Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 Released - Decisions, Decisions!
 

Well, Adobe has now come out with their next version of Premiere. It is called "Adobe Premiere Pro" and it looks great! It has tons of new functions, including color correction, 5.1 surround sound, advanced timeline features, and so sooooooo much more. Now I have a problem. This new version of Premiere looks good, but what do you think? I am going to buy a new NLE within the next month or so. Should I buy this new Adobe Premiere Pro or should I go with Avid Xpress DV like I was planning? I am so confused now! Thanks alot for your help. I would love to hear you opinions and thoughts about the newly released Premiere. (I think it starts shipping in August). Thanks for your opinions, thoughts, first impressions, and help!

More detailed info at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/overview.html


PS - I currently use Adobe Premiere 6.0

Woah didn't know it was being released this early. Usually Adobe starts advertising months in advance to big releases. Wait- and didn't they JUST release 6.5 not too long ago! Darn maybe Vegas DID put the burner under their butts!
Looking at the screenshots and features they DEFINITLY have taken many cues from Vegas. I'm curious as to how it ultimately stacks up against Vegas. Even if it matchs it, heck even if it BEATS it.....and still is unstable like every other Premiere release- it's not worth the $700. I'll stick with my Vegas+DVD.
Time will tell I suppose. Anyone that picks it up- please let us know how it is!

Also in the digital video collection standard version they have added adobe audition (for sound editing) http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html and encore but have taken out photoshop and illustrator. In the professional version of the collection they include the professional version of after effects and include photoshop, but still no illustrator. They are priced from adobe $799 and $1499 respectively and the professional version is only available direct from adobe.

Brian

Hmm I have to wonder how good Adobe Audition is going to be. Mind you I'm comparing the whole Adobe NLE suites to Sonic Foundry's. Sonic Foundry has Sound Force- which I'd have to think would blow away Audition beings they are a company that specializes in audio.
I dunno I'm just a bit disgruntled- I don't want to get excited about new Adobe product right as I'm currently making the swtich from Premiere 6 to Sonic Foundry's Vegas 4, DVD Architech, and Sound Forge. I can't afford both. I'm actually hoping Premiere Pro turns out like all other Premiere releases and is horribly unstable- at least that way I can rest assured my money is/was well spent.

UPDATE: Oh yeah I forgot- all Audition is, is Cool Edit Pro. I almost forgot Adobe bought that. I'll stick with Sound Forge and Noise Reduction 2.0. ;)

forget it if its cool edit...
Soundforge has been the industry standard (alongside pro tools) as the godfather of all audio editors...
I been using it for about 7 years now, and i know it works marvelously....
when vegas 1 first came out, noone knew anythign about it, but then they all cought on with vegas 4...
one thing to remember is that it took THIS long (V7) for Adobe to make any real significant changes to Premiere... from what i recall, there havent been many major improvements or breakthrus since before v5... which is quite sad when you consider its been on the market for so long...

oen good thing about P7, is that its compatible with HW like matrox and canopus... and i guess with that kind of support it will stil have a strong following and rightly so, but it wont take too long (hopefully) for SF to score a deal with a HW manufacturer...

either way, choose whatever NLE works best for you...

IMO it still seems a lil overbloated compared to the smooth fast operational flow of Vegas...

Best to give it a try and see what happens.. :)

in the end, the more choises WE have the more productive WE can be...

Yeah I'll probably download a trial of Premiere Pro just to keep and open mind and give it a shot- although it'll take nothing less than a miracle for them to have created a product that can eclipse Vegas. And even then, like I said, theres the issue of stability.

If SF (or Sony for that matter now...) scored a deal with a HW manufacturer I'd be the first on the list to pick one up. Lets just hope unlike Pinnacles DV500, it doesn't introduce any hardware related software instability!

As a long time Premiere user I tried VV4. Without any substitute for virtual clips VV4 is pretty limiting to me. In many ways Premiere 6 already surpasses VV4 and is not harder to use (at least for me).

