May 2007 — News
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Know Your NLEs
And what about the once heavily hyped Video Toaster? Well, that's now called VT[4] and is owned by NewTek, the maker of the extraordinarily popular 3D animation system LightWave. NewTek also competes with itself by offering a few other video systems, including SpeedEdit and TriCaster and TriCaster Pro. I have not ever touched any of these systems and so can't attest to their quality. TriCaster and VT have a somewhat small following, and neither is particularly well suited for K-12 budgets. (The VT[4] Live! Education Bundle runs $3,995. TriCaster and TriCaster Pro are more, but they do include hardware.)
What To Choose?
If you have the budget, along with a program aimed toward college- and career-oriented students, any one of the four major NLEs I discussed will do well for both the teacher and the students. All offer great features and can be a benefit to those looking to a (crowded) future in editing. It comes down to the right tool for the right person.
Avid and Apple are probably the two most useful NLEs to work with in terms of broad acceptance in the industry, but neither Vegas nor Premiere Pro are slouches either.
And, with Adobe's new CS3 (along with the deep education discounts), Premiere Pro is likely to gan in popularity over the next few years to become Final Cut Pro's major competitor. The Adobe Master Collection is also the best value of the four in the K-12 market, coming in at $30 per seat for the complete Adobe collection (assuming you use all of the 500 seats included in the license). If your schools would benefit from the "additional" software in the Master Collection (mentioned above), that would seem to be the way to go. It pencils out pretty nicely.
For truly dedicated video editing courses, however, the benefits of learning early on the industry leaders (Avid and FInal Cut Pro) are obvious.
In terms of the consumer software available, there are plenty of good choices. I personally would go with iMovie. It's straightforward and has some good effects students can play with to get creative, and it is somewhat extensible. Beyond iMovie, everything at the free level is pretty much the same in terms of versatility and features. Since these apps are free, you don't lose anything (except a little time) trying each one out. See below for a list of free NLEs.
Next time around, we'll discuss the recommendations for hardware in a video editing environment, including machines, drives, cameras, and capture devices.
Free/Consumer NLEs
