Programs

[Jonas Risvig]

What program do you use to make your videos?
"Post-Production"

[Dreams Creation Video Production]

I finally broke down and bought a MacBook Pro 15in laptop. 250 gig hard drive and 4 gigs of memory.
I am now using Final Cut Pro 7 suite
DVD studio Pro
Final cut pro 7
Motion
Color
Logic Pro
Sound Track Pro
Motion Pictures

[grinner]

Avid MC, After Effects and Photoshop in every session. Sometimes I apply 3D work and sometimes I venture into stop-motion.

[Jay Michael]

What do you consider the most important secondary program or plug in for your editor? After effects? Something else? Since I use Video Pro X from Magix I use Vitascene a lot. VPX has a 3D titler but I'm wanting to get Bluff Titler for more versatility.
I'm curious, what plug in or other program do you guys/gals feel you cannot live without?
J.

[grinner]

It depends on your NLE and your needs. For Avid editors, After Effects is required becasue Avid's DVE on every model below DS blows so much. Most have Genarts Sapphire effects as well. FCP users lean toward Motion because it works so seamless with FCP. Premiere users use After Effects and dig how compatable it is with premiere. 3D apps vary vastly, depending on workflows and needs. Today, most uses can be done in AE with a plugin as most of the time we just need to extruse and bevel a logo then light it. That is generalizing, of course.

[Bill Mecca]

Grinner,

Not to hijack the discussion, but I recently upgraded to MC 3.5 from XDV at work, still using AE 5.5 (no $$ in the state budget) MC did come with the Avid FX Engine, have you worked with that? I cannot seem to find any reference to it anywhere. I haven't really had time to dig in and figure it out, seems to be laid out a lot like AE, yet different. ;-)

grinner said:

It depends on your NLE and your needs. For Avid editors, After Effects is required becasue Avid's DVE on every model below DS blows so much. Most have Genarts Sapphire effects as well. FCP users lean toward Motion because it works so seamless with FCP. Premiere users use After Effects and dig how compatable it is with premiere. 3D apps vary vastly, depending on workflows and needs. Today, most uses can be done in AE with a plugin as most of the time we just need to extruse and bevel a logo then light it. That is generalizing, of course.

[Pierre Samuel Rioux]

I used Vegas Pro 8 , vegas pro 9, I start with premiere and switch to Vegas 6 and stay with them.
With the vegas pro 9 i ad Vegas Pro Production Assistant
This is made to save you time when working in editing It's made by the Vasst guys
but Sony sell it directly.
With Vegas 8 i ad Somme plug-ins my favorite is made by PRODAD Mercalli a image stabilizer this could save you scene you normally put to delete.
NewBlue product are great Essential 1 and 2 at Newbleue they have a cartoon fx free and i start with this and discover the product they made.
I also have BLUFF TITLER great for the low price.
I like to used the great product IMAGINATE for image tracking combined with photoshop and Vegas.

[Jay Michael]

I also have BLUFF TITLER great for the low price.

I'd like to see some tutorials on Bluff Titler! Anyone who has it, Game?

[Bill Mecca]

I downloaded the trial, but haven't been in the office to try it. I did play with it for about five minutes, seemed pretty intuitive and cool.

Jay Michael said:

I also have BLUFF TITLER great for the low price.

I'd like to see some tutorials on Bluff Titler! Anyone who has it, Game?

[grinner]

Bill,
Avid FX is just Boris FX and Boris Red combined. It has some useful filters sometimes but the 3D stuff is as big of a joke as Marquee was. It's weak as far as possibilities and anything you'd use it for like motion blur, extruding, bevelling or lighting takes so dang long to render you can do it quicker in AE with MUCH more options and capabilities. It's disappointing, really. Avid's DVE simply has not evolved since it's introduction with MC version 5 in 1995. After Effects, on the other hand, certainly has since it's v1 release just a year prior to that. It was made by CoSa at the time.
It's not Avid's DVE limitatins that make it impossible to use in a session, it's that nasty aliasing it has toted since the get go. Inexcusable at this point. Throw a quick PIP effect on V2 and rotate it a bit to see what I'm talking about. See the stair stepping on the edge? I can't put a client behind that at what I charge an hour. To this day, I simply ahve to keep AE open in the background in every single session. It's my DVE.

[Tom Pauncz @ 30WEST MEDiA GROUP]

Check out their website. There are some there.
Tom

Jay Michael said:

I also have BLUFF TITLER great for the low price.

I'd like to see some tutorials on Bluff Titler! Anyone who has it, Game?

[Michael Bruder]

I use Magix video DeLuxe 15 Plus to edit my videos. Here in Germany it has been ranking on top among competing editor software for years within the same price category ($100-$120). The result you may check on my video-portfolio www.youtube.com/portfolioish.

Jay Michael said:

I'm something of an underdog. I use Magix™ Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus. I consider it a Pro-sumer editor. Better than any consumer editor on the market but not quite a full blown pro editor. For the money it will do just about anything you could want. It is by no means a toy.

It has a great key frame editor and a good green screen key. I have found it is very stable and even if you have a crash it will save your work. The only dislike I have is though it will key alpha stills it has to have a separate alpha element to key alpha video. That isn't an issue since most of my alpha elements are Digital Juice and the "Juicer" will create the separate alpha version of the clip for me.

I use it because years ago i started with Magix™ Video Deluxe 2.0 and stayed with it because i know the system and it's comfortable to me. I guess i just don't want to go through the learning curve of another editor when I don't have to, MEP14+ does what I need and more.

For me, that is the point. Find an editor that you are comfortable with and use it.

If you are looking for a low cost but powerful editor you may want to check it out.
J.