Adobe Reveals Next Generation Video Software

Posted on by Larry

UPDATE: Monday afternoon (4/8) our podcast, Digital Production Buzz, will interview Bill Roberts, Director of Video Product Management for Adobe. You can hear this interview LIVE at 2:00pm Pacific Time. Learn more at NABShowBuZZ.com

This evening, Adobe revealed the next generation of its video software, announcing new versions of Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, AuditionPrelude, SpeedGrade, Story, and Media Encoder. (If your favorite product was not on this list, don’t worry, it didn’t die, it just wasn’t part of this announcement.)

KEY NEW FEATURES


In this announcement, Adobe did not announce release dates, pricing, or even final names. With the 2013 NAB Show coming up, Adobe wanted to showcase their new software, while still taking some time to wrap up development and get final versions ready to release.

Let’s take a look at some of the new goodies.

ADOBE ANYWHERE

Adobe announced Adobe Anywhere last January. What this provides is a collaborative environment where all media resides on a server, while editorial groups can access this same media and projects via the network.

What makes this new technology especially attractive is that editors don’t have be in the same facility. In fact, Adobe stresses that this system doesn’t even require proxies, while the master files remain on the server. This allows collaboration without regard to geographic boundaries. Media can be shared between different applications, run by different people, in different geographic areas; without relinking media, without transferring files and with complete version control.

For one-man-bands, this is no big deal. For workgroups, this provides a whole new definition of collaboration. Best of all, it integrated into the next version of Premiere Pro, Prelude, or After Effects. In other words, once you upgrade to the new versions of each of these, you can edit stand-alone, or with Adobe Anywhere using the same software.

The initial release of Adobe Anywhere is targeted at the Enterprise (read, large workgroups) and a PDF listing of recommended hardware can be found here.

NOTE: The only downside to Adobe Anywhere that I’ve seen so far is that it requires a Windows server in order to work. I am sure there will be minimum network bandwidth considerations as well.

AODBE PREMIERE PRO

I spend about a third of my time editing in Premiere, the rest is split between Final Cut Pro X and Final Cut Pro 7.

What impresses me most about this new version is speed. Adobe Anywhere is fully integrated. The Mercury playback engine is faster, and supports more GPUs. There is also improved support for importing Avid and Final Cut projects using AAF and XML.

Adobe has continued streamlining the user interface, with more customization is available.

Relinking missing media is faster and more intelligent. Audio control is improved, and Adobe added the Lumetri Deep Color Engine which allows adding LUTs and other color looks quickly and easily to your projects while still inside Premiere.

ADOBE AUDITION

Audition, which has become my daily go-to audio application has seen a lot of improvement.

The entire app is now 64-bit, allowing for much larger and much faster audio projects. They’ve improved the interface, making is faster, easier to customize (and it was already really customizable), with more keyboard shortcuts. Favorites were beefed up with improved automation and an enhanced Favorites panel.

Two new features are amazing: Sound Remover (which reminds me of Sony Creative Software’s Spectral Layers) can remove unwanted sounds from a clip, such as a siren, without removing other sounds, such as dialog. This is very, very close to magic.

The other really hot new feature is Preview Editor, which allows you to see a before and after on the same waveform, before you actually make a change. This prevents that “duh!” feeling that occurs right after you’ve done something stupid.

NOTE: Audition will not, initially, support Adobe Anywhere.

AFTER EFFECTS

The big news here is a Live 3D Pipeline integration with Cinema 4D. Create a shape in Cinema 4D, bring it into After Effects for lighting, positioning, and compositing into the final effect.

On the list of improved effects is the Refine Edge tool for rotoscoping, Warp Stabilizer VFX lets you choose which object in a shot you want to stabilize (which is just WAY cool!), improved camera tracking, and a new Pixel Motion Blur.

Support for Adobe Anywhere will be added to After Effects later this year.

SPEEDGRADE

The big news with SpeedGrade is an improved user interface, the ability to load SpeedGrade looks into Premiere, and the ability to automatically match shots and check color continuity between scenes.

STORY

The big news with Story is integration with Prelude. You can now write your script, shoot your script, then import your script into Prelude to make finding shots using text searches a whole lot faster.

You can now assign permissions to shared scripts so that your collaborators only see, or correct, what you want them to see or correct.

Shooting scripts can be automatically generated, script syncing is faster, reports are dynamic (meaning they are adjusted on the fly as new information becomes available),

Like I said, the Adobe theme of speed is everywhere – and Story is a huge beneficiary of this.

PRELUDE

I’ve already mentioned the improved integration between Story and Prelude. By combining the script text from Story with the speech recognition that Adobe migrated from  Premiere, you can quickly match text to transcript to find exactly the clips you want using text searches.

