Mid-price Editing Software

Mad Matt

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Any recommendations? I'm after something that's accessible yet will provide me with plenty of options as my skill level increases and confidence grows. Basically, something half the price of Premiere Pro but almost as good!
 
Pinnacle DV200 pack,

contains full licensed version of Premiere v.6 for £99 in jessops.
comes also wiyh a chunk of pinnacle stuff (cards software) which will only run on a pre xp computer.

The premiere software will run on xp with the 6.02 upfrade free from adobe site.

If you then need dvd authoring, buy pinnacle 9 for £60 (software) or £80 (software with dv capture card).
 
Thanks! :smashin:




Edit: Just checked Jessops site - they haven't got it. Neither has Amazon, sadly. I'll have to keep looking. One further question; if my PC already has Firewire input (which it does) could I just use the Premiere software and leave the capture card in its box? (Sorry if I sound totally ignorant; I've been editing videos for quite a while, but all this computer-based NLE business is very new to me...) Also, how would I use the DVD authoring aspect of Studio 9 if I had edited my film in Premiere? I'm guessing this would all become clear in the Studio 9 manual, but I just thought I'd ask. Again, apologies for my stupidity...
 
call your local branch, ask them to do a stock check with head office...

you would dump your premiere project to dv, then recapture in pinnacle.

your exsisting dv card should be fine.
 
I'm also tempted by the DV200 but noticed that ebuyer have the DV500DVD for about £180. I'm only running a only running a windows ME Duron 850 with 128mb Ram and a UDMA 30GB hard drive. Will either of these work ok on my PC?
 
Bassbin
yourprocessor is a little on the slow side,but you should still be able to do editing, it will just be very slow. But your memory at only 128Mb may well cause many programs to struggle, if they even run at all. Most editing programs require at least 256Mb, but I would say you should have at least 512Mb if not 1Gb of memory. This upgrade should not be too expensive and will improve the performance of everything you run on the PC not just editing.
Now for the Hard Drive. At 30Gb you have no where near enough disk space for video capture. Just to capture a 1 hour tape will use up approx 13Gb and then you need extra space for editing and file conversion etc. So if much of your 30Gb drive is used up for the O/S and all the other programs you have installed you will be unlikely to have enough space for even a short video. Yet again you can upgrade to a second disk for very little money. I have just upgraded my video drive to 160Gb for about £60. If you only have a single drive at the moment then it is just a matter of plugging the new one onto the same IDE cable, setting the jumper to 'slave' and you have a lot more disk space - easy!

So if you have around £100 that you can afford to spend (plus the editing software/hardware) on upgrading the PC you should then be able to use it to do all the editing you require.

Good luck,
Mark.
 
Thanks for the pointers Mark. I guessed that I'd only have limited space (I think I've got about 20GB spare) so I'll look at getting another drive which makes very good sense as it can be taken with mer to a new machine. Memory is a little harder as I have a HP machine so it may be a little more costly but I'll check on prices. My plan is to get a new PC for Photoshop, Audio and now video work next year anyway.
 
Well a brand new PC should speed things up by a lot. Rendering a short piece of footage on my P4 1.8Ghz PC still seems to take forever, so if this is something you want to do a lot of then the faster tyhe PC the better. Most PC's now come with 512Mb of RAM or more so you should be able to get something very good for not too much money. Also they now seem to come with firewire built in and if you get Windows XP (which just about all new PC's will be suppplied with now) you also get editing software, so you will have everything you need to start editing without haveing to buy any additional software or hardware.
IMHO when choosing your new PC steer clear of the badged PC makers such as Dell, HP, Pacard Bell etc and you will be able to upgrade memory, disks etc very cheaply. Dell do make some very nice PC's at very good prices but they still cost a lot to upgrade as you need to use Dell or Dell compatable parts for many upgrades.
Of course we wouldn't want you to waiste any money on upgrade if you are going to replace the PC next year, so why not just upgrade now :devil:

Mark.
 
Very interesting reading! I wonder, can you buy an external hard drive and plug it into a spare USB port (for example) to save opening up your PC? What would you then have to do to make sure your editing software knew to access this drive rather than your usual one?
 
Yep, you can add an external HDD via USB2.0, but I'm fairly sure that USB1.1 is not fast enough especially for video capture! You could also connect and external drive by firewire, just make sure it is connected directly to the firewire card and not daisey chained. Many external cases have both firewire & USB2.0 connections. I would advise buying the drive and case separately and putting them together yourself as this will save you some money.

The external drive will be given a drive letter just like any internal HDD/CD/DVD drives. To get the editing software to use this just tell it in the capture setup (exact settings are software dependent!).

