Adobe Updates Their Creative Cloud Apps

Late last week, Adobe upgraded all their video applications. Programs updated include:

• Premiere Pro CC
• After Effects CC
• SpeedGrade CC
• Prelude CC
• Adobe Media Encoder CC
• Adobe Story

For a list of all the new software and features, click here.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO CC

Since the initial release of the Creative Cloud versions of all Adobe applications, Adobe continues its rapid pace of rolling out updates. The October, 2013, update was the third since launch.

What impresses me most about this update are not the features themselves, though there is a lot to like in this update, but the fact that Adobe is aggressively improving Premiere.

For a long time, Premiere languished in the doldrums of “almost-but-not-quite.” Since the CC release, Premiere can stand with the best. (And, no, I’m not about to define what “best” means.)

New with this version are:

• Support for multiple GPUs
• The ability to render multiple sequences at once.
• Smoother transfers between Premiere and SpeedGrade. This “Direct-Link” allows SpeedGrade to open a Premiere project, including multiple layers, for color grading, then send it back to Premiere without requiring rendering first.
• Enhanced timeline editing
• Improved multicam editing
• Improved closed captioning
• The ability to move timeline markers when you insert, delete or ripple trim a clip
• The ability to drag markers to new timeline locations
• Sequences now display icons of their content in the Project panel.

The list of new features is long and, rather than turn this into a laundry list, check out this link for a detailed list of all the new features;

For a list of what’s in this version, click here.

ADOBE PRELUDE

For me, the more exciting news is at opposite ends of the post-production process: Prelude for ingest and Media Encoder for compression.

I find Prelude be a very exciting concept. By separating transcoding and import from the editing system, this opens up the opportunity for teams of people to easily work on the same project.

Face it, the prospect of reviewing hundreds of hours of ANYTHING is daunting. By allowing producers, assistant editors, production assistants, even wandering passers-by to review, log, and capture footage is a huge step forward. Plus, it is very easy to send Prelude files directly to Premiere on the same computer or across the country.

With this release, Prelude adds still image formats to the list of formats it can ingest. These include:

• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• .BMP
• .JPG
• .PNG
• .TIFF

Metadata, markers, and conforming are also enhanced.

If you’ve been holding off learning Prelude because, well, “Premiere does that,” you are missing the ability to get help on your projects. For a complete list of what’s new in Prelude, click here.

ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER

My compression tool of choice is Apple Compressor. It is inexpensive, works fast, and does what I need it to do. Over the years, I’ve tried to love Media Encoder but it just didn’t do enough fast enough or well enough for me to consider using it for production work.

Until now.

The new version is faster because it supports GPU rendering; more flexible because it supports what Adobe calls “Automated Image Processing,” and what I call “filters.”

Now, inside AME we can add watermarks, timecode burn-ins, and color LUTs without having to first open the file in Premiere. This makes the prospect of a stand-alone compression system much more feasible.

In coming weeks, I’m looking forward to putting AME though its paces to see what it can really do. Because it is bundled with the rest of the Creative Cloud applications, the price is perfect.

For details on what Adobe Media Encoder can do now, click here:

SUMMARY

When I talked with the folks at Adobe prior to this release, they were very excited about what these new versions could do. I can understand why. They are developing substantive new features at a whirlwind pace. If you haven’t downloaded the update, give it a try and discover for yourself just how far Adobe has come. Our industry is not standing still, and neither is Adobe.

With this release, Adobe is showing some really great work!

As always, let me know what you think.

Larry