What is Adobe Premiere 6.5?

A professional digital video editing application from Adobe, and the last version from before the program was rewritten as "Adobe Premiere Pro" (and became Windows-only from 2003 to 2007), along with being the last version to work on PowerPC Macs. It features real-time preview on certain systems, the sophisticated then-new Adobe Title Designer, a powerful audio mixer, A/B roll editing on the "Video 1" track, DV capture and export (with batch operation and logging), the ability to work with 16:9 footage, and a customizable interface.

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The new Adobe Premiere 6.5 reminds us of a great prizefighter just a few years past his prime. Not long ago, Premiere was the hands-down champ when it came to editing video affordably on your Mac. Now, all Macs ship with the free and easy-to-use iMovie, and big shots flock to Final Cut Pro. Avid's brand-new Xpress DV offers still more competition. So does it make sense to place bets on the veteran Premiere, or should you lay your money on one of the fresher faces in the ring?

Rest assured that Premiere is still in great fighting form. It’s a mature, full-blown video editor with plenty of refined, sophisticated features. For example, you can capture video from any DV camera or analog-video source (analog-capture card not included), organize media clips into bins, edit clips on the timeline with specialized tools (creating ripple edits, rolls, slips, slides, markers, match frames, and so on), mix audio tracks in real time, apply keyframe video-filter effects, and build and animate text titles. Plus you can save your edited masterpiece back to tape, QuickTime digital files forthe Net, CD-ROM, or DVD.

One of Premiere 6.5’s biggest perks is its sparkly new real-time preview engine, which shows your effects as you apply them without wasting time and disk space rendering them beforehand. This is something every editor will love, and Premiere’s implementation is surprisingly good — you can preview just about anything, including transitions, effects filters, motion effects, time effects, and titles. The preview feature works decently even on older G3s and G4s (for the record, Final Cut’s real-time preview does less and demands beefier hardware).

Premiere’s other big improvement is in the title-design department — no longer do you have to boot up Photoshop to add style to text. Instead, just open the new Adobe Title Designer window, and you can format text using 21 premade styles or create your own. You can control your text's kerning, leading, and tracking; skew text; place it on a curve; and either add outside artwork like logos to your titles or use standard drawing tools to create new art on the spot. You can also scroll text across the screen or roll it vertically, but it’s still difficult to create standard credits with custom tab and alignment settings.

Premiere shows some weakness when you want to do higher-end editing work. For instance, it can’t match Final Cut Pro’s color correction features and it can’t work with HD video. Also, if you're interested in editing film digitally, then doing the actual cutting and splicing on your film negative so you can project it on a movie screen (this is how most films are still made). Premiere can’t generate a cut list to follow (Apple’s Cinema Tools adds this feature to Final Cut Pro for a cool grand).

It’s taken Adobe almost 18 months to get this moderate update out the door, and the PC version already includes a couple of nice features we’d love to see on the Mac, such as a free DVD-authoring program. One curious insult: We had to install Windows Media Player to watch the training videos on the CD! But none of this takes away from Premiere’s editing prowess, it’s still a world-class contender forthe majority of editing projects you can throw at it (with a few specialized exceptions). And at $500, it won’t KO your budget.

Kobler, Heimut. (December 2002). Premiere 6.5. MacAddict. (pg. 46).

Download Adobe Premiere 6.5 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 9.2 up to Mac OS 10.4

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• PowerPC G3 processor
• 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended)
• 600 MB hard disk available
• Mac OS 9.2.2 (or Mac OS X 10.1.3)
• QuickTime 5.0.2
• A FireWire/IEEE 1394 port for capture and export of DV, or an Adobe Premiere certified capture card

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver