Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 I've been using Adobe Premiere 6.5 for a few years now, and I'm starting to think that I should upgrade. Mainly I'm not happy with the speed of the software, and the quality of the video it puts out. I'm looking at Discreets Smoke but I may just go with Premiere Pro 1.5, I don't know what the price difference is but I'll bet it's pretty big. I would appreciate anyone who has used one or both of these programs to give me their critique, and also anyone who may have a better program in mind please let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Please do a little site searching, this has been covered fairly recently Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Well I just got a call from the Discreet rep, they said that Smoke was at least $100,000 and could go as high as $200,000. Needless to say that is far out of my league, I feel stupid for even asking about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hockley91 Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Holy Smokes! That's amazing! $$$$$$$ I've been using Adobe Premiere for awhile now as well, but I'm quite happy with 6.5 for my uses. I'm sure you've played with all the different codec's out there. My animations are usually around 250-300 mb for a 2-3 minute animation. I find that to be a decent size for my laptop to show clients... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 I've been using the windows media player codec, and I can get a 1 or 2 minute video size at about 85mb. The problem is I don't want to use a codec that is not available on the standard windows media player because our clients don't want to have to download anything. The windows media player just doesn’t have the quality that say a QuickTime video would. I would like to find something that is better than the standard windows media player codec but the file sizes are less than 150mb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skogskalle Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 try using BINK.... it can compress the movies as much as you want it to, and its got pretty good image quality/filesize. best of all (for you) it can turn the movies into an .exe that can be played on any computer without installing any software first. http://www.radgametools.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Yea I've tried blink before, doesen't it put a little icon somewhere on the animation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hockley91 Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Well, here's another question. When you output your frames, do you output as .tif or .jpg? I've found that .jpg compression in the frames greatly reduces the quality of the animation once it's compressed again as an animation. The .tif frames are much larger like 1 meg each, but when these frames are compressed in Adobe Premiere the quality is much higher and clearer. A big difference. I've found that using the "Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V1" to be pretty good. I've never had a problem playing the animation on another PC. However, like you said there have been problems before with other codecs on other PC's.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skogskalle Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 not during the animation... you can let the anim repeat itself for as long as you wish without seing the logo, but yes, it does pop up and stays for a few seconds when you exit the anim. I believe you can get rid of the logo if you buy a proffessional license for the codec.... dont know how much this costs though... im sure the info is on their site... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 I always render out Tiff's, because of the quality level and the ability to recover an animation in the case of crashes. It seem like I've tried every codec that Premiere comes with and they either are to large and won't play back smoothly or they just look bad. What I really want is something that is comparable to a Quick Time with out the large file sizes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DelfoZ Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Divx. but if the client don't have the codec he can't play the video : Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 if your only hang up with premiere is bad compression, then you don't have a hang up with premiere. you have a hang up with codecs. every video editing app out there is going to give you problems. they all basically use the same set of codecs. some may make it easier to use the codecs than others, but they are the same codecs. microsoft makes a app that writes windows media format (wmv) directly from premiere, you will need to download and install it. they make a stand alone version for the rest of us not using premiere. the quality is comparable to quicktime. here is a sample of a wmv file, that will play on all windows machines through windows media player. although i think you need to be using the newer version, which should install with updates. this movie is 512 x 384, 2:47 minutes long, and is in 23.8 megs in file size. http://www.phase22.com/work/karlsberger/piedmont/ i have been thinking about switching to divx, it has better quality than windows media, but the support requires the user to have a slight clue of what they are doing. delfoz... i always liked the flatness of your old avatar, but the layer screen or whatever effect is cool also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Alexander Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 delfoz... i always liked the flatness of your old avatar, but the layer screen or whatever effect is cool also. Can't you see he's "listening"? shhhh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DelfoZ Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 WDA "microsoft makes a app that writes windows media format (wmv) directly from premiere, you will need to download and install it. they make a stand alone version for the rest of us not using premiere. the quality is comparable to quicktime." Can the client play the .wmv fromat without install any codec ? and whats the url to D/l the codec ? free? Offtopic : about the avatareffect is called (Designersextet) Glare from www.FlamingPear.com . