I'm looking for recommendations for a step up from iMovie HD. Ease of insertion of stills and extending the sound track are a known consideration.

Final Cut Express or switch from Adobe CS4 Design Premium to Production Premium?

If the latter, what problems will occur from using Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional with CS4?

Thanks.

What type of video to you expect to work with now and in the foreseeable future? Premier Pro is a better choice if you will be working with AVCHD. Check the codecs for Final Cut Express and make sure it covers what you need.

Remember too that you can get Premiere Pro without buying the whole CS4 suite if you want. But it's still a lot more expensive than buying Final Cut Express ($600 difference list) and you can do a lot with FCE.

Premiere Pro is the only solution (that I'm aware of) that offers NATIVE editing of AVCHD, Panasonic PC, RED Camera, and Sony HD on a Mac.

What most people don't realize is that this is a HUGE time saver and the reason for going tapeless in the first place!

Last week I shot the Photoshop World Keynote in Boston. I shot the entire keynote. However, when I got home I had an immediate need to create three videos: One of the entire keynote to share with Carla. The second one of the just the Adobe portion of the keynote to put on my podcast and the third video was just a short clip of the one of the Guru Award winners that I know so that I could send it to him.

I got home, I popped the SDHC card out of my Canon VIXIA HF10 and popped it into a San Disk card reader on my Mac Pro. I fired up Premiere Pro and started a new project.

Premiere Pro listed the card as a source and I had IMMEDIATE access to the clips to start editing right off the Card!!!!! No copying, no transcoding, I was immediately able to put the clips on the timeline, ad my titles make my cuts and then export out my 3 separate movies using the Adobe Media Encoder (that's included).

The source movies remained on the card the whole time freeing up drive space on my Mac and saving me time!

To this day, I never did copy the files off the card, because I got the three movies that I need now.

So yes FCE is much cheaper, no question. If you're going to be editing standard DV and not HD, then you're probably better off to go with FCE because it is cheaper. If you're going to be doing tapeless workflows, AVCHD, Blu-ray authoring/burning, then there is no better solution than Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 which also includes Encore CS4 for DVD and Blu-ray authoring.

None of this should affect your installation of Acrobat 8 Professional.

Thanks. I think you covered the major points. AVCHD and BluRay content are important. I'm going to recommend switching to Production Pro and keeping the Acrobat 8 installation.

Now that I've gone through this analysis, I wish I had followed this advice when I went from CS3 to CS4 Design Premium. I'm beginning to do more video now. But, I can't find the "Whoops, I got the wrong version." button in the Adobe installer.

Quote TW

"What most people don't realize is that this is a HUGE time saver and the reason for going tapeless in the first place!"

So is there any time saving when you are still using DV tape but using Premier Pro?

If not then the external drive that I see you use when you do the Mac Group meeting seems to be the best way to go if you are not ready to pop for a new tapeless camera.... correct?

quote:

Originally posted by James R. Cutler:
Now that I've gone through this analysis, I wish I had followed this advice when I went from CS3 to CS4 Design Premium. I'm beginning to do more video now. But, I can't find the "Whoops, I got the wrong version." button in the Adobe installer.

Try "Shift CMD MoreMoney" Key combination. Want to use the GUI then click here https://store1.adobe.com/cfusi...remierePro&loc=en_us

quote:

Originally posted by Calvin

If not then the external drive that I see you use when you do the Mac Group meeting seems to be the best way to go if you are not ready to pop for a new tapeless camera.... correct?

Depends. To buy a good external drive at the low end will be around $700. You can buy a new higher-end consumer-grade HD camera for $700-900. You can buy lower-end HD cameras for $300 or even less in some cases. These are tapeless models. So unless you have some pressing reason to hang onto your older camera, getting an external drive may not be a good alternative.

Agreed to a point. It depends on your existing camera. If your existing DV camera is a high-end 3 chip model, then the Focus Enhancements Firestore HD (which is what we use at the meetings) may be the way to go. I have not compared the quality of the $700 HD cameras with the older higher end DV cameras in all lighting conditions, but my guess is that the older 3 chip DV cameras are going do do a better job in low light scenarios. Again, it's my theory, haven't compared the two.
If you're not using a higher end 3 chip camera, then getting a new tapeless HD camera would definitely be the way to go instead of the Firestore drive.

quote:

Originally posted by Jack Beckman:

quote:

Originally posted by Calvin

If not then the external drive that I see you use when you do the Mac Group meeting seems to be the best way to go if you are not ready to pop for a new tapeless camera.... correct?

Depends. To buy a good external drive at the low end will be around $700. You can buy a new higher-end consumer-grade HD camera for $700-900. You can buy lower-end HD cameras for $300 or even less in some cases. These are tapeless models. So unless you have some pressing reason to hang onto your older camera, getting an external drive may not be a good alternative.

Say I upgrade iMovie to FCE. Coulde I use After effects with FCE. Since I do football highlights, I want to use the tracking feature to point out a player.

You can, but I think you will have to export your video from FCE into a quicktime movie, then do your work in After Effects and re-export to Quicktime. Terry will have a better handle on the workflow.

If you use Premiere Pro, you won't have the extra exports - just one at the end to whatever format you need.

Jack is correct.
You can use After Effects with FCE but there is no link between the two. In order to get your video into After Effects to add your animation/effects to it, you would have to first export it as a QT movie and then import it into AE. Once you're done with it in AE, you can the export it back out as a QT movie and reimport it back to FCE.

If you are just using AE to create animations that will go into FCE, then you would use AE to generate the animation, then export it as a QT mov and import it into FCE.

If you use Premiere Pro and AE together (purchased in the Production Premium Suite), you will then have Dynamic Link and you can simple drag and drop compositions/timelines between the two and only render out the final movie when you're done. NOTE: you do NOT get Dynamic Link if the apps are purchased separately. It's a Suite ONLY Feature!

quote:

Originally posted by Jack Beckman:
You can, but I think you will have to export your video from FCE into a quicktime movie, then do your work in After Effects and re-export to Quicktime. Terry will have a better handle on the workflow.

If you use Premiere Pro, you won't have the extra exports - just one at the end to whatever format you need.

This just why I wish I could find the "Whoops..." button.

quote:

NOTE: you do NOT get Dynamic Link if the apps are purchased separately. It's a Suite ONLY Feature!