To pay for the Adobe Premiere 6.5 upgrade or not to pay?

[awallace]

I have learnt a great deal from this site recently - but am now looking for some experienced opinions as to my next steps.

Some background: I currently capture DV format video using the DV-Raptor card into AVI files. From there I have been using WinProducer 2 to edit the video and produce mpeg-2 output. These are then burnt onto a DVD using neoDVD and finally played on a Toshiba 220E standalone player. The results work, are fine - but not brilliant. For example, there is a flicker in the video during fast movement (I think caused by incorrect generation of the interlaced video which WinProducer does not appear to have the options to fix), and the DVD menus are a little basic.

Here is the question then:
Is it worthwhile upgrading my old (and currently unused as it does not generate MPEG-2 at all) copy of Premiere 5 to 6.5 in order to get better editing features than WinProducer 2, as well as a MPEG-2 encoder, and perhaps some DVD authoring tools; or should I save the money and buy separate solutions for each stage (i.e. TMPGEnc for encoding etc)?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Andrew

[alenhard]

I don't have a ton of experience with premiere, but i did notice that editing was great while encoding was limited (never got the results i wanted for dvd- just 'average'). Maybe you can find a good .avi output in premiere that works well with tmpgenc....

[BJ_M]

the encoder (main concept) in 6.5 works very well if you apply the free upgrade to it .. you have to call adobe customeer support for the upgrade with your serial number - not avaiable as a download.

[awallace]

So what I am thinking is to stick with Premiere 5 for edits, produce AVI and then encode with TMPGenc (the trial results look excellent). Any recommendations for DVD authoring?
Thanks for your help...

[alenhard]

dvd workshop by ulead. HIGHLY recommended! great flexibility with menus and easy to use. there is a trial available...

[awallace]

So for encoding the options are either tmpgenc or premiere + customer support patch. So last question (promise ) - Premiere 6.5 seems to include Sonic DVDit! LE. Any opinions as to its capability? My guess is that the Ulead software is going to beat it hands down.

[Thorn]

If you want ac3 (dolby digital) audio, neither package will handle it (need to go for the pro version of DVDit). I've heard good things about DVD workshop, but I haven't tried it yet. Since there are trials of both programs, you really need to try them. Sometimes the look and feel are important, and sometimes it's important to note that DVDit crashes all the time Also note that some programs are far pickier about the input (I tried ulead's DVD moviefactory and it didn't like some of my input). I personally think that all of the entry level programs are severely lacking but some of them are very usable and produce good results. We'll see better affordable programs as more people get into authoring.