s Xpress DV!!
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/
It has PC and Mac version.
I am told that PC version runs faster on faster Intel CPU like Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz than the mac version on G4/G5.
The software itself costs $695.
Or you can use Ulead’s Media Studio Pro.
Or Video Studio, also from Ulead, which is simpler than Media Studio Pro.
http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp?pageElement=flyout
And this, Free DV! 
http://www.avid.com/community/forums/Forum38/HTML/005605.html
Xpress Pro vs Premiere Pro
[quote]With Avid you are dealing with a product and company who has pioneered editing software. With Premiere you are dealing with a company that realizes that a large market is interested in doing editing on their new computers. Adobe does not have any real concern for Professional results. If you really want a professional level edit software go with Avid, or buy a mac and get Final Cut Pro. If however, you want to play at editing save your money and stick with Windows Movie Maker.
Or buy a mac and use iMovie.
[/quote]
Some tests on 5 different products:
Vegas, Premiere Pro, Avid xpress pro, FCP, and Pinnacle
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=39&ArticleID=8066
The Mac version of Avid Express DV is just plain evil. Comments on the PC version, anyone?
Microsoft XP MCE – unredeemably bad and, realistically, only one output format. Besides, it’s only at v2.0. Microsoft never puts out usable software until at least v3.0.
Ulead software has some utility (dog’s breakfast of supported codecs), but it’s rather a cul-de-sac. That is, when it no longer meets your needs, you’ll be faced with the FCP vs Premier question all over again. There’s also a lack of third-party plug-ins, helpers, books, etc.
Not familiar with Pinnacle, but at first blush it looks rather lightweight (oops, it seems they have several packages, including pro)…
ive used fcp and premeiere and avid all… i perfer premeire just cause im more use to it, and can put shit together quicker, an editing system is just a tool remeber… and really a pc is much cheaper then a mac, who really pays for software anyways? they are jsut tools, they dont make or break anything, you still gotta be able to create it, just remeber fcp or premiere wont make your shit hot, you make your shit hot… but i go with pc cause its cheaper… if you got the money you can get a lot of extra features on your pc… dual monitor, more hdd’s a real nice sound card… if you got long doubh you might even want to fuck with a dv deck, the read heads on your nice dv camera wont last for ever
I’ve heard the software ver of Avid for PC is ok, nothing spectacular. Don’t forget Avid specialise in HARDWARE systems, not software. I did an internship at our national broadcaster back home and they had one of the mid-range hardware systems. Holy shit. It was only used for simple (though professional) news applications but it was cool.
Stay away from Windows Movie Maker.
Ulead is OK, pedestrian.
If you’re an absolute beginner, I recommend Pinnacle Studio. Most people complain about it, it’s a little unstable and I recommend encoding mpegs using something like TMPGEnc but it’s seriously intuitive for novices. (OK so looking a that it seems like there’s not a lot to recommend it :raspberry: )
And yeah, you’re right, Illah. GIGO. The world’s greatest editing system will not make you [insert director of choice], only poorer.
i think encoding your video as mpeg is a bad idea a very bad idea… espcially if you are messing with dv,even when your not mpeg is more resource intensive i find to playback as compared to uncompressed avi’s
Just to follow up on the notion that tools are what you make of them:
macobserver.com/columns/just … 0521.shtml
A neophyte director has garnered much attention at Cannes for a movie he created using an iMac and iMovie.
Perhaps his next project will be cut on a PowerMac G5 using FCP…
Hmm. Illah, does this mean that you never make DVDs or VCDs? I’m not recommending encoding DV to mpeg for editing purposes – you edit then encode to mpeg to make DVDs or VCDs.
And if your system isn’t up to playing back mpeg editing DV is not a good idea.
The new Premiere Pro “1.5” looks pretty cool!
http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catPremiere&sourcecode=128302
On a related issue, can anyone recommend a place to buy Adobe Premiere/Premiere Pro? And any idea how the price compares to (ouch) the US price? I’ve exhausted the not very wide limits of Windows Movie Maker and I must be looking in all the wrong places…
Try ebay usa.
Someone is selling sealed brand new one for under 300 bucks.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51345&item=3679272675&rd=1
I just check the ebay and found a lot of people with good “auction” rating
are selling Premiere Pro for US$180.
That price even includes a Firewire card. Good deal.
And upgrade from Premiere pro 1.0 to 1.5 is $99.
By the way, I used Premiere 6.0/6.5 and its problem is instablity.
And Premiere PRO improves a lot. Now we have Premiere pro 1.5, it should be more stable.
premiere is a good choice of tool since it has more learning resources like books and websites.
[quote=“daasgrrl”]On a related issue, can anyone recommend a place to buy Adobe Premiere/Premiere Pro? And any idea how the price compares to (ouch) the US price? I’ve exhausted the not very wide limits of Windows Movie Maker and I must be looking in all the wrong places…[/quote]Have you tried Guanghua? I saw at least two or three places there that were selling Premiere, and it was usually the educational version. It’s not as cheap as eBay, but there’s got a lower chance of problems down the line.
Also, there must be an Adobe rep somewhere in Taibei. When I bought Lightwave 7.5 a couple years ago, I got it straight from the Newtek rep. The rep even helped me apply for a real educational license!
buying software??? haha come on stereptypes and all you are in taiwan, why would you pay for software even in the usa?? last i heard adobe stopped making chinese versions of programs because it wasnt worth the lil revenue they saw. i used premeiere 6.5 for a long time with otu stability problems myself… but thast the problem with pc’s they sure arent all built the same