Adobe Premiere 6.5 Review

Interface

For anyone familiar with any of the Adobe products, you will instantly recognize the look and feel of Premiere. I have been doing a lot of work with After Effects recently and my first impression was of the similar feel to the program, however, intentionally a bit simpler.

I would encourage first-time users of Premiere to peruse the included tutorial CD before diving into a first project (or consulting on-line tutorials). As with most ~$500 video editing programs, there are a plethora of options available to you and it is a good idea to get a sense of how things are laid out before getting started.

Premiere hasn't changed the interface between version 6.0 and 6.5, at least not as far as I can tell. As with Premiere 6.0, the workspace is divided into separate window panes to organize your editing tasks. The main window is typically the project window which organizes the media (video, audio, stills) you will be using in your project. The timeline window will be a familiar sight to anyone who's used a video editor; it’s where you arrange and trim your clips to form the blueprint that will be your resulting video. The monitor window shows you your source clips and can also show you a preview of your output. Three other panes showcase effect controls, a timeline navigator and a repository of all transitions, and video / audio effects.

The Premiere interface is highly configurable - every window on the workspace can be maximized, minimized or resized just like in Windows. When you're happy with the way it looks, you can save it as a workspace preset so you can always come back to it. The position of tools is logical and intuitive, and navigating through media is a relatively simple process.

Video Capture

Premiere 6.5 features a very robust digital video capture interface, with camcorder presets available for a wide variety of camcorders. However, the list available with my copy of 6.5 was a bit out of date - the latest Canons are (for example) the ZR25, Elura20MC, Optura PI and GL1, but no sign of the ZR50, Elura40 or GL2. There are "standard" and "alternative" listings for each camcorder manufacturer, so I imagine if you don't get joy with one particular brand / model you can mix and match until you find something that works. I've read more than a few postings by people having compatibility problems, so I would recommend downloading the trial before you buy.

Premiere has an easy to use video capture interface - rewind and fast-forward to the point on the tape you want to capture, and press record, and the file is created on the hard drive location of your choice. You can also type in an exact timecode and the camcorder will go right there, which is using functionality present in the batch capture process. Batch capturing is also quite efficient, in which you develop a list of mark-in and -out points, essentially giving the computer a list of capture tasks to fulfill. The resulting clips are put into the project window. Noteably, Premiere 6.5 also has native 16:9 image support.

Premiere has overcome its problems with large file support - it used to be limited by the Video for Windows standard of 2 gigabytes for any one file. But now that it is OpenDML compliant, and I can confirm you're only limited by the maximum size of file for your particular operating system (which, if you're using Windows 2000 or XP, is effectively unlimited).

Unfortunately absent is any kind of scene detection software, which personally saves me a lot of time when capturing. Premiere's closest competitor, Ulead MediaStudio 6.5 does have scene detection software. Hopefully they'll include it in Premiere 7.0? One thing that's special about Premiere 6.5 is that it can import Windows Media Video and Audio files for editing, something I haven't seen yet in other video editing programs.

Video editing tools and preview

Premiere is abtly suited for the task of managing and editing video with a whole host of trimming, cutting and previewing options. Cutting, trimming and resizing clips is all done with ease. I particularly liked the trim window, which lets you adjust clips very precisely after a rough edit has been made.

The quantum leap for Premiere is its real-time preview mode, which really does work quite well. It is hardware-dependent, so don't count on being "wowed" if you are running a slow system, but on a Pentium 4 it should take you a lot of effect and transition layers before you start dropping frames during preview. The preview mode is, however, only limited to the monitor. On an external monitor or attached camcorder, the NTSC video will only show a red "X" where the real-time preview rendering is being performed.

Effects, Transitions

With 79 video effects, 75 transitions and 24 audio effects, there should be a bit of something for everyone in Premiere 6.5. You can set up a default transition which can be inserted at any time with the click of a button, which is very handy if (like me) you use the cross-fade transition on a fairly regular basis. Premiere has also included 5 effects from After Effects, which really does raise the question about where one ends and the other begins. At any rate, a very versatile package.

Titling

Another recent addition to Premiere with version 6.5 is their new Title Designer, which resembles Inscriber's excellent product TitleExpress which was bundled with the Matrox RT2500. Regardless of its origin, kudos to Adobe for including a very powerful title-making program. Everything from the font, spacing, slant, kerning and tracking can be manipulated, as well as options for rolling and crawling titles. It's a far cry from the original titling package included with Premiere.

Audio editing

Premiere has good support for audio editing, from the basic function of fading audio tracks in and out to adjusting stereo settings from left to right. The collection of audio effects provided with Premiere will allow you to perform audio editing functions such as low and high band passing, channel mixing, reverb and other effects, but of course for high-end audio effects you're going to want to use a high-end speciality application such as Soundforge or CoolEdit. That said, if you didn't have one of those, you could get by ably with what is provided by Premiere.

A side note: Premiere 6.5 has bundled Sonic Desktop’s SmartSound software, which I reviewed a while ago. An excellent choice for composing royalty-free music soundtracks of professional quality.

Video output

The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and when working with a video editing program this is no exception. Premiere offers export support for a wide variety of different codecs and file types, as well as DVD authoring support with the bundled version of Sonic DVDit LE.

Premiere excels with its MPEG and DVD support, using the excellent Mainconcept MPEG encoder and Sonic DVDit DVD authoring program. The level of adjustable options can be a bit overwhelming, so thankfully there are several included presets for standard VCD, SVCD and DVD formats. A handy feature is a checkbox which launches DVDit after the MPEG file has been created, offering true "one-stop shopping" for DVD authoring. Also included is support for Windows Media and RealMedia streaming files. However, current users of Premiere 6.0 should note that Discreet’s Cleaner application, used for the "Save to Web..." function, has been abandoned in favor of Mainconcept’s MPEG support.

When doing some sample renders, I found Premiere to be a slower renderer than I'm personally used to, but then again I'm only using a 700mhz machine. On a P4 machine the render times may be significantly improved.

Conclusion: Is it worth it?

Three types of users will be interested in purchasing Premiere 6.5.

You've used Premiere before, and are currently considering the upgrade from an earlier version. If money isn't an object, an upgrade is worth it, if just for the preview functionality, the new title program and the MPEG encoder. If the budget is tight, I don't think the core engine of Premiere has upgraded from 6.0, so you won't see your render times decreasing. Several internet postings I have perused in the course of writing this review have suggested that the engine may have even taken a step back, but I have no hard evidence of this. I think it's an internet truism that while you may see what seem to be a large number of complaints on an issue, you rarely hear comments from the satisfied user.

You've never used Premiere before, much less any video editing program. Adobe Premiere is a hefty program with something of a learning curve, but the included tutorials and help files make it easy to get started. The interface is clean and well-organized. If your video editing needs are a bit more simple, you may want to get a simpler (and less expensive) program, but if you plan on getting into video editing, Premiere is a good choice.

You're using another video editing program and are considering a switch. Well, this will depend heavily on how well you know your current program and how long it would take you to make a switch. After exploring the capabilities of Adobe Premiere, I can't say it offers anything exclusive that other programs do not, but if you're disenchanted with your current video editor, perhaps Premiere would have something to offer that may be worth exploring.