Adobe Premiere 6.5 Upgrade

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 PC 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 Windows XP and 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.

However, if for some reason you prefer to buy the obsolete version, you may benefit from my installation experience. To install the product, you need to enter a serial number during installation. The directions direct you to the back of the jewel case for the serial number. However, the jewel case does not have a serial number. The registration card has a number pre-entered for you in the serial number spot, but this ISN'T a valid serial number. Adobe charges for technical support and I refuse to pay for technical support for when my problem is a defective product. So I called customer service, who verified that I was a registered owner of a previous version and made me fax my receipt of purchase for the upgrade to them. They promised that Adobe Security would contact me in 2 days with a new serial number. Five days later (three business days and a weekend), I called Customer Service asking for a serial number. They responded that they had all my information, but since the Customer Service representative had entered something incorrectly in their computer, the case wasn't being processed. The representative apologized, fixed the mistake, and promised me a serial number within 48 hours. 47 hours and 59 minutes later, I'm back on hold with Customer Service trying to get a serial number. This time, the Customer Service representative told me that you need to enter the serial number from Premiere version from which you're upgrading. Logical, but why wasn't I told this in my last two calls? She apologized for the fact that I found installation "confusing." However, the installation instructions for the product specifically direct you to the CD jewel case. I'm not confused; the instructions for installation are clear and I followed them properly. She replied that the same instructions are supplied with the full and upgrade version. They just don't work for the Upgrade version.

For the money this upgrade costs, Adobe could afford to include proper instructions. Indeed, its interesting to me that they sell their technical support and then knowingly give you the WRONG instructions for installation. And if you're thinking you can just use your serial number from your old version, that doesn't work either! I needed to enter my old serial number with three numbers appended to the end of it. These three numbers didn't appear anywhere in my old version, only my Customer Service representative knew them. There really was no hope of being able to install this program without telephone assistance.

All this hassle and a version comes out in a few weeks that fixes the compatibility problems with Windows XP. If Microsoft had updated Windows and that forced me to upgrade my Adobe products, I might find that to be fair. However, Adobe Premiere 6.5 is sold as a Windows XP program. You're not allowed to mention prices in these reviews, but we all know that these "upgrades" are a three digit expense. I have to spend again in three weeks to get another program with the same features but better compatibility with my operating system?

I'm yet another Adobe customer who likes Adobe products, but not the experience of being an Adobe customer.


Crashes when trying to export   April 20, 2003
Bryce Conner (Syracuse, NY)
I've tried this software on multiple computers and had trouble with it crashing while exporting MPEGs and also during Advanced Windows Media Export. The level of quality of this software is quite poor. It could be an incompatibility with Windows XP (both Home and Professional), but since the box says it's XP compatible I'm not quite sure.

Adobe has been sued in the past (class action lawsuit) due to the lack of stability of Premiere 5.0, which I was upgrading from. I only upgraded because I didn't want to pay a lot more for original software of some other brand which I'd have to learn from scratch. Adobe seems to have learned nothing from its experience in court, and is again putting out software which doesn't meet decent standards. Software that doesn't work as advertised should not be put on the market.

Please do not buy this software, as it isn't ready for prime time, at least for XP users. Please show Adobe that putting out software that doesn't work is not a good way to make money.

I guess I'm stuck waiting for the next update from Adobe. Any word on when that will be? I would start another class action lawsuit, but after paying for the upgrade I can't afford a lawyer. Just kidding, but the upgrade is overpriced considering just about everything is the same as it was in 6.0, which I have experience with.

Titles already came with Adobe 5.1 so I'm not sure why everyone thinks that's a new feature. The only thing new is real time preview and MPG-2 support, which doesn't even work properly on 2 out of 2 of the machines I've tried it on (both generic Pentium 4s with plenty of memory).

The manual is for the wrong version and is completely useless for those trying to learn the new features, such as MPG export (see the dialog box help button for that). In the video export section, they mention a "Save to web" feature which no longer exists, and the nonexistent CD-ROM Optimized Plugin. At least in the online help index they indented the subtopics under a particular topic (in prior versions it was a big mess), which at least makes it easy to find out that they don't have a topic you're looking for.

To summarize, my recommendation is to stick with 6.0 or go with some other brand entirely, if you can afford it.


ADOBE DELIBERATELY HINDERED THIS SOFTWARE   February 9, 2003
reviewer (Zurich, Switzerland.)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

This upgrade version of "Adobe Premiere 6.5" has got clips and sound editing tools, which professionals may like, but the fact that Adobe chose to make it incompatible with RealPlayer, QuickTime, and TitleDeko has forced me to rate it low.
Also, do not assume that because it comes with a nice MPEG encoder, that you can easily use it as an all-in-one programme for editing and recording your DVDs. The reason for this being that its designers has ensured that it does not contain any DVD authoring accessory.
Although that its video-effects commands, as well as superimposing menu are really impressive, its overall cons simply outweighed its pros.
Know that this software would have been wonderful, had Adobe not deliberately limited both its capabilities and compatibilities.


Setting the Record Straight   December 12, 2002
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

mitchler2 says Premiere 6.5 does not support Quicktime or Realvideo...neither of which is true! They are definately included in my legally purchased copy, but excluded from the illegal versions I've seen on the web.

I think it's pretty good, actually, and the MPEG2 support alone is worth the price of the upgrade, in my opinion.

The new titling feature is fantastic, although I wonder why they invented a new type of style instead of using compatable Photoshop styles.

I DO agree with mitchler2 and other reviews concerning real-time preview: it's not truly real-time previews, like you can get with Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video.

Overall, Premiere never has been a high-end tool, although some broadcasters do use it. It's best feature in my opinion is it's interface and it's integration with other Adobe products.