Battle of the Software NLEs, Part 4: Slideshows, Rendering, and Conclusions

EventDV by Jan Ozer In the final segment of our four-part series comparing five leading software NLEs—Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Xpress Pro HD, Liquid Edition, and Vegas—we’ll wrap things up with a look at slideshow creation capabilities, and we’ll render our test projects and compare speed and quality. Finally, we’ll crunch the numbers and draw some conclusions. The success of the Ken Burns documentaries like The Civil War and Baseball—which were composed largely of still images animated via pan-and-zoom techniques—combined with the pervasiveness of digital cameras, makes high-quality slideshow production a must for all video editors. Slideshows with carefully orchestrated 2D motion have become the bread and butter of documentarians, especially those working with archival still images. For personal event videographers, photo montages are an important premium service to be able to offer; for video biographers and memorial videographers, pan-and-zoom slideshows are often the core of the product. read more...