The feature I like most about VV4, transitions on all tracks, will be available in Premiere Pro. We'll see how easily it does crossfades, another nice feature if VV4. SOFO needs to work on VV4's asset management, it's horrible.

I'm really looking forward to the tabbed timelines. Something I've wanted for a while now. VV4 holds no interest of mine at this point.

I'm thrilled to bits that you and others are happy with VV. AP works for me. Why can't you leave it at that?

It seems that the pendulum is swinging the other way now! I have always been a Premiere fan, and seem to be in good company. For the first time though, Adobe is letting me down, as Premiere Pro (PP?) doesn't seem to run in anything but XP. I hope this is just a typo, and they will have support for 2K users.

<<<-- Originally posted by Nigel Moore : I'm thrilled to bits that you and others are happy with VV. AP works for me. Why can't you leave it at that? -->>>

No, nooo I didn't mean it that way. It's hard to convey the temperature of your coorespondence in written the written form. I was simply making a statement that meant nothing more than, "you don't know what your missing". I figured you never tried VV so honestly didn't know how it compared.
Take it from me I'm a long time Premiere user and when I first heard all these people ranting about Vegas I thought they were exaggerating...after all Vegas is one of the smaller NLEs out there. I'm sorry if you took it the wrong way, rather...I'm sorry the way I worded it. I didn't mean to come across the way it did.
Btw, what are your personal reasons for not trying Vegas?

Craig, virtua clips are one of the particular things that actually made my Premiere buggy. Granted I'm running Premiere with Hardware support of Pinnacles DV500 so it's really hard to tell if it's hardware or software related. Whenever I tried to work with virtual clips Premiere never played them properly and/or would crash.
I'm pretty new to Vegas but I'm pretty sure it has options that are similar (and less limiting) than virtual clips. You can duplicate full tracks with all it's edits and adjustments. If you go back and change the original track you duplicated it from it wont change your duplicated track- unlike with virtual clips.
VV4 IS harder to use- at first. You are used to the Premiere workflow just like me and was a fish out of water at first when working in Vegas. Once you take the time to learn the workflow it'll make sense and you'll prefer it....at least all the people I know that have taken the time to learn Vegas prefer it's workflow over Premiere.
I could be wrong but I honestly can't think of one thing Premiere can do that Vegas can't do, if not better. On the other hand I can list plenty of things Vegas can do that Premiere couldn't even attempt.
The onset of Premiere Pro may change things but the best case scenario is it is on par with Vegas. Then again I haven't heard if Premiere Pro supports 24p and High-Definition.


*Oh and I DID think of something Premiere can do that Vegas can't- FLMs. I actually do like FLMs- though they become quite combersome if longer than a few seconds...even on a fast computer.*

I do not understand all the fuss about Vegas vs. Premiere. Why does it matter? It's become like Mac vs. PC. Just use what's best for you and leave it at that. It seems like a lot of "Vegas Converts" around here are bitterly resentful of Premiere, and are already trashing the new release before they've even tried it. That's amazing.

I for one love Premiere and it does everything I need it to do. I doesn't crash, and works beautifully with the my Canopus DV Storm. And now, Premiere is set to be even more tightly integrated with AE so that is a major bonus I'm looking forward to.

I've tried Vegas and I personally don't like the interface, but I'm not going to go on a public bashing spree of the software. I know a lot of people enjoy that program and if it works for them then more power to ya! ;)

I agree. Who cares if it works. Having said that I dont see many Vegas users moving over to Premiere but many going from Premiere to Vegas.

Does anyone use Avid Xpress DV? I am going to buy that or Premiere Pro, and I would like some user experiences with the program. Thanks for your input, I appriciate it!

Yes, I too would love to hear opinions regarding Avid Express DV vs Premiere Pro (or Premiere), as I have an opportunity to upgrade from 6.0 in a few weeks.

