New, Small-but-Powerful Features in Adobe Premiere Pro CC (April, 2019)

Adobe announced a variety of new features in the April update to their media software, released  just before the start of the 2019 NAB Show. The one that got the biggest buzz was Content-Aware Fill in After Effects. Which is cool, I guess. But I don’t use After Effects, so I’m less wowed than others.

However, Premiere adds several very exciting features that are REALLY useful, even if they don’t generate headlines. Let me show you some of the smaller ones – the ones you’ll use everyday that didn’t get the big headlines:

• Graphics
• Rulers & Guides
• Auto-ducking
• New View Menu
• User Voice

There are many other features that I’ll cover in upcoming articles. Visit Adobe’s website for the complete list.

GRAPHICS

Big changes are coming with the next major release of the macOS. I’ve already talked about the removal of support for QuickTime 7 codecs here.

However, in addition to codecs, there’s also the issue of GPUs. Premiere is now aggressively warning about unsupported NVidia GPUs when you launch the software. In my case, I’m writing this newsletter on a 2013 iMac with an nVidia GPU, so this is a supported Apple implementation. Still, if you are running an older system which you’ve personally updated to nVidia, be very, VERY cautious about updating to the next macOS.

We’ll learn more about what’s coming in the opening keynote at the upcoming WWDC Monday, June 3. For now, you don’t need to do anything except be aware that changes are coming.

The really big news for me, though, is Adobe’s support for eGPUs and dual GPUs. This means that Adobe’s performance is dramatically faster especially using today’s state-of-the-art GPUs.

“Better load balancing across multiple GPUs, including eGPUs, provides faster rendering and exporting, especially with professional codecs, like Apple ProRes, RED, and others – on both macOS and Windows.” However, “these load balancing changes do not affect playback, which does not use multiple GPUs.” (Adobe Help)

To make the most of your GPU, be sure to set graphics rendering to Metal. This provides the fastest performance and will be supported by Apple moving forward. (OpenCL has been deprecated by Apple, and won’t be available in the future.)

NOTE: Adobe moved this setting out of Preferences with this release and into the screen you use to create new projects.

As well, the Essential Graphics panel has several new tweaks:

• Support for multiple strokes, and strokes now have styles
• Adding text now comes with its own background
• We can now group shapes and apply masks
• Automatic font syncing when you load a project with missing fonts

And, while it isn’t new with this version, I really like how easy it is to apply drop shadows to text, using the settings at the bottom of the Essential Graphics panel.

RULERS AND GUIDES

In talking with Patrick Palmer, product manager for Premiere last week at NAB, I learned that this was one of the most user-requested features for Premiere: the ability to display rulers and guides in Premiere. These work just like rulers and guides in Photoshop.

To turn them on, click the Wrench icon in the lower-right corner of the Program panel. Then, in the popup menu, select Rulers, Guides or both. To create a guide, drag it out, or down, from a ruler.

NOTE: You can also display these using the new View menu. More on that in a minute.

To remove Guides, go back to the Wrench and choose Clear Guides.

“You can also color code guides for different purposes and save guide setups for specific tasks, to ensure consistent positioning for graphics elements like lower thirds, logo placements, and more. After you save your guides you can export them to use later. You can also import guides created in After Effects and bring them into Premiere Pro.” (Adobe Help)

NOTE: I should also mention that you can snap objects, both video and text, to guides, to each other, or to tracked items.

AUTO-DUCKING

Automatically ducking (reducing the volume) of a music clip when someone is speaking was a big new feature in Audition in the last update. This time, it moved into Premiere.

To get this to work, switch to the Audio workspace, then:

• Select all dialog clips in the Timeline and click the Dialog button in the Essential Sound panel. Make adjustments if you want, but changing any of these settings is not necessary for auto-ducking to work.
• Select the music clip(s) who’s volume you want to automatically adjust.
• Click the Music button in the Essential Sound panel

• Check the Ducking checkbox, then, adjust the Duck Amount (to adjust level) and Fades (to adjust how quickly the audio changes levels) until the audio mix sounds right to your ear.

NOTE: As long as levels for individual clips, tracks or the total mix, don’t exceed 0 dB, whatever sounds right to you is right.

• Click the Generate Keyframes button to create the keyframes. Whenever you make a change, click this button again to modify the keyframes.

Poof! Instant level adjustment. Even better, this creates standard audio keyframes which can be manually adjusted as you see fit. In other words, you are not locked into anything, except a faster way to work.

THE NEW VIEW MENU

Premiere now has a new View menu which gathers all the Program monitor commands into a single place. This also allows you to lock guides, or save a guide layout as a template for future projects.

I like how this simplifies making display changes to the Program monitor.

NOTE: As with most settings in Premiere, you can create custom keyboard shortcuts for any of these new options. Here’s how.

USER VOICE

Another big change is not even in Premiere. It is the User Voice website. Adobe has always listened to user comments. But, now, they’ve made it MUCH easier to share your opinions with Adobe and read what others are saying as well.

You’ll find User Voice here.

Adobe actively encourages your feedback. Take advantage of their interest.

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