AVID vs. PREMIERE

[Rick Meyer]

Hello post-production people-

I have a quick question for you AVID/Premiere users which I will repost on the Premiere thread. Can anyone who has experience with both of these programs steer me into the right direction in terms of which NLE system has a better feature set? I currently have Premiere Pro 1.5 and only find that it is marginally good. Sure I can edit on it, but after using the Interface of Final Cut Pro HD, I realize that Premiere leaves much to be desired. I don't have a MAC though. I think Premiere is a little too simple and could offer more in the way of a better interface design, better color correction and effects tools, etc. Would AVID give me these options?

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
Rick

[Rosestar]

I personally love FCP and would suggest that, all things being equal, however, if you want to stay pc, Avid beats the sh*t out of Premiere. I have had nothing but problems with the program, so that is why I switch to Mac and FCP. One of my best friends has the Avid set-up on a pc. It is a great NLE.

[Rick Meyer]

thanks rosestar for your reply-

yes i like FCP too. I used it this entire semester at school. going from FCP back to Premiere is a little like going from a nice bed to a hammock. And I have only SEEN the interface of AVID. I have not used it. But the interface made a good impression.

Anyone else want to chime in?

[BLUESPIDER]

I know a fellow who is an incredible editor and all he uses is this Ulead Media studio. He pretty much can do what ever avid/premiere/final cut can do. Like they say its not what you use its how you phucken use it!

[Luka_Brazzi]

Like Bluespider said. But Avid is waayyy more flexible than Premiere.

[Rick Meyer]

thanks guys. I think I'm leaning towards Avid. Premiere is just not doing it for me anymore. I think we need to start seeing other programs.

[jchenier]

"We need to start seeing other programs..." what does that mean?

I've been with Premiere since 6.0 and taught a class of PP 1.5 at St. Lawrence College this semester and have nothing but praise for it. You'll likely find that Premiere has more features that you'll ever need, they all do. At the end of the day go back to Bluespider's comments. It's not what you edit with.

Besides, at $500-1000 a pop, who can afford to jump back and forth between programs (and I hope you're using legit software... I get pissed at the people who bitch about what programs can and can't do and don't have a legit version).

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[Constantine]

I've been with Premiere since 5.1 and currently am with PPro. I have nothing but praise for Premiere Pro. I have edited with many programs, and I've found that most of them are essentially the same. These days, and editor is and editor. We also use Avid Express at work, and I honestly haven't been impressed at all by it. I would rather use Premiere. It has all the features that FCP has, and if you are more comfortable with FCP, then just switch your keyboard shortcuts to FCP shortcuts. Those shortcut settings are already built into Premiere Pro. Everybody likes to bitch about Premiere, but I honestly don't know what they are complaining about. I love it. Besides, it's directly compatible with the other programs that I use, ie. Photoshop and After Effects. You really can't beat that. Peace.

[jchenier]

Big point Constantine. The compatibility, or integration, with the other Adobe programs is HUGE!

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[Neil Rowe]

in my experience, most people complain or spit about premiere because they havent used and arent familiar with PPRO, and last version they used was 5.0 or 6.0 and they dont realize that PPRO is a whole new ballgame. sure it has its quirks.. but the workflow is fantastic and the integration is unbeatable with the other adobe apps. peoples only real gripe about PPRO is the couple 24p bugs. but realistically its all soved by simply shooting 24pa if you want to work in a 24p project. its as simple as that.. if you want to use true 24p .. shoot 24pa. thats what its there for anyway. and you can simply output it to NTSC 29.976 when your done. theres really no reason i can personally find to use 24pn with premiere. when shooting 24pa you can have a true 24p master and then output in true 24p for DVD or output to 29.976 for other stuff. its only when you use 24pn that the problems come into play.. although im one of the few made invuenrable by the matrox rtx100 extreme pro which lets me use 24pn normally in a 29.976 timeline, but.. why? why not make a true 24p master?. anyway .. i really like the software. im hoping they move to naitive HD and dvcpro HD support for the hvx soon enough for me to be able to wait though.. otherwise it may become a secondary app for SD only for me.

[Rick Meyer]

[QUOTE=jchenier]"We need to start seeing other programs..." what does that mean?

It was a joke. As in seeing other people...when things aren't working out. All right guys, I appreciate the advice. I will stick with PPro and see what it has to offer. Admittedly, I haven't rolled my sleeves up yet and gotten all that dirty with it.

Rick

[jchenier]

Rick, roll up your sleeves and get dirty. I was initially frustrated going from Premiere 6.0 to Pro, and ended up going right to PP1.5 and the more I play, the more I adore. So, go on, get dirty! In fact, go all the way to the elbows!

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[Rick Meyer]

Thanks guys for the advice-
I'll let you know how it goes.

