New dawn for Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe has teased significant updates for all of its “Creative Cloud” applications including veteran video editor Premiere Pro.
The new version, which will be rolled out as part of the usual continuous updates for CC subscribers, is to include:
1. Linked round-tripping from editor to other apps such as Speedgrade.
2. Improved masking and tracking for effects
3. Greater – and faster – support for UltraHD resolutions and beyond.
The first bullet will hardly seem revolutionary to users of other NLEs including Sony Vegas, which has long supported direct export of clips to other apps whilst remaining at least partly within the NLE environment (for example to Magic Bullet Looks via OFX) without the need for rendering either way.
Where Adobe goes one better is that the entire edit timeline – not just individual clips – gets transferred to Speedgrade for colouring before being returned for any further editing. This two-way process can be repeated as often as necessary, presumably (we say as the full details have not been explained) without losing any timeline information in the process such as you might if exporting in XML to DaVinci Resolve or the like.
Bullet 2 is something that the aforementioned Vegas is crying out for and Sony would to well to emulate. Adding separate masks to multiple individual effects on a single timeline clip provides the ability to selectively alter different areas of an image. Adding to this enhancement, Premiere Pro will also enable those masks to be motion-tracked automatically to the image.
Users of Grass Valley Edius are the ones to snigger this time round, as it’s had per-effect masking for ages though not, we seem to recall, with motion tracking.
Now if only someone would take the next step and provide separate effects chains per clip with per-chain masking, that would be ideal…
And finally, Bullet 3, enhanced Ultra HD performance. Well, everyone’s at it now so this is no great surprise but Adobe say their “greater than Ultra HD” timeline performance will be silky smooth, thanks to even greater use of whatever graphics processor is on board the editing PC.
After many years of playing catch-up to Apple’s Final Cut and perhaps even being considered by some edit snobs as a glorified piece of home software, Adobe really have begun pushing the boat out in their drive to retake the professional market including broadcast. If you can stand their requirement for monthly subscriptions then Premiere appears to be re-establishing itself as the de facto PC/Mac editing suite.
Take a look at www.adobe.com for more info.