Let's be frank: Premiere 5.1 had problems. Adobe didn't know who its market was, and 5.1 didn't work with every capture board on the market in addition to being buggy as hell. This time out, instead of trying to be all things to all people, Adobe has rebuilt the application from the ground up and focused this release on one market segment: digital video filmmakers who want to output to DV or upload their projects to the Web.
Adobe's Premiere 6 is one of the best software-based, non-linear video editors we've ever used. New features to version 6 include numerous bug fixes, improved media management, bonus After Effects filters, enhanced Web video output, full support for Microsoft OHCI-certified IEEE-1394 capture boards, and an audio mixer that that lets you mix numerous tracks in real time
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Knowing they were making this release for digital video filmmakers, Adobe is making real sure its product will work with every Microsoft OHCI IEEE-1394 (FireWire) board on the market. Check out www.microsoft.com/hcl and select "1394 Controller" from the drop down menu to find a list of OHCI-certified cards. We tested Premiere 6 on a 600MHz PIII Micron PC with 256MB RAM, a Maxtor UDMA/100 hard drive, and used Pinnacle System's DV500 real time 1394 card. The first question most current Premiere users will ask is, "Did they fix all the bugs in 5.1?"
No, they didn't fix every bug in the application -- but they did fix a lot of them. After a little more than nine hours of total editing time, we brought the application to its knees six times. Not one crash occurred, however, while we were doing straightforward editing; the majority of crashes happened when we the pushed application to its limits, with such tasks as applying multiple effects filters to the timeline. Premiere 6 is definitely more solid than 5.1, where you knew and avoided specific areas in the app to stay away from in order to prevent a system crash. There are no touchy areas in Premiere 6, at least that we've found. Even when we crashed in version 6, we couldn't recreate the error a second time. What's new
The coolest new feature in Premiere 6 is the new Project Bin window, which is worth the price of the upgrade alone. It's the ultimate way to organize and find your media. Every time you capture a shot, a thumbnail image of that shot appears in the bin. To the right of the thumbnail is the shot's name followed by a text input box for making notes about each clip. All text in the bin window is searchable. If you're working with hundreds of shots, you can find any one shot you're looking for just by doing a search on the comment you wrote next to the particular shot. This feature alone saved us hours of editing time.
The only downside to the bin is that it adds yet another window to an already crowded screen. The solution is to use two monitors, but you'll need a special graphics card (and another monitor) to take advantage of that. You can minimise windows to help clean up screen real estate, but it's an annoying extra step that leads to a sore wrist after a while.
Audiophiles will appreciate Premiere 6's new audio mixer. The mixer lets you adjust a clip's volume and pan control while you're watching the clip. The new mixer is certainly no Sound Forge, but it does let you mix multiple tracks in real time.
If you're more interested in getting your video on the Web and don't like messing around with compression settings, you'll like Premiere's Export to Web feature, which uses Cleaner LE to automate the process. Cleaner will save your video as a RealVideo, QuickTime, or Windows Media file and upload the compressed movie to a Web site. The only downside to Cleaner LE is that you can't tweak any of the compression settings if you're so inclined. If you're the kind of person who has to have compression control over every frame in your video, then you'll want to buy the full version of Cleaner.
Another cool Web feature built into Premiere 6 is the ability to build Web tags into your video. For example, if you're editing a trailer for a feature that's going to be streamed on your Web site, you could embed URL tags that trigger page changes on your Web site while the movie streams. In a practical application, the pages that change while the video plays could include information on cast members when they appear on screen, a director's bio during the opening credits, and information on where you can buy the movie while the final credits roll.
There were other touches that we found useful, including Open Most Recent Project under the file menu, which allows you to open most recent project in seconds. Additionally, now when you insert any clip in the timeline, all clips on all tracks will shift in sync. And rounding it all out are 25 new Adobe After Effects plug-ins that increase your video and audio effect options, including a bunch that can make your video look like film.
Is Premiere 6 perfect? No. the titler is still terrible, but Adobe had the good sense to include Pinnacle Systems' TitleDeko to make up that deficiency. TitleDeko is okay, but in the future we'd like to see compatibility with Adobe's plug-in architecture. And there are still a ton of things we'd like to see implemented in future versions, including the ability to delete extraneous video from a clip after we've marked the clip's in and out points in the monitor window, a basic paint utility like the one included in Ulead's Media Studio Pro, and a way to play videos in succession from multiple timelines.
Still, for all its faults, Premiere 6 is still one of the best software video editors out there.
Adobe Premiere 6.0
Company: Adobe Australia
Local Supplier: Buzzle
Price: AU$1,349
Ph: 02 9551 7979
Fax: 02 9957 4325
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