Adobe Premiere 6.5

Premiere 6.5's editing screen consists of a number of free-floating windows that contain such tools as a video preview and the all-important timeline and storyboard. The basic operation of Premiere is to load in a series of video clips taken from a camera or a CD, or previously stored on your hard drive, and then drag and drop icons for them onto the timeline. You can then add a soundtrack, transitions, effects, and titles. When all is complete, export the finished video in a format suitable for use on a DVD, Video CD, or for the Internet.

Premiere 6.5 introduces several new features, the most useful of which is probably real-time preview. The ability to see the edits you've made to your video before you render the final version is a huge timesaver. While this feature has previously been available using special hardware, this is the first time it's been available from within the software. You need a fairly powerful Macintosh to take full advantage of the real-time preview. You'll also need a computer with two hard drives, one to hold Premiere and the other for your video files.

Being able to add well-designed titles can make the difference between an amateur and a professional production. Adobe's new Title Designer, included in Premiere 6.5, provides many of the tools users of Illustrator and Photoshop will recognize to add text, rules, and shapes as overlays to videos. Adobe has bundled 90 fonts with Premiere 6.5, selected to produce clear and attractive titles.

Adobe produces a series of effects plug-ins that can be used with Premiere (sold separately as After Effects). Five of these effects (channel blur, blend, lightning, ramp, and twirl) are now included standard with Premiere 6.5, adding to the appeal of this very attractive package. --Simon Williams, Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com Product Description
An essential tool for professional digital video editing, Adobe Premiere 6.5 delivers unmatched hardware support. Work more productively with real-time preview, and take advantage of sophisticated, new 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 a comprehensive desktop video-editing solution.

Premiere 6.5 offers powerful and precise editing tools to create broadcast-quality video productions. Use real-time preview to instantly view effects, transitions, titles, motion, and transparency. Drag and drop clips in the storyboard to quickly lay out projects and rearrange as necessary. Use new Adobe Title Designer to create broadcast-quality title sequences. View all project settings in one convenient location with the settings viewer. Work with hundreds of predefined text and object styles, or create your own custom styles.

Premiere 6.5 supports a wide range of DV devices, including Sony DVCAM gear and the latest camcorders and decks. Use DV device controls for pre-editing tasks before bringing clips into Adobe Premiere. Enjoy native support for Mac OS X, and easily move projects between the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Finally, output your video productions to DVD and other leading video formats.