Customer Reviews

Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 [Old Version]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm an advanced amateur, I guess. I really like taking video and playing around with my camera. Much of my video is taken from the inside of my car when I go racing. I have tons of footage, and I like to spend the winter distilling things down into videos for myself, my friends, and family. Plus, my website, too.

When I got started with this idea, I was trying to use Pinnacle Studio 8. It was a horrible experience: the software crashed every time I felt I was about to make progress. It was slow, and Pinnacle's support was pretty marginal. I simply wasn't having fun.

After asking around, I found that almost anyone whose opinion I respected recommended the Adobe products. They're rather expensive, but I saved up and bought them. And I can't believe I waited so long!

First, I want to clarify that Adobe Premiere is not a full-featured DVD burning tool. You can get pretty far with it, but it's important to know what it does and what it doesn't do.

You can use Premiere to capture video from your camcorder, or your favorite frame-grabber hardware. The product includes a really neat batch-capture feature which lets you specify a bunch of different time ranges on your tape. You start batch capture and walk away: if Premiere can control your camera (and it probably can, if it has a FireWire port) it will suck down the ranges you ask for and take care of cuing.

You can also use Premiere to edit whatever video you have lying around; from the web, and so on.

The product will help let you introduce video and audio effects and transitions between your clips. You can do non-linear editing, which means that you can drag-and-drop clips wherever you'd like them to be.

There are plenty of technical features, including advanced color correction and balance features. Cleaning up marginal tape is pretty easy! You can also resize and move video. I'm really excited about using the product to produce split-screen views from the race car: a faster lap on the left, and a slower lap on the right, so I can learn where I'm making mistakes. I got this working in just a few minutes!

There are a few dozen interesting transitions, from modest cross-fades to more advanced wipes and dissolves. You can apply audio transitions, as well. Doing edits where the sound transitions before or after the video is trivial -- something that's a bit of a challenge in other products.

You can edit titles and insert them as video. It's easy to move PhotoShop files (including their layers!) into the video stream. And you can filter, edit, and adjust the audio tracks on your videos as you produce them, too.

Premiere will burn to DVD when you're done, or you can export to a myriad of formats appropriate for burning digital media to disk (to share with others) or publishing on the web.

You can have as many audio tracks as you like, and both 16:9 formats and 5.1 sound are supported.
Premiere makes asset management pretty easy, at least over the few hundred files that I have floating around.

Premiere doesn't do a few things that Studio 8 did do: most notably, it doesn't have any features for making DVD menus, play rules, or burning a a "real" DVD. Premiere alone can dump your video stream to A DVD so you can take it to your home theater, but you won't have menus, angles, multiple audio features, and so on. You'll need to buy additional products for these other features.

I was a bit intimidated by the product at first. Initially, I thought it didn't do much work for me. But it took a while to learn the nomenclature -- all proper terms used by professional video folks, instead of the "slang" that simpler products use. But now that I understand what to call my different edits or controls, I'm much more at home and more comfortable with the product.

If you're having stability or functionality problems with lesser products, I know that Premiere will solve your problems ... once you get over the higher price. I wish there was a dumbed-down product for the advanced hobbyist, like me. But I'm having so much fun with video now that I don't feel bad about shelling out the extra money. And I'm certainly happy that I didn't upgrade the other products that I own; I probably would've been disappointed, and certainly just put off the satisfaction I realized when I finally became productive with Premiere.

If you wanna learn digital video editing, Adobe Premiere Pro is superpowerful has great effects integrates amazingly with Photoshop and after affects and encore DVD.

DON"T BUY THIS though!
if you're going to buy this spend the extra $300 on the video collection. It is well worth it with that, you get Adobe aftereffects adobe encore DVD Adobe audition and premiere Pro. For $300 extra. That is well worth it!

Check out this web site for some free video tutorials
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/index.htm.

They really help you get started with premiere Pro.

Have some fun and get it done

Adobe Premiere 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 editor cuts and arranges media. Adobe Premiere does that perfectly. I recommend this like no other for the price but if you are looking for pro packages then go elsewhere and be prepared to pay five figures with extra hardware. If you want special FX this has some but no pro uses these effects tool. Premiere is a first class cutting tool. Go to Discreet products for FX.

