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