Last year Adobe unveiled the latest version
of its video editing suite -- now called the Adobe
Production Studio (www.adobe.com/productionstudio).
Built around new versions of Premiere Pro for video
editing and After Effects for motion graphics and
visual effects, the suite also includes new versions of
Encore DVD for DVD authoring and Audition for
professional audio mixing and editing.
Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0
This new collection is all about full
support for the broad range of video formats, from SD and DV
to HDV and HD, with even better integration among the Adobe
tool set, plus the bonus of a significantly improved
interface.
Since the core of our work is in the
Premiere Pro editor, let's highlight some of the most
exciting features in the editing process,.
The first thing you notice when getting
started with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 (www.adobe.com/products/premiere)
is the new common interface design for all the Adobe video
applications, based on the consumer versions of Photoshop
Elements and Premiere Elements. Instead of having
you constantly fiddling with overlapping windows and
floating palettes, the interface uses interlocking panels
that move together and resize proportionally as you adjust
their size, so there's no wasted space or partially
overlapping windows. It's even easier to rearrange the
layout with the new "drop zone" feature -- you can drag and
drop individual windows to either be positioned as a new
panel, or be nested as a tab with a group of windows in an
existing panel.
Otherwise, the Premiere Pro interface should
feel familiar and comfortable, with the same general windows
and controls that you are already used to -- the Project
windows to organize your assets, the Source and
Program windows to view and edit your clips and
sequences, the Timeline window for editing, and
additional windows to access tools including Effects,
Effect Controls, Audio Mixer, Info
properties, and History.
Premiere Pro: Interface
You still can use Window > Workspace
to restore the screen layout to default positions for
different kinds of tasks, or to save your own favorite
layouts. And you can still drag out a tab or a window as a
separate floating palette (i.e., to place on a second
monitor) -- just hold down Ctrl as you drag.
The big improvement for editing in Premiere
Pro is scalable support for the full range of major video
formats, from standard definition to high-def, including DV,
SD, HDV, HDCAM, D5 HD, and Windows Media Video, up to 2k and
4k resolutions (4096 x 4096). Premiere Pro now supports
native HDV capture and editing for lower-cost HD camcorders,
with no format conversion or quality loss. And for higher
quality, Premiere Pro provides native pro HD-SDI support out
of the box through the AJA Video Xena HS real-time encoding
card.
The capture and importing process in
Premiere Pro also works as before. Use File > Capture
to bring up the Capture window to log and capture from tape.
And use File > Import (or just double-click in the
Project window) to import clips and a wide variety of common
formats. Then preview and trim in the Source window, and
then assemble your production as sequences on the Timeline.
Import dialog - file formats
This means you can mix formats on the same
timeline, for example combining DV and HDV footage at 480,
720, 1080 lines, and then edit and preview directly in
Premiere Pro -- with real-time preview as possible based on
the performance of your system.
For high quality results, Premiere Pro now
uses full 32-bit internal color processing, and can increase
performance with GPU-accelerated rendering on new graphics
cards.
Beyond all this HD editing, however, the
coolest new feature in Premiere Pro is the Multi-Cam Monitor
tool for cutting together multi-camera shoots with up to
four cameras. What makes this so effective is the way that
it naturally uses the existing facilities in Premiere Pro to
help you synchronize the shots, cut them together, and then
continue editing the shoot.
First, stack up to four tracks from the
multi-cam shoot in a Timeline. Use all the usual tools to
lay out and preview the clips, including the Toggle Track
Output (eye) icon to view each individual track. If needed,
use the new Synchronize Clips dialog to help
automatically synchronize the clips, by timecode or by
markers that you have inserted, for example at a hand clap.
Assemble Tracks
To use this multi-track timeline as a
multi-cam source in Premiere Pro, you can take advantage of
the ability to create nested timelines (called Sequences).
Create a new master Sequence in the Project window, and drag
the multi-track sequence into it, now nested and displayed
as just one collapsed clip. Now here's the magic:
right-click and select Multi-Camera > Enable to tell
Premiere Pro to treat this sequence as a multi-cam source.