Version 1.5 of Premiere Pro is much more stable than previous verions. Its menus are intuitive and its features extensive. Particularly strong are the ability to move back and forth with Audition (for sound editing), encore (for DVD creation), After Effects (for adding special effects and animations), and Photoshop (for static picture editing). It is missing some features found in Final Cut Pro (like being able to assign multiply, screen, overlay, lighten, etc. modes to clips), but if the video collection is purchased, there are easy workarounds using other software in the collection (like after effects). Unlike Avid Xpress Pro, it is PC only, so those who plan to share files with MAC editors or who plan to upscale to a high end Avid system - might look at Xpress Pro instead.

Its 24P support is more flawed than either Vegas or Xpress Pro. Hopefully this will be fixed with a patch in the near future.

As the title says this is a great product. It is easy to use and can be quite powerful, but the problem is if you are using anything other then Windows XP it won't even install. So if you are running Windows 2k and don't want (or can't) to upgrade to XP you may want to look elsewhere.

I usually hate the Adobe user interface. They make incredibly capable applications but using them has always been a trial for me. That was not the case with Premiere Pro. It is quite simply a joy to use.

Ease of use is generally indicative of a simple and limited program. That is not the case here. It is an extremely powerful application that can handle a wide variety of video editing tasks. That is what makes it worth the price tag. That it has a mostly well thought out interface and is easy to use is just a very appreciated bonus.

The strength of this software is in its editing capabilities. It has a few bells and whistles but those are usually better handled by third parties. The basic engine that drives it all, however, is superb. I cannot recommend this program highly enough. It is worth the price.

If you are using 6.5 or below, why? Now is the time to upgrade!*

I love the new Pro interface and with Win XP's effortless multiple monitor support I'm in heaven. The features added in Pro 1.5 make it a worthwhile upgrade: project management tools, Panasonic 24P/24PA support, Bézier keyframe controls, effects favorites (AWESOME), HiDef (HDTV) support, auto-color adjustment (Pro 1.0 has some great color support too, but it's a no brainer now), project-ready Photoshop files (great for a WYSIWYG in Photoshop 7.0 and above - helps greatly with pixel aspect ratio issues), After Effects plug-in compatibility, After Effects clipboard support (have not used this yet, Discreet Combustion user :) ), AAF (Advanced Authoring Format, for some compatibility with AVID), Windows Media 9 export from the timeline (supports HDTV-720P-1080i) - WM9(VC-9) is part of the new HD-DVD spec coming soon to an outlet near you. You can also configure your keyboard hotkeys quickly to comform to Final Cut Pro 4.0 or AVID Xpress DV 3.5.

* WARNING - You must have SSE chip support and Windows XP. For AMD users this means you must have a Athlon XP or 'higher' chip.

If you are not upgrading but buying new get the Adobe Video Collection Standard it is only $200 more and is WORTH IT. If you are upgrading don't upgrade to AVC just upgrade to Pro 1.5. Buy a new AVC so you can have 2 licenses of Premiere Pro dirt cheap.

I'm afraid this product is next to useless as it is so compicated and unintuitional I would recommend you first be an computer engineer and experienced digital editor before considering this mess.
As for Adobe support, be prepared to pay out $35 per question.
I've been making feature films since the 80's and thought Adobe Creative Suite would help me make my own films but there lack of glossary in their PP 1.5 manual (which I was advised to toss out as it it useless) and expect a year long education before you get anything edited.
My friend started his first feature on PP 1.5 and gave up after year and he went with VEGAS and finished the editing in short order.
Sadly he's not the only one. I personally know no one who has liked or completed a film with this product much less Final Effects which has a reputation of being 10 times more complicated. And I know a lot of filmmakers.
So far after purchasing PP 1.5 5 years ago I have yet to even download my DV tape into the process. I gave up on this not ready for usage by anybody other than a an digital expert who can understand their confusing and poorly organized manual. As far a tutorials. They don't seem to conform to the screen I get.
Why, Adobe why? I am still waiting after 3 weeks for a question about Photoshop CS that shuts off after 20 minutes. After losing my file even though I had a customer case number and was promised a supervisor. Adobe has the most consistantly poor customer support I've ever experienced.
I have asked Adobe support, the free but largely useless for the operation of the product if they could tell me what courses I can take to understand their manual and three times nobody could supply an answer.
I asked a couple of Premiere Pro instruction schools the same question and they (not surprisingly) had no answer either.
Thanks for dashing my dream Adobe. Demolishers of dreams and they took several hundred dollars as well.
I learned that lesson.

the wrigley tutorial page has moved.

try: http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/
and go from there, or try wrigley's home page.

As far as Premiere goes, it's like most Adobe products: expensive compared to competing products, overkill software engineering, a hog on RAM resources, but you can do a lot with it once you get past the (steep) learning curve.