I would suggest either Adobe Premiere Elements or Cyberlink Power Director.
Premiere Elements is much simpler than Premiere Pro. I have both and really
prefer Power Director.
Paul in Portland OR
----- Original Message -----
From: "khen lim" <khen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Olympus Camera Discussion" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:46 AM
Subject: [OM] I have antz in my pantz with this A/V hell...
Greetings wizards, gurus, senseis and sons of Merlin
Serious set of back-to-school questions for those whose brains are A/V
wired...
I've got huge problems with trying to create a multimedia show with DVD
output and quality. Let me give you a shortened chronology of events leading
up to now with what we're tried to do:
1. Powerpoint just won't do. We don't have to go down this lane.
2. Everyone in this part of the jungle seems to think that Adobe is the next
best thing to sliced bread (don't even start the argument...!) and so we've
been asked to use Premiere Pro. Of course that meant checking out the CS4
version.
3. We 'looked' at the CS4 Premiere Pro and nearly vomited 5 years worth of
food. It was horribly technical. It's obvious these guys have no idea how to
simplify the user interface and win friends. We promptly dumped it.
4. Next came a look at Premiere Pro 2.0. I don't know why it's not called
Premiere Pro CS2 but I'm not going to argue. So we tracked this one down and
decided to trial it, which is where we're now at.
5. I'm not in agreement to use Adobe but I'm outvoted. I'd rather look at
something simpler like Roxio or Corel or whatever. So long as I can create a
slide show, keep my images looking nice and sharp, do simple cross-dissolve,
add music tracks and then convert the whole project file to a format that I
can burn to a DVD and then view using a home DVD player on to a large TV,
I'm cooking with gas. But we're not on this road for now. It's Adobe and I
hate it...
6. Someone asked us if we've tried Lightroom because it has a slideshow
feature. So we took a peek here and found it fairly straightforward to
develop the slide show but when it came to rendering or exporting, we're
lost, which is typical of Adobe's lack of expertise in developing proper,
usable and friendly U.I.
So we're now back with Premiere Pro 2.0 and here are my problems/questions:
1. I have ZERO clue about what the technical settings have to be to get the
project file to DVD. I see things like Audio Codec, Video Codec, etc etc
etc. and all I basically want is to cut to the chase and get the thing burnt
on to DVD and made playable on a standard Best Buy DVD player and viewed on
the usual LCD TV.
2. We're struggling with the way our images look in Premiere Pro 2.0. If we
look at our JPGs in Photoshop or IrfanView, they're tack sharp but when we
bring them into PP2, we get so crestfallen it isn't funny. But why?
3. The same thing when we scale the imported images in PP2. When we downsize
the image to fit, it gets all unsharp. But why?
3A. So we tried tracking down some forum Q&A and someone suggested that it's
better to use Photoshop to downsize and get the image to the size we want to
use in PP2 and then save it as a PSD file at 72dpi. Guys I have no idea why
we should save it in that format or even at 72dpi and we don't have a clue
how you do that in PS (we're using CS3). The reasoning behind this
apparently is that when you save the image in that format and resolution,
you don't muck about with JPEG when the image is imported into PP2 and
because of that, the original image sharpness is retained. I don't know if
all this is really true or not as I have no clue in trying this. I take it
that with PP2, one can import a PSD file in and use...?
Last note: I'm at a dead-end with Premiere Pro 2.0 right now. I have this
slideshow to hand to the customer this Saturday and I don't have enough time
to do a new learning curve with a new alternative product but after this
weekend, we will take a serious look again at what else there is in the
market we should use in deference to PP2.
Our 'Zone-10 western hemisphere office' suggests we ought to use Pinnacle
but doesn't that require us to also use the Pinnacle plug-in board???
Hope Dr A/V or any of our resident senseis, wizards, gurus, Obiwans and
Yodas can help flush me out of my problems...
Many thanks in advance
K.
--
Khen Lim - Zone-10 LLC, Des Moines, Iowa, USA
"To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of people” - Emily
Cox
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them" - Walt
Disney
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