Premiere 6 still viable?

[sandwedg]

I purchased Premiere 6 off of ebay over 4-5 years ago and never really used it. As hard drives have become large and cheap and DVD burners are the norm, I started back on the home video editing kick. I first began when I realized the "free" nero software had a basic video editor and ability to burn to DVD. My family loves the movies produced, but they are buggy (sometimes freeze in the dvd player) and the quality isn't all that great. I now have XP and tried Movie Maker, but that didn't seem very powerful, and I have to buy an add-on software to burn to DVD. I looked at some downloadable demo's (cyberlink power director 7) but that constantly crashed. Adobe removed their demo of essentials 4. I can't find a trial to the Pinnacle 11 software... anyway you it doesn't seem that there is a great option out there.

So my question - is my Premiere 6 still worth using? Can it use the newest codecs and formats? mpeg2, avi... (I don't even know what it uses)

Any advice, insight, or recommendations would be appreciated!

 

[Akribie]

Premiere Elements is a good, simple all-in one capture/edit/DVD program. Bundled with PhotoShop elements it makes a really good way to make movies. They lack some of the bells and whistles of the full versions, but more than the basics are there for a fraction of the full price.

Premiere 6 still works, but is very limited in its coverage of modern formats. P6.5 is the oldest one I would be comfortable using nowadays, but I think you'll probably enjoy Elements much more.

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

I used Premiere 5.1c until recently, as well as Premiere 6.5. Both produced AVI files right handily. If I wanted WMV files, I'd use MovieMaker to convert AVI to WMV.

I'd also use Encore to convert AVI files to DVD files using Encore's transcoding capability. I still prefer doing that, although for one feature, I realy had to transcode it separately, so I did so using a plug-in for Premiere.

But now that I have CS3, there's a lot I just don't worry about.

The fact is, if you already HAVE it, you'll probably be able to do 95% or more of whatever you might want to do.

Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door