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Avid makes the best mid level editing software, in the $4,000 range or check out Video toaster by Newtek, don't know how much that goes for... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 I've seen that animation before and I like it, and the quality is really good! I've downloaded it and I'll let you know how it works...Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 maxer, ya, i posted it in completed work back when i finished it. defoz, wmv / wma are the native formats for windows media player, which is included in windows operating system. there is also a mac version, but would need to be downloaded. i don't think a solution exists for linux, at least not one that is published by microsoft. stand alone.... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&DisplayLang=en premiere version..... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FBCD4987-86C6-4FE0-8A6D-F19DDF89217E&displaylang=en manta, et al... i think avid's entry level video editing app is free, but i don't know how diverse it is, and whether you can distribute to the public. also, has anyone on the board comleted anything in Wax (a free video app that was posted in the news section a couple of months ago)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Have you ever used Quicktime and Premiere? I've messed with it but I've always gotten very large files, not sure which settings are optimal for animations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Have you ever used Quicktime and Premiere? I've messed with it but I've always gotten very large files, not sure which settings are optimal for animations. we bought sorenson pro to use with media cleaner to produce quicktimes back when it was version 2 was released. i was hoping to produce compressed video that was as nice as the trailers you always see on the Internet. i never really had that much luck. i would work through tutorials, and everything else, but they were always noisy, and large file sizes. it could have been because sorenson is kind of a bad codec for architectural animations, but in the same way that all codecs are bad for architectural animations, but can be good for movie trailers. arch animations tend to always be moving, so they can not reuse as many of the same pixels as what movie trailers can, where you have scenes that someone is talking, or a car is driving through, but the rest of the background stays relatively unchanged. anyway, i never got the results i wanted. the other thing that bothered me about quicktime was that it doesn't scale well on windows machines. going full screen was often taxing on the processor, and would cause it to stutter. the only codec that i had any level of predictability with was the 'animation codec', but i would end up with 2-3 minute files, that were 500 megs in size. not exactly what i would call good compression. so i started experimenting with mpeg2 and mpeg4. my results with mpeg2 always turned out blurry, and the compression software could be expensive considering i was only searching for a solution. i wound up in mpeg4, which led to divx and windows media. divx truly has the best quality, and is based on the mpeg 4 algorithm, but window media is owned by microsoft, which means it is already widely distributed. so yes, i have tried quicktime with various video apps, but never wound up with results that i was pleased with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 I use sorenson squeeze 4, I export all my animations uncompressed, and squeeze them in that program, I like having an external program to compress them on the fly, if I need one for the web and another for a CD, it creates them simultaniously and fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted February 1, 2005 Author Share Posted February 1, 2005 It sounds like with a few exceptions that the windows media codec is the best all around choice for compression and image quality. I downloaded the new windows media codec 9, but I honestly can't tell any difference between it and version 8. It does look like the file sizes are smaller which is good, but nothing I do seems to affect the quality of the image. I guess if everyone is having the same problems with video then at least I'm in good company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 It sounds like with a few exceptions that the windows media codec is the best all around choice for compression and image quality. I downloaded the new windows media codec 9, but I honestly can't tell any difference between it and version 8. It does look like the file sizes are smaller which is good, but nothing I do seems to affect the quality of the image. I guess if everyone is having the same problems with video then at least I'm in good company. this is subjective. some people swear by quicktime, others by some other format. you have to develop your own opinion, but for me, ease of use vs. file size vs. security, windows media wins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hockley91 Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 I guess I'll try .wmv for my next one. The results look pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjornkn Posted February 2, 2005 Share Posted February 2, 2005 I also like wmv For video editing you should have a look at Vegas Video, formerly by Sound Forge, but now bought up by Sony. I like it much better than Premiere, but then I haven't used Premiere for several years, after being very frustrated because it crashed all the time. Must have been the most unstable app I've ever run... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now