Does anyone have opinions of pro and con of using Ulead versus premiere for NLE ??

-- Louis Kudon (lkudon@yahoo.com), October 30, 1998

Answers

I have limited experience with both but Premiere is a lot faster at moving peices of clips around. but Uleads product seems much more stable. I can use premiere for hrs sometimes with no trouble then other days it will crash on every other mouse click.

-- steve Shortridge (Steve@DigiScape.com), October 30, 1998.

Ive been using Premier for years, and know it well. So, to retrain myslef on another software package would be a waste of time. If you have a good card, costing at least $2k, and you have good plug-ins for Premier, you wont need anything else. The sole xception to this is if you must BUY a capture card and find out that Premier won't work well with it, in which case you might be stuck using the bundled program that comes with the card.

-- rock (rock@rock.rock), November 01, 1998.

NLE Q's

Concerning your response to the Q of premiere/ulead....... You mention that as long as you have a card at least $2k....

Are you using a PC based NLE? I have found that to be true for the PC, but not true with Mac, oddly enough. I am reading up on all systems before purchasing the Firemax for the Mac. If I were to get set up with an NT system the cost appears to be higher. It's all dependent upon whether you want real time effects, dual stream video, etc. I believe it's a good idea to get in low $$ for now since we are (perpetually) at such a rapid rate of change in the development of this technology.

-- Richard A. Jacobs, Jr. (zemerich@concentric. net), November 02, 1998.

If you're using a DV Master (currently the only serious choice for pure DV editing), Ulead Media Studio is a far superior package. The DV Master drivers aren't very compatible with Premiere so you can't preview without dropped frames and the audio and video going out of sync. In Ulead, you can output your project straight out of the software, with no dropped frames, virtually real time straight cuts, and lip sync with the combined strength of the Dv Master Power Play drivers. There really is no argument.

-- John Stein (Loudjazz@hotmail.com), November 01, 1998.

Well, there *is* an argument. (Not a flame, just a friendly disagreement!) I use Premiere 4.2.1 on a Mac 8600/200 with a combined FireWire/SCSI interface card, the Adaptec 8945. With Adaptec's new drivers, I get all of the performance you claim for the DV Master. I'm sure yours is great; it's just not the only good performer with DV.

-- Tim Merritt (tmerritt@gsu.edu), November 03, 1998.

I run an editing lab with 15 mac's running Premiere 5.1 and the firemax card. On the Mac platform and for the price, it really works! The support is great and so on. Believe me, I have to support over 40 users and without it . . . we'd be screwed!

Dv's Dark-Jedi Jeskid

-- Jeskid (jcowell@scf.usc.edu), November 11, 1998.

My point is that Premiere doesn't work well with the DV Master board. But even though Ulead Media Studio works far better with this board, it will struggle in a pro situation. And as a matter of act, I use neither at this time. I switched to In Sync Speed Razor. When the 4.5 version of Razor comes out soon, I'll have real time transitions, titles and layer previews, as well as the real time cuts I currently have. The editing functionality and multi-threaded power of this NT based system wipes out the other consumer based DV systems.

-- John Stein (loudjazz@hotmail.com), November 26, 1998.

Im new to non-linear editing having just built my first full non- linear system from scratch. Thats scratch as in bare mother board, case, CPU, RAM Drives, etc. Here's my 2 cents worth.

Premier is a good program - so is Uleads Media Studio Pro.

I have Ulead MS Pro  full version. It came bundled with my DV Raptor card. What? You haven't heard of this card? DV in/out via Firewire into PC. Has separate Y-C output to monitor. Uses camera CODEC to "make" picture to send simultaneously to the monitor and to the computer. Batch capture, etc. very nice. And only $599.00. Actually I paid a wee bit less as a "distributor". It was either that of wait. You'll begin to see DVRaptor card reviews soon.

Look at the edit solution altogether.

How much money do you have? I had about $5,000. The computer cost me approximately $3,800 plus the parts I already had. The $3,800 included the DVRaptor card. Uleads software does pretty much the same as Premiers. The plugins from Premier are usable in Uleads MS Pro, also. One situation I noticed at the time I purchased the DVRaptor card was that Premier rendered everything to a separate file, requiring additional storage space, as well as time.

The Ulead MS Pro renders only transitions and effects outputting from the timeline using a program called "SmartPlay". Canopus supplies the required additional software to use the DVRaptor card with MSPress. NO additional storage for massive rendered files is required. This means you save money on storage. I've currently got 30 GB online for about 150 minutes. I dont know if this has changed with Premier, but it IS a big point to consider. Check it out.

If you have a computer yet and are thinking of saving money by building one, e-mail me at the above e-mail address and Ill send you the specs for my system.

You can get a demo copy of PREMIER from Adobe at:

http://www.adobe.com

Uleads MS Pro demo is also available at URL:

www.ulead.com

Both are free with disables saves, etc. Try before you buy, but dont be swayed by price. There are both competitive dollar wise. Evaluate all considerations , specs, costs, speed, etc, and of course YOUR specific requirements before making a decision.

