Hm..

1. There are seperate windows for preview and display. You set in/out points in the preview window and then drag the clip onto the timeline

2. The timeline is divided into seperate video and audio sections.

3. The are not auto-crossfades. You must butt two clips together and then drag a dissolve from the transitions menu onto the jion and then adjust from there.

4. Not the same degree of audio control in the editor.

5. Have to import clips into bins.

There are a couple of starting pointers...

ciao,

marks

I'd go to Lynda.com and get a 1 month subscription for 25.00. The Premiere instructor for CS3 is great and the videos are in small chunks so you can find what you're looking for quickly.

Good luck,

Marc

Why not just tell the person you're not familiar with the application?

The best help you can give him is to uninstall premiere from his pc, download Vegas and show him that.

Hadn't used it for oh, 8 years, been using Vegas in the interim.
Forced into it now, took less than 30secs to get started.
Looks more serious than Vegas but so does FCP and Avid.
So what, they're all NLEs so don't be intimidated, the process is the same in any of them. They all sort of want you to work their way but mostly nothing will blow up if you don't. PPro does seem to like you to get the project properties sorted first, does like a fair hunk of resources and does like to take over things more so than Vegas.

From my experience in this kind of situation all the help that might be needed is a fresh pair of eyes. I've given help to a FCP guy and I've never used it. Managed to get iMovie to fly for a high school student in the wee hours of the morning too.

Personally when someone asks me for help with something I've never used before I usually leap at the chance, be it editing video or building something. One things for certain, in this game you've got to talk to lots of different people and the odds are pretty high they will not be using the same tools as you, pays to know the basics of all of them.

Funny thing is, the most difficult thing I found myself teaching someone to use, cold, was VMS.

Bob.

Thanks for the link to Lynda.com. I signed up on the spot- what a fantastic service and just $25 for the month in which you get learning.

Knowing Vegas, Lynda.com conversion to PP takes about 2.5 hours.

Mike

That's a great site, and it also gives you a chance just to see what other programs and technologies are about, even if you aren't going to use them.

Rob Mack

I've found VTC to be rather useful for me.