Adobe Premiere Pro Review 

Posted: Sept 2003

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Adobe spent two and a half years rewriting the already popular Adobe Premier program. The last version of Adobe Premiere was 6.5, so effectively Adobe Premiere Pro is version 7.0 of this widely used package. Some would argue that Premiere is not really a "professional" video editing package but targeted more at the Prosumer market. Adobe has been trying to dispel that notion and is targeting the product at the type of professional who would normally use Final Cut Pro.  

Some of the major changes are that Adobe Premiere Pro now supports:

• Multiple nested timelines
• YUV Processing
• Three point colour correction
• Sample-level audio editing
• ASIO hardware for multichannel output
• Surround sound mixing

There have also been several workflow enhancements to make it more intuitive and to reduce changing of tools and menus to achieve a desired result. Unlike previous versions of Premiere, Adobe Premiere Pro does not take the YUV colour of the DV feed and convert it into RGB for working on and then convert back to YUV for export back to tape. It actually works directly with YUV saving time, space and a bit of quality as well. A project can now support numerous nested edited sequences, and it's possible to immediately toggle from one to the other using tabs above the timeline. You can have several bins in a project and expand them or shrink them in a tree like structure that Windows users find intuitive.

Other Major Advantages: 

Very good audio mixer - better than Final Cut Pro's.

As you would expect Adobe Premiere Pro integrates well with other Adobe applications like After Effects, Photoshop, Encore etc.

Multi-publish your complete timeline to VCD, SVCD, web or "edit once, publish many time" as Adobe likes to call it. No third party applications like Cleaner (Final Cut), or multi-step conversion required. 

Enhanced Batch Capture: Unlinking captured material allows you to capture in DV format, do your edit, unlink the files and recapture in High Definition format.

Better support for SMP environments: Scalability has been improved. Adobe Premiere Pro makes better use of Symmetric Multi Processing i.e. dual processor, multi processor and hyperthreading facilities. The theory being that the more power you throw at it the more performance you are going to get out of Adobe Premiere Pro.

Major Disadvantages:

Adobe Premiere Pro is not available for the Apple platform.

Adobe Premiere Pro is not optimised for 64 bit processing, which is a shame because Premiere Pro hits the market just as 64 bit processing is becoming the buzz word in the hardware industry.

It appears that Adobe Premiere Pro favours Intel based systems over AMD based ones. While we don't have a problem with Intel we'd have liked to see it perform well across the board and optimised for both platforms, especially as dual AMD processor based computer systems are a lot more affordable than dual Xeons. In fact it doesn't run on some AMD systems at all!

Limited transitions compared with what the competition offers.

Despite the improved layout it feels cluttered and cramped on a single monitor.

Other Premiere Pro reviews

Avid Express DV

Final Cut Pro

Pinnacle Edition (and comparison of Premiere Pro vs Edition)

Pinnacle Liquid Edition