VV4 does not have virtual clips nor does it have anything to substitute for them. I confirmed this in the SOFO forum. One could say that virtual clips don't make Premiere buggy if, like VV4, you can't use them. The only bug I found in virtual clips is that they can flip field order.

Premiere 6 and 6.5 have been absolutely stable for me and I've run them on at least 6 different boxes. If I were you, Glen, I'd blame the Pinnacle card. I, too, had a DV500 and it was horrible. With Premiere my philosophy is only the cheapest OHCI card and it's served me well.

There are many things Premiere does that VV4 cannot do. You can find a list of them on the VV4 forum at Sonic Foundry. My favorite peeves are the bad asset management and lack of storyboard. How do you export a bin in VV4? No one at SOFO seemed to know yet I do it all the time in Premiere.

The whole purpose of a virtual clip is that when you update it it updates the copy in the main timeline. Doh!

I also never said VV4 was hard to use. What I said was Premiere was not harder. Personally I liked VV4 but it is lacking in features I need and it offers nothing compelling to me over Premiere. Now that Premiere 7 has added a fulltime vectorscope/waveform display, improved color correction (though I use Video Finesse) and transitions on all tracks, I see all VV4's advantages gone. That opinion is based solely on the features I use, of course. I approached VV4 with an open mind and even bought it. I may yet switch to VV5.

I do agree that the VV4 vs. Premiere subject seems personal and comes mostly from Vegas users. It shouldn't surprise anyone that more users convert to Vegas than the other way around. Premiere is much older, more mature, and has a lot more users to lose.

Glen, sorry I took it the wrong way. Thinking about it I know what you meant.Most of my apps are Adobe, so they fit well together. I was looking forward to EncoreDVD so that AP, AE and PS would have a DVD export option that worked within the workflow.

I addition, I've been very happy with the export from Premiere to Cleaner 5 using the plug-in. I output a lot of QT to web, and it worked for me. Then I made the mistake of downgrading to Cleaner XL, and there's no plug-in anymore.

But the best thing about AP for me is the A/B edit. I like that. I'm not an intuitive single track editor. Nor do I like keyboard shortcuts...my mind's too full of crap as it is! ;-)

But this morning I read a couple of reviews on Premiere Pro over at the Cow. There's same way cool stuff in there....but A/B editing is out, and the toolbar requires the use of keyboard shortcuts to select tool variants. So, you didn't need to rain on my parade after all (not that you meant to)...Adobe's done a pretty good job of it itself.

A lot has been said about Premiere and stability. I used to run it on an Win ME on Athlon CPU (with a few heat issues, CPU core temperature as high as 89 Celsius). That was quite unstable.

Now running on Win XP pro and a P4, and havent had Premiere crash once.

I tend to believe that the switch to XP made the biggest difference, but my point is just that Premiere stability seems to be heavily influenced by your platform.

Looking forward to trying Premiere 7.0 too :)

Hans Henrik

Nigel, I'm the same way. I've grown accustomed to editing in an A/B workspace. It just seems so much easier to tweak the lenght and timing of transitions, etc. Believe it or not Vegas has A/B as well- there is a little symbol in the track list to open up the track to break video 1 into A and B rolls with a transition track in between. People said once I get in there I wont want to edit that way..once I started working with the default (single track) view for transitions, they were right. You have just as much control in single track in Vegas as you do in A/B. You can highlight the edge of a transition and drag either direction to adjust timing. Not to mention all you have to do to initiate a transition is overlap two clips by draging one over the other. It's pretty nifty how it also defaults to a cross fade (dissolve), my most used transition- plus you get to tweak the "curve" of the transition. All of Premieres are simply linear transitions.
Excuse me for sounding like a Sonic Foundry salesman- I'm just very enthusiastic about learning this new program and feel the need to share it with fellow Premiere editors. Take care.

<<<-- Originally posted by Hans Henrik Bang : A lot has been said about Premiere and stability. I used to run it on an Win ME on Athlon CPU (with a few heat issues, CPU core temperature as high as 89 Celsius). That was quite unstable.

