Adobe Premiere

Lending even more appeal to its already strong nonlinear video-editing product, Adobe has endowed Premiere 6.5 with real-time previewing, a DVD-authoring tool, new audio plug-ins, and a titling feature that comes with 90 PostScript fonts. Unfortunately, the Mac version doesn't fare as well as the PC one since it lacks both real-time audio plug- ins and DVD authoring.

Ready, set, edit
As with all of the previous versions of Premiere, installation is a snap--just insert the CD-ROM and follow the instructions. Premiere ships with some of the best documentation in the industry, including a well-written user guide, online help, and an excellent training CD-ROM from Total Training. Phone tech support is free (although you'll have to pay for the cost of the call) for 90 days if you're purchasing the program for the first time or for 30 days if you're upgrading.

Once you start up the program, you'll be asked what type of video you want to create, from a simple clip for the Web to full-resolution DV movies. After you've made your selection, the Premiere Timeline window opens up and allows you to assemble your videos. If you're accustomed to using other Adobe products, such as Photoshop, you'll find the interface's organization very familiar. When it comes to capturing video, Premiere 6.5 supports a greater variety of DV devices than its predecessor, including the popular Sony DVCAM video decks.

Real time only part-time
Within Premiere 6.5, you'll find several powerful new editing features. Three DirectX audio plug-ins from TC Electronics let you do everything from adding reverb to improving volume on a poorly recorded audio track. Just click and drag an effect onto an audio file, and a TC Electronics window will open so that you can make adjustments. On the Mac side, Adobe bundled Sparkle, a stereo audio-editing program, which, while impressive, lacks the real-time features of PC-based TC Electronics plug-ins. Therefore, you will need to render any changes you make to a Mac audio file.

At long last, you don't need to use an external program to create truly impressive titles and graphics within your production. Premiere 6.5 includes a full-featured titling app called Adobe Title Designer, which lets you tweak your text and graphics to your heart's content. The 90 included PostScript fonts add even more pizzazz to your titles.

We tested the new version's much-touted real-time previewing with a single-processor, 1.7GHz Pentium 4 desktop computer with 256MB of RAM. The feature worked as advertised, providing a generally smooth view of footage with effects, transitions, and titles added. However, there are a couple of limitations to be aware of. Unlike Vegas Video, Premiere won't let you preview on an NTSC video monitor. And you'll need to make sure that your system is up-to-snuff before getting all excited about the previews. Although you can run the program on a slower machine, you won't be able to view real- time previews on a PC that's slower than 800GHz or on a sub-G4 Mac. And of course, Adobe recommends dual processors for the best performance. On a positive note, unlike in Final Cut Pro and some other editing programs, the real-time preview in Premiere works on all transitions, effects, audio (for PC users), and graphic layers.

Now includes DVD authoring
Like many current Windows-based editing programs, Premiere 6.5 comes bundled with a third-party DVD-authoring program, Sonic Solutions DVDit LE, a scaled-back version of the company's high-end DVD-authoring tool. The program has a feature set that falls somewhere between that of Dazzle DVD Complete and that of Apple DVD Studio Pro. DVDit is nicely integrated into Premiere; you can export your timelines complete with chapter markers directly from Premiere with the Adobe MPEG encoder. Once you've encoded your video, just open up DVDit to design your DVD menu and burn your clips to a disc.

Divided platforms
Advanced amateur video editors will appreciate the boost in productivity that real-time previewing brings, as well as the expanded creative options of the new titling and audio tools. However, it's hard to recommend the Mac version of Premiere over Final Cut Pro, which offers even more extensive controls for audio, editing, and effects. At the very least, Mac users might want to wait until Adobe adds DVD authoring.

There are three major enhancements in the QuickTime 6-compatible Premiere 6.5 -- native real-time DV effects processing, an internal text generator that's been promoted from Title Tool to Title Designer -- with good reason -- and streamlined exporting for projects destined for DVD.

With version 6.5, Adobe Premiere continues to answer to end users' wishes by hopping on the real-time DV bandwagon. Real-time editing is possibly one of the most important features an editing system can offer: The ability to try out lots of variations on a cut is key to successful editing and real-time processing gives editors the freedom to use their imaginations without the regret of a wasted render. Nowadays, cuts-only real- time editing is a given and thanks to faster CPU processing speeds, multiple layers of real-time effects unassisted by hardware add-ons are also quickly becoming the norm for FireWire-based DV systems.

Recently, several other editors have closed in on the ground usually occupied by Premiere, the most popular package in its field. Some of the new contenders are low- end tools which have finally reached a level of sophistication that makes them appeal to a wider audience. Others are higher-end products which have been moved down the price scale to aim at Premiere's core audience. There's also a new arrival in the shape of Newtek's Video Toaster, which is going to attract a lot of attention from the semi-pro and broadcast users.

Premiere needed to respond, and by the looks of the beta, it has.

Top billing has to go to the new real-time tools. You can put on whatever effects, transitions, filters, and overlays you like; the computer will do its best to play them back both on the Premiere monitor window, and on an external monitor connected via a standard IEEE1394 card - dropping frames, or reducing the quality of images if it can't manage to do everything at once.

You can view your work any way you choose. If you hit Play, you get the unaffected playback of any shots on the timeline; if you hit Enter, you get real-time rendering; if you hit 'Render Work Area', you get all your effects rendered for full- quality playback. This is a step up from most packages, which force you to mess about switching from one type of preview to another.

Titling has been completely overhauled, with Adobe going for an entirely new real- time titler of its own. This enables you to use graphics and text and to animate both, and it offers an extensive library of pre- designed styles to get you started. Animation is limited, however, and it would have been nice to have had keyframing on the timeline of titling options.

To cover the DVD market, Adobe has added a couple of tools. Firstly, you can now export the full range of MPEG formats with an easy-to-use encoder which will spit your files out in a DVD-playable format. Secondly, there's a bundled package, DVDit! LE, which enables you to do limited authoring (PC only).

Other additions to Premiere 6.5 include enhanced Windows Media import, export for better streaming files (Windows only), and the ability to grab music directly from CDs. There's also an additional bundle of 90 fonts and 11 new musical styles for 'Smartsound' - the automatic music creation tool. Three extra sound filters are provided on the Windows version for EQ, reverb, and dynamics, and the Mac release - which now works with OS X - gets a two- track real-time audio editor in the shape of the third-party package, SparkLE.

Version 6.5 looks set to add a whole suite of extra little functions to Premiere, and the addition of real-time effects will be a boost to everyone who uses the package. For the complete lowdown.

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