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NLE alternatives to Premiere?
  • 50 Replies sorted by
  • carlopeciccarlopecic

    I find Edius is themost responsive of all nle on the market,problem with edius is it can only render to downsampled 422 output,not good for compositing

  • disordinarydisordinary

    Is Edius here to stay though? I thought that Grassvalley was in financial difficulty?

  • TronTron

    I've been running Vegas since about 2008 and have not yet found another NLE that is as efficient, easy to use AND stable. I like that the inexpensive Movie Studio version now natively supports magic bullet looks, which used to only run under Pro before. It seems to render faster than performing color correction in CS5. Eventually I may go back to Vegas Pro for the EDL export support, as apparently there are scripts available that will allow Vegas timeline import into After Effects, which would be very convenient to have available on certain projects.

  • qwerty123qwerty123

    I wish Avid wasn't in such financial trouble: they are one of the few software companies whose entire livelihood depends on the professional film and audio markets. ...Maybe Pro Tools 11 will give them a bit of a bump. Fingers crossed.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Is Edius here to stay though? I thought that Grassvalley was in financial difficulty?

    Where you hear about their issues.

    I only see that all their software development is moved to Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

  • JayB38JayB38

    I been mostly afraid to admit it, but I've been working with Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and it does the job for me. hopefully I can save for Pro since I got a new 'puter with a little bit of GHz, Hard drive space, RAM and 64bit.

    There are some alternative NLEs mostly for free. Surprised no one's mentioned Blender as I can recall that it does or export 4K - be aware that the whole software itself has a learning curve. As for a Flash-like, After Effects-like experience, I'm trying out Synfig.

  • dancerchrisdancerchris

    Blender's VSE is not very good for video editting. It'll do the job (and I have used it). It just is very tedious. The compositor in Blender is top notch though! It can do just about any effect that can be done in AE, however AE generally has more efficient workflow and slicker interface.

    For free or low $ editor Lightworks is excellent. The free version in beta now supports .mts import/transcoding for our GH2 footage. (It is expected that the 11.1 release will be shortly).

    Good workflow combo's

    Lightworks, Blender, Resolve Lite.

  • Brian202020Brian202020

    FCPX. It was flawed when released, but all is fixed and then some. It is by far the most efficient NLE I ever used. Efficiency does 2 things, saves time and/or gives the client a better more refined finished product because you can do twice as much in the same amount of time. This means more money per hour of work or a client that will keep coming back because of the effort put in the project, which also equals more money. FCPX is a win win.

  • disordinarydisordinary

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev - I read it on a blog somewhere when googling around - but maybe it was related to Thomsons financial problems a couple of years ago.

  • kellar42kellar42

    FCPX +10,000

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    Nuke is an alternative to After Effects, and is actually more powerful. It's a node based compositor, so the workflow is very different from AE. But, it's really, really good.

  • GravitateMediaGroupGravitateMediaGroup

    Don't forget Vegas also has real time FX, no rendering each effect on each clip or whatever, one of the main reasons I've been using Vegas for years, but for more complicated task, resolve or AE may have to join the flow.

  • BurnetRhoadesBurnetRhoades

    Nuke is an alternative to After Effects, and is actually more powerful. It's a node based compositor, so the workflow is very different from AE. But, it's really, really good.

    For compositing it completely annihilates AfterEffects, and pretty much anything else (but it also costs a lot more than AE and has a pedigree few other commercial packages besides Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman can boast). Compositing, if you're not doing simple A-over-B with maybe a single matte clip, can be absolutely dreadful with AE's interface and reliance on linear and spatial layering of clips, which is horribly, horribly inefficient.

    But compositing isn't AfterEffects main reason for being, even if that's a very common usage. AE will run rings around Nuke for its original purpose which is motion graphics and now AE's 3D inside the 2D environment, if you include Element 3D, give it fairly unmatched flexibility and power regardless of how much you're willing to spend on an alternative.

  • OedipaxOedipax

    Smoke's another alternative to consider. It gives you an NLE plus powerful VFX/finishing tools inside one app. I think you could replace the Premiere/After Effects workflow quite easily with it.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @Oedipax

    Just does not run on PC.