To then cut between the multiple camera
clips, click the flyout menu in the Program monitor to
display the Multi-Camera Monitor view. Premiere then
displays the new Multi-Camera window, showing the up to four
sources on the left, with the currently-selected track
outlined and displayed as the output on the right. To then
edit the shoot, start playback to view the multiple tracks
playing in parallel, and then dynamically switch between the
views by clicking on the sources (or pressing the numeric
keys).
Multi-Cam Editing
After you finish recording, the track in the
Timeline shows cuts at each edit point, just like any other
editing. You can continue reviewing and refining the edit
using the Multi-Camera Monitor, changing the cut points and
source camera. And you can precisely edit the shoot directly
in the Timeline, using the standard tools to adjust edit
points (roll, ripple, slip, slide), and even using the
right-click menu to change the multi-cam source track.
When you've finished editing your
production, Premiere Pro now supports full DVD creation
support right from the timeline. As first used in Premiere
Elements, you can create either an auto-play DVD with no
menus, or a DVD with chapter menus for your clips, based on
customized template designs.
For an auto-play DVD, you can place DVD
markers in the Timeline for chapter points, or use
Auto-Generate to insert markers at edit points, or at
regular time intervals, or evenly along the length of the
sequence. Then use Window > DVD Layout to Preview and
then Burn the DVD. Actually, you can burn directly to Disc,
or to a Folder on hard disk to play with a software player,
or to an ISO Image file to burn copies later (i.e., with
Encore DVD).
Burn DVD
For a menued DVD, use the DVD Layout
window to choose a template graphical design. Adobe provides
a pair of menus for each design, for the main menu and any
scene menus, or you can create your own -- these are just
Photoshop PSD files with special layer names, as used in
Encore DVD.
DVD Templates
You then can customize the selected template
by clicking in the DVD Layout window to reposition the
elements and edit the text. Finally, preview and burn your
disc.
DVD Layout
Besides creating a DVD with a scene menu to
jump to each chapter point, Premiere Pro also provides the
ability to create a disc with multiple movies, each with its
own scene menu and chapter points. To do this, change the
DVD Markers in the Timeline to mark the start of each
separate movie with a Main Menu marker, and the end as a
Stop marker. You can do this in the Effect Controls window
as you work in the DVD Layout window, or directly in the
Timeline.
Of course, there's a lot more that's new and
interesting in Premiere Pro 2.0, but the idea here has been
to highlight some of the more visible and exciting new
features, and show you how they integrate into the
applications that you may already be familiar with.
Adobe has worked hard to bring its video
applications together with a new look, common interface
design, and cross-application integration for moving quickly
and naturally between the different tools for different
kinds of media. The applications are more powerful, more
responsive, more flexible, and more mature. Which also makes
them more fun to use.
So check them out for yourself -- the Adobe
website offers tryout versions of Premiere Pro 2.0, Encore
DVD 2.0, and other applications that you can download and
experiment with for 30 days. Also check the site for
updates, tutorials, support forums, downloads, and other
free resources.
Production Studio Versions
The Standard edition of Production Studio at
$1,199 (estimated street price) includes Premiere Pro 2.0
and After Effects 7.0 Standard for video editing and
effects, plus the latest version of Photoshop CS2. The
Studio also includes the Adobe Bridge media organizer and
viewer (which is shipped with each individual application),
and the Adobe Dynamic Link function to use After Effects
compositions directly in Premiere Pro and Encore DVD
(available only as part of the Studio).
While you can do a lot with Premiere's
built-in audio editing and enhanced DVD authoring
capabilities, you can also step up to the Premium edition at
$1,699, with full After Effects 7.0 Professional, plus
Audition 2.0 and Encore DVD 2.0 for more advanced work, plus
Illustrator CS2.
Adobe also offers a new Video Bundle, with
the full Production Studio plus Macromedia Flash
Professional 8, for $2,099.
Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0
Premiere Pro: Interface
Import dialog - file formats
Assemble Tracks
Multi-Cam Editing
Multi-track Sequence
Burn DVD
DVD Templates
DVD Layout