Reports | Technology

Premiere 6.0: The Long-Awaited Upgrade Arrives

1 May , 2001  

Written by Peter Bohush | Posted by:

With its new code, user interface, and integration capabilities, Premiere 6.0 is back in the starting line-up of inexpensive non-linear editing systems.

Three years ago, Adobe’s Premiere 5.1 was in a league by itself of non-linear editing applications for less than $1,000. Since then, programs from Apple Computer, Avid, and others, challenged Premiere’s status while Adobe presented new versions of nearly all its other applications.

Adobe has finally released its long-awaited upgrade, Premiere 6.0. This new version will please die-hard Premiere fans and may even win over some new converts. Those who use other Adobe products, such as After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator, will find improved integration among these programs. Those looking for a stand-alone editing application should also put Premiere high up on their consideration list.

A Sound Investment

I have had a love-hate relationship with Premiere. I used it successfully to edit the first cut of my movie, "Geezers," and loved the precision with which I could edit video and audio. But I also hated it when it crashed every hour or so (a conflict related to my Hewlett-Packard computer), and cursed the very features I loved when they didn’t perform to my satisfaction.

Particularly irksome was the audio "rubber band" feature, which allowed for exact audio editing down to the single frame. The tiny little lines and dots which had to be controlled by the mouse were too small, and Premiere has a habit of changing the audio levels when you click to create a new handle on the audio band.

Premiere 6 addresses this problem with a new feature, the Audio Mixer window. Looking like a traditional audio mixer with slider controls, Premiere users can play back their clips and adjust the audio volume and mix on-the-fly; Premiere will record these new instructions into the Timeline.

Neat, right? Well, it’s a cool effect to show users at a trade show. In reality, it’s pretty darn hard to simulate — with one mouse pointer — the kind of real-time mix a talented sound editor can achieve using two hands on a real mixing board. And those pesky rubber bands in the Timeline still change the audio levels when you create a new handle! Hey, Adobe, here’s my version 7 wish list: give me a keyboard shortcut to add a handle or keyframe.

In all fairness though, Premiere’s Audio Mixer does provide a new way to deal with audio, a vast improvement over other applications that favor video and give sound the short shrift.

Premiere also comes bundled with SmartSound’s Quicktracks, a scaled-down version of SmartSound for Multimedia. With this new application, you can create cool music tracks to add to your projects.

Digital Improvements

Premiere 6 now offers a new host of settings to interface with digital cameras and VCRs. Gone are the days of endless tweaking and crashing to find the right setting to capture and import footage. There’s even a window to compare your source footage with the project settings to see if all the settings match.

Capturing video is easier with Premiere 6 since it helps you capture clips at their original settings. This will eliminate errors later on and avoid quality loss when exporting your finished project back to tape. And exporting has been beefed up. With Premiere 6, you can export to QuickTime, Windows Media, Real, MP3, and other formats. This lets you create files for use on the web, CD-ROMs, and video.

Premiere 6 ships with a lite edition of Media Cleaner Pro (now simply called Cleaner), to quickly compress and encode your project for a variety of purposes. If you own the full version of Cleaner, Premiere will call that up instead of the lite version.

Special Features

Some have unfairly criticized Premiere’s titling feature in the past, holding it up to expensive stand-alone titling applications and hardware products. But Premiere’s titling function remains the best among non-linear editors. Creating rolling titles is easy. Complete font style, size, kerning and leading controls are provided, as well as drop shadows. Combined with Premiere’s editing and matte features, and this is a nice title creation tool.

New to version 6 is the Storyboard, a pre-Timeline staging area to arrange clips and set transitions. One click sends your storyboard to the Timeline. This is arguably just another, simplified view of the Timeline, but it has its uses for doing rough cuts of a project.

Also new to version 6 are optional workspace views, so you can set the layout to your liking. Adobe patterned Premiere’s interface to be consistent with its other products. You may or may not like the multitude of floating palettes (personally, I don’t). Users should have at least a 19-inch computer monitor, or better yet, two monitors to handle all the windows.

Finally, Premiere has organized its transitions and effects (over 75 of them) menu into categories that make it much easier to use.

Summary

Clearly Adobe has taken a look at the upstart NLEs that have invaded Premiere’s space over the past three years and incorporated the best ideas from each. But they’ve also added new features to Premiere 6 and maintained the integrity of the user interface.

With its rewritten, robust code (no more crashes?) and integration with other Adobe products (with the exception of LiveMotion flash files), Premiere 6 can stand up and take a well-deserved curtain call.

Premiere 6 from Adobe Systems Inc. (www.adobe.com) for Macintosh and Windows retails for $549, or $149 to upgrade.