Now running on Win XP pro and a P4, and havent had Premiere crash once.

I tend to believe that the switch to XP made the biggest difference, but my point is just that Premiere stability seems to be heavily influenced by your platform.

Looking forward to trying Premiere 7.0 too :)

Hans Henrik -->>>

Hans, XP helped my Premiere performance too but didn't solve it. It all depends on how complicated of edits you try and do. If you simply layer footage and ad a transition here and there it works fine. It's when you try to add multible effects, reverse the footage (-100% speed setting), and work with virtual clips is when it's starts acting up....for me at least.
I don't understand how Adobe could make such rock solid programs such as Adobe Photoshop but skimp on their flagship NLE. Lets hope this new incarnation of Premiere will carry Photoshops rock-solid stability.

*Btw, I've actually had Photoshop crash on me, well ImageReady I should say- it was after working with a rather large Animated Gif*

Photoshop doesn't interface with 3rd party hardware. Speed adjustments, even reverse, and virtual clips were never a stability problem for me.

The problem with Premiere is that it's a kitchen sink application that's expected to support a thousand different hardware products that Adobe has no control over. Premiere is blamed much like Windows is. I've never had stability issues with Windows 2000, either. I'm no Adobe or Microsoft apologist, but smaller companies simply don't have a big problem with this.

That said, Adobe has a reputation for letting serious problems go unfixed for a long time and their support is nonexistant.

Man, I'd sure wait a bit to see what the user community has to say. I used to be an ADOBE PREMIERE user, now I'm absolutely sold on Vegas 4. Behind me, I leave a history of lost files, freeze ups and poor quality with Premiere. It wouldn't be so infuriating if I hadn't been led down the garden path by Adobe's inflated claims, elitist attitude and overinflated price under the guise of a professional NLE. Now I know better. Curiously, the new release of Premiere Pro sure seems to mimic qualities that Vegas has had since version 3 and improved on in version 4. Is it the competition that's finally forced ADOBE to do some technology upgrading to its woefully under-developed NLE? It sure seems so. Personally, I've had it with their elitism. Vegas serves me well...and it does it at a fraction of the cost.

Bill makes a good point. What about the aspect of cost. Premiere cost more than twice as much as Vegas!

I feel qualified to comment on price since I just bought Vegas+DVD for $700 and just ordered the standard Adobe bundle for $800. The difference is that the Adobe bundle includes After Effects and Encore in addition to the NLE and DVD authoring. Premiere Pro's retail is $700 compared to Vegas' $490 (recently reduced from $700). Hardly twice the price. I hope you guys have a better argument than cheap since the "fraction of the cost" Bill refers to is 7/10 and less. Street is probably closer still.

Encore is DVD authoring. The standard bundle also includes Audition.

Signed

S.M. Artarse

Keith,Yeah but what was the original cost of Premiere? $600?
$600 + $199 doesn't sound like any better of a deal.

Craig, if you just bought it for that much- you got ripped. DV Direct was selling Vegas+DVD for $399. Today the price was raised to $449...and thats with DVD Architech and the AC-3 encoder.

Well, it seems to me that most of the people praising Vegas and smashing Premiere, are former Premiere users. So, unless you were using a pirate copy, you have a valid copy of Premiere, and are eligable for the upgrade. $200 sounds like a savings compared to $400.

And I got my copy of Premiere with my edit card.

Oops. I meant Audition.

I wouldn't put it past SOFO to rip me or anyone else then.

So Glen, what you're saying is that we should compare your street price for Vegas to full retail on Adobe's website? Why don't you post your justification for the "more than twice" the cost claim so we can ridicule it. My comparision was fair and accurate. If your friend would sell you a copy of VV4 for $1 would Premiere be 799 times more expensive?

