These days, DV cameras are all the rage in Tinsel Town — just ask George Lucas, Spike Lee, and Francis Ford Coppola. It seems that just about anyone with a DV camera, a good story, a keen eye, and a knack for ordering people around can chum out the next Star Wars: Episode II, Blair Witch Project, or Fat Boy Slim video. Of course, the most daunting task is deciding what footage makes the cut and what ends up on your hard drive’s “floor.” An intuitive video-editing program like Premiere can make all the difference, easing an otherwise painstaking process.
Though the move comes a bit late, Adobe has finally wised up and cracked the whip, bringing its stalwart video editor up to date and on par with the competition. Although users of previous versions will find the look and feel cozily familiar. Premiere 6.0 is a much more versatile, better organized animal, adding DV support and some snazzy new features and enhancements — such as storyboard ing, clip logging, and audio mixing capabilities — that cater to serious filmmakers.
There’s no hardware to bother with, so installation was pretty painless, though we did hit a snag when we weren’t paying attention to the additional DV requirements. This meant losing a quick gigabyte of data to complete the task at hand (video can eat up hard drive megs faster than a Survivor contestant can eat cow brains). After rifling through the drive and trashing an embarrassing number of stupid pet pics, we were good to go.
While Premiere 6.0's interface hasn’t changed much, the enhancements sprinkled throughout have really beefed up the program. For instance, the Timeline now offers two workspace options: you can stick with the easy-to-use A/B Editing (two-track) workspace or use the more precise and efficient Single-Track Editing workspace (best for those who already have a clue about nonlinear editing).
The updated Capture window lets you store, access, and edit dip and device information with the new Logging and Settings controls. The Capture Settings window features a number of adjustable presets that let you capture clips at the same resolution ratio as your video source instead of guessing (the latter can cause funny things to happen).
Capturing video is a snap — just plug a DV camera into your Mac’s FireWire port and open the Movie Capture window. With device control (the ability to control your camera through Premier), you can quickly cue up footage on our camcorder directly from the Capture window’s playback controls. A couple of times we encountered error messages that prohibited us from capturing, though the problem went away after we simply closed and then reopened the Capture window. We’ve experienced frequent frame-dropping problems with older versions of Premiere, but Premiere 6.0 doesn’t have this issue — hallelujah!
After capturing clips, you name and save them into the muchrim proved Project window — no more having to import captured clips manually. The Project window stores all of the individual segments that comprise your movie, but now it lets you organize them. Clips are stored in Project Bins — these allow you to separate video segments from audio or divide footage according to scenes. You can also preview clips as thumbnails and rearrange their order.
Building a movie is simple: just drag and drop clips from either the Projector Monitor window straight onto the Timeline. Video handling in the Timeline window is a lot less frustrating than in previous versions — some of the editing tools provide much clearer visual feedback, making it easier to keep track of edits. Before, a misplaced edit could cause video and audio to shift if you weren't paying close attention. The quick-access buttons located at the bottom of the window — like the Toggle Sync mode, which keeps audio synced to Its respective track — prevent that from happening.
In spite of the efficiency enhancements, the amount of time it took to render preview sequences on the Timeline is disappointing. For example, it took well oveno minutes to render an old-time, scratchy, sepia video effect on a 14-second clip, and 15 minutes to color-emboss a 13-second clip — and we were testing the program on a 64. Thankfully, less intensive effects such as transitions rendered more quickly.
Playback in the Monitor window is stable, making scrubbing (the process of moving back or forth within an audio or video file) footage an easy task. Video ran smoothly, without the previous version’s occasional hiccups. The Monitor window offers three viewing modes: Dual View, Single View, and Trim. Though we had no use for Single View, the Trim mode was especially handy for fine-tuning edits — such as adding transition frames to a clip.
The new Storyboard feature earns some brownie points (although we wish Adobe had introduced it a lot sooner). It lets you visually arrange your clips in sequence before committing them to the Timeline. You can eyeball thumbnails of your clips, making arrangements quick and painless — no more scrutinizing a mystery bar or clip name in the Project window. You can also edit in and out points from here.
The Automate To Timeline button quickly assembles the Storyboard onto the Timeline in one fell swoop, adding simple clip transitions that you can edit later. For beginners or those who hate to fuss, this is a beautiful thing. However, we had an alarming experience with this feature — after clicking the Automate button, audio clips didn’t make it to the Timeline with their video counterparts. On the second attempt, we noticed a default checkmark next to Ignore Audio In the Automate To Timeline dialog box — grrrr...
Premiere 6.0 certainly doesn’t skimp on the amount of eye candy you can layer onto clips. It now groups transitions into categories for easier execution, and it has enough video and audio effects to fix or enhance anything. If you’re really looking to add dazzle, the Motion Settings window provides intuitive, though somewhat clunky, controls for animating your clips creatively.
Though the sticky faders can be a bit frustrating to use, the new Audio Mixer is definitely a plus, providing a more standard way of mixing dialogue, sound effects, and music. Its best feature is the audio automation, which allows you to record real-time panning movements and volume swells for a smooth mix.
Once you’ve got your edits in the can, you can export the entire project in a number of ways — by saving it as a desktop movie, compressing it for CD-ROM or Web delivery, or using one of the presets to create a streaming video, to name a few. Overall, Premiere 6.0 is a great package that adapts well to all skill levels, allowing any user to pick it up and grow with it.
Fong, Kris. (May 2001). Premiere 6.0. MacAddict. (pgs. 48-49).
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
189 / 
2020-09-13 / 
cd718caf1f85b4fa91f9afe9a2c450b501ca795b / 
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ap6.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
