Video Editors Go Beyond Ego-Casts

Three powerful video editing applications—Adobes Premiere 6.5, Pinnacles Edition and Avids Xpress—make a good corporate fit.

Of the three, Premiere 6.5 is the most corporate-ready. It fully integrates with other Adobe products, including Photoshop and Illustrator, allowing users to create mattes and textures in these applications and drag them into Premiere.

Premiere 6.5, released in August for $549 (upgrades start at $149), supports DVD- authoring, MPEG 2 and a real-time preview, which has become something of a biblical issue in the video world. I recommend Premiere for all corporate video production needs.

In Pinnacles $699 Edition, there is no real-time preview, but Pinnacle is constantly background-rendering the project. Theoretically, by the time users are done with the project, theyll get the fully rendered project. This is suitable for the corporate market, which typically uses minimal transitions and has simple editing needs.

Edition, on the other hand, might have the best video editing interface in the world, but anyone familiar with other video editors might be taken aback. Editions interface defies standard Windows and Mac OS conventions. That said, Edition is extraordinarily powerful and comes with a wide variety of titles and effects. I recommend Edition for companies that want to add bells and whistles to video and dont mind an unconventional interface.

Avid still makes the most powerful video editing package for high-end video editing needs. Avids lowest-priced version, Xpress DV 3.5, costs $1,699 and is the best solution for true video production (as opposed to streaming ego-casts).

For any of these packages, I also strongly recommend video editing control systems, such as Contour ShuttlePro, which provides a jog control and programmable buttons. At about $100, they are time-saving bargains.