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Total Training for Adobe Premiere Pro 2
Review Date: 2006
Reviewed By: Charlie White
Product Reviewed: Total Training for Adobe Premiere Pro 2
If you want to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, you can read through the documentation, try editing a few projects, and stumble your way through, eventually learning your own way of doing things. Or you could pick up a copy of Total Training for Adobe Premiere Pro 2 ($249.99) and save yourself lots of time and effort by learning it the right way. With 17 hours of training spread across five DVDs, nearly everything you would ever want to know about Premiere Pro is included in this series of lessons. Does it get the job done?
I've always found Adobe Premiere Pro to be an intuitive application to learn. I've been using the software since version 1.0, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, thinking I knew a lot about the software. I was thinking I would just take a look at the bonus disk included with this package, “What's New in Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.” But then, since I was reviewing the entire package, I decided to take a look at this series from start to finish. As I loaded up the first DVD of Total Training for Adobe Premiere 2, I started realizing that there were lots of gaps in my knowledge, not only having to do with the latest version 2.0 with all its new features inside.
An appealing part of this series of tutorials is its presenter, Jacob Rosenberg. If you attend numerous trade shows as I do, Jacob is a familiar face, and can always be counted on to clearly and precisely explain capabilities and features of various software packages. But he goes well beyond that in this series of DVDs. His professional demeanor, his upbeat presentation and extraordinary knowledge of the software are obvious throughout every minute of each one of these five disks. His presentation is so smooth, it's hard to believe he is not reading this stuff, but he isn't. He just knows it, cold. And Rosenberg is not only a teacher, but he's been there, too, editing highly sophisticated productions as well as nailing every tutorial assignment he does. In fact, I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have sitting beside me showing me how to use this deep application. From the beginning of these tutorials, it became obvious that I had a professional editor sitting next to me, showing me everything I needed to know.
When you first start out, Total Training asks you to load a small application onto your hard disk along with all of its sample files that are used in the various lessons. Once you've gotten all the material on your disk, the lessons themselves are played back from DVD. It becomes immediately evident that this company, Total Training, has quite a bit of experience producing these types of tutorials, where the user interface is highly refined and user-friendly (see graphic below), allowing you to do such things as place bookmarks throughout.
Plus, if you take a break and close down one of these DVDs and then return to it the next day, it starts up right where you left off. This is certainly a convenient and easy way to work with tutorials. You also have your choice of full-screen viewing, 100%, or 50% its native size, leaving you room to actually use the application along with the presenter.
By using a dual-monitor setup, I was able to get the most out of this tutorial series, where I had the DVD content playing in one of the monitors while I worked with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 in the other. That way, I could follow along with the DVD, using the included sample video, audio and stills to get a hands-on experience. A slight problem I encountered was small dropouts in the tutorial audio when I was scrubbing within the Premiere Pro application. That problem could probably be solved by either using a more powerful PC or playing back the tutorials on a different workstation or laptop nearby.
The depth of these tutorials was remarkable. A sure sign of their tremendous value is the fact that a lot of the information presented on them is not present in Adobe's own documentation. For example, in the lesson about the source panel, Jacob shows us with great detail how to create an L-cut and a J-cut, and then drop that edited clip into the timeline from the source panel. Looking for that technique in the Adobe Premiere Pro 2 printed and online documentation, I saw no such coverage. At this point, I was starting to think that if you don't use these disks to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, you're not going to be able to get the most of the software.
The pace of the tutorials was exactly right. From time to time Jacob would get ahead of me, but then, it was easy enough just to reach over and pause the tutorial while I tinkered around with the application. However, almost all the time, that was not necessary, where Jacob seem to know just how much time those following along would need to learn the material.
I also liked the way there was a good balance of practical knowledge about each feature of Adobe Premiere Pro, and there was also a wealth of insight about editing any kind of video. I found the advanced lessons to be particularly engaging, as well as the multicam lessons and those that covered all the other new Premiere Pro 2 features.
Summing up, if you're going to spend the money to acquire Adobe Premiere 2.0, I think you would be remiss not to go the extra $250 and get yourself these total training DVDs. I gained an astonishing, almost embarrassing amount of useful information from this set of tutorials, and I was surprised at what I didn't know about this tremendously feature-rich application. I have a new appreciation for Adobe Premiere Pro after taking this Total Training tutorial set, and I also have a deep respect for its host, Jacob Rosenberg, and the organized and easy-to-follow presentation he and the team at Total Training have created. This series of DVDs can truly turn you from a novice to an expert in 17 hours. It doesn't get any better than this. Total Training for Adobe Premiere Pro 2 receives my highest recommendation. 10 out of 10 stars.
View original at www.digitalmedianet.com
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