Anyway, at Provantage you can buy a full version of Premiere for $249 and get a firewire card for free. Look here and you'll find Vegas+DVD for $259. If you bought from DV Direct, Glen, you got ripped.

Keith, what I was saying was you had to buy Premiere in the first place...so comparing the upgrade price to the price of the full version of Vegas isn't a fair comparison.

Admittedly you are right about former Premiere users bashing Premiere. I for one find myself in that catagory which has got a few people a bit angry with me- people, apparently get slightly offended when you bash their software. Likewise I feel the same way when Craig, for example, argues against Vegas. It's the typical "I want him to see it my way" mentality I often fall victim to. *sorry guys*

Craig, your right it isn't fair to compare a retail price of one product against a street of another....good point.
However, going by the comparison you used, your comparing two programs vs one. Vegas+DVD is a full featured NLE with 5.1 surround, AC-3 encoding, and a DVD authoring program...I'd hope it'd be a bit more expensive than simply Premiere 6.0 by it'self.
If you want to compare apples to apples compare Vegas+DVD vs Premiere 6 and Encore. Or better yet Premiere Pro and Encore, because comparing Premiere 6 to Vegas 4.0 in itself isn't fair- Vegas is a newer release with a much more robust set of features.

Speaking of former Premiere users- you sound like a disgruntled Vegas user. You share my dislike of Premiere, for Vegas. I can respect that. But when you wanna compare more than preference and get down to features Premiere really can't compare. At least until Premiere Pro.

I don't argue against Vegas. I just point out that Vegas does not do everything Premiere does. You made that claim. How do you like Vegas's garbage mattes?

Glen, you were the one putting down Premiere in a Premiere topic. If you refute my claim that Vegas doesn't do virtual clips, then demonstrate how to do them. Likewise support your claim that Premiere costs more than twice as much as Vegas.

I don't dislike Vegas, I dislike claims that it does things it can't do.

well, anyone want to argue synthetic Mobil1 vs. organic Pennzoil?

Pennzoil leaves this gross crud coating all your engine parts. Vegas doesn't do that. Bad analogy.

I don't use either... It's Castrol all the way!

Craig,
1. The prices you quoted were from the Acedemic Version only.

2. Like I said before Vegas has something similar to a virtual clip, in that it can Duplicate tracks. You'd have to explain how, exactly you use virtual clips for me to formulate a work-around. The only difference is if you change the original track you made the "virtual clip" or duplicate clip (as in Vegas) the copied, or new, track doesn't change. Why you would want it to update I'm not sure- thus you need to provide a scenario.

3. Garbage mattes. To my knowlege Vegas can do this also, as it's way more advanced in the compositing department. How you ask? I can find out- like I said, I'm still trying to learn the program myself.

4. Who said I wasn't going to download the trial of Premiere Pro. I'm not close minded. The product I dislike and make statements about is one that I own personally and have over 2 years of experience on.

Craig you gotta look more into Vegas, it apparently has more options than you think....you didn't know about duplicating tracks did you? Or the fact it has advanced compositing. Not all these things are easily seen if you just have scratched the surface.

Throught this coorespondence I've been quite humble always making a point to say "I'm not sure" or "I think" just to make sure I don't speak out of ignorance. If you go back and re-read my original statement that set you off you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm not standing with my feet set in stone- I specificaly said "I could be wrong" regarding Premiere having features that Vegas lacks. And thus so far all the examples (all two of them) have work-arounds and/or different ways of going about it. If "virtal clips" is exactly what you need and no variance is acceptable then maybe Vegas DOES lack features you "need". However as an editor myself I find features like compositing, keying, 5.1 surround mixing, AC-3 encoding, and 24p/HD support more compelling than a "virtual clip". (btw, seriously... please dont forget to explain how/why you need them...that way I can better gauge if Vegas has something that'll replicate it's effectiveness)


*Oh, and.....Mobil 1 all the way!*

Well then I guess Premiere is much cheaper. The point is that Premiere is not more expensive than VV4. How about $282?

