Adobe Premiere Pro CS5: Learn by Video (Book with DVD-ROM) 1st Edition

This DVD package with a book is cutting edge learning/teaching material. I have bought and read hundreds of books, tapes, DVD's and I have never written a review before today. This material by Vidio2Brain out of Europe has significantly improved my life with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. I am most of the way through the all the material and using it has increased my understanding, speed and proficiency editing video clips and putting together a short movie by a plus factor of 3-5 times. The authors' sagacious suggestions on how to make Premiere Pro CS5 run better on a limited computer have cut my crashes and grey screen stalls by over 90%.I am new to video editing and Adobe programs. Adobe has outstanding software but their programs do best with great hardware and a very fast CPU and a CUDA approved GPU. I own and have read Adobe's Premere Pro CS5 Classroom In A Book. It helped but this DVD material was more helpful and made for much faster learning.The things I really admire, appreciate and respect about this video2brain DVD/book are as follows:1. The book and DVD present excellent overviews first, so you get an understanding of what Premiere Pro CS5 does and how it is laid out in the very beginning. For someone like me, who is new to video editing, unfamiliar with Adobe's products and did not grow up with them, this makes learning much easier, faster and more productive.2. The book lists and the DVD teaches and explains many keyboard shortcuts that speed up both editing and learning. As I begin to use the shortcuts, I was amazed at how much faster and more proficient I became in just a few hours of editing clips and music for a Black Tie 95 Year Old Birthday Party movie I am working on. This is making the whole process much more fun for me and the 95 year old star!3. The authors obviously know what they are doing, exhibit great humor and repeatedly explain why this particular shortcut or capability will help your editing and movie making process. These 'special effects' Maxim Jago and Jan Ozer bring to the teaching process make learning Adobe Premiere Pro more enjoyable. The net effect on me is to build motivating links into my mind to get better at this.4. These guys (Maxim Jago & Jan Ozer) are pros who teach pros. The book/DVD combination gave me a much deeper appreciation of why Adobe is made for and used by people who are professionals. These real pros are people who want to do a great job in an efficiently planned and executed manner to produce an outstanding product. I recently moved up from Premiere Elements to Premiere Pro CS5. Elements is a great way to get started but Premiere Pro CS5 is making much higher quality movies and audio in much less time. Thanks Adobe and Video2Brain. Nice work!5. The tests at the end of a section are good reviews and help instill both details and overall understandings. I did not find a test at the end of each section and this was a disappointment.6. The authors did a superior job of showing how Adobe Products are integrated in supporting suites. If you use the suite, you can do more in more detail and quicker. This was helpful in my planning and purchases for the future.7. You can stop the DVD anytime any place, back it up and play any part over. The DVD is layed out in sections covering all the major aspects for using Premiere Pro effectively in planning and doing a movie making project.I have a few concerns that I wished had been covered more. In the DVD, I wish they had covered more on the substantial and crucial technical hardware and computer setup requirements. I have rebuilt my computer 3 times to get it working without problems with avchd and h.264. I ended up with an hardware RAID card, 6 hard drives, 24 gigs of ram, a professional ASIO sound card and a CUDA video card before things settled down for trouble free fast editing. I also wish they had spent a little more time denoting what the novice can do with simple fixed settings and preferences through out the whole DVD that will just get you producing material now without state of the art equipment.All in all, an outstanding product. I am not now and have never have been associated with Adobe or any of the companies connected with or purchased by Adobe.Thank you for taking time to read my review. I hope it supports your decision making process. Please let me know if it has helped you.Sincerely,Jeff Carl

