Adobe Premiere 6.5

by Adobe

Product Features

• Takes video input directly from digital and analog video cameras
• Editing screen consists of a number of free-floating windows that contain such tools as a video preview and the all-important timeline and storyboard
• Several new features, the most useful of which is probably real-time preview
• Tools users of Illustrator and Photoshop
• Produces a series of effects plug-ins that can be used with Premiere

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00006GTEL
• Item model number: 25500410
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 5, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,104 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #3 in Software > Video & Music > Encoding
  • #79 in Software > Video & Music > Digital Video > Video Editing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The latest upgrade to Adobe Premiere adds useful improvements to this well regarded digital-video editing application, including real-time preview and a title designer. Premiere can take video input directly from digital and analog video cameras, store it on your hard drive, edit it, and output to a variety of video formats, including MPEG-1.

Premiere 6.5's editing screen consists of a number of free-floating windows that contain such tools as a video preview and the all-important timeline and storyboard. The basic operation of Premiere is to load in a series of video clips taken from a camera or a CD, or previously stored on your hard drive, and then drag and drop icons for them onto the timeline. You can then add a soundtrack, transitions, effects, and titles. When all is complete, export the finished video in a format suitable for use on a DVD, Video CD, or for the Internet.

Premiere 6.5 introduces several new features, the most useful of which is probably real-time preview. The ability to see the edits you've made to your video before you render the final version is a huge timesaver. While this feature has previously been available using special hardware, this is the first time it's been available from within the software. You need a fairly powerful PC to take full advantage of the real-time preview. You'll also need a computer with two hard drives, one to hold Premiere and the other for your video files.

Being able to add well-designed titles can make the difference between an amateur and a professional production. Adobe's new Title Designer, included in Premiere 6.5, provides many of the tools users of Illustrator and Photoshop will recognize to add text, rules, and shapes as overlays to videos. Adobe has bundled 90 fonts with Premiere 6.5, selected to produce clear and attractive titles.

Adobe produces a series of effects plug-ins that can be used with Premiere (sold separately as After Effects). Five of these effects (channel blur, blend, lightning, ramp, and twirl) are now included standard with Premiere 6.5, adding to the appeal of this very attractive package. --Simon Williams, Amazon.co.uk

Product Description

Adobe Premiere 6.5 can be registered and upgraded. This is the full retail version not an Upgrade, Educational, NFR, or OEM version. Adobe Premiere 6.5 is the essential tool for professional digital video editing. You get top-quality hardware support with this most adaptable DV-editing tool available. Take advantage of the new Adobe Title Designer, DVD authoring, MPEG-2 export, powerful audio tools, and much more to create remarkable video productions. Make your work more productive with real-time editing capabilities. Whether you want to work with multiple layers of analog footage on a professional, hardware-based system, or edit digital video on your laptop, Adobe Premiere is the best choice for video editing. Included in a 1 hour total training CD. Part Number 25500410.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review by a Newbie, December 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Adobe Premiere 6.5 (CD-ROM)

Most people reviewing this product are reviewing it from an expert's viewpoint. I will review this product from someone with a little digital editing experience on lesser featured products, however a "newbie" to Adobe Premiere 6.5

First of all, this program is quite complex, and it is not intuitively obvious how to use this product or how to find a productive workflow. I tried using the supplied 6.0 userguide however I got frustrated pretty quickly.

I also ordered a SAMS Teach Yourself book for 6.5, and again became frustrated. It was obvious to me that the "drag and drop" interface can hardly be described by a book.

Luckily the product came with a video DVD called "Introduction to Adobe Premiere 6.5" by Total Training. I watched this video for an hour or two and shadowed some of the instruction on my own footage. I was able to produce a passable editing job on a five minute production after two hours (excluding time to capture footage), interleaving watching the Total Training video and trying some of the moves shown on the video on my own footage.

I bought the follow-up 16 hours of Total Training instruction for another $131 (including postage). If I get through this video instruction, I will have a pretty good handle on the product, but by no means an expert.

Premiere 6.5 is chock full of features, which means there's still plenty to learn six months or a year down the road. What is a little disconcerting about this product is all the "new features" that came with 6.5, however some of these features have already been available for some time in much cheaper software packages.

For example, I did not buy the bundle including DVDit, and Premiere 6.5 itself can't burn to DVD without having DVDit installed. Instead, I create the MPEG video and audio files using Premiere, then import files into a much cheaper video editing package that came with my DVD burner to complete the DVD burn. Hmmm. And now I'm supposed to fork out $300 for DVDit on top of paying for Premiere - I don't think so.

The bottom line is you can produce fairly professional results with Premiere 6.5. The big question is do you want to invest the 20 hours effort to learn the not so intuitive interface and working methods?

Well, I bought Premiere 6.5 with a firewire card for $200 so I'd say it's well worth it. And if another $130 worth of video training by Total Training and 20 hours effort to get me up to reasonable speed on most of the features I would ever use in Premiere, then $330 for software and training is a pretty good deal.

By the way, Adobe customer service seems to be pretty good. You can call them for up to 30 days after buying the product. After that, you have to pay for support. I never did like this pay for support idea, since basically your paying them because their manuals aren't so good or their software is not easy to use. And sometimes your paying them to report a bug in their software.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great cutting tool, January 21, 2004

By 

OverTheMoon ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Premiere 6.5 (CD-ROM)

Adobe Premiere 6.5 is far from the most advanced non-linear video editing package you can get however let me make this one comment.

- Editing is all about cutting and not fancy effects. The strength of the project is what is in front of and behind the camera not fancy effects.

I would never recommend using any of the effects on any of the non-linear video editing packages anyway. Get dedicated effects packages if you really want to do your special effects well.

In short Adobe Premiere is the BEST cutting software and the EASIEST to use. The learning curve is slightly steep but you will be cutting your footage within a day or two with this one.

An editors cuts and arranges media. Adobe Premiere does that perfectly. I recommend this like no other but if you are looking for pro packages then go elsewhere and be prepared to pay five figures.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent choice for professionals and beginners!, May 26, 2003

By 

ernesto (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Premiere 6.5 (CD-ROM)

I started editing video several years ago using Ulead Mediastudio Pro, which is pretty good. Then I moved on to Premiere, and it's much better. You can find many more plug-ins and there's lots more support on the web from users. I strongly recommend this for advanced and beginners. It is not difficult to use, and always gets met the output I expect. Just need to put in time to get to know its functions, like any other software. I use it to create MPG2 for DVDs and occassionally realvideo or quicktime. Also, it's the only software that allows me to easily and extremely quickly convert a sound file into 48khz sampling rate. All other software, even sound software, only gives 44khz option, which is not compatible with DVD.

Ernesto
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