Mark.
 
After some more reading here and at Computer Video I think I need a new PC. I considered the Poweroid off the shelf systems but the £2k price tag is a bit daunting. So looking at ebuyer I cam up with the following:

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe SKTA NVNorce2ST ATX 8xAGP Giga LAN, SATA, Firewire, 6 channel Audio, USB2 Dual chan. DDR +WiFi slot (up to DDR400) £51.48

AMD Athlon XP3200 400FSB 512Cache Barton Retail Boxed Inc Heatsink & Fan with 3year Warranty £102.62

Samsung 512 PC3200 DDR400 184pin Original Memory Module x2 £95.60

Western Digital Caviar SE 40Gb UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM £33.22

Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM £50.05

Sony 8x DVD+R 8xDVD-R 4x DVD+RW 24XCDRW IDE Burner OEM BLACK £36.99

Samsung 52x Internal IDE CD-ROM Drive (Black) - OEM £7.59

Alps 1.44 Black Floppy Drive £3.69

Microsoft XP Home With Service Pack 1A OEM £49.76

Pinnacle DV500 DVD/PCI DualStream DV S-Video EN (inc premiere 6.5) £154.21

Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Pack - Case Keyboard Mouse Speakers £34.99

All prices ex.vat total inc vat is £736

I will probably add a Matrox G550 or similar dual head graphics card but not decided yet.

Does this look like it will give me a powerfull editing solution that will compliment my new jvc dv4000 camcorder and still be good if I upgrade to a prosumer 3ccd camcorder next year.
 
Well those specs look fairly good to me! A couple of thoughts though:

Why get a CD-ROM? The DVD writer will do that for you.
The Sony DVD writers have had a few issues in the past, not sure what they are or if they have been fixed. The writer of choice seems to be the latest Pioneers.
Does the MoBo support IDE drives or is it just SATA? If only SATA then you will need to get SATA drives.
What is the waranty on the Maxtor drives. I know all Seagate drives come with a 3 year waranty that will give added peace of mind.
If doing serious editing then the Matrox double head graphics do make life a lot easier. But if only doing the occassional bit then a lot of money for little use.
Do you specifically want Adobe Premiere? It is hard to learn and unless being used all the time is a bit OTT (says he that has it!). You could save a fair bit by getting the consumer NLE packages from Pinnacle or Ulead etc - software & firewire card (MoBo has onboard firewire that is fine for the job) for around £50. With Premiere you will still need to add DVD authoring software.

Mark.
 
Thanks Mark.

It sounds like I'm on the right track then. I added a CD drive largely because they are so cheap and it will mean less wear on the writing drive. I'll look at the DVD writer again (I'm not sold on any one brand) but the Sony had some good reviews. I read a good review of the Western Digital drives a while back and after that just checked the spec and went for them.

The Matrox double header graphics cards are under £100 for the older models with about 32mb of ram and everything I've read about them suggests they are the best option for running a 2 monitor desktop. I'm watching several on ebay so I may start with one and upgrade it if required.

My only reason for wanting Premiere is that it is so widely used. However, if I didn't need it then I wouldn't need to buy the Pinnacle card (I don't mind not having analogue inputs and the motherboard has firewire anyway). I would probably look to U-Lead for some authoring software but initially I will probably burn discs by sending the edited footage back to the camera and using my domestic DVD recorder even though this would be a stop gap.

I think my main thought is to get an edit PC up and running even though my efforts will be more focused on learnings in the lighting and sound recording areas.
 
Well I use a Matrox 550 duel head graphics card and agree that they are excellent for NLE, as long as you wont use the PC for games as they are just not up to modern gaming.
Why not leave out the Pinnacle card for now and just use Movie Maker that comes with XP to learn with. You can always buy the card at a later date. The DVD burner, unless OEM, should be supplied with some basic authoring software to get you up and running. You can always download a free 30 day trial of the Ulead software.

Mark.
 
Followed your advice and dropped the Pinnacle/Premiere card for now and just ordered the rest from ebuyer. Might start a new thread when I've put it all together. Not really interested in games so I think the Matrox 550 should be ok. Started looking at the Ulead software and it seems to get rave reviews so I might grab a copy for £30 and see how far I can get with it. I don't want any 'trick' editing features really just something that lets me play with the soundtrack and gives clean results. I may also add a creative soundcard depending on how the onboard sound performs.

Thanks for all your help.
 
Ulead are making some very good, and most importantly stable software at the moment. Feature wise I don't think it is as advanced as Pinnacle Studio 9, but this is said to be very unstable on some PC's. I would therefore recommend, although as I say I use Premiere so have never used it, you go for the Ulead software. I do however use the Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 authoring software to create my DVD's and like the simlicity of their software interface. Don't forget that all Uleads software can be downloaded for a free 30 day trial before you buy it to see if you get on with it.

