David Esp Video Technical Blog

I am becoming less enthusiastic about the “Integrated Suite” philosophy or perhaps actuality of Adobe CS6, in favour of a “Best of Breed” approach, where I cherry-pick the best tool for each kind of job and then design or discover my own workflow for integrating them.

I reached this conclusion from the following experiences:

• As regards editing itself:
  • For general A & B Roll” editing, I find Premiere is ok, though for improved usability, I’d prefer a Tag-based system (as in FCPX) to the traditional Bin-based one (as in Adobe & Avid).
  • For MultiCam editing, even in Adobe CS6, I find Premiere does the job but I find it clunky, frustrating and limited at times, like it has not yet been fully “baked” (though “getting there”)…
    • e.g. In the two such projects I have so far worked on, there has been an annoying 2-second delay from pressing the spacebar to actual playing.  Maybe some kind of buffering?
      • I found a setting for “Pre-roll” in the Preferences but altering it made no difference.
      • The following http://forums.adobe.com/thread/387405 suggested that the embedded audio (in video file) could be the issue, the solution to which was to relink to a WAV file.
        • Clunky, but at least this is particularly easy in Premiere, via its [Render/Replace] function http://help.adobe.com/en_US/PremierePro/4.0/WS1c9bc5c2e465a58a91cf0b1038518aef7-7f47a.html:
          • Select an audio clip in a sequence.
          • Choose Clip > Audio Options > Render And Replace.
          • A new audio clip is created and replaces the selected audio clip.
          • The master clip (either audio clip or video clip containing audio) in the Project panel is untouched.
    • e.g. It brings up a separate MultiCam Monitor instead of using the Source Monitor.  You have to remember to activate this each time before playing.  I find that a nuisance (and time-waster when I forget) especially because I tend to alternate multicam editing as such with tweaking the cut timings until they feel right, and sometimes that can only be done in retrospect.
      • I see someone with a possibly similar philosophy at http://forums.adobe.com/thread/738084?start=0&tstart=0
    • e.g. When you stop playing in multicam mode, it places a cut (that you probably didn’t want) wherever the playhead happens to be at the time.
      • I see I am not the only one complaining about this: “ExactImage, Sep 15, 2012″at  http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1069438
        • A workaround given at that link: Before to stop the playback press the key 0 (zero) of the keyboard and then you can stop the play (with the Space bar) without the cut in the timeline.” Duh!
    • e.g Markers are really useful in multicam, but while Premiere’s are steadily improving with product version, they are way clunkier and more limited than those in Sony Vegas:
      • e.g. I put a marker at the start of an interesting section (of timeline), I select it and define its duration to be non-zero, so I can stretch it out to mark a region, then I drag the playhead to the find the end of that interest, I try to drag the marker’s right-hand end up to the playhead, but instead the playhead gets reset to the start of marker.  Duh!
      • e.g. Markers cannot be promoted from clip (media or nested Sequence) to current Sequence.
      • e.g. waveform displays (assuming you can get them to appear in the first place) go blank when sliding clips around.  Really annoying when trying to synchronise to music etc.
  • …so I will explore other options for multicam:
    • In the past (as will be apparent from the above) I have had more joy, as regards Multicam, with Sony Vegas.
    • I will check out what people think of other NLEs as potential “Best of Breed” for multicam editing.  Thus far I have heard (from web-search) good things about FCPX and LightWorks.
• For audio enhancement, such as denoising, I find iZotope’s RX2 far superior to the one in Adobe Audition.
• For making a DVD:
  • I find Encore to be handy in some ways but limited and clunky in others.
    • e.g. can’t replace an asset with one of a different type (e.g. [.avi] and [.mpg]).
  • The advantage of using an integrated DVD-Maker such as Encore might be limited:
    • e.g. many people are not using the direct link, but exporting from Premiere/AME, in which case any third-party DVD Builder could be used.
    • The only significant advantage I am aware of is the ability to define Scene/Chapter points in Premiere and have them recognised/used by Encore.
      • But maybe some third-party DVD Builder applications can also recognise these?  Or can be configured/helped to do so?  Worth finding out.
  • ?