Much of this past weekend was spent trying to wrap my head around Adobe Premiere Pro for the Mac. Here’s the result of hours of wrestling with the new (to me anyway…) software:
In addition to using Premiere Pro do edit, assemble, and clean-up my video footage, I used Adobe Sound Booth to add narration, add copyright-free music tracks, and get the volume levels of each where I wanted them. By the time I trimmed out what I didn’t like, the actual video footage of our dogs wasn’t very long…only a couple of minutes worth. So I decided to add a photo slide show, which I used Apple’s iPhoto to do. The end product was a just under five minute video which I think turned out fairly well. More importantly, I learned a lot about the tools I have at my disposal. I’m finding that the more I know about the post-production end of things, the better job I do at shooting and capturing video footage in the front end of the project.
I recently upgraded to Premiere Pro from Premiere Elements – which I assumed would be in every way better. And for the most part, during editing and production, it very much is. However, rendering a 1080p file for YouTube is just plain easier in Premiere elements. 1080p rendered files in Premiere Pro however are huge – anything in the 10-15 minute length (my typical YouTube video length) is going to bigger than the YouTube limit of 2GB. So I end up rendering many of my Premiere Pro projects at 720p. And there’s certainly an argument that for a YouTube video, 720p is plenty good, and that 1080p is a bit of a waste. As valid as that may be, I have equipment capable of recording at 1080p by golly so I want to render and upload 1080p files! I’m hoping that I can “break the code” with how to render a 1080p file of reasonable size in Premiere Pro – it’s next on my “to-do” list to learn.
John B. Holbrook, II is a freelance writer, photographer, and author of ThruMyLens.org, as well as LuxuryTyme.com and TheSeamasterReferencePage.com.
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I’m wondering why you’re using Premiere and not Final Cut…
That’s certainly a fair question. In the end, it came down to the difference in the educational discount pricing. From what I read, FCP is likely easier to use than PP, but both seem to have the same capabilities. My wife is in graduate school, and I could take advantage of student pricing for either. With Adobe, once you buy the student version (identical to the retail package in all but price) you can forever upgrade at the relatively inexpensive upgrade price. Apple doesn’t let you do that – you can’t ever upgrade a student package without buying either a new student package of the new version, or the full-blown retail version. PP’s suite also has nice integration with After Effects. I have had vague thoughts of buying new upcoming FCP new release on my wife’s student discount however, just to for certain see which I like better. 🙂
John I ran across your review of the RugerSR9C, and a lot of my questions were answered. Thanks for that! Will be at the range testing their rental this weekend. It is between the Glock 19 and this model by Ruger. Your trigger slack comments sold me on the Ruger.
On to videography. I use a Canon XF-100 for our Indy films, but I am not the editor, but on my own shooting I want to edit. The new FCProX does not support this camera unless you go through a jillion little fixes. The Adobe PP5.5 and hopefully the new 6.0 will work with the camera. This is the way I will go. My question is regarding your Mac, are you using MacPro or ? I am PC and will be making this upgrade at the same time as the Adobe PP. In starting out with both, what options and ideas do you suggest for the Mac purchase for using Lightroom and Adobe PP? Thanks in advance for your help!
Hi Scott – I’m actually using a MacBook Pro 15″ with a Thunderbolt display. I use the Adobe Suite with PP included and running LR 4. Reviews can be found here on ThruMyLens.