consumer vs prosumer vs professional edit software

[exedra]

I am in business transferring most formats, PAL and NTSC to DV and DVD, including 8mm and super 8mm. A flood of consumer editing products have hit the market for Christmas and they all promise the world to the consumer, I know the difference, but can anyone help me to define the difference for a consumer. Silly question I know, but the answer seems vast and varied, any concise arguments except for TIME and disc space?

[solarfox]

I usually explain it to people like this:

A consumer-level product, such as MGI Videowave or ULead Video Studio, is like using a $5 disposable 35mm camera. It's quick, cheap, relatively easy to use, and has enough functionality to get the job done -- but little more. The results will be the video equivalent of simple snapshots, and if you aspire to do anything more creative than simple scene-to-scene fades and wipes or single-track editing, you'll soon be frustrated by its limits. On the other hand, if you don't have any ambitions towards being the next George Lucas , and all you want to do is trim down those vacation videos into a watchable 10-minute presentation, this kind of software and hardware is probably perfectly adequate for your needs.

A professional-level product such as Adobe Premiere is like having $3,000 worth of all-manual, Nikon single-lens-reflex camera equipment at your disposal. It's expensive, has a significant learning curve to overcome before you can do much with it, and won't be as easy to use -- but it offers powerful capabilities that you could never hope to accomplish with the little $5 disposable camera. This is the kind of thing you want if you have the urge to grab a camcorder and some of your friends, run out into the local woods, and create the next "Blair Witch Project." On the other hand, if you just want to trim your vacation videos, this is way more powerful than you need.

"Prosumer" products are like one of the better Canon or Minolta 35mm automatics. They're relatively easy to operate when you just want to take snapshots -- they do have more of a learning curve than the cheap disposable, but a lot less than the all-manual Nikon! -- but offer enough flexibility for you to get creative when you feel those Spielbergian urges. Personally -- and this is strictly a matter of personal opinion, so your mileage may vary -- I'd class ULead Media Studio Pro in this camp; it's a full-featured and complex video-editing suite, far above their consumer-level Video Studio product, but nowhere near as much of a powerhouse as Premiere. (On the other hand, it doesn't cost anywhere near as much as Premiere, either! )

[Cornucopia]

Personally, I'd put Premiere at the bottom of the Professional level or top of the Prosumer.
Better ones would be FinalCut Pro or Media100 (Mac) or AVID DVXpress/Xpress/MediaComposer/DS/Symphony (Mac & PC) or some specialized PC/Mac/Unix systems incl Panasonic & Sony proprietary stuff.

There is a world of difference there-things like better compression codecs or uncompressed support, 8-16-24-or more video layers and similar audio layers, integrated 3D, film support w/pulldown, batch digitizing and redigitizing, universal machine control (not just DV/Firewire), mixed resolutions, mixed sample rates, more streamlined user interface and workflow, and most all of this realtime/near-realtime/better-than-realtime.
Of course, price is more like $1000 US .....$150000 US. But for somebody who uses it day-in-day-out, it's worth it.

Scott

[thxkid]

Now I have not used the newer premiere but comparing the 6.0 version to media studio pro 6.0 version ulead beats it out add the fX Hollywood gold and its more than you can ask for, now comparing the newest versions from both adobe and ulead I have no idea, but unless you really want to be a pro editor then ulead is much easier to use than adobe, a much faster learning curve but both is more than most of the masses need anyway.

[SteveDVD]

Ever since I learned and was able to use Premiere very good. I will never look back. I know it very well. It's professional quality makes it tough to use for the newbie but once you learn, turst me, you will never look back.

[BJ_M]

Personally, I'd put Premiere at the bottom of the Professional level or top of the Prosumer (as the poster above says also) ..
though After Effects is used by many right to the top ...

the apps that are really blurring the line are Blade, Vegas Video (which has a lot of even high end coverts for quick fast edits) and Avid DV (great NLE also) and Video Toaster 2 (well video toaster is priced the same as something like Speed Razor with a good capture card, toaster is hard to peg) but as the poster above suggested, apps that run only on SGI for HD and AVID and the new Media 844x , dpsVelocityQ and HD, BOXX HD and others are high end -- at the really high end you have Quantel products like Henry and iQ ..

big diff in real pro apps is that they all work in uncompressed video and also in some cases can handle uncompressed HD and/or film resolutions often at 10bit color or even better and have hardware acceleration.

you can add also high end comp. apps also to the list with Shake, Fusion , Rayz , Softimage XSI, and sgi only apps and a few others..

[exedra]

Thanks alot! your comments are all helpfull, trying to convince people to use my service with a market load of cheaper lookalikes is hard to do, I'm sure the difficulties I have navigating the compatibility issues with good quality software will put many people off home editing with the cheaper versions. Thanks again!!!