More years ago than I care to remember, as a freelance journo working with PCUser, APC, PCWorld, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian on occasion and other publications in general (as well as radio), I was full time almost just keeping up reviewing the plethora of look alike “office” suites that abounded such as Borland Office, Lotus Office, WordPerfect Office and more.
The AVI and MOV formats had not yet been invented, so desktop video wasn’t quite yet a ‘thing’.
Then Lotus Notes appeared and I wanted to see it to review it of course. But the nice folks at Lotus said “No, because it is too sophisticated for you to understand”.
I kid you not.
But I persisted over the months and eventually someone in Lotus (it wasn’t quite yet a part of IMBM as I recall) capitulated. A few days later, a box with a massive 40+ floppy disks turned up.
It took the best part of a day to install.
And you know what, they were partly right.
It’s not that it was too sophisticated for my software knowledge though. To this day I have yet to find anyone that can tell me what Notes was. Or is.
I believe some federal government departments still use it, but gawd knows what for.
Leaping forward a year or two, and Apple invented the MOV format quickly followed by Microsoft with the AVI format, signifying the start of desktop video, following fast on the heels of desktop publishing.
And thus Adobe Premiere came to be. And then After Effects.
Hang on Hague, what has all this to do with Lotus Notes I hear you ask?
Well, Adobe was quite happy to provide me with a review copy of Premiere Pro. I had previous experience in the analogue world of video with a company called Computer Television where I wrote and directed a mammoth series of training video tapes on Windows, Office AutoCAD and other programs.
But when it came to getting a review a copy of After Effects, Adobe answer at the time and for several years to come mirrored that of Lotus’ almost word for word.
Eventually though, in about 1998 they too gave in, and I received my copy and leapt into it with gusto.
Of course things were very different then. You could actually, you know, BUY software, and you owned it for ever after, only upgrading if you needed to.
And while in that area things have changed dramatically, with subscription now the norm and not the exception, although probably impossible to prove, it is more than likely the most popular and widely used NLE is Adobe Premiere Pro.
But many people cannot justify in their minds the costs today of a full Creative Cloud subscription so that they will get After Effects as well – assuming they know what After Effects actually does, and even ignoring the fact you also get Photoshop.
Fair enough. It’s also fair to say that the way an NLE operates is very important to the way your personal workflow is setup. In my case, for more than 10 years I hd been using Vegas Pro, and only recently switched to DaVinci Resolve. I still use Vegas Pro upon occasion for quick and dirty stuff though as I can bang out a 30 second clip in just a few minutes.
But even the paid Studio version of Resolve is incredible value for money for what it is capable of, especially if, as I did, you also get the Speed Editor editing console.
Before Vegas I did use Premiere Pro though, and in fact it’s fair to say I learnt digital editing via that program, before that being mainly analogue based at version 4.2 off memory.
Many find it is hard to justify the Creative Cloud subscription for Premiere Pro at around 40 bucks a month. And if that is all there was in the “people versus Premiere Pro” argument pool, that would be the end of that.
But it isn’t, is it? And this is the bit that more often than not is precluded from the Premiere Pro vs the rest subscription argument.
$40 a month for Premiere Pro as I say, I cannot justify. But $96 a month for a subscription that includes Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects with InDesign thrown in I certainly could if I was a serious editor.
Sure, Bridge I would not use (Kyno is my app of choice for asset management) and Rush doesn’t work on my mobile devices so there is a no point there either.
But to your serious video editor, Photoshop and After Effects are almost indispensable.
So my tip is certainly keep using the NLE of your choice. That really does not affect things in the greater scheme.
But $96.99 per month I would have thought is an easy choice to make though for the benefits the other apps give you?
Of course, if you have never used Premiere Pro, you might turn out to be surprised how good it actually is. And the very tight integration between all of the Creative Cloud apps is an added bonus, being a great time saver as well as enabling a fantastic workflow.
The point of all this though, is that if you have never used After Effects, then frankly, you do not know what you are missing! You can get a trial of it and have a play. Grab some tutorials and run through them.
While initially you may have NO idea what you are doing, you’ll soon pick up the concept and probably think of a million things you could use it for and a few million more you COULD have used it for!
Get the trial After Effects here. And have a look at your first tutorial here.
And then have a look at the many, many plugins available from the likes of Red Giant, BorisFX and more to open an even wider world of creativity.