[soarprod]

<Me Ricky PPRO 1.5.1>

[LloydC]

the only program I know how to use is PPro 1.5... and I love it
I can work extremely fast and don't imagine myself changing NLE's anytime soon

[jchenier]

It's 24p normal - the F5 default scene setting. It uses the normal pulldown(2:3), as opposed to 24pA - the F6 default setting. It uses the advanced pulldown (2:3:3:2).

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[ransom]

I agree with iamloser, PPro is great once you really use it. One thing to do before running the program is to only load necessary programs in Windows before a serious editing session. And especially disable virus protection software. The only time I've had any issues is when this stuff was loaded. I sometimes physically disconnect from the network and boot up with minimal programs loaded using msconfig. Most often I just disable the virus protection before editing and I don't have any problem.

[jchenier]

How do you load minimal programs using msconfig?

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[ransom]

Got to start->run, type msconfig and return. Go to the Services tab and first check "Hide all Microsoft Services", then uncheck any services you don't want to load. I personally only leave a few checked, one for my Matrox extreme card and mabe one for my UPS sw. Then go to the Startup tab. I usually press Disable all and re-check a few I need running. Press ok to close the it and you'll be prompted to re-boot at which time all that stuff that was unchecked won't be running in the background. To go back to normal just run it again and select Normal startup, reboot and your done.

[EYES OF NY]

I taught a class at emerson in Boston. The school had me teach FCP but after I did I would always tell the kids that I use Premire and will always. I agree with BLUESPIDER that it is what you do with the program not the program. I've seen good work come out of I MOVIE and Windows movie Maker. If you definately want out of thye PC world I would say that FCP is better than AVID but they both are clitchy and fussy when they want to be.

[PDX_DVX]

Yea, I haven't used Avid, but I have used FCP and premiere, and I must say, I like PPro better. I have heard though that Avid works with huge amounts of data and files more efficiently than premiere does, and that's why it's used more with high end content production. Then again I could be wrong....

[PaulK]

peoples only real gripe about PPRO is the couple 24p bugs. but realistically its all soved by simply shooting 24pa if you want to work in a 24p project. its as simple as that..
HI, iamloser, would you please describe the 24p bugs I have to watch out for? I've read other references of the PPRO/24P bugs on this forum, but never detailed descriptions.

Thanks!
-Paul

[sebastian___]

I work with Premiere 5, 6 and 6.5 for many years. I also use to work in music industry with editors like Cubase Sx and others and I always find Premiere incredibly bad made especially compared with an editor like Cubase. I mean, in Premiere 6.5 you can't do simple things like selecting multiple clips and copy/paste all of once, or apply the same effect to 10 clips at once ..and so on. Or you can't change the keyboard shortcuts (actually I find out recently that you can in premiere 6.5 by changing a text doc). I find out that PPro is even worse because they dumped some good features of the Premiere 6.5 like :overriding keyboard shortcuts" in wich if you hold down a key, you temporarily activate another tool, and others.
I'm actually desperate to find a better editor. After reading this post I started to read and visit the Avid webpage. I'm downloading now their free editor for evaluation. But if their support for After Effects plugin is no good, then I can't use it.

[Neil Rowe]

..actually sebastian .. im not sure how much experience you have had with the software.. but you can copy and past multiple clips ..as well as apply the same effect to multiple clips very easily within both p6.5 and pro. i believe PPRO lets you set up custom keys.. not sure about 6.5. i use standard keys so ive never used it. im sure it has alot of other usablity that perhaps you just didnt know how to do as well. nobody has an issue with you not liking premiere, but giving incorrect information about it is another thing.

[sebastian___]

