Edius Pro 4
Edius major strengths are the speed of the editing, its reliability and the realtime performance. It is probably true to say you could do a job faster and more reliably in Edius than any other editor.
It is also normally the first program to support new formats - like AVCHD or Sony XDCam-EX, both supported by the current version, 4.6.
Click here if you want a full run down on what has been added in version 4.
Edius Neo, Edius Pro and Edius broadcast
There are three main versions of Edius, Neo, Pro and Broadcast. All share the same interface and most of the same features. Neo is the entry level version with support for HDV and AVCHD editing, but with some of the Pro features missing. Click here for a full list of the differences.
Edius Pro and Edius broadcast have the same list of features; the major difference between them is the video formats supported - Broadcast supports Panasonic DVC Pro HD (as used on P2 cards), Sony XDCam and XDCam-EX and Grass Valley JPEG2000, the Pro version does not. You can buy any version of Edius and upgrade to a higher one when needed.
Hardware support
Edius will talk to DV and HDV cameras via a standard FireWire. It can also output more in real time at full quality through FireWire than any other editing program. There is also a range of hardware available to add different types of analogue and digital i/o to Edius - some of these cards, the Edius NX and SP, only work with Edius Pro or Broadcast, and not with Neo. One of the things these cards add to Edius is a proper component HD output - very important when working in HD because you cannot transmit HD live down a FireWire, so without one of these cards you cannot actually see your edits at full quality when editing.
Click here for full information on these cards.
HD Support
Edius was the first program to properly support HDV editing, and supports more formats than most, including JVC’s 720p @ 25 fps, a format which even now is still not supported by Avid Xpress Pro/Media Composer..
HDV Editing
When editing HDV footage you can either choose to edit the "native" format, which is what most programs do, or convert it into another format. As the native format is MPEG2, where most of the frames are only bits of frames and you need to look at several frames nearby to make a complete frame, it is quite hard work. You need a very good computer to achieve any realtime effects and in fact most programs cannot manage anything in realtime with HDV footage and have to playback at a lower preview quality. Edius does a better job than most at editing native HDV and is only really beaten in performance by Adobe Premiere when used with an Matrox RT.X2 or Axio.
However Edius can almost wipe the floor with every other program for "realtimeness" if you choose to edit HDV in Canopus’ own format called Canopus HQ. This takes 4-5 times the amount of space of native HDV files but is much easier and nicer to use. So you can have multiple layers of effects, slow motion, even keyframmed so that it changes speed during a shot, colour correction and blurs all running without rendering at full HDV quality. The conversion from the MPEG created in the camera to the video used on the computer is done while capturing, so you do not lose any time at all. All you do is plug in the camera and start capturing, then when finished start editing.
When it comes to getting the footage out of the computer and back to tape or Blu-ray Edius is also faster than other programs. It will typically take and hour to 1½ hours to make an hours worth of footage back into the right format for recording to tape or Blu-ray. Most software would take 4-5 hours. Again the only set-up that comes close to the same performance is Premiere Pro with a Matrox card.
AVCHD
This new and highly compressed HD format is not supported by many programs at present. Like HDV it is stored mainly as bits of frames, but is more highly compressed and so you can get the same quality picture into a smaller file. This makes it a good format for cameras that record to memory sticks, SD cards or hard drives. It does make it very hard to edit. Edius can load the footage happily and will let you edit it in its native form, although because it is highly compressed it is not great to use, and updating takes time. Again it is much better to take the native footage and transcode it to Canopus HQ format. Edius supplies a utility to do just this - simply load up the clips into the program and they all get converted to HQ for decent editing.
Panasonic DVC Pro HD & Sony XDCam
These two professional formats also record to cards or discs. They are not nearly as compressed as AVCHD or even HDV so are easier to edit. You can transcode to Canopus HQ if you prefer, although it is not necessary unless you want the best performance you can get. These formats are only supported by the broadcast version of Edius. You can load the files, edit them and then put them back to the XDCam or Panasonic media in the correct format, or, of course, make a Blu-ray of SD DVD.
In some variations they record proxy files to the media as well as full res files. Edius will see these and let you copy the proxies onto your system and start editing straight away. While you are doing this Edius copies the full resolutions files from the camera to the computer and replaces the proxy files. This means you can start editing really quickly with the low res files and they slowly become full resolution while you are working!
Interface
The main interface of Edius is similar to most editing programs. You have a source and destination window, a project window where you can organise all your clips, different windows showing all your available effects, markers and information about the clips and a timeline where the video is laid out. Here how we can have several sequences open at once with Edius 4 and sequences can be put inside other sequences for multi-layered effects.
