Adam E. Abraham (digital@earthlink.net)
Wed, 2 Jun 1999 08:43:15 -0700
Hello everyone,
We recently purchased an NT-based NLE system built around the MotoDV Studio
capture card, with Premiere 5.1(a). We've taken the "home-brewed" experience
route and have indeed taken a few lumps in getting things up to speed.
(System crashes requiring 3 hard disk reformats being among them.)
But system-wise, things are beginning to work out. We have a much better
understanding of where the problems are (capacity, RAM, etc.), and are
fixing them. The MotoDV capture card works like a champ (I can vouch for the
firewire card review in the June print issue of "DV" magazine (www.dv.com).
My question is regarding Premiere. Our editor -- experienced at
feature-length films (by actually cutting film, and via the Avid system) --
seems to be pushing Premiere to the limits, particularly with regard to some
of the more subtle editing methods. Problems with transitions - from simple
cuts (Premiere appearing to "insert" phantom frames) and dissolves -- to
"stretching" audio tracks to "synch" across clips with, for example, the
ripple and rolling edit tools. Sometimes it seems to take forever for
Permiere to "process" a change (even Undos)... this with a 400 MHz
dual-Pentium II (NT 4.0) setup with 256 MB RAM. A "staccato sound" is
somethings inserted in the audio after a clip has been manipulated a bit...
and audio will sometimes go off-sync on playback, and after it is "fixed,"
it will go off-sync again, in the same place.
My question is two-fold:
1. Is *Premiere* really "ready for prime time" with regard to editing
feature-length films? (We realize it could still be our inexperience, but
the people at Adobe tech support have not actually been very helpful so
far -- *willing* and *trying*, but not helpful, because they're not really
editors themselves.)
2. Can you recommend any other comparably-priced, stable, non-linear editing
packages, with a similar feature set that could get the job done.
Maybe these things wouldn't be problems if our movies were going to be
postage-stamp, or quarter-frame in size (which might then suggest that our
graphics card -- a Matrox Millennium G2-- with 16 MB RAM -- might be
contributing to the problem).
One more question is perhaps if anyone knows of a resource where we can get
some informed guidance on Premiere, not from the system side, but with
regard to editing. We're working on a self-produced short (30-minutes)
drama, which is helping to "shake down" both the system, while we ramp-up in
experience, and have several feature film projects -- and film shorts -- in
development.
Any comments, tips, resources or suggestions that you can direct us to in
the L.A. area would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Adam...
digital@earthlink.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed Jun 02 1999 - 08:46:39 PDT