: Video tool options It seems I may be exploring video editing sooner than later. While my skill level with video would certainly classify me as a novice, I like to invest in tools which allow

@BetL875

If you move to the Master Collection, you get the industry-standard motion graphics application, After Effects, a professional grade NLE (Premiere Pro) and a highly effective audio application (Audition) along with Encore, for creating DVD/Blu-Ray discs, complete with menus, etc.. The upgrade is quite inexpensive, so I'd say that's a no-brainer. (I use the Master Collection myself.) Regardless of which NLE you use, you'd want After Effects anyway, since there really isn't a viable competitor out there. The cost of an AE license is more than the cost of an MC upgrade.

Two bonuses that come with the suite are what they call "Dynamic Link" -- the round-tripping between PPro and AE (which has to be seen to be believed -- they've done an outstanding job with that), and either of those and Photoshop or Illustrator for visuals, Audition for audio -- and the NVidia GPU synergy built into the playback and rendering engines. Both of these make the actual end-to-end workflow about 10 to 50 times faster than it was even three years ago. I've had situations where a video rendered so quickly I thought nothing had happened, and ended up doing it twice. That's life-changing for full on video folks, but great even for someone like me who only does video and motion graphics as the need arises.

Side Note about Final Cut: The video editing world got a bit shaken up recently by Apple's decision to "consumerize" Final Cut, making it unusable for a great deal of professional work. There's a worry that Apple really is moving solidly into the consumer space, where almost all their income comes from, and out of professional markets. FCP 7 is back on the market because of the storm of protest over FCP X, but it's still 32-bit and Apple has no plans to upgrade it.

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@Heady304

Of course it depends on what exactly you're doing, but I have found After Effects to be very helpful for most of the tasks you've outlined (resizing, cropping and compressing files).

Beyond that, I primarily use it for creating user interface transition mockups and it's a very good fit for this type of use. It renders typography nicely and allows you to animate it in a variety of ways that are very intuitive if you're accustomed to Photoshop.

From what I know as a result of my Graphic/Interface Design background, I would say it's the "Photoshop" of video software, good for creating effects and short clips. Final Cut and Premiere are better suited for editing and splicing long collections of video.

All of that said, if you just need to compress and export files all of them might be overkill. Either way I wouldn't recommend getting a full video suite...After Effects would probably work fine.

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