Help in making a decision on Video Studio 9 or Premiere 6

[jcikal]

I saw someone selling a used Premiere 6 for $200 at a Garage Sale and it includes everything. They didn't sell it yet so it's still up for grabs. The thing is that I already have and use Ulead's Video Studio 9 which came out last year and I think Premiere 6 was from 2001 or thereabouts. Should I go ahead and take the plunge? I have no experience with Premiere so I don't know how it compares with VS9 since Premiere 6 is an old program. Anyone out there have any experience with Premiere 6 or preferably with both programs that can give me some advise?

I am particularly concerned with the fact that Premiere is an older program and might not have some features a newer program such as VS9 has. My main use for the program is to basically capture home videos from my Mini DV camcorder and burn them into DVDs. How good is Premiere 6 at that task? since in 2001 Home-based DVD writers were still in their infancy so I don't know how hard or the end quality is with Premiere.

Thanks for any information.

[harley2ride]

I have used Premiere 6.5 occassionally, and I've used Ulead Studio 7. I'm now using Vegas 5. It is much easier to learn, and it's a semi-professional software which is very powerful. I got my premiere 6.5 off of ebay (full unopened version), along with an ADS PYRO Firewire card for only $49.00. Premiere is a good powerful tool, but it has a very high learning curve. Even after hours of tutorials, I had difficulty editing my video. I ended up switching to Vegas and was up and going withing a few hours and somewhat comfortable in capturing, editing, and encoding. If you are just doing this for home use, you should stay with stuff like ulead studio 9, Vegas Movie Studio, or Adobe Premiere Elements, all of which are under $100.00 (usually around $59.00 to $69.00, and will do a good job. If you want a more professional capable software, you need to watch ebay for deals. Last week they had Pinnacle Liquid edition 5.5 with a capture card, and a breakout box that went for $125.00. Vegas 5 is sometimes listed for around the same price. If you aren't sure what you should get, do some reading at www.videoguys.com.

[jcikal]

Thanks for the reply Harley. I'm merely interested in capturing from Camcorder, doing some editing along the way, then convert to DVD. My main interest in Premiere was the fact that it is recognized as basically THE editor to get for professional results. I have heard of vegas (I believe it's made by Sony) but have also heard complaints on these forums about it. The $200 price includes a video capture card, the Premiere Bible book, After Effects, Photoshop 8 and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

Is anyone proficient enough in Premiere 6 or 6.5 to basically inform me if it's a good purchase even though it's an old program?

[edDV]

Is anyone proficient enough in Premiere 6 or 6.5 to basically inform me if it's a good purchase even though it's an old program?

Premiere Micro History:

v5.0, v5.1 Got DV editing basics right.

v6.0 was an incomplete release, pushed out because it was that time of year. Focus was on "realtime" resolution reduced previews for effects editing. They didn't have an MPeg2 encoder that worked, so they included a crippled Sonic DVDiT SE DVD authoring program that just didn't match the goals of the typical Premiere customer. It was awful.

v6.5 added the Mainconcept based "Adobe MPeg2 Encoder" and refined most other features of the program. v6.5 was the final release on the old platform and the last available for the MAC and Windows98. v6.5 was a milestone product and in my opinion is very solid.

Premiere Pro 1.0 (aka v7) was a complete rewrite based on YUV colorspace (previous versions were RGB) and DirectX API. It was for Windows XP only. The goal was to focus the effort on producing a stable Windows XP based pro editing solution and leave the Mac market to Apple and AVID. At that time most of Abobe's other products were moving to the more dominent and faster Windows platform. Adobe gave up on developing their own audio or DVD authoring program, choosing acquisions that became Encore and Audition. Integration was poor. Adobe lost many long term Windows customers to Sonic Foundry's Vegas, a new integrated program with strong audio and DVD authoring. I was one of those that went to Vegas although I still use Premiere and may upgrade to v2.0.

Premiere Pro 1.5 was all about trying to integrate these acquired products and fixing some issues.

Premiere Pro 2.0 adds native HDV and HDTV editing and multicamera editing. v2.0 also adds basic DVD authoring into Premiere. Before you had to buy Encore.

If your goal is to advance into a video editing career, and you know the school or employer will require Premiere, and you can't afford the new program, then step in at some point. The only pre-"pro" choice should be v6.5. It is a complete product, has great user support and will work with older computers running Win98SE or WinME or older MAC's. It also works fine with XP.

Give us a better idea of you goals. Premiere is a bit exrtreme for simple home movie editing.

[harley2ride]

Thanks for the reply Harley. I'm merely interested in capturing from Camcorder, doing some editing along the way, then convert to DVD. My main interest in Premiere was the fact that it is recognized as basically THE editor to get for professional results. I have heard of vegas (I believe it's made by Sony) but have also heard complaints on these forums about it. The $200 price includes a video capture card, the Premiere Bible book, After Effects, Photoshop 8 and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

Is anyone proficient enough in Premiere 6 or 6.5 to basically inform me if it's a good purchase even though it's an old program?

Which video capture card is included?