Chris Mason (masonc@anguillanet.com)
Thu, 3 Jun 1999 09:03:36 -0400
>2. Can you recommend any other comparably-priced, stable, non-linear
editing
packages, with a similar feature set that could get the job done.
In my opinion, and we all know I'm biased, the lowest price solution that
will be solid, reliable and fast is the Matrox DSLE/Speed Razor bundle
(about $5,500 street). Don't get hung up on the need to stay DV. The matrox
will produce a picture so good you will not have to worry.
The real time edits will make your editor happy, rendering is a pain on a
long project.
One tip: break your project into manageable length scenes, I would suggest a
few minutes each. When you have them all setup the way you want you can
merge them.
Chris Mason
Box 340, The Valley, Anguilla, British West Indies
Tel: 264 497 5670 Fax: 264 497 8463
Fax in USA: 1 516 382 7771
View some of our work:
http://www.rendezvousbay.com
http://www.oceanbreeze.ai
http://www.devonish.ai
http://net.ai/joart/
http://www.splash.ai/
bwz*mq
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-digvid-l@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-digvid-l@ucdavis.edu]On
Behalf Of Adam E. Abraham
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 1999 11:43 AM
To: digvid-l@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Can Premiere Handle Feature-length Film Editing?
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 Thu Jun 03 1999 - 06:34:52 PDT