I personally wanted a DV Rex card, and Speed RAZOR, but I spent a little too much on the computer. The FAST DV card is a good choice as is Speed RAZOR for software. Both are higher end products. The DVREX gives the FAST DV card a run for the money. Pretty much the same cost, but the REX uses BOTH the built-in AND software CODECs to render, AT THE SAME TIME! Check out the DVREX specs at URL:

http://www.canopuscorp.com

Good luck!

Teddy J.

-- ted jameson (webmaster@technibooks.com), December 16, 1998.

I've used them both quite a bit, at least the 4.2 version of premiere and though I really like premiere as it was the first NLE I've used, I eventually switched to mspro 5. The main reason was the Premiere crashed CONSTANTLY for me. There were times when premiere would crash 10-12 times in an hour. The new version may be improved so I couldn't comment on it. MSPRO will crash occasionally also, but it's very rare. Plus you have to like the Video Paint app. A very nice rotoscoper. nice noise reduction filter in the Audio editor module too is cool.

-- C. Armstead Young (kilamofo@ix.netcom.com), January 13, 1999.

I got a MotoDV studio 2.0 which is with Premiere5.1. My PC is P200 with 128Ram, UltraDMA HD and windows4.0sp4. Sometimes, the Premiere will crash and it always happens. My system meets the min. requirements for both MotoDV and Premiere.

I don't have Ulead, but I guess the crash may not so often if I use Ulead. We have a Premiere4.2 in the school's library, it is very reliable with Plum card and using win95. I like it, so I buy a Premiere5.1 with Award winning Radius card. But I am upset. I don't have the same system as in our library which is P300 with SCSI and 256MB ram. My conclusion is: If you have much better PC system, then you could try Premiere. Otherwise, you may has trouble.

-- Chia Huang (cphuang@umr.edu), April 25, 1999.

As for Premiere and Ulead, I much prefer Premiere. I have very few problems with the software and it is much faster to work in than Ulead it seems to me. I'm using 4.2 and getting along fine. As for crashes I've actually had more problems with rendering in Ulead's 5. I'm using a Canopus DVRex board on NT and the board is totally stable!! I do many long programs on it (over 30 minutes) and it's fast and stable. One word of caution, the DVRex board doesn't like Quicktime 3. Once I dumped version 3 I haven't had a crash in 4 months that amounted to anything at all!!

Brad

-- Brad Parsons (videomag@dtgnet.com), May 09, 1999.

They are both great programs, Ulead with its bundle of effects programs, and premiere 5.1a with its awesome interface (the monitor window rules) and ease of use. I prefer to use premiere and make great use of virtual clips etc, but use video paint and CG infinity extensively and just import the finished avi's into premiere for inclusion into my project. I use a DV raptor - an awsome piece of gear - on an NT platform and it is very stable even for long format stuff, and its works very well with even slow IDE drives....it seems canopus have the best codec if you ask me. Batch capture is a breeze - the raptor just works and works well.

-- Barry Hannah (sonwah@kiwilink.co.nz), October 18, 1999.

I have not used Media Studio and cannot comment on it. I do know that even though I have a dual 350mhz machine, Premiere still crashes all the time. Premier is simply an unstable program. If it worked, it would be one of the best buys I've ever seen. But alas, it does not work. It simply crashes too much. There are other options out there, but they are more expensive. Speed Razor is a great program. I think EditDV will be a good program to use as well.

-- Thomas Koch (TomK@3cm.net), October 20, 1999.

I really cant see how anyone can favour premier over Ulead Pro 5. ULEADS interface is so user friendly as opposed to premiere`s. Premier have also seen fit to get rid of the timeline interface in thier new addition,bad move. But most importantly have you read this message board recently. It appears that almost all who claimed to use premier suffered from serious crashs time and time again and they appear to have become a custom to this occurance. Not I. Ulead appears to have the ability to undo this occurance on a scale of 99 times if needed. Not to mention the ability to preview the instance no matter what colour form is displayed ( blue). Yes premiere may be faster but not by a great deal and if you we up the number of crashes sustained from useing Premier than I wonder if Premier is really as fast as one once thought.Take Ulead away than I would probablt quit movie making game all together. Ulead is ahead of its time when you consider premier as the only rival. Dont put up with the constant crashs get it sorted. How can the makers of premier sleep at night. They don`t. They have to find time to provide the support. If I told you what card I WAS USING YOU WOULDN`T BELIEVE ME. The only draw back being it doest support an NT4 DRIVER.dESPITE THIS IT WORKS BRILL. bye good luck. Shane alias Squeak.

-- Shane Common (shane@scomm.freeserve.co.uk), November 04, 1999.

I have tried the Ulead software that comes with Siig's FirewireCard (it's a TI board). It obviuously was an entry level version of Ulead because it only offered minimum functionality.