I bought a soundcard for my editing PC, but TBH it was a bit of a waiste of money as the integrated sound on modern MoBo's is very good. They even have 5.1 etc sound now, so the only real reason to get an additional soundcard IMO is if the onboard breaks for some reason.

Just remember that all these additions can be bought at a later date, and as you are building the PC yourself I know you will have no problems adding the cards. You could go on adding more & more, uping the cost of the PC and then end up with cards you don't need (yep, I've been there, done that on many an occassion). I would suggest you just start with the basics and as your requirements grow, then add to the PC.
For now spend what you need to and start to enjoy this new hobby. You will be spending more than enough on it in the coming years as it is!

Mark.
 
Had any of you heard that Canopus are doing a special deal (which ends this month) where you can get one of their well-reviewed analogue/digital converters along with the complete versions of Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 (the latest one), Encore DVD 1.5 (for DVD authoring) and Audition 1.5 (audio studio)? It's about one-and-a-half grand's worth of kit for around £360! I was thinking about getting it (and had read that the new version of Premiere was far more user-friendly than the older versions) but hearing that it's a bit tricky has made me wonder. And £300+ is a lot of money to me. It seems such a good deal, and by getting such advanced software I thought I'd be future-proofing myself if/when I eventually become more adept at this whole Non-Linear-Editing lark. I need the converter anyway (lots of old analogue tapes) and good ones are about £200, so I'm tempted... What do you think? Are there any 'teach yourself' Premiere Pro DVD's out there for complete beginners? And, as in my previous thread, is there a 'Dummies'-style book relevant to the latest version of Premiere Pro? Or should I just get the Pinnacle Moviebox with Studio 9 (or equivalent) and hope that I can afford something as professional as Premiere/Avid further down the line?
 
That does look tempting. I'd done a uturn on buying the Adobe software but that might be worth buying as I also have some analogue stuff that my new PC (building this weekend) wouldn't be able to handle.

There's tutorial stuff on ebay at reasonable prices (also a lot of pirate versions of the software which I wouldn't touch) and also someone is selling sticker packs with all the keyboard commands. If you've got a lot of spare time then I think there must be loads of stuff to be had for free on the net.
 
TBH I don't think any Adobe software is really user friendly. I've not used Premiere Pro 1.5 but having used a couple of other Adobe programs doubt it would be anything close to easy to use. Saying that though, once you get your head around the way things work it does then become a fairly logical process.
By the sound of it the Canopus deal is excellent value, but as I said above the software isn't easy to use and if this then stops you useing it then no matter how cheap it was its no longer good value. If you can spend time & effort learning the software and are likely to use the added features it offers then go for it! Be aware though that Premiere Pro will only run with Windows XP and only fully on a high spec PC's. Also at the price you state for the package it might be worth a close look to make sure that none of the software is time limited trials or reduced features versions. Also Canopus do a cheaper analogue to DV converter that does not convert back from DV to analogue - if you don't have a TV output on your PC this could be a big problem, unless your camcorder has DV-in.
TBH I doubt there are that many differences from the old Prem Pro & the new so the 'Premiere Pro For Dummies' book should be a good starting point for learning. I have also got the Adobe Classroom in a book for my version of Premiere and find it quite good, but others have stated that they found it very difficault to follow. I think a lot of it is because the book assumes a reasonable knowledge of PC's and therefore does not explain more PC based processes and concentrates on those specific to Premiere.

Mark.
 
Hi

Just thought I'd add my twopennorth as I am similarly thinking about the Canopus/Premiere bundle offer (available for £326 at dvstuff.co.uk)!

I have recently spent a lot of time investigating the different products and issues around video editing, especially with a view to getting all my old 8mm stuff into digital form and burning DVDs. The conclusions I came to were that stability and reliability are my absolute number one priorities. I have spent too many hours surfing too many message boards where people are stuck with problems they can't fix, which might have a thousand undetectable causes due to IRQ conflicts, incompatible software and other driver glitches which you could spend your life trying to overcome. All of us, I assume,want to spend our time editing and burning and using these tools not tearing our hair out trying to get them to work.

Given the enormouss size and data processing requirements associated with DV any activity takes a lot of elapsed time so that overall "turnaround" for a solution to a problem can be days - e.g, get stumped, post on a message board for a possible solution, wait a day for a response, try the fix, leave something running overnight to see if it works, come across another glitch, repeat ad nauseam. So, I would rather sacrifice anything else than stability and reliability.

