What NLE program would be best for me

Eagle eye

Eagle eye

Member
I currently use Pinnacle DV500 which has Premiere 6.5 built in. I shoot mainly holiday stuff and family, plus the occasional Wedding. I bought the DVX102BEN because I am keen on the highest quality footage for my efforts. So far the results have been great. I am soon to retire and was wondering what I should buy to update my DV500 NLE. I want a good DVD authoring ability and excellant quality encoding. I would like the ability to handle HD footage at some time in the future perhaps but this is not absolute. I have looked at some of those available on the net but know some are really for the Pro, so I would like some guidance. I have a fairly powerful computer Athlon 64 3200 2.21GHZ and 1G of RAM and two hardrives 7200rpm.:)
 
I used to have the DV500 as well. I'm now using Premiere Pro 2.0, which integrates nicely with Adobe Encore, Audition, and After Effects. It's what I use to edit all my weddings and other projects. The computer your using is plenty powerful to edit SD footage using the new Adobe suite.

A lot of users on this site love Sony Vegas.
 
Alot of people including myself use Vegas by Sony. By the time you get into HD it should have HD capabilities (lets hope) although as of now, it does not. Along with sony vegas, there is DVD Architect which is a pretty capable program. For weddings, holiday, and family stuff, this combination is more than enough.

Tim.
 
Vegas. I had Premiere Pro and wont go back. And I use FCP at work and its always so.... I dont know...BLAHH maybe is the best description. Both very competent apps, but Vegas has that "mojo" the DVX has and that clicks with so many users.

Vegas handles HDV now, but I'm sure 7.0 will have HD. Vegas was made for 24p (so its ironic Sony themselves still have no 24p pro-sumer DV camera)

Plus Sony has the best upgrade prices for Vegas, everytime they come out with the new version I get $99 upgrade promos.
 
If you want to keep using your pinnacle dv500, it's not compatable with premiere pro so you'd have to keep using version 6.5. I doubt pinnacle have kept it compatable with any of the recent nle solutions, which I think is terrible considering the amount it cost. So if you want to update your editing software you'll need to replace the pinnacle with another firewire card
 
Thanks for the advice but......

Thanks for the advice but......

I would like to know a couple of things about VEGAS & Premiere Pro 2.
1) Do they include a hardware encoder in the form of a PCI card like in my DV500 NLE platform. If not what sort of encoding speed would they have using my above mentioned computer.
2) The final MPEG 2 picture quality will it be noticeably better than my current Pinnacle DV500 output, which I have to say can look very good.
3) It took me years to finally get a stable editing platform which of the two would you consider the most stable. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
:dankk2:
 
Neither of these NLE's come with a card.

I can't speak for Vegas, but PP 2.0 is much faster than 6.5 at rendering video clips. The computer you mentioned above has plenty of speed. But I would consider a powerful video card. I use a Geforse 7900 gt, which allows some effects, including magic bullet filters, to run in real-time. I think the Mpeg quality will be the same, and will be more dependent on the quality of the encoder.

My DV500 was good to me...but It's only real advantage was it's abilities for analogue capture and playback. I found it's DV abilities to be the same as any 14 dollar firewire card. I believe both Vegas and Premiere have 30 day full functioning trial versions you can download. Try 'em out and see which you like better.
 
I went from PP 6.5 to 2.0 and have the suite. The student version is $1,000 less and the suite works very very well together.
 
Thanks to you all for your advice!

Thanks to you all for your advice!

I think I will look hard at Premiere Pro 2 with Encore, thanks Sacksnack for your advice. It will probably be more familiar to me than a new program like VEGAS. By the way I have a Ge Force 6600 video card. I was recently in Wellington New Zealand and took some fottage of the Inter Island ferry coming into the habour mouth in rough weather and shot using F3 'Spark' setting the results were great very sharp and with excellant detail in bush & trees on the otherside of the habour entrance. No mushy look, like many previous cameras I have owned. This is a great peice of kit for sure. I am always interested to read about other peoples settings and their results as well. Thanks again.
:dankk2:
 
I'd buy the most expensive Video card you can afford. Makes a world of difference.
I have the 7800gt. Spend $350 or more......newegg.com
 
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