The timeline can have the audio either with the video clip or it can be separated into different tracks either just by dragging or using Edius' track mapping. With the latter you can decide to split a stereo track onto two mono sound clips and route them to different tracks or add them as a stereo pair.
It has been designed to be tidy - when you capture there is no new window, the player window becomes the capture window.
EFFECTS
Edius may not have as many effects as other programs - it lacks track or image mattes, has no lens flares of garbage mattes, and some effects are not keyframable - but what it does all the basics and it does them very well. It has one of the best realtime chromakeyers available, excellent high quality picture in picture effects, nice blending modes (Premiere does not have these!), good film-like looks through the old movie filter (again not something that comes with Premiere or most other editing programs), and colour correction that quickly and easily gets the shot looking like you want.
Version 4 introduced keyframable slow motion - which you can apply both to picture and sound - and which is both completely realtime and excellent quality. Click here to learn more about Edius' range of effects.
Titling
Edius Pro 4 has three titling programs, although not all three come with every Edius bundle.
Quick Titler which, as the name suggests is good for making simple titles quickly.
Title Motion Pro - this is a very comprehensive and high quality titler, although not the most intuitive to use. It does 2D and 3D titles and can even animated the words character by character if you want. Some of the results we have achieved with TMP are simply amazing!
Both Title Motion Pro and QuickTitler can produce smooth scrolling and crawling titles in realtime. When you make an animated titles with Title Motion Pro with more complex animation it has to be rendered before you can add it to the timeline, although this process is still pretty fast.
Title Motion Pro is supplied with most Edius bundles but does not come with Edius Neo, or the DVX. It has also been taken out of the Creative Suite bundle and replaced by ProDad Heroglyph
ProDad Heroglyph - ProDad's program does excellent high quality titles and can animated on a character by character basis. It does not do 3D titles, however, it scores over Title Motion Pro by being a lot easier to use. ProDad Heroglyph comes with the Creative Suite bundle or can be bought separately and works with all version of Edius.
Plug-ins
Edius has reasonable plug-in support.
Boris FX and Red plug into Edius to allow you to do more complex effects and compositing.
ProDad's range of effects also plug-in to Edius and add a large range of excellent and useful features. Adorage is a range of fancy transitions which ships with some versions of Edius. Soundsoap, which also ships with some versions, is a great audio plug-in for noise reduction.
Click here for more information on the plug-ins available.
Stability
One of the biggest advantages for Edius is its stability. To say you will never have a crash is not something we would like to promise, however, many of our customers say just that!
Audio editing
The audio editing is comparable with Adobe Premiere 6, but does not have the sample level editing or surround sound support of Premiere Pro. There is a good voiceover tool, and excellent support for VST plug-ins which means there is a huge range of possible add-on effects available.
Output
When it comes to getting your footage out of Edius it can handle just about any format including converting PAL to NTSC and vice versa. This is all using ProCoder Express which you can either configure yourself or use the wizard to let ProCoder set the settings for you.
Output from Edius is faster than most programs. For example a 30 minute wedding which we needed to output to HD Windows Media format took 5 hours in Edius (using a single 3.4Ghz processor) and 12 hours from Avid Liquid!
Making a DVD
Edius has a DVD creation section built-into the program. You add makers on the timeline and these become the chapter markers on the DVD. The menus themselves can be thoroughly customised, although you cannot use video backgrounds or have video buttons. The menus consist of a main menu, followed by a chapter menu for every title on the DVD. Beyond this you cannot add a more complex menu structure, or have slideshows or other audio tracks and subtitles.
The DVD writing part of Edius does do single and dual layer DVDs and 4:3 or widescreen menus. It does not write to Blu-ray discs currently. Click here to read more about Edius DVD Writing.
Making Blu-ray
If you want to make a Blu-ray disc with Edius you need to use another program, like Adobe Encore, Sonic DVDit or Ulead Movie Factory.
Movie Factory comes with the Edius Creative Suite for writing Blu-ray discs, or you can buy Adobe Encore for £569 +VAT or £199 +VAT if you have a previous version of Encore or Premiere.
How does Edius compare to the competition?
This is a question we get asked a lot. The biggest reasons you would choose Edius is for its reliability and speed. It also handles new video formats quicker than other programs. Edius lacks some of the features (big and small) found in other editing programs, and does not have the integration with other programs that are available in the Adobe Production Studio, for example. But then it does have some useful features not found in other programs - for example you can rip video off non-copyright DVDs and re-edit them in Edius. It is great for large and complex projects and its very unlikely you will get a crash with it!
Click here for an in depth comparison between Edius and Premiere Pro 3 .