I didn't have the chance to test Avid yet. But I really hope it doesn't have the shortcomings of the Premiere.
Well, to be honest, there's certain things that I like in Premiere 6.5. Like the customizable workspaces, and the fact that you can easily asign keyboard shortcuts to that. You can simply press F2 and you monitor become small and timeline big. Press F3 and your monitor becomes fullsize - to easily preview your work. I also like that you can view clips like a series of thumbnails, or for speed purpose you can put thumbnails only on the ends. I like that you can render your work area - if you have time consuming plugins. But this are standard features. It's not something you should praise the Adobe for - it's normal to have them.
As I was saying the origin of my frustration comes from the fact that I was working for many years with music editors like Cubase. And after moving to another field of work, video editing, I found out that video editing share a similar concept : instead of audio tracks you get video tracks (along with audio tracks) so you should have the same useful functions that an audio editor has. But in fact, you don't. And I don't understand why. Because Premiere and Cubase (or another similar audio editor) have approximately the same number of years in development. But Premiere feels like a 5 years old (or more) version of Cubase. And trust me, the Cubase editor is at least 5 times more complex the Premiere. Perhaps developing a video editor is much more difficult ? I really don't know 'couse I don't know anything about programing.
About Premiere 6.5 : if you are using the "selection tool" you can't drag a selection box arround clips, like you are used to in windows and every other application. With the selection tool you should be able to select a clip or multiple clips, move them all at once, or press copy and paste them in another location. Instead you can only select multiple clips if you keep ctrl pressed. And after that - the only thing you can do is - delete. If you try to move all the clips, you just can't (or at least at my machine I can't). You can move all the clips but you have to select another tool. And with that other tool you can only move the clips after you drag a line arround them. But if for example - you wanna deselect a single clip between many others - again - you can't. Perhaps one of you are gonna say - you can do some of the things you said with Premiere Pro 1.5. But I can't believe they needed so many years to do that. Why ? Because other application allready have that many years ago. Was that so difficult to implement ?? Other applications had for years keyboard customizations. While Premiere 6.5 don't. Actually I recently find out that you can search for a text file named "keyboard" inside Premiere 6.5 install folder and change that. And in that way you could have keyboard customization in Premiere 6.5. But that's not counting.
I could go and say other things wich are not ok in premiere 6.5 - but I already wrote to much - and I don't thing anybody cares. BUt one more thing : how can you copy multiple clips at once with Premiere 6.5 ?
I have the possibility to work with Premiere Pro 1.5 - but I refuse to work with, because they did some good stuff in it (wich I don't use much) and throw away some other good stuff (wich I really use) - Again - I could say mode details about that - but this post is too long :)
I have a single question about Premiere Pro : In Premiere 6.5 lets say you work witha a default workspace : the timeline is half of the screen and you have the single quarter-size monitor. If you wanna add a new segment from a clip from the bin- you go to bin - double click to some video file and bam - a big monitor opens for you with the video in it. In that big video monitor - you can easy view the clip - and select a segment - wich after you can easy drag to the timeline. Well - in PPro you can't do that. If you have the small monitor workspace - and you double click a video clip from the bin - that video clip opens in the same small monitor. How can I make the PPro to behave the same way as Premiere 6.5 did ?

[rsbush]

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=15467

[sebastian___]

That's so strange. Everybody being happy with Premiere. I'm the only user unnhappy with it. It's like I'm in "Twilight Zone" where everybody keep saying stuff like : "I'm so happy with Premiere..." , "I switch to Premiere and never looked back" , "Premiere did all the things I wanted and more..."..and so on. Perhaps other users never worked with other editors where things are REALLY simple and logical. Where you don't have to select 3 tools to do 3 jobs. You just select one tool and do 5 jobs. - Perhaps, in video editing industry, such a tool was not made yet. Too bad.

[Neil Rowe]

sebastian.. PPRO has the dual monitor view as well. one preview/clip and one the timlene. you just click the little arrow on the top right of the monitor window and select dual view among the many options there.. or you can right click the window and select dual monitors as well. and again, p 6.5 can easily select mutiple clips and do whatever you want with them.. just use the right selection tool. you should go through the "help" function for the program and read up on how to use the tools and do what your trying to do. because to be frank it sounds like you simply do not know how to use the program and are complaining about not being able to do things that are pretty basic. and fundemental . perhaps a training DVD series is in order? .. i dont know.

[jchenier]

The more I use PPRO 1.5, the more I LOVE it! I stayed with 6.5 long after the upgrade to PPRO 1.0 came out, partly due to my slow PC, but mainly due to my confort level with 6.5 (I was stuck in A/B editing mode). I upgraded my system in September, and waited until March to upgrade to PPRO 1.5, and I haven't looked back since.

On the A/B side, PPRO 1.5 is WAY better than 6.5. Being able to add transitions to any track and being able to add transition to single clips gives for endless possibilities on coming into and out of a shot.

Just my two-cents worth...

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[discs of tron]

i think sebastian is comparing apples and oranges. the leap from 6.5 to pro was huge in my opinion. i think that by abandoning apple, and then basically ripping off all of the good features from fcp, adobe finally made a pro-like video editing app. before pro, there isn't really a point in talking about premiere in the "video editing industry." because the earlier versions of premiere really didn't have a place in said industry. beyond stuff like wedding/event videography etc. (not trying to diss the folks in that line of business, but it is very different from tv/film production.)

[ransom]

sebastian, I've seen plenty of folks put down Premiere. I guess those folks just don't visit the premiere forum much. So your not alone. And I seem to remember many people that put it down were talking about 6.5 as well. Try the free download of PPro and use it on a real project and learn the ropes. I think you'll be surprised.

[saturnin]

premiere pro 1.5 is awesome....i tried avid ...bah....coudntl get into it....