Vegas has nothing similar to virtual clips. My most common use of virtual clips involves combining footage then applying filters to the combination. I've also used it to generate complicated garbage mattes and to do simultaneous transitions. Vegas has a superior solution to the third application by allowing each track to have transitions. PPro duplicates that ability.

My understanding is that VV4 does not offer garbage mattes but I have not verified it. I learned this on the SOFO Vegas forum where it was accepted as fact. I doubt SOFO employees would let that go if it were not true.

If you go to the SOFO Vegas forum, you'll find that the users there are actively trying to find a substitute for virtual clips using a frame server. I personally would not bother with that level of complexity and hope, instead, that SOFO adds tabbed timelines.

the price question isn't really a question...
why buy the Premiere Pro software for 800 bucks when you could buy the software bundled together with a hardware editing card in a month for 500 and then sell the card alone again and your old version of premiere alone too. you pay 50, 100 or 200 $ for it. i always do that. the software alone is too expesive wait for a bundle and then buy it. i did that with a bundled editing card and AP 6.5 and not even paid a cent for a new 6.5 version (i had AP 6) i... got 20 bucks more later than i had before and the newest premiere version, thats the way to go

Vegas doesn't have garbage mattes just like it doesn't have virtual clips. I do think it has features that do stuff thats similar- for example...say you want to blur out someones face as they move across the screen- simple work when using a garbage matte, right. Well in Vegas you can duplicate the clip blur the top layer, add a mask (cookie cutter) over top of it, and key frame it to the motion of the person walking- isn't that the same as a garbage matte?

Regarding Virtual clips....I'm still a bit fuzzy on what you mean by combine clips. I understand how you can make a virtual clip out of two clips transitioning together and then transition that to yet another clip. But how would using the track duplication limit that in Vegas? *not rhetorical, I'm actually asking a question*
If that didn't work, last ditch effort would be to export your transitioned track as a DV avi and import it into the project. That way you could add new transitions on top of footage where transitions were already rendered. The only limitation is the ability to change the original clip and have it update the virtual clip, which I still don't see the usefullness of that. *how do you, personally use that feature of Virtual clips?*
I actually did something similar to that in a recent wedding video I finished. I'd do a 3 minute vignette, export it as DV avi, import it and place it on the timeline- that way I don't have to worry about re-rendering if I nudge the clip on the timeline. It's then when I'd add all the visual effects (color correction, soft focus, etc). I probably could have achieved something similar by turning the edited vignette into a virtual clip and then applying video filters to the virtual clip, skipping having to output the AVI as a middle step...though, like I said virtual clips act up on my system.
In Vegas you can finish your edit then apply project-wide adjustments (filters, speed, super-sampling, motion blur, etc) by use of video bus tracks. Again just another way to achieve the same effect.

OK, my little bit.

I've used both, Premiere and VV, Pennzoil and Mobil1. As far as NLEs go, or any software app for that matter, it's rather narrowminded to limit yourself to one app, there are things one app does better than the other and in editing flexability is the name of the game as far as I'm concerned. If I can't do something in Prem then I fire up VV. The same goes with Illistrator, I sometimes find that some things are easier in Macromedias Freehand. Everyone has loyalities but to limit yourself to one app is just limiting your creativity. As for getting pissed at someone because they use something different to you, grow up!

I found that mineral based oils, Pennzoil and Penrite, are great for large capacity V8s and 6s, and synthetic Mobil1 was good for turbo'd engines. Why, the Mobil1 handled the heat produced by the turbo better than the mineral oils and left the oil paths as clean as a whistle, the mineral oil broke down under the heat and left gummy residue in the oil paths.

oh wise one...three humble bows in your direction.

Does anyone here use Avid Xpress DV? I am starting to think that naybe I really should upgrade to Premiere Pro simply because no one seems to use Avid! Please, if you use Avid, could you tell me how you like it or what you think its strengths/weaknesses are? Thanks.