OK I’m going to ask the question that I have a funny feeling many wonder about, but won’t ask.

Which software for which job!  Many “plain old folks” are now stepping into the area that was for the pros only.. video and music.

We have iMovie, itunes, and dozens of third party software out there, but which programs are best for which jobs?

Most have heard of Final Cut Pro, but at that price tag, the average person isn’t going to just go out and order a copy.  Then there are tons of other programs… Cleaner 5.1, MovieWorks Dlx , Boris Graffiti,  Premiere, Cinema 4D GO, After Effects,  LiveStage , HipFlics, and the Sorenson Family of products.

Lot’s of software to pick from, but very little info for the newcomer.

To give you and idea how bad it is… the other day I called my MacMall sales guy to find out which Sorenson Squeeze would serve my needs (there were two different ones listed on the site). He didn’t know so he passed me to their tech dept., who gave me a phone number to call, that number ended being to the company that use to own the software! They were very nice and gave me the correct phone number. The Sorenson sales person didn’t know either, so she sent me to their tech support, ... voice mail!  I ended up e-mailing tech support. They were very fast at the reply, and even sent me a very nice looking pdf brochure. However I still don’t know any more than I did when I started the venture!

Now I ask of you wise ones (and not so wise) what do you use for the different projects.

Here we go…

Graphics Work

I mainly use Photoshop for my graphics work.  I don’t own Illustrator or FreeHand, but I know people that prefer to create things from scratch in those programs, then import into Photoshop for additional touches.

For quick conversions, I tend to use GraphicConverter.  It is a great shareware program with everything basic that you need, and even some you don’t.

Photo Work

I use iPhoto to catalogue, and then, of course, Photoshop and GraphicConverter.

Video Editing

Final Cut Pro, hands down, is the best editing package out there.  It is very powerful, but not cheap.  I still think iMovie is good, but anyone who wants to go beyond your typical home “family” movie, I’d go with Final Cut.

Compositing

Combustion.  I don’t have much experience with Combustion, but I do use it.

Post-Production effects, etc.

After Effects and Commotion are all great for effects.  I use both at work.

Audio

I use nothing more than MIDI editors and regular sound editors like Amadeus.  I keep a collection of SmartSound royalty-free music for use, as well as sound effects.

Compression

If you had to choose between Sorenson Squeeze or TH’s HipFlics.  My preference: HipFlics.  These are the basic compression packages.  If you are going pro, go with the professional edition of Sorenson 3.  Its a great piece of encoding, but the learning curve for “getting it right” is steep.

Content Delivery/Deployment

The web (via hand-coded HTML, mainly, but sometimes Dreamweaver).

QuickTime movies (via LiveStage Professional, and possibly iShell if I put it on CD-ROM).  Can’t go wrong with interactivity.

*confused by reference to “wise ones”*

For photo work, Photoshop is an absolute must! There are so many techniques, you could never learn them all. It’s so powerful, I believe you could do most anything with it. (as seen in the enquirer…)
-Dan

I have Photoshop and can muddle through it, but recently I got PixelNhance from http://www.caffeineSoft.com/products/pnh/index.html. Very cool little ‘free’ app. for the casual user.

you asked….

Graphics
————
Photoshop - The mainstay app. This thing pushes pixels like nobody’s business. Great for tweaking images and adding some really neat effects.  Compositing is also a strong one with this program.

Graphic Converter - Reads just about everything I have thrown at it. Can’t kill it. Definately a web designers handy man app.

TypeStyler - Need a little extra oomph in your text? This program will fit the bill. Have used this since version 1.0 on my old MacIIfx. Just wish they would carbonize the thing already! Also great for creating images from scratch.

Illustrator - Mainly used for EPS conversion. Can get those windoze only Clip Art cds and use the stuff on there. Vector art is cool.

ImageReady - For downing the sizes of images made from Photoshop. Keeps quality and clarity while making the images nice and small.

iView - for my OS 9 cataloging.

iPhoto - Just for X.

Web
—-
TypeStyler - For those complicated Java menus and other little neat things.

ImageReady - It slices, it dices….use it for slicing images. Works great and makes some pretty clean code.

Dreamweaver - For Shockwave buttons and flash animations.

GoLive - My baby nowadays. IMO, the best WYSIWYG editor available. Some extraneous code, but is readable by all browsers.

Audio
——-
Quicktime Pro - Can’t beat it for the price. Does everything I need.

iMovie - Yup, I edit and compile tracks in iMovie as well. Only when I am feeling lazy though.

Video
——-
iMovie - Can’t beat it for the simple stuff.

Final Cut Pro 2 - for the more intense video jobs.

Quicktime Pro - For extracting video and audio from each other.

Cleaner 5 - Does a great job on compressing video and audio without losing quality. Takes a while on my G3, but worth it.

that’s about it….

I got a question, is it possible to get regular mpg and mov files in to iMovie or does iMovie only support DV input. I’d like to play with some mov files I have, but getting FCP for that is just not possible.

You know, I would have thought so, but I just looked and it doesn’t if you have quicktime pro, you can use that to convert .mov files to digital video streams that iMovie can read, but it doesn’t look like iMovie will do it on it’s own. 

I could be missing a feature someplace, but it seems pretty straight forward, file->import lists a few image file formats and DV stream, that’s it. 

EdGar is right. iMovie only supports DV Stream. You need Quicktime Pro, or maybe some third-party shareware might be out there that will let you convert to DV Stream.

Then you just pop them into the folder of the movie you are working on, open iMovie, and it will tell you it found a stray clip. Click yes for putting it on the clip shelf and go from there.

Seeing as how most people got iMovie 2 free, $30 is not that much for Quicktime Pro. Usually the serial number is good for at least a few version numbers as well, so you won’t have to shell out $30 everytime we hit v.6, v.7, v.8, etc.

fireworks and golive!!!  thats all i need

You can also use an older version of MoviePlayer with a newer version of QuickTime in Classic / OS 9 and export to DV streams for free.

As an update to my message before, you no longer need to drop the DV file into the project folder. You can import them straight from iMovie.

Go to File>Import and choose the file you want. Click on Import and it will put it eithe rin the Shelf or in the Movie at the playhead, depending on your preferences.