I have been using Premiere for several years. I started with version 4.2 and am now running 5.1c. At first my system crashed constantly, and I stayed on the phone with Tech support relentlessly to determine the problem. The problem, Premiere does not like to mix resolutions when rendereing. Your entire project needs to have audio and video settings that are identical. If you try to render a transiton between a clip with audio captured in mono with one captured in stereo...Premiere will crash, same thing true if there are other mis- matched clips. I carefully plan my projects and capture at the sames settings for all of the clips. This resolved all problems. I have produced many videos from 5 - 30 minuted over the last 6 months with virtually no crashes.

I hope this helps all of you working with or consideriing Premiere. By the way someone said that Premiere had dropped the time line. That is not an accurate atatement. That is the only way I use Premiere.

Regards George

-- George Coleman (ghcoleman@home.com), December 25, 1999.

I`m looking for plug-ins and special filters for Premiere4.2 Thank YOU!!!

-- Przemcio Jarkowitz (mercyk@ganja.com), December 17, 2000.

I agree with the above guy. If you do not mix and match resoulutions you will have less problems with premiere. I can tell you one thing I have used 5.1 and now 6 and have never crashed it once. What os are you running I run NT and 2000 with no porblems. If you use win98 expect crashes. They should have called 98 CRASH!!

Just My 2 cents

-- Mike (Me@me.net), April 13, 2001.

I would like to use Premier 5.1c and a MS driven card that I purchased with Ulead Video Studio. Does anyone know of a plug-in for Premier 5.1 that will work with the Dazzle DV-Editor SE board for driving a digital camera (standard microsoft plug-in works with Ulead)?

-- Bill DeMarco (wldemarco@aol.com), June 29, 2001.

Premiere's a good editor.

But Ulead's MediaStudio is more than just an editor.

It's a suite of programs:

a. Video Editor b. Video Capture c. Video Paint (rotoscoping) d. CG Infinity (vector-based drawing and titling) e. Audio Editor

I like the generic IEEE 1394 support.

Jerry Jones http://www.jonesgroup.net

-- Jerry Jones (jerry@jonesgroup.net), November 29, 2001.

I have been making short films for some time and have followed ulead MSPro since version 5.0, I used to capture video via an ATI All in wonder and output MPEGs before moving to DV.

I am now using MSPro 6.5 with a DV Camcorder and a Hollywood Dazzle DV Bridge handling transfers from a 3CCD JVC TV Camera.

The features in 6.5 are amazing, with the addition of Instant Play, DVD authoring and excellent DV I/O options the software has really grown up. The upgrade path is also very affordable (You can upgrade to MSPRo 6.5 from VideoStudio 4.0 (which ships with many 1394 cards) for about £150).

I recently decided to try the demo of Premiere 6.0 in case there was something I was missing. Alas there wasn't. Perhaps the full version of Adobe's suit might work properly, but for me the captured DV was completely black with distorted sound and the thing crashed endlessly. Sorry. I just couldn't be bothered going any further with it.

-- Steve Baxter (osaeris@hotmail.com), February 05, 2002.

I have Premiere 5.5 and I find it very unstable also it doesn't encode Mpeg2, maybe 6.0 does I don't know. Ulead is very stable and does encode mpeg with great results. However there are a lot more plug-ins for Premiere but I like Ulead because it is also more cheerful than the dull Premiere and it has text, sound and video paint parts to it. Also I found that Ulead supports Mp3 and Premiere didn't so I all in all I like Ulead Media Studio Pro better however if there's something that can only be done in Premeire I 'll use it. (I found the Chroma key was better.) Thanks for listening Mike

-- michael millison (m.millis@btinternet.com), April 01, 2002.

I am working with Ulead Media studio pro 6.0 for a year now,without any crasch.All testing with Premier give me crasch on the computer all the time. Only problem with ulead is I do not transfer from timeline to recoder.It just start the camcorder in "waith" possision,not in "record". This camcorder is a JVC DVL9600. On my Canon XM1 it start recording but not transfer video??? But exsport the video AVI file to this recorders work fine.The files could be 4Giga(20 minutes).

-- Per O Christiansen (perchri@online.no), October 07, 2002.

I am a semi-professional editor and use both programs. I have found that for simple edits, Ulead works well. I also like the three dimensional support for titles and video. However, Premiere offers a much more advanced suite of capabilities, such as easier motion tracking and layering. Also, you can not consider the "DVD function" of MSP to be of any worth unless you want to make simple, generic looking DVDs without any creative insight or function. Stick with a more advanced package for DVDs. You may also wish to look into Pinnacle's Edition 5. It looks pretty sweet as far as blending Premiere and MSP in one product. Happy editing to all...

-- Mike (offermh@hotmail.com), June 12, 2003.

Both are very good in the PRO version. But I like adobe to edit and ULEad to Export.

-- Mike (CallMe@Jml3.com), December 31, 2003.