demagogue on 7/1/2008 at 20:57
Quote Posted by Muzman
I'd love to know what "fanboy" means as it pertains to Adobe use though. :D
The reason I said that was that the majority of people praising Adobe Premiere in cyberspace (that I could find) were otaku-types using it to make anime music videos for YouTube ... and I thought to myself, their praise is telling me right now maybe this isn't the program for me. Then I saw some glowing reviews by mothers using it to make slideshows of their babies and I closed the book on it ... nope. Apparently it's quite user-friendly, but the interface also tends to guide your hand along the way (at least, that's what it was getting praised for), and I don't like that.
I just said "fanboy" for the sake of that one poor sap that doesn't know what otaku means yet ... also because 'otaku' means something a little different in English than Japanese (where it's closer to sicko); so I feel a little dumb using it, like how Japanese can't deal with saying all of 'personal computer' they have to say 'PasoCom'; if you know English it sounds idiotic.
For the record, by "suburban" I was thinking of exactly what Mazian just said. People were praising Pinnacle mostly for its intuitiveness; and were lukewarm to Vegas because they couldn't figure it out right away, even if it was more versatile. It's people that want something higher end and respectable, but really value convenience. And the idea of needing to roll up their sleeves to dig into the complicated guts of the thing to see what it's capable of is a bad thing. That's cool for people that just want to get a job done and not pull their hair out with the learning curve, but wasn't my style ... digging into the complicated guts is the fun part.
Muzman on 8/1/2008 at 00:06
I see, heh. Yeah that one poor sap is probably me. I've heard about otaku before a little, as an insult, but it's part of a sub-culture I don't really know much about (there's this whole world of console gamers and anime watchers that I have nothing to do with and people are like "You're a nerdy gamer type, you'd know about this stuff." Sorry, no idea. I had to look up what an 'AMV' was.)
Anyway, Premiere is popular with that section eh. I wonder how much is Elements (Mum with baby pictures) and the rest is just "Adobe: the warez of choice". Gawd, Premiere Pro can't be that lame. I was hoping it could stand up to Final Cut. Much of the rest of CS3 is a goddam nuclear missile, I'm quite sure a lot of media software makers gave up at the sight of it.
If Vegas is that well featured at that price though, that's pretty cool. I wonder what extra Vegas Pro gets you. I shall go read.
Thirith on 10/1/2008 at 09:37
I've been playing around with Vegas Movie Studio a bit. It seems okay enough, but there are two things I don't like right now: 1) the trimmer isn't very user-friendly (or at least I haven't been able to figure it out), especially when compared with Premiere and Avid, and 2) I miss the function that those two other programs have where you can finetune the point where one scene stops and the next starts. In Premiere (or was it Avid? It's been two years since I worked with them), you get this useful window where you see the last frame of scene A and the first frame of scene B, and you can adjust these frame by frame. In Vegas Movie Studio, I seem to be reduced to fairly imprecise mouse trimming...
Mazian on 10/1/2008 at 17:56
Have you tried zooming in on the timeline? It's the little plus and minus buttons in the lower right of the timeline editing window IIRC. I can usually zoom in further than necessary when I'm editing, so maybe you just didn't see those options. I'd like to be more help but I'm at work and my recall's a little shaky.
Thirith on 10/1/2008 at 21:05
I did, thanks. It still strikes me as way less user-friendly than being able to go step by step, frame by frame, as you can in Avid, for instance. However, apparently there's an option for "keyboard trimming", which should take care of this.
fett on 10/1/2008 at 22:27
Quote Posted by Mazian
For the love of all that is holy,
avoid Pinnacle Movie Studio. It is the most finicky bitch of an editor from hell you are likely to encounter.
MOTHER FUCKING PINNALCE!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
Seriously, this piece of shit converter isn't even worthy to be a paper weight. It is the only PC peripheral that I have ever physically broken because I hated it so much. I literally took it to the garage and busted that fucker with a hammer, just so I wouldn't be tempted to use it again. The software? Exactly as Mazian says: bloated, slow, incomprehensibly buggy, ties up all your resources, and handles like a flacid penis on the sixth whiskey and coke. The English language isn't expressive enough to describe how horrible the software is. There just simply aren't enough adjectives.
Mazian - what are you using now for an analog to digital input? I've got some Hi8 tapes I still need to get onto the PC. Pinnacle was the only reasonably priced (read: cheap ass POS) that I could find with RCA/analog inputs.
theBlackman on 11/1/2008 at 08:17
fett I use an ATI All-In-Wonder card for Analog input. Works well. I can record directly from the TV line, or from a VCR direct hookup.
It also has Svideo in/out as well as the once standard R/L audio-video inputs on breakout boxes.
Haven't checked the newer ones, but when I upgrade I hope to find one that will work.
Else, I'll just have to keep my old system for that type of editing. A friend has a 30 minute TV show every week that I tape (direct input) and burn to DVD after editing.
I've also run a handful of older Beta tapes through and edited them and burned them to DVD.
Muzman on 11/1/2008 at 08:21
I don't know if this counts as cheap but you can get stuff like this these days
(
http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC55/index.php)
which is great if you want to avoid huge hardware and software bundles, and provided you have a firewire port handy.
Mazian on 11/1/2008 at 16:26
Quote Posted by fett
Mazian - what are you using now for an analog to digital input? I've got some Hi8 tapes I still need to get onto the PC. Pinnacle was the only reasonably priced (read: cheap ass POS) that I could find with RCA/analog inputs.
I'm still using the hardware. Hell, the hardware and the capture portion of the software are the only parts of it that work well for me, I just pretend the editing software doesn't exist. If I had the money I'd probably get a dedicated capture card or go the firewire route but I'm on a budget so I'm sticking with the PPOS (Pinnacle piece of shit) for the near future. I would have bypassed the capture software altogether if I could have gotten Sony Vegas to recognize my hardware.
fett on 15/1/2008 at 21:31
Quote Posted by Yakoob
I used to use Ulead Video Studio a few years ago and it worked pretty nicely with a good set of features. If Ulead keept their stuff up with time, it might be worth checking it out.
Yakoob - I'm using a trial version of that right now and I like it except for two things:
1) Doesn't seem to be a transition feature that allows you to fade in and out between clips. The only thing similar is the 'theme' feature which takes your clip, adds music, dancing, cheap sex, and flashing lights, etc. (it was very odd listening to the default porn music over the clip of my 2 year olds birthday, but I digress...) - then you have to delete all that stuff to get back to a basic fade. It also seems to automatically add a 'filmstrip/widescreen' effect to those specific clips. Am I missing something here? Fades are a pretty common feature even with cheap-o video editors.
2) If you've already added video clips to your project, and then decide to throw in a few more clips, it adds them to the end of the project by default - in other words, you can't specify where you'd like to add them. This results in a laborious dragging of individual clips back and forth across the project (no cut/paste feature either).
If I could remedy those two things I'd definitely get the Ulead program because it seems to work like a gem on my system.
