Thanks! I will go for your advices and see if it works. And then I will throw Premiere far away out in the desert somewhere and go for Vegas=)

I forgot to tell you how to delete your preference file- while loading premiere hold down ALT+CTRL+SHIFT...once you get in there all your settings are back at default but you can go back and set them back up again.

Upgrading to Premiere Pro
 

I've been thinking about upgrading from Premiere 6.02 to 6.5, but if I did, would I have to pay again to upgrade to PRO? I called Adobe and they said if I ordered 6.5 now, that they'd upgrade me to PRO for free when it came out. If I order from them, I was told, no documentation would be necessary. If I ordered from buy.com, I'd have to send them a copy of the receipt.

One of my biggest gripes is that Adobe's "try-out" download is still Version 6.0, not 6.5 -- so there's no way for me to try out the new features. Also, Adobe won't let you order by credit card and download the update. You have to pay shipping and wait.

What is it about them? Very little of this makes sense. I've also heard a lot about instability and this product, but don't seem to have many problems with 6.0. At this point, the DV encoder (to DVD) is a major selling point. The titling stuff I can master later.

I think many of the instability issues relate to the mongrels of edit systems out there. To some extent Adobe have tried to address this by limiting Pro to XP, and therefore newer hardware.Perhaps I'm mistaken, but haven't you answered your own question there? Just make sure that when Adobe say that they will upgrade you for free that they aren't referring to you buying the full version of 6.5 now. AFAIK, free upgrades only relate to purchases of the full product.

John,

If you're interested, I've got a unopened in the box copy of 6.5 I'd be glad to sell cheap (came with my Matrox RTX100). With it, you could just buy the upgrade to pro ($199). Contact me offline for more info. BTW, I'm upgrading as soon as it's available. Really looking forward to the increased functionallity.

Premiere Update
 

Rob: Just called Adobe again and the woman yesterday gave me bum dope. She said the 6.5-7 upgrade would be free. The fellow I just spoke with said the price of upgrading from 6.0 or 6.5 is the same: $199. He said upgrading to 6.5 is $146.

He also said Premiere 7 has been "completely rewritten" and that .avi files from DV camcorders can be readily converted to MPEG-2 with little or no image loss. He did say that 1 gig or more of memory was recommended for the PRO version. He also said the new version has none of the instability issues of the older versions.

Reckon I'll hold on and upgrade to the PRO version when it's available.

John - I want to make sure I understand.

If you own 6.0 (which I do), then you can upgrade to 7.0 for $199? If so, that's exactly what I'm going to do!

Thanks for doing the research!

That is the way Adobe explains it. However, LE versions are not available for the upgrade. Go figure :)

I don't think I have LE (I'll have to see when I get home). I assume that is a "light" version?

Thanks for the confirmation though.

Correct. It is the cheapie limited version.

You can upgrade from LE, it's $399:

http://www.adobe.com/store/products/...?id=PRupgrades

First you have to decide what your target output is:

1. download/view for the web
This would mean QuickTime, mpeg or DiVX for example

2. DVD/vcd/svcd
This means mpeg2 or 1

3. Back to tape
Leave it in AVI/DV

AVI, WMV and QuickTime are just container formats. They are
there to store digital video & audio but don't know HOW to store
it. Codecs tell the container format HOW the information is stored.
MPEG is both a container AND codec format.

AVI can be uncompressed, rle compressed, DV or you can use third
party codecs like DiVX/XviD.

QuickTime has codecs like MPEG4, Sorenson etc.

If you know in which way you want to use your movie you can
then choose an approriate container format and codec.

I've been playing with Vegas 4 lately and it seems to like my
XL1s pretty much. Do try out their demo at www.sonicfoundry.com

I don't know of anyone using real with Premiere. Most people
output to QuickTime for the web (this seems to be right seeing
that no-one responded to your question).

One thing I learned with the Lady X project I'm involved in, is
that good web output takes a lot of trials and testing before
you get it acceptable. Not a thing to rush!

I normally export to web using either Windows Media or Quicktime. I never liked Real's players, which is why I stick to those two. All I can tell you, is to use Cleaner, if it is an option, and experiment.