Adobe CS5.5 - Kicking Tires of Premiere CS5.5

Little Frog in High Def by Shane Ross

OK, if you have been following me for a while, you know that I use both Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro…and I am pretty proficient with both. If you haven’t been following me for a while… I use both Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro, and am pretty proficient with both. I am a fan of both. I might lean more towards FCP, because it better fits the way I like to edit. But I know that Avid had strengths in many areas that far surpass what FCP is capable of. Plus I started out on Avid MC. So I am comfortable with both.

But, I like to be a well rounded person. Mainly because I dish out post advice, and I like to be sure to give people the proper advice based on many factors in their post/production workflow. For this reason I have owned and used capture cards from all three major FCP capture card makers…AJA, Matrox and Blackmagic Design (As well as Aurora…I had a Pipe Pro Studio). So, now I am digging into Adobe Premiere Pro, to see what all the hoopla is about. I hear a lot of people raving about how much better this is than FCP or Avid. It’s about time I looked for myself.

INTERFACE.

Took a little looking around to see what was where. I couldn’t find the INSERT and OVERWRITE buttons for a while. Always used to them being in the PROGRAM (Canvas) monitor. In Premiere, they are in the PREVIEW (Viewer) monitor. But, they are there. You can drag clips onto the timeline, or use the period or comma buttons (insert and overwrite), or drag into the Canvas. Many ways to get things there. Standard J-K-L keys for keyboard operation, and I and O for marking IN and OUT. So that is comfortable enough. And you can customize the keyboard…which helps those of us with pretty set in “muscle memory.”

I like the media browser. Allows me to find the media I want to import from my various tapeless sources. I can OPEN files in the Preview monitor before I decide to add them to the project…so I can see what I have. And then I hit upon the thing that people RAVE about Premiere. The ability to import all sorts of tapeless media, without converting/transcoding. read more...