I have been editing video on the computer all the way back to my days with an Amiga computer. I have used the Video Toaster, Sony's Vegas, Edius, and most recently Final Cut Pro 7 for my NLE. Until the release of Premiere Pro CS5 with the new Mercury Playback Engine, I had never done much more than casually edit a few short pieces in Premiere Pro. PP CS5 has changed all of that and recently i have been involved in a multi-camera edit of a concert and grew frustrated with trying to edit that project in FCP. I decided to give PP CS5 a chance and I needed a crash course in getting up to speed editing in PP CS5. I discovered this video tutorial course on Amazon and decided to give it a try. I have found the video tutorial to be absolutely excellent.Preparing and delivering a solid, informative video tutorial series that works for both people unfamiliar with NLE editing tools as well as for those with expertise in other NLE systems is no small accomplishment, but that is exactly what video2brain and Maxim Jago and Jan Ozer have done. There are over 15 hours of high definition (720p) video tutorials in this series and not one second is wasted. The series begins with an excellent overview of PP and goes into some detail on how it works with the focus on what it can do. This is followed by a series of tutorials on setting up a PP project for editing and the basic procedures used in editing clips on the timeline. This material will be of great value to those unfamiliar with NLE of video on computers, and will be of equal value to those moving to PP from another NLE system. The remainder of the tutorial series covers virtually every aspect of editing in PP CS5 including what makes the new Mercury Playback Engine special, what is required to use the MPE, how to do multi-camera editing, use effects, create titles, work with audio and metadata, output video using Adobe's Media Encoder, etc. Of special note in the tutorials is a section on integrating PP with Photoshop and After Effects. Since the tight integration of Adobe's Production Premium package and PP is a strong positive feature of the program(s), it seems quite appropriate that the newcomer to PP be introduced in an organized fashion to the integration of PP with the other Adobe products.The presentation of the two instructors is outstanding in that it is straightforward, beautifully organized while seemingly unscripted, and presented with a clear view to solving real world problems encountered in everyday editing. If you are looking for a tutorial that methodically goes through every button and menu option in the PP interface, thankfully this is not it. Instead, by organizing their material and approach with meticulous care, the instructors manage to cover virtually every control by illustrating its use in a real editing situation. To me this is the ultimate strength of this tutorial series and what sets it apart from many other video tutorials that i have purchased and used.There are many convenience features in this tutorial package -- not the least of which is the full 720p presentation in sharp HD on my 30 in. monitor, the easy ability to switch in and out of full screen mode, to send the tutorial videos to my iPhone or iPad, the inclusion of lesson files and media on the DVD, etc. Each section also has a Quiz Yourself package of ten questions which is quite well done and provides an excellent means of testing what you have learned in that chapter. My only disappointment with the Quiz Yourself section is that when you miss a question there is no right answer supplied or even any indication of what was wrong in your supplied answer. You simply have to go back and take the test again after reviewing the material a second time.In summary, Learn by Video: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 in my opinion sets new standards for video training and is worth twice its cost! If you want to learn PP CS5 whether you are an experienced or inexperienced video editor, this is the tutorial series for you.Tom

I've used many video editing systems over the years, so I already know the basics of editing. I got Premier Pro as part of a suite, and have intended to learn it for quite some time. I own another editor (Sony Vegas), so I didn't have a pressing need - it just seemed like it would be a better tool-chain for me (Photoshop integration, etc). Frankly, every time I tried to learn it, I just found the workflow a bit odd and the interface very busy and awkward. So I'd get frustrated and put it aside.This video did a pretty good job in showing a pragmatic workflow, and it started to "click" with me. Perhaps I had preconceived notions of how it should work, but this video brought my mindset around and now it all makes sense to me. Most videos are either too slow (boring) or move fast, but lacking detail. This strikes a good balance - it starts with simple projects, and adds more detail and complexity as we move on. Overall, a very enjoyable way to learn Premier Pro.I expected to play the DVD on my television, but quickly discovered it only plays on a computer. That's not a problem for me, as my editing system has three 24" monitors, so I could play the video on one, while I had Premier Pro on another monitor. But I wanted to point this out, in case someone else made the same assumption. The title clearly says "DVD-ROM" and that's a computer-formatted disc, not a Video DVD (called a "DVD"). It's my fault for not paying attention.Overall - very happy. I don't know if other Video2Brain offerings are as good, but I wouldn't hesitate to get anything Maxim Jago produces.