Should I go pro? « Videomaker Community Forums

neckbreakerb
Member

Hi everyone. I'm hoping someone can help me make a decision about upgrading from my consumer grade editing software (Pinnacle Studio v14) to a professional grade program. Premire Pro seems to be the software of choice for most editors on here. Studio 14 can do quite a bit. What can professional programs like Premire Pro do that Studio 14 can't? I'd appreciate anyone's input. Thanks.

Posted 2 years ago #
film814
Member

My advice would be to not upgrade unless you are finding things that you need to do, that you are not able to do with your current software. (Unless budget isn't an issue.) When you do upgrade I personally would recommend Sony Vegas Pro. I have found the interface, stability, and speed to better than everything else I've worked with, from Premier Pro to Avid Media Composer.

Hope this helps.

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Neck,

I'm not familiar with Studio 14, but am thoroughly with many of the Adobe production, web and print software programs.

There was a day when premiere wasn't a pro NLE program but that time's past. Many medium and some of the larger Hollywood studios are starting to incorporate it into their workflows. If I remember correctly, the offline edit for the last Superman flick was cut on Premiere.

Other than being pretty easy to learn to use and work with, Premiere has some pretty good out of the box tools to get a good portion of your basic production needs taken care of. It like many other of the big named software offerings isn't 100% and if you're needing fine tuning on sound or want to do advanced compositing/mographics work you'll need to get additional software to do so. This is where Premiere really can stand on similar ground with Avid and FCP. With seamless integration with Photoshop, After Effects, Encore, Flash and Soundbooth, you can get 95% of your project done without having to close your Premiere project timeline. That's pretty hardcore.

The mere fact that most production professionals either use or have used Photoshop and or AFX makes it possible for you to collaborate with thousands of potential pro's. Also, Premiere is crossplatform. Anyone who thinks you will only work with other pros using Mac or PC only is in for a rude awakening. If others are working on your project have Premiere, then with some streamlining on which primary video and audio codecs will be used, you can swap out whole project files between mac's and pc's without batting an eye.

Now programs like FCSP, Media Composer, Media 100 and some others that I forget about at the moment are high-end programs, Premiere (particularly in the production bundle) can give those program a serious run for a lot less money.

H.Wolfgang Porter, Composite Media Producer
Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc.
http://www.dreadedenterprises.com

Posted 2 years ago #
grinner
Member

Look at Smoke. It's available for mac now... awesome.

http://grinnerhester.com

Posted 2 years ago #
neckbreakerb
Member

Thanks guys. This helps. I don't currently have a need for a more advanced program, as I'm not a videographer by profession. I'm just eager to learn; and I'd like to get familiar with professional software in case a career opportunity presents itself. So thanks for the tips!

Posted 2 years ago #
Roland Deschain
Member

I'm going to have to disagree with the first reply. Sony Vegas has a tendency to crash; it's quite well-documented if you go to their forums, the biggest reason is that Vegas does not play well with the default SATA drivers that Windows Vista & Windows 7 use. (fault lies with Vegas, the drivers work fine for everything else in the world; their solution is to update your SATA drivers, but very few motherboard manufacturers release SATA drivers now since the Windows ones work very well)

As someone else said, only upgrade if you want to do things you can't in Pinnacle; but part of the problem there is you may come across stuff in Premiere Pro that you can do that never even occurred to you with Pinnacle. I used Pinnacle Studio 14 for a short while, and I didn't care for it. Premiere Pro is definitely an upgrade as far as both features and complexity goes, but it's not hard to learn; it just takes some time. $800 is not a price tag that should be taken lightly. They have a free 30-day trial; download it and play with it. A valid point brought up by someone else is that Adobe is the biggest name and most commonly used one for video editing out there, so your compatibility as far as project files and such are concerned is at a max; but that may be irrelevant, depending on what you do.

Posted 2 years ago #
XTR-91
Member

If you don't mind a bit more daunting learning curve than the other two (Pinnacle and Premiere), then I'd take a serious look at Sony Vegas Pro 9. I haven't heard much good things of the reliability with Pinnacle Pro version - saved projects just might disappear from your eye before you know it (at least this is something I've heard from one guy using it). Adobe Premiere's got the extra bucks tacked on but includes something else with it I can't remember. I'd take a look at Adobe's website.

Posted 2 years ago #