Files can now be renamed on ingest. Gone are the days when you need to figure out what “Clip 054” actually is. Improved tagging and customized templates means less typing, but more essential clip information captured easily.

The application is now 64-bit, ingests faster with less setup, and allows you to specify where you want ingested files stored.

One of the features I like most about Prelude is that it allows you to create a rough-cut that can be instantly sent to Premiere for editing. This allows a production assistant to create a quick selects reel, allowing the editor can concentrate on shaping those selects into a story.

NOTE: When used with Adobe Anywhere, Prelude can be used as an ingest tool to get files into the Anywhere production pipeline. You use also use it as a logging and organizational tool. However, when used with Adobe Anywhere, the initial release of Prelude won’t support creating rough cuts.

MEDIA ENCODER

Media Encoder has been updated to support the new features in these applications, but hasn’t changed much from the current version.

ADOBE ENCORE

Adobe did not mention anything about Adobe Encore in their announcements this evening. However, do not assume from this that the application is dead.

WHAT ADOBE DIDN’T ANNOUNCE

Adobe did not announce pricing, a release date, a version number, or when we can order the product. Tonight was a “reveal” so that Adobe can show off these products next week at the NAB Show.

They also didn’t announce anything else about any other software.

SUMMARY

All in all, these new announcements from Adobe show that they are working VERY hard to improve the applications that most of us use every day.

I am already in the process of revising all our Adobe training and will have new training available on, or shortly after, these new applications ship.

If you are going to the 2013 NAB Show, or the Supermeet, you can see these new applications in action.

I’m looking forward to the release of the final versions. What was already good, just got a whole lot better.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Larry


9 Responses to Adobe Reveals Next Generation Video Software

  1. Leo Hans says:

    As always, is good to know all companies are pushing forward.
    Personally, I haven’t tried Premiere CS6 but for curiosity, but I felt it was more of the same compared with the new approach Apple took with FCPX.

    I would like to see some pros and cons comparison between PrPro and FCPX from your point of view since you has gone deep in both NLEs before doing both training video series.

    Yesterday I have tried to ingest Alexa media to FCPX 10.0.8 to test the option to display LogC color space and I was surprised for good. In FCP7 this required a plugin + heavy render, and now it was just a checkbox in the metadata (on by default).

    The full res ran perfectly smooth even with a chroma key applied on my MacbookPro Late 2011.

    The Proxy conversion was still fast and the best: instead of converting the file with color applied (like RED raw) the proxy file still have the option to use LogC or not with the same checkbox.

    (I guess PremierePro will have something like this too since Alexa is a major player).

  2. Paul says:

    Larry,

    The addition of the TC Electronic Radar Loudness Meter in both Premiere Pro and Audition is a pretty big deal ..

    -paul.

  3. Paul Adams says:

    Larry, can you confirm the new Premiere and After Effects support FCPX XML? i.e. no more having to massage FCPX XML through Xto7 to get it into the Adobe products?

  4. Mel Gioco says:

    This shows how committed Adobe is to pro video editing. Its been almost 2 years since FCP X launched and the only updates released have been bug fixes and implementation of features that should have been there from the beginning. Creative suite is a huge business for Adobe; FCP X is just a tiny little, insignificant piece of the Apple empire.

  5. Yury says:

    Mel Gioco:

    I’ve just wanted to write the same thing.

    Looks like Apple almost totally lost in a full cycle video production. But for sure it still has not bad positions in i’d say “consumer ve” or “stand-alone ve”. I think the MacPro’s win/fail would play important role in this game.

    The time Adobe would hit upon an idea to make two versions of interface in PremierePro – Basic and Advanced they could annex some more clients.

    Yury

  6. Leo Hans says:

    @Mel Gioco

    Both are committed to pro video editing but with different view of what Pro Video means today and in the future.

    What Apple has done in these two years was impressive. You need to hands on FPCX following Larry’s or Steve Martin’s tutorials (both are great). Once you got the concept, FCPX is amazing.

    For reference, I am an editor since 1995 (eighteen years now) and worked with Avid MC and FCP7, so I really know the benefits of track based editing, but they fall behind FCPX’s Approach.

    Adobe products are great too. There are pros and cons on both sides. The best way is to deeply know how to work with PremierePro AND FCPX, not just one. That way you are able to choose the best option for every particular project.

  7. Karl Soule says:

    Hi All,

    Premiere Pro added native ARRIRAW support in CS6. Support for adjusting between LogC / Rec709 and adjusting some additional RAW parameters like Tint were added in a free update at the IBC show in Sept 2012. Here’s a video from the ARRI channel that explains it:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cldxyrMHy7s

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