For this reason I am only considering stuff from companies with rock-solid reputations and/or the stuff that came preloaded on my PC as long as I don't try to fiddle with it. I am ignoring completely anything from Pinnacle, and also doing my best to ignore any other low-end stuff which might struggle on projects which involve more than 20 minutes of DV footage. Further ruling out stuff which costs silly money, this pretty much leaves me with the Canopus/Adobe offer mentioned above.

I have been tinkering for the past few days with the stuff which came on my Sony VAIO and, to be honest, it pretty much seems to allow me to do most of what I want with what came on it. I can capture analog footage to AVI or MPG files - and convert between the two; I can burn DVDs and edit using MovieMaker very easily, and according to what I have read I can also copy captured/digitised analog footage back out to DV tape (just haven't got round to trying this yet). If I need anything more fancy I can use Adobe Premiere 6 LE. Its a 3Ghz P4 with 512mb RAM which fairly flies and all for £750. For another £100 I'll be putting in a 2nd 160Gb HDD and another 512Mb memory.

So, why am I rambling on at you here? Well, I read the Adobe Premiere Pro Classroom Book to help me decide whether I wanted to use Premiere or not and it's not that scary but I guess it depends on your background - if you're any good at using something like Excel then the complexities of Premiere shouldn't scare you;on the other hand if you wouldn't know a pivot-table from an array then you're probably best sticking to things like MovieMaker. In just a few hours I found that I could very easily knock together a demo video using MovieMaker but, just as quickly, found that some things I wanted to do (fiddle with the sound to get rid of wind noise, have more than 4 credits rolling at the end, etc) were things I'd need something beefier for. So perhaps I'll use MovieMaker for assembling rough cuts and Premiere for fine-tuning - we'll see.

At any rate what I am already finding, even as I am just dipping my toes into the video editing water, is that many of the apparently daunting options that Premiere presents you with (e.g, the opening dialog window with a whole host of different settings for your project) you can (a) probably just click on the default selection to start with;but more importantly (b) you WILL need to understand what the options mean even if you don't want to because the video-editing process requires them of you - ie., you can't expect to be able to capture, edit and burn if you don't understand the difference between MPG and AVI (let alone AVI types 1 and 2), don't know what codecs are the difference between resolutions and file sizes required. Premiere just throws them at you straight off rather than letting you get stuck in in ignorance and learn them later.

Anyway, what are my points:
1. Premiere 6 and Premiere Pro are sufficiently similar that a book on one should give you the basics on the other. I got my book from PC World so it shouldn't be too hard to find and if the book doesn't put you off I'd say go for it
2. Assuming all decent packages have some learning curve, and that all people who respond on forums have a bias towards whatever they personally use, you're not going to find true objective advice as to what is best for you. So you might as well pick one product which will do what you want, grit your teeth and spend time learning how to use it, rather than flitting between several and having to relearn a little each time. The grass is always greener.
3. Base your choices on solidity - just think how much being stymied from finishing a project for 1 week or more every few months is worth it to you (£50? £100? £200? more?) and add that to your budget before you buy. Time and stress are money. There are no guarantees but, inevitably, you get what you pay for.
4. The forums (not especially this one) for video editing and so on are full of people trying to do fairly complicated stuff on the cheap using hacks to noddy software, weird combinations of programs involving file conversions needed between each one, esoteric freeware packages and so on and staggering from one problem to the next. There are an awful lot of helpful people out there who can help when you get stuck but your biggest help is not getting stuck in the first place.

Ooops. This has turned into more of a rant than a help I guess so apologies if it hasn't helped! On the plus side it's helped me decide I'm going to buy this Canopus/Adobe bundle even if it turns out I don't need it. The price is too good to be true and if I don't need it I can always sell it unopened on eBay.

good luck with whatever you decide
 
I've just noticed that Avid offer a free stripped-down version of their editing software. I downloaded it last night and I'm just going to print out the tutorials. Should I just make do with this freebie, learn the Avid interface then upgrade to a full version of Avid when I can afford it? (I need to buy a DV camcorder at some point as well as this software, and can't afford both at the moment.) How does Avid compare with Premiere Pro? It IS the industry standard, I understand. However, if I don't take up this Canopus offer, I may be kicking myself in a few months time...



NOTE: Now that I've looked at them, the tutorials are little animations, not printable text.
 
Ordered a Canopus AVDC100 + Premiere Pro 1.5 bundle from dvstuff. Should be delivered in a few days. I built my PC at the weekend and it all works fine even tried capturing a couple of minutes footage from my camcorder which worked a treat. Can't wait to get the Adobe software installed and start learning it.
 

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