[sebastian___]

iamloser - I think either I'm not express myself well enough, or you didn't understand me. I am well aware of the dual monitor view. You keep saying that "perhaps I don't know how to use the program". I think it would be strange to work with a program for a couple of years and still don't know how to work with it. I think I know enough to discover things about Premiere that are not even in the user manual. Like the stuff with that text document that allows you to customize the Keyboard for Premiere 6.5 (even though officially Premiere 6.5 doesn't have that).
And I asked you to tell me in a couple of words, how can you copy multiple clips in Premiere 6.5. All you said is "can easily select mutiple clips and do whatever you want with them.. just use the right selection tool."

I think all of you are happy with Premiere because simply you don't know any better. How would you feel to work a couple of years with a perfect editor, five times easier and better designed then Premiere and after that, you are forced all of a sudden, to work with Premiere ?
UNfortunatelly, I tried Avid and after one day of testings, it seems worse then Premiere. Too bad, because I had hopes with it.
Actually, I can settle with Premiere (seems the only choice) if somebody knowledgeable can answer a few questions.

[Neil Rowe]

.. sorry, your just asking very basic questions.. i dont think anyone else here aside from yourself would disagree with that. i think nobody has answered because it takes time.. and you could simply look up the answer by using the "help " function in premiere and typing
"selecting multiple clips" or reaing the manual. but for a breif explanation. you can take the arrow or pointer tool, and drag a box around multple clips on the timeline.. in 6.5 i think theres a seperate "mutli- select" arrow for doing that though. its been a while ,, and it shard to remember. i believe the standard keyboard shotcut key to select that tool in 6.5 was "m" i could be wrong though. and there is different multi select tools,, theres on which select all clips forward of the selected point on the track or tracks selected. and so on.. to switch between them in 6.5 i thnk you ust keep hitting "m". or whatever the tool selection is and it cycles through them.

in PPRO the one arrow tool can select single or multiple by draggin a box , and theres more tools that do more than one thing pending how you use it.. namely the ripple editing tools. so you dont really cycle through tools anymore.. you just hit thier shortcut key and use the tool the way you want and it likely does a number of differnt things pending how you use it. and what button your clicking and how many times your clicking it...ect. and the only thingk that premier 6.5 has that 1.5 doesnt is the stupid A-B track editing. otherwise it has more features and all the same old ones but alot better. they are just accessed differently and used differently ..1.5 is undoubtedly much better than 6.5. . IMHO you should familiarize yourself with 1.5 pro and forget about 6.5.. but ...whateva.

..i would suggest using the dual monitor view and dragging the clip you want to take a segment from into the preview omnitor and set you in and out ponts from there. then you can drag that clip onto the timline. or you can right click a clip and select "new reference window, and it will open up a seperate monitor window for just that clip with all the controls and such .. although i cant recall if you can set in ans out there as well. there may be a shortcut key for that as well.. i dont use it very often if at all . just for color matching when i need one clip to stay up on the screen and work on another in the main monitor window. ..otherwise if you just do like you said and double click the clip it wil open in the main monitor window. you can set your in and outs, and then drag it to the timeline, once you click back on the timeline , the monitor window will switch back to monitoring the timeline.. so its not really any different .. it just uses one window instead of having to open a new one. ... if you want to see the timeline and the new clip at the same time, just use the dual monitor view. hope that helps.

[ProjX v2.0]

sebastien,

I think your main problem is that you addressing the limitations of Premiere 6.5 instead of addressing the freedoms that Premiere Pro 1.5 allows. If you are comparing Premiere 6.5 to new versions of Avid or FCP, it isn't quite a fair comparison. I would suggest, if you haven't already, download the free trial of Premiere Pro 1.5 and work through a project.

I think you'll find many of your issues resolved.

[ProjX v2.0]

On the A/B side, PPRO 1.5 is WAY better than 6.5. Being able to add transitions to any track and being able to add transition to single clips gives for endless possibilities on coming into and out of a shot.

Is there a way to do A/B editing in Premiere Pro that I am not aware of? I thought it was strictly a Single Track style NLE?

[jchenier]

It is single track, but the way transitions are added between clips in the tracks, and then modified through the effects window is almost identical to A/B. The fact that you can add transitions to any track makes PP1.5 WAY more versatile than any previous version.

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com

[smok3]

to not start a new thread, premiere pro question: how do i export multiple edits at once (like some sort of batch export), like all with same settings for example?

[sebastian___]

Sorry for not replying for so long, but I had to finish a project.
Because even many of my friends did not understood my complaining about Premiere Pro - I made a little website (about some good things in Premiere 6.5 left out in Pro) - wich explains a lot better what I was trying to say - because it has pictures and even small gif animations. I think I'm gonna make a new post with this (because this topic title is not actually about this).

http://www.moviefactory.ro/premiere_vs_premiere.html