imovie 11 vs adobe premier elements 9

Which do you believe is the more professional video editor?
imovie 11 or adobe premier elements 9


Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premier or Corel Video Studio Pro 4

I have been able to do quite a lot with imovie 11 (a lot better than movie maker) but, I need to take it step further which would you recommend?

 

Adobe Premier 5.5, or AVID

for now if you are going pro editing I would say Premier or see if you can get an upgrade or educational licence to AVID. if you have a bootcamp partition download the FREE lightworks beta, its a very powerful editor and is actually in full use in feature films now, and has impressed many an editor the last couple years.

http://www.avid.com/US
http://www.lightworksbeta.com/

I have never worked with Premier elements so cant offer much of an opinon there but iMovie is .... cute and not much of a learning curve but very limited comapared to the bigger NLE Editors.


for now my personal list of editors would be:

1: AVID, its been the industry standard for years and every major editing house uses it that I know. even in FCP's heyday it still ruled over 50% and is by far the king of having multiple editors on a single project. it however IS the hardest to learn as its customizations and feature sets and addins are almost infinite.

2: Adobe Premier - it was given full 64 bit support over a year ago and is absolutly fantastic with opening up FCP-7 projects as well as supporting full FCP keymapping, and supports external color editing, and every possible codec and file format in existance. 5.0 was VERY nice, but 5.5 is superb

TIE for 3 & 4 FCP-7 mostly because I know it, but it does certantly show its age with lack of many modern codecs, formats and abilities. it was a good run but is now falling by the wayside. Lightworks because it supports all the new formats and is very easy for AVID DV users to use, plus its free, the only downside is the interface takes a bit of work to get used to for a novice.

5: iMovie Pro ... ahem FCP-X. after gutting almost all the professional features and destroying backwards compatability I tend to call it a dead horse until it is seriously rewrote or upgraded.

6: Sony Vegas, never actually used it but it does some very nice work and has a good feature set and great format and codec support.

6: iMovie and other basic NLE's

 

Thanks for the detailed response, I believed Final Cut was the only way if you really want to go PRO editing.

 

While you're right, I'm not sure it disqualifies FCP X in this particular case. Something tells me that the OP currently doesn't have, say, a tape based workflow and that he needs neither EDL, OMF nor AAF support. Or any other "pro" feature for that matter.

It's perfectly fine if he wants something that is a huge step up from iMovie '11 and the other low-end NLEs he mentions.

 

you are right but if the OP wants to learn someof the more pro aspects for possibly working in the video industry past HD youtube videos I would still send them to one of the other NLE's for the experience and challenge. I will agree FCPX does somewhat fill the niche of intermediate NLE with Premier, Vegas and Lightworks. but the lack of support for so many video formats or codecs without reencoding is IMO a major drawback for anyone, amateur or pro. as is how horrid it is to take a projectfrom one computer to another. and in my year I have never seen anyone who will never move projects to a friends machine or eve to a new computer, this is the first issue that needs resolved.

 

He hasn't provided any information about what he'll use this for and how much he's willing to spend, but given the mention of Corel Video Studio Pro 4 I think it's fair to say that a proper Avid editing suite is probably a little out of his current budget. It's a pity that Avid discontinued their free DV editor, because that would've been a nice fit.

Which video formats or codecs aren't supported in FCPX? It handles most DSLR workflows, right? (Since you're talking about issues that affect anyone I guess you aren't thinking of high-end stuff like RED).

 

many Sony and Panasonic and a couple Nikon DSLR's need a full re-encode. RED and many mid and high end cineotography cameras are NOT supported at all.

but yes mor inforation is certanty needed from the OP

 

Clarifications Please**

I believe I am being referred to as the OP -What is OP?
What does NLE mean?

I am using Olympus SP610 uz Camera which gives some real clean shots in 720 p HD. I am impressed and encouraged with the video quality and colors even though it may not be the best camera it it class on the market. I just needed something more than imovie that will allow me to edit with some cool effects and colors like those we see in the movies . I want something preferably for the MAC OS

 

NLE is non-linear editing. OP is just useful slang when quickly referring to the Original Poster of a thread.

Sorry, you probably won't be able to get better picture quality out of your camera with a new editor. Your camera appears to have far, far too many technical limitations.

I'd start by saving up for a camera with a larger and better sensor and better glass than what you have now. You should also buy a tripod with a solid head if you don't already have one.

Although it's trending towards the more expensive part of the photography market, I'd recommend you visit www.dpreview.com and their forums. That site is a treasure trove of information about digital photography (and by extension also video).

 

Thanks for your reply, I have purchased a Tripod which also includes a monopod, a professional stand that I use for green screen. Yes I know the camera is limited technically, I purchased it for still photography (which it does a marvelous job at), but I was more than impressed at the quality of the 720p HD video especially if shot in the correct lighting conditions. The pinhole and Pop art gives your pics a theatrical effect even without any editing. I will show you a music video that I made using the Olympus SP610 uz and edit in imovie and some still images from the same camera pretty soon.

What I really wanted are cool effects and colors editing tool- something better than i-movie. I was going to buy Final Cut Pro X and motion until I stumbled upon a test video2 using Adobe Premier Elements 9, hence my OP

Test Video2 Adobe Premiere Elements 9 - YouTube

 

Lightworks

Why not try lightworks? Its free and its a professional grade movie editor (real movies like Shutter Island, Pulp Fiction, etc). If you don't like it you can delete it.

Edit: Nevermind everybody already pointed out lightworks.

However Lightworks for mac is in development. So you don't need to dual boot. I think its expected for late 2011.

 

lightworks for mac is VERY rough for now