Prosumer editing
 

I have some editing experiance with fairly basic editing programs but would like to get something more powerful, as I am well past the limited functions of my current program. Going to Vegas or Premier would mean a serious upgrade in hardware ($$$$). Could anyone advise me on good mid range type programs available that funcion with computers of 2.2 gig processor, 448 RAM. I intend to get a external hard drive to store my captured video.
Thanks for any advise.

Vegas will work on really weak computers, so you don't have to upgrade. Vegas isn't a ram hog so it doesn't need much RAM (you should have enough).

I don't know too much about Premiere. Recommended specs for Premiere Pro is a Pentium 3.06ghz processor and 1GB of RAM.

Internal hard drives are usually better than externals, but they aren't as portable.

Go Vegas, it's well worth it. Not only does it make better use of resources or rather require less, I prefer it hands down over Premiere Pro. I used to be a serious Premiere advocate but 6.5 was always a TAD sluggish on my P4 2.4 gigarhertz with 1gig or RDRAM. The Premiere Pro demo was really sluggish and made my computer seem like it was ready to crash when I asked anything significant from the program other than straight edits. I also HATE rendering on 6.5 and the real-time on PRO and 6.5 isn't really that great as it takes a great deal of resources. Finally, if you're going to be editing 24p and want to do it native (I personally am a DVX100a owner) then Vegas is a must as Premiere does not offer native 24p editing as of yet. Premiere PRO offers some of the 'cinelook' plugins which are sort of decsendents of the Magic Bullet AE plugins which rock, but I've found that I can achieve a very similar result in Vegas with some color curves and an extra layer of 30% opaque gausian blur. Anyways, if you really want, you can download a demo of each program off their respective websites to give em a spin, but I push Vegas these days. Best of luck.

While you're checking things out, make sure to give Ulead Media Studio Pro a look as well.

Premiere, Vegas and MSP are all good DV Editors with loads of video tracks, transitions and filters, but there are a few things that make each unique...

Premiere Pro has the best high-end hardware integration and options short of Avid. Basically, Adobe seems to be gunning for the Avid market with this. Part of the result of that is that the price is a couple hundred $$ more than Vegas and MSP. If you're working mainly in DV/MPEG-2, and will not going to be interfacing to Beta or other high-end gear, your just spending money on features you'll never use.

Vegas has the best audio features of the lot. If you hope to do surround sound in your video editor, Vegas is the easy choice.

Media Studio Pro's niche is in more robust visual effects tools. It includes a rotoscoping tool and a 2D animation module that make track mattes and shot touch-ups a breeze, as well as enabling some visual effects that the others (Premiere depends on Photoshop and AfterEffects) just can't do. Compositing with MSP is also very good.

Personally, I'm a former Premiere user that switched to MSP for the effects power, so I'm biased that way. I can report that I'm running MSP on a P4, 1.6Ghz w/256Meg ram and an external drive for video and it works great. Even realtime preview to video monitor via firewire.

Anyway, all these programs have free trial demos. The best thing you can do for yourself is download 'em and try them out.

Good luck.
Have fun.

Wow... UMSP looks very nice. What's the diff/advantages between that program and Vegas? I mean, the track look and whole interface seems more "newbie-friendly" to me, but does it also have some good features/plugins?

Well, I'm not a Vegas user, so I can't really speak to how it's UI works vs MSP. More often than not, users of both programs seem to be quite happy with the user interfaces. I've always thought that UI is mostly a personal fit kinda thing.

Anyway, one advatage MSP has over Vegas is the Price point.
I just noticed that to get DVD authoring and AC-3 encoding, you need to buy the Vegas+DVD package, List Price near $800.
MSP includes DVD authoring and AC-3 in it's standard package listing at around $500.

One cool tool MSP has (not sure if the other programs have it or not) is a tape scanning feature in the Capture module. Basically, this scans your DV tape at 20x speed, and automatically creates a thumbnailed catalog of all the different shots on the tape. You can then add descriptions, pick the shots you want, and save then entire list for use again later. Capture also has a feature to capture MPEG-2 video directly off un-encryped DVD's, complete with AC-3 soundtrack. Very handy if you happen to have a set-top DVD recorder.

MSP's real stregth, as I mentioned before, is in visual effects.
Compositing, for one, is an area that starts many users of Premiere and Vegas on talking about add-on applications. MSP on the other hand has a set of very capable compositing tools. I use them quite often for bluescreen or greenscreen work.

There's also a great rotoscoping tool that lets you edit a video down to the frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel level if you like. The module (VideoPaint) works directly from the video file (AVI, MOV, MPG, whatever) rather than requiring conversion to a seperate format (Adobe uses a "filmstrip" format between Premiere and Photoshop). I've used this tool to correct an instance where a narrator moved his eyes during a shot to look at some notes and in another case, completely removed an ugly tractor from a client-supplied handheld outdoor shot. VideoPaint made these tasks easy and I did them each in about five minutes with the client sitting next to me.

Anyway, what you get out of an application is directly related to how you plan on using it and what tasks you need to achieve. I'm a happy, (therefore biased) MSP user and some of the things I mentioned above are the key reasons I'm so happy with it.

Hope this helps.
Have fun.

I checked out the Ulead site, but downloading the Demo proved too much for my dial up connection!
What are the bad points ot what can't the Ulead program do. I am interested in checking it out for sure.
Thanks for all the input as well!

I bought a new Sony computer in late 03'. They offered Premiere Pro preloaded (no discs, no manual) for a good deal as an option. I bought the option. I'm comfortable with Studio 8, Showbiz, and several other entry level editing programs. But, I need help in utilizing Premiere's capabilities. Can anyone please suggest the best way for assistance? Is a good aftermarket book available? Online help?

????
 

No discs? No manual? Sounds like a funny deal. I suggest you go back and get the discs and manual that they seem to have forgotten!

Julian

When you buy Preloaded software on a new computer, the software mfgr saves $ - no packaging, etc - and you are prevented from moving to another computer. SONY offers this on their video editing computers.