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Entered CNET Catalog: 07/25/2002
SKU: 25500410
Manufacturer: Adobe Systems
Manufacturer description
Delivering unmatched hardware support, Adobe Premiere 6.5 software is the most adaptable DV-editing tool on the market today. Now you can work more productively with Real-Time Preview. And you can take advantage of the sophisticated Adobe Title Designer, MPEG-2 export, DVD authoring, powerful audio tools, and more to create extraordinary video productions. Whether you want to edit digital video on your laptop or work with multiple layers of analog footage on a professional, hardware-based, real-time system, Adobe Premiere is the hands-down choice for desktop video editing. Whether you're producing content for DVD, tape, or the Web, Adobe Premiere 6.5 software offers a complete solution that delivers uncompromising quality. New features in this release expand your options with Real-Time Preview, innovative editing tools, support for the most up-to-date technologies available, and output options for a wide range of media, including DVD.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 10/28/2002
Ready, set, edit
As with all of the previous versions of Premiere, installation is a snap--just insert the CD-ROM and follow the instructions. Premiere ships with some of the best documentation in the industry, including a well-written user guide, online help, and an excellent training CD-ROM from Total Training. Phone tech support is free (although you'll have to pay for the cost of the call) for 90 days if you're purchasing the program for the first time or for 30 days if you're upgrading.
Once you start up the program, you'll be asked what type of video you want to create, from a simple clip for the Web to full-resolution DV movies. After you've made your selection, the Premiere Timeline window opens up and allows you to assemble your videos. If you're accustomed to using other Adobe products, such as Photoshop, you'll find the interface's organization very familiar. When it comes to capturing video, Premiere 6.5 supports a greater variety of DV devices than its predecessor, including the popular Sony DVCAM video decks.
Real time only part-time
Within Premiere 6.5, you'll find several powerful new editing features. Three DirectX audio plug-ins from TC Electronics let you do everything from adding reverb to improving volume on a poorly recorded audio track. Just click and drag an effect onto an audio file, and a TC Electronics window will open so that you can make adjustments. On the Mac side, Adobe bundled Sparkle, a stereo audio-editing program, which, while impressive, lacks the real-time features of PC-based TC Electronics plug-ins. Therefore, you will need to render any changes you make to a Mac audio file.
At long last, you don't need to use an external program to create truly impressive titles and graphics within your production. Premiere 6.5 includes a full-featured titling app called Adobe Title Designer, which lets you tweak your text and graphics to your heart's content. The 90 included PostScript fonts add even more pizzazz to your titles.
We tested the new version's much-touted real-time previewing with a single-processor, 1.7GHz Pentium 4 desktop computer with 256MB of RAM. The feature worked as advertised, providing a generally smooth view of footage with effects, transitions, and titles added. However, there are a couple of limitations to be aware of. Unlike Vegas Video, Premiere won't let you preview on an NTSC video monitor. And you'll need to make sure that your system is up-to-snuff before getting all excited about the previews. Although you can run the program on a slower machine, you won't be able to view real-time previews on a PC that's slower than 800GHz or on a sub-G4 Mac. And of course, Adobe recommends dual processors for the best performance. On a positive note, unlike in Final Cut Pro and some other editing programs, the real-time preview in Premiere works on all transitions, effects, audio (for PC users), and graphic layers.
Now includes DVD authoring
Like many current Windows-based editing programs, Premiere 6.5 comes bundled with a third-party DVD-authoring program, Sonic Solutions DVDit LE, a scaled-back version of the company's high-end DVD-authoring tool. The program has a feature set that falls somewhere between that of Dazzle DVD Complete and that of Apple DVD Studio Pro. DVDit is nicely integrated into Premiere; you can export your timelines complete with chapter markers directly from Premiere with the Adobe MPEG encoder. Once you've encoded your video, just open up DVDit to design your DVD menu and burn your clips to a disc.
Divided platforms
Advanced amateur video editors will appreciate the boost in productivity that real-time previewing brings, as well as the expanded creative options of the new titling and audio tools. However, it's hard to recommend the Mac version of Premiere over Final Cut Pro, which offers even more extensive controls for audio, editing, and effects. At the very least, Mac users might want to wait until Adobe adds DVD authoring.
The Title Designer, a tool for designing complex titles and graphics from within the program, is a great addition to Premiere. Check out the new audio plug-ins on the right from TC Electronics, which provide high-quality reverb, compression, and equalization.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
User Rating: 
3/10
Cons out-wiegh the Pros by a fair margin
Pros: Great features; lots of flexibility; once learned you'll never out-grow it
Cons: slow to learn, variety of bugs, missing applets, real-time play-back is unstable
User Rating: 
1/10
Go with VEGAS
Pros: havent found any yet, just started. Its all about Vegas + Adobe after affects + Encore DVD.
Cons: same program interface as Vegas , but Adobe much harder to learn and use. Vegas is 10X better.
User Rating: 3/10
Unstable, Bloody unstable!
Pros: Good , intuitive interface
Cons: Unpredictable output quality, sound problems, Crashes all the time with Mac OSX only OSX app i've experienced with stability problems. Final Cut, here we come!
User Rating: 
6/10
PRETTY GOOD WITH SOME FLAWS
Pros: fairly easy to learn the basics (although more difficult edits need the manual), great variety in transitions and effects, titles are much better than 6.0, potential is endless
Cons: crashes too much when timelines are full of difficult edits (may need to export to avi or mp2 and reimport clip so it doesn't crash), some effects are tricky to create, title creator is slow
User Rating: 
10/10
Stay away from any Pinnacle product, even if bundled with Premiere
Pros: none
Cons: I went to install it, and Pinnacle sent out a copy of premiere 6.5 without a valid serial number. I called Adobe who told me to call Pinnacle and around and around we go!
User Rating: 
8/10
Easy to Learn and Very Powerful
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User Rating: 8/10
Blows Final Cut out of the water!
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User Rating: 6/10
lots to learn
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User Rating: 8/10
Great professional/prosumer package
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User Rating: 
7/10
Premiere is not consumer!
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User Rating: 8/10
Good features, solid improvement
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User Rating: 
9/10
Excellent for DV editing
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User Rating: 
5/10
No point
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User Rating: 7/10
Sonic Foundry's Vegas video is the daddy now...
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User Rating: 
4/10
GO WITH FINAL CUT PRO
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User Rating: 
2/10
OK but Vegas Video 3.0 blows it away
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User Rating: 8/10
Works a little better than version 5.1c
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User Rating: 5/10
Half backed step forward
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User Rating: 2/10
How does it work?
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User Rating: 5/10
almost impossible to learn
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User Rating: 6/10
Check out Pinnacle EDITION DV!!
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User Rating: 1/10
Very slow, clumsy software
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User Rating: 9/10
Stay Ahead
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User Rating: 6/10
Improved, but not enough
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User Rating: 10/10
bye bye final cut!!!
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User Rating: 10/10
the best in video editing
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