Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Effects Editing software

This is topic Effects Editing software in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Jason M Miller (Member # 2597) on 06-13-2006, 04:56 PM:

I am looking for an video effects editor, I know of Adobe After Effects, is this the way to go or is there better ones out there? I am using a pc and do not have a mac available [Frown]

Thanks

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-13-2006, 06:45 PM:

What's your price range?

In terms of mainstream software, Adobe After Effects is the best of breed motion graphics application for both Mac and PC. The standard version of AE7 costs $700. The professional version costs $1000 (it adds a lot of features many may consider pretty critical to have).

You'll get the most bang for your buck in buying a copy of Adobe Production Studio Premium. It includes AE7 Pro, Premiere Pro 2, DVD authoring software and full versions of PhotoshopCS2 and IllustratorCS2. It costs $1700. But if you bought each app in that suite separately you would spend well over $3000.

Apple Motion (part of the Final Cut Studio Suite) does many of the same kinds of things as After Effects. But it doesn't have anywhere near the integration with Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator. Since you're on a PC that's a non issue anyway.

Autodesk Combustion 4 is a PC-based rival to After Effects and was originally developed by Discreet, makers of some very high end video effects and authoring systems (Flame, Flint, Inferno, etc.). It does some cool stuff and costs around the same as After Effects Professional. But I think it's kind of limiting compared to AE for the lack of Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator file integration.

In higher end circles, Eyeon Software's Fusion 5 is growing in popularity. It's a fully node based motion graphics and compositing application. Fusion and Lightwave3D were the two main things used to put together Sin City. It costs around $5000.

Some of those packages sold by Discreet cost a whole lot more than that.
[Eek!]

In the end, I would at least go with After Effects 7 standard. Get the pro version if you can afford it.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 06-17-2006, 03:12 PM:

After Effects. There simply is no other.

[edit] I did use Combustion for its wire-removal tool. That was pretty good, and had no AE counterpart.

[ 06-17-2006, 10:27 PM: Message edited by: Tim Reed ]