J. Norman Kern (kvp@erinet.com)
Thu, 03 Jun 1999 10:26:31 -0400
Amber:
Perhaps you are skeptical of my statement, and that's understandable.
I'll start by telling you what I use, then what I consider to be more
reliable inexpensive systems, some background on my viewpoint, and
finally my practical concern for someone who is trying to edit a feature
film with Premiere.
My situation:
I am a full Digisuite user. This system is expensive by MotoDV
standards, cheap by Avid standards.
>From the NT perspective, Digisuite LE combined with Incite or United
Media Online Express is very powerful for the money, offering a lot of
real time power at low cost. (Digisuite LE currently lists for $3995 and
Incite and United Media are going for 2-3k each.)
Lower cost solutions:
I don't have personal experience with Promax or Canopus, which are less
expensive than the Digisuite solutions, but I certainly have read posts
from many satisfied users on this and other lists.
Lots of people really like Final Cut, which has garnered a lot of
enthusiasm and support for the very short time it has been out.
A little background:
I don't intend to put the Premiere folks down. For several years, I did
nonlinear editing on an old Matrox Studio. This single stream editor
just did AB roll with tile and slide transitions. It had a graphics line
that supported alpha keying. It did handle batch digitizing and print to
tape well with time code. Transitions and graphics layering wer done
with hardware and printed to disk at about 6 frames per second. This
system, which ran on a 486 PC with only 32mb of RAM was not fast, but I
edited many projects with the client present. It was not fast and it was
not bug free.
I bought my Digisuite hardware 1-1/2 years ago when there was little
software for it. I tried out Premiere and Ulead Media Studio on it. I
quickly saw that I could never be even marginally productive with those
applications even compared to my old Studio editor.
The new version of Premiere is undoubtedly much better than 4.2, but
editing a feature film?
Editing a feature film with Premiere:
In order to get anywhere with a feature film you need all the help you
can get. This field is _very_ competitive. Some of the most talented and
experienced people working in this field have virtually unlimited
resources. To go against the odds like this, you don't need to have your
time, temper, and creativity diluted by software bugs, arcane
workarounds, and waiting for long renders on things that could easily be
done in real time on more capable systems. It's like having one hand
tied behind your back.
Even if you place only a small value on your time, how much of it can
you afford to waste? Any simple cost/benefit analysis would show the
cost effectiveness of using a faster, more productive system than
MotoDV/Premiere to edit a feature film.
What if there just isn't money available for anything better? You have
to ask yourself if the project is viable if it can't attract any more
financial support than that....
Norm Kern
Kern Video Productions
Amber Morey Wu wrote:
>
> >It's strange to hear someone struggling to use Premiere to edit feature
> >films, when there are so many more reliable nle solutions out there,
> >including some very inexpensive ones.
>
> Norm,
>
> It may help the person if you mention _which_ other "more reliable" NLE
> solutions that you are referring to, particulary the inexpensive ones. I
> am curious to hear.
>
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
> Amber Morey Wu
> http://www.swingmedia.com
>
> Now on the air:
> http://www.slackertv.com - a coffee break for your mind
>
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
> Amber Morey Wu
> http://www.swingmedia.com
>
> Now on the air:
> http://www.slackertv.com - a coffee break for your mind
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Jun 03 1999 - 07:27:06 PDT