Depth of Options
I have always been a kind of multi-platform user. By that I mean I tend to do a lot of audio work in Pro Tools, while using a couple of different video conversion and editing programs for other tasks, all to get to where I need to go in a project. EDIUS Pro 4.5 provides all of the tools needed to achieve professional results for your video or film projects without “outsourcing”, which is quite nice. Unfortunately, one feature missing is DVD authoring. You can burn a DVD directly from your timeline, but you will have limited control and results. That is the only real negative I have found. What you do get far outweighs what you don’t get.
If there were one word to use when talking about EDIUS Pro 4.5 it would have to be REALTIME. There is no rendering time required to check an effect, transition, title, etc. This speeds up the process a great deal. The flexibility of working with different formats, aspect ratios, resolutions and frame rates means only your imagination and your PC horsepower limit you. If you have a recent PC, you will be fine. EDIUS allows you to edit from up to eight sources in their multicam editing options with unlimited title, video and audio tracks. Not only can you burn a DVD directly from the timeline, but you can output DV in real-time. In addition, for dual core CPUs, there is a high-speed HDV timeline export.
ProCoder express, included with EDIUS, is a nice, one-stop-shop for transcoding between PAL and NTSC and is so much better than relying on a stand-alone transcoder. While I did not have any PAL footage, I did have a PAL DVD that is region-free. Since it is not copy protected, I imported a segment into EDIUS. Using the ProCoder, I made an NTSC DVD that looked as good on my 42” plasma display as the original PAL DVD.
Performance
If you have a PC with the Vista OS, you should be aware that there might be some compatibility issues.
Aside from the quirk encountered when launching EDIUS Pro 4.5, (mentioned above, wherein I simply had to right click the desktop icon and choose the option “run as administrator”), I didn’t run into anything that shut me down, or caused me to think things might not be working as expected. Having said that, Vista is not officially supported yet, so keep that in mind. [Editor’s Note: Unfortunately for Windows XP x64 and Vista x64 users, EDIUS Pro 4.5 simply does not work correctly on these machines at all. Hopefully 5.0 will feature x64 support.]
EDIUS performed flawlessly during all of my testing. I was able to mix HD and SD in my timeline and render projects out to a wide variety of formats. It would be much more difficult to find a format that EDIUS would NOT work with, than to list the formats with which it would work. Transitions and effects are easily selected as well as editable for a custom touch. You can even save the edited fx to be used in other projects.
Nothing kills creativity more than being mired down in the process. I want to applaud Grass Valley for writing a comprehensive manual. That may seem trivial and not performance related, but it goes a long way toward achieving the desired result, with much less frustration. It does not cover every aspect, but it covers enough to keep the juices flowing. If you would like more training, I ran across some nice training options available through www.ClassOnDemand.net, which sells very thorough training DVDs.
Value
At $699.00 retail, EDIUS Pro 4.5 is on par with other PC based, software NLEs in price, as well as performance. While some may see the lack of a DVD authoring tool as a reason to look elsewhere, I think that it offers much to make up for that exclusion. There are so many great standalone-authoring programs available, that it should not be a deciding factor.
Final Comments
With so many choices in editing software, the water can get a bit murky. While it is hard to say that any particular product at a specific price point is a definitive solution, I think that EDIUS Pro 4.5 is worth a serious look. There is a fully functional 30-day trial download available, so you can always take a test drive first. EDIUS Pro 4.5 would be a worthy addition to any microfilmmaker’s short list of potential software editors.