  • carlopeciccarlopecic

    For compositin and motion gfx,eyeon fusion is middle ground betwen ae and nuke,it is faster than ae and nuke, ,it doesn have 3d tracker but fusion 3d compositing is super fast.Eyeon also have interesting product like avid connection,Dimension(stereo+opticalFlow tools) and GenerationAM(teqm colaboration and review tool)

  • carlopeciccarlopecic

    You also can have free krokodove plugins wich works with fusion https://vimeo.com/channels/krokodove/65857861

  • Sph1nxsterSph1nxster

    Using Corel Videostudio since X3 and now on X5.

    Very stable, very quick render times and customizable outputs.

    Works well for those that want to make projects fast and see the results quickly.

    CONS? - no multicam supported editing

  • kellar42kellar42

    Nobody likes Apple Motion and I'm not an expert but I believe it can handle most of what AE can with a reasonable and efficient interface. Not PC either, of course.

  • jrdjrd

    The Lightworks interface can be confusing if you're used to the basic Avid model found in FCP, PPro, Edius, etc., but a number of highly accomplished editors rave about it. This includes Scorsese's editor. And a number of big budget feature films have been cut on it - unlike PPro.

    The free version doesn't support AVCHD or AVC intra, but you can license the full version for $60 a year. There must be something here, once you figure it out....

  • andrevanberloandrevanberlo

    I work on mac only and I have Premiere CS6 and FCPX. Started on Premiere (Cs4) and switched to FCPX. For me it works much faster and more intuitive, I use Premiere for very specific things as it works with MTS files natively.

    so FCPX it is for me, can't say anything about Avid or Vegas.

    (should Logic Pro have some sort of integration with FCPX as motion does it would be a perfect scenario for me!)

  • ohhwellohhwell

    Vegas Pro since Version 10. It's been pretty stable for the most part but the P2 support introduced in Ver 12 is buggy. I've Used FC7 and CS5.5 but neither of those compare to the intuitiveness and audio abilities of Vegas. The only thing I have to leave vegas for audio wise is noise reduction and I use Audition (Cooledit) for that.

    Shoot, we have a protools station here at work and I much prefer using Vegas for pure audio projects.

  • luxisluxis

    Lightworks seems to be more close to reality. 50 euro per year is a "hell yeah" price. Interoperability of files and projects(!!!) between the three main OS, that's a winning ticket right there. But it does take them a while to get them working. Its been a year since they announced their noble goals...I hope at least by the time CS6 is useless(due to who knows what new formats and various tec advancements/blocks etc) to have the Lightworks option ready to buy in stable product.

    @ohhwell Totally agree with you and have a very similar experience. You should check AcidPro! The most intuitive audio multitrack ever ;) If Sony would only start to make Vegas/Acid for osx I would go back to it in a blink of an eye time. Who knows, they just might, I saw there is soundforge(lighter verison) for osx(the latest one only). The moment will be perfect for this now.

  • kolinkokolinko

    I've been using blender VSE for the last years. Even didn't manage to use the compositor so far. My workflow: blender VSE imported every video format I used so far (mostly h.264 videos, but I think it also takes prores for example) then export video as PNG/JPG images, audio to wav/flac, manipulate audio with audacity or Ardour4. Put together audio and PNG/jpg using ffmpeg to high quality MKV h.264 file. Make (sub-/)titles with Aegisub, render them with ffmpeg again.

    The only problem with Blender is, it can get very slow in preview while editing even with a good PC working machine. I create proxies, that makes it slightly better. But blender has so many functions!! The sad thing is the VSE is only a side effect, and there's no focus on making it better so much. But for many problems I got help online in their live chat! Blender is fun. Is it effective? I guess not so much. I make only one video per year so far with a lot of pauses..

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Interesting to see how prices changed

    • X5+Samplitude+Designer Pro was $149 in 2013

    Now same pack of current versions is $299 ( 300 EUR) https://education.magix.com/en/products/magix-academic-suite-pro-x/

    Slightly lower on ebay - https://www.ebay.com/itm/Magix-Academic-Suite-Pro-Video-Pro-Xara-Designer-Samplitude-Studio-Download/112018666444

    But also exist MX Suite form $100 from

    • Movie Edit Pro: The complete video studio
    • Music Maker: Make music now! Your own songs. Your own sound.
    • Xara Web Designer: Create websites just like a pro
    • Xara Photo & Graphic Designer: The complete solution for photo editing and graphic design

    https://education.magix.com/en/products/magix-academic-suite-pro-x/

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