Which NLE should I buy?
 

Hello,

I am using Pinnacle's Studio 9+ and I'm ready to move up to a "pro" level NLE. I do weddings and receptions with 2 and 3 cameras. Some features I'm looking for are: user friendly, drag and drop to timeline, sd w/ hd capability, excellent slow motion, color correction & other filters, multi video & audio in timeline, realtime rendering and with extensive dvd authoring/burning capabilities. I have been considering upgrading to Avid Liquid or Premiere Collection Pro. I haven't studied others like Vegas, Avid Express and Edius, but I would consider them. Do any of these products, with dvd authoring, have copy protections built in? If not, where do I go to get it? I have looked at Sonic's dvdit for dvd authoring. However, I can't verify if it has copy protection built in. Does anybody know?

I'm pc based and have less than one second experience with mac. So feel free to try and convert me. I hear Final Cut Pro is good also.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.....

Thanks,
Troy

Lots of people like Sony Vegas. I've heard it has good slow motion rendering, and good color correction. There are scripts that would facilitate multicamera editing. Vegas+DVD would probably handle your needs pretty well.

If you wanted even more extensive capabilities, nothing beats the Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio for features and integration. Adobe Premiere Pro now has multicamera editing built in.

As for copy protection, because of the way it works you cannot use it on duplicated (burned) DVDs. It has to be used on commercially replicated DVDs made from glass masters, which because of the expense involved are used for large scale replication, well beyond the few DVDs you would make for your wedding clients. But don’t worry; DVD copy protection is so easily broken by software freely available on the Internet that it is useless for the most part anyway.

While we can give all the advice in the world, it won't do you much good if certain NLE software just doesn't "click" for you. I would advise checking out the demos of NLE software available from the different software publishers like Sony and Adobe (of course, with Adobe if you get the Production Studio you would have a whole suite of software to check out). In the end, only you can decide which is best for your needs and the way you work.

yes vegas is really good. plug ins are not as vast as avid or premier but they are out there and are really good.

Liquid 7.1 has a similar setting to Studio. But, the best way is go to the sites and get their demos. I think Premiere, Vegas, and Liquid have demos. Express may too.

I did not find one for Xpress, but here as some of the trials. Try before you buy and see what you like the best.

Avid Tryout page with Liquid

Vegas info and trails

Adobe Premiere trial (register)

Canopus/Grass Valley Edius Trial

I suspect they may all want you to register.

I had been Studio User, before I first got involved with Premiere. I also use Vegas Movie Studio, which is a stripped down version of Vegas.

First, the step from Studio to Premiere was easier to me, because the basic layout of the editor is very similar. In Stuidio, I always edited with the time line, and Premiere is the same way. Also, with transitions, you just drag and drop between scenes, just like Studio. So if you want to move into something that is a bit familiar, that might be the way to go.

Everyone sings the praises of Vegas, but I haven't gotten into it yet. Its like the interface is just too different for me.... but you may find it different..

I will try all of the above over the next couple of months. I have registered with Adobe. And I have started looking at Premiere Pro 2. I'll let you know how it goes.

Troy

I went for Premier pro 1.5 after using Pinnacle, and find it very cluttered and bitsy compared with the simplistic yet user freindly interface used by Pinnacle.Of coarse,Premier has many more function's but having to purchase yet another program ,DVD Encore,then export the finished film for DVD authorisation and menue setups,this truly is a pain in the butt.Also DVD Encore is not a very user friendly program.Now I am looking for something with the simple user friendy interface and work flow of Pinnacle,but with the extra features providind by Premmier.If anyone know's of such a program,could you please enlighten me.My system is PC based.

Joe:

Since you already have 1.5, You can use Premiere to edit, and then render it to an or DV file, then pull the resulting files into Pinnacle Studio make your DVDs. I do it all the time.

Troy,

One thing is for certain, if you plan on using premiere I would recomend dual monitors or one of the 21 or 22 inch wide screen monitors. That way you can spread out your work and then the work flow is smooth and easy.

As for encore, I found it benificial to do some tutorials, you can purchase them but there are some free ones available if you do a web search. It is a difficult program but worth it once you get it down.

I thought premiere 2.0 now did some authoring as well???

Actually, this is true, but I haven't checked it out to any great extent. I usually include some kind of menu in my DVD, and I have figured out how if at all it can be done in PPro 2.0. I have other resources available, so I haven't bothered to learn it.

Avid
 

I've been reading the forums, various threads, trying to figure out what NLE to use.

It seems the professionally, Avid is the #1 system. My question is why wouldn't someone buy Avid. Why would a person choose say FCP or Premeire over Avid? The minimum system specs for the PC don't look too bad, they look the same as what I'd expect for any of the others. The price is in the same ballpark as FCP, and is the same as FCP and Premeire if you get student discount.

So my question is, why is there even discussion on it?
I know I must be missing something here, otherwise there would only be one forum for editing and nobody would be saying "which one?".

For higher-end work, they are using the more expensive versions of Avid that run in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars range (Film Composer, Nitris, Symphony, etc.).

With Xpress Pro, you don't get the hardware acceleration or all the features of the higher-end versions. It's basically a watered down version of Avid.

You may still want to use Avid because of the interface... it'll translate better into the other versions of Avid, and some people like the interface because it's less button pushing and better media management. Other people dislike Avid Xpress because they don't get the interface (it's not that intuitive) and because it isn't as powerful as other applications (i.e. its audio isn't that strong; Avid owns Digidesign... they want you to use Pro Tools).

2- For mid-high end work, you can put together a FCP system for a fraction of what an Avid would cost. An uncompressed HD system costs much less than what an Avid would cost. You still need to buy everything else (decks, monitors, etc.) so the price of the overall edit suite (incl. furniture, rent) doesn't come down much.

3- At the end of the day, the quality difference between the editing platforms is pretty minor. What it comes down to is speed and cost. How much time you waste pushing buttons, how much rendering you have to wait for, how much the overall system costs.

4- In my opinion, Vegas is my favorite NLE since you can do almost everything inside it. The audio is clearly better than the other NLEs, strong color correction, and it can do basic compositing tasks. Almost everything you need to do can be done inside Vegas. Unlike the other NLE packages, you don't have to export into the bundled compositing/effects program or the audio program.

FCP is good if you do lots of cuts and dissolve editing, need to work with other editing systems, or if you work with higher-end formats.

Premiere is kind of like a FCP clone/knock-off on the PC. The designer of FCP works for Adobe I believe.

Oh, if we are going to push favorites... ;)

I am an Avid Liquid guy. You can do everything inside include create DVD chapter points on the NLE timeline along with the DVD. It has Smartsound intergrated and supports 3rd party plugins (I have Deshaker and still trying Neat Video). Its hardware requirements are different than others, but you get background rendering and a save function that saves every change automatically with undo.

But, it reallys comes down to what works for you. Try the demos I listed above and see.

Hey, nothing wrong with NLE evangelism.