Premiere Pro CS6 announced

Premiere Pro CS has just been announced, in time for NAB.

[success.adobe.com]

Some awesome developments for the FCP7 lover - Adobe has been listening hard to the switchers - well worth checking out.

There are a ton of new improvements that users will love, but there were just enough core editing fails in the system that made my editors choose MC6 over CS6. The audio mixer being Track Based with no option to go Clip Based was one of the bigger ones. We were really hoping they would make that happen, but it didn't.

But overall, I think folks will be very impressed and happy with CS6. The interface is a lot cleaner, there is less clutter.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

They actually have trimming now.

- Justin Barham -

And a bunch of other cool things like adjustment layers, warp stabiliser, rolling shutter repair, unlimited multicam and more. I've been playing with it for a while and although it's still got a few small stumbling blocks, on the whole it's quite an amazing upgrade to 5.5, and, as they say, feels a bit like FCP8.

Here's some excellent free training videos by Todd Kopriva for those interested.

[www.video2brain.com]

>They actually have trimming now.

Not just that, also Prelude, which looks like Avid Medialog. I hope the notion that Premiere is only good for short form work will be banished for good.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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> >They actually have trimming now.
>
> Not just that, also Prelude, which looks like Avid
> Medialog. I hope the notion that Premiere is only
> good for short form work will be banished for
> good.

Unfortunately the media management as a whole in Premiere Pro is still crappy to non-existant and needs a LOT of work. Prelude was interesting when we started to play with it during testing, but it wasn't all that useful for me so I stopped working with it.

Great concept and I hope they keep this going as it could turn into quite the tool.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Thanks for the honest assessment, Walter. I haven't really tried out Premiere's media management, but Jeff was mentioning that Premiere can't count, but I can't say that I have ever really trusted Premiere for rock solid workflow.

My current FCP prep work for reality shows consists of trucking lots of footage through Compressor to generate offline rushes and proxy reference files. With a few machines on quick clusters and a SAN, the transcoding is pretty quick for most formats. Then it is down to logging and getting sync maps and multi-clipping the rushes.

Some of the general complaints I've heard about Avid is the time it takes to import rushes, and that it bogs down the machine because it's a foreground process. Sorenson Squeeze Pro lets you transcode rushes into Avid media, although I'm not sure if it preserves metadata such as timecode and it certainly does not read the time stamps on DSLR footage. In the Avid world, I'm hoping for some kind of tool to speed up consolidating/transcoding the rushes, on top of handling the prep work.

The Prelude concept looks potentially very useful, and I can see a whole bunch of future possibilities- having a cloud based MAM system for real time access to proxy rushes for the story producers, sharing log and script notes via cloud, etc..



www.strypesinpost.com

The 'can't count' thing has been addressed, but yeah, the media management side is still not rock solid. My favorite things are no transcoding and no freaking rendering, the fact that it feels almost like FCP under your fingertips, and the ability to instantly see any window full screen. Oh, that, and knowing that Adobe interacts with its customer base to explain where they are headed.

This is a very sexy release. Its a big jump for me as i have been 50/50 on PP & FCP through tens of projects.

I was xml'ing to fcp so that i could use color but now they have speed grade which looks/feels a lot like BM Looks.

I have not seen any info on compatibility with FX Factory or even if they improved the transitions at all. I hope they did cause some of the plugs i have in FCP are not friendly to PP but they are priceless in use.

The other thing i i have ran across is that the dynamic link works at 3+ degrees as you can go from PP to Speed Grade to AE and back to PP for a final. Hope it works that way with audio also. Ae was not the friendliest dynamic link partner to anything other than PP, PS, and AI. But then again i never tried it any other way but to/from Audition.
I would love to go from PP > SeedG > Ae > Audition and back to PP and still be able to adjust each step.

PS, which was already naturally sexy has gotten a better outfit and some physical training. Its STRONGER and smarter.

I will have the precious Masters Suit ASAP. Although with this upgrade, it is really starting to feel like i am leaving the NLE i started with. (Sappy Nostalgia Moment)

OH YEAH, I think that the ATI 6770 can be used by mercury now via OpenCL.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Premiere Pro CS6 - the Conan editors aren't kidding when they say it's FCP 8 - incredibly responsive - takes anything you throw at it - FCP7 keyboard option has you editing with your eyes closed (well many folks who view my final product suspected that all along) If you are a whiz at FCP7 - it will take no time getting comfortable with this. Really impressed.

Walter and Jude - curious as to what the Media Management shortcomings are -

A few real world scenarios:

Consolidate and transcode a project (either rushes in selected bins or sequences) to edit on a separate workstation. Let's say you want to cut on the road on a laptop and you don't want to lug gigantic RAIDs along with you. Or if you want to pass an episode to another editor for offline edits.

Try offline editing a multicam show (work offline in ProRes Proxy or DNxHD36). Then try batch re-linking your P2 or XDCAM EX mags or to your ProRes rushes in Premiere. This is quite common for multicam shows, because your storage or your machine may not be fast enough to deal with everything in high resolution.

Alternatively, consolidate/transcode a sequence to something else. Let's say you want to send a sequence shot on RED to your graphics guy who wants it in Prores.



www.strypesinpost.com

>>Let's say you want to send a sequence shot on RED to your graphics guy who wants it in Prores.<<

Well, you can just copy paste to a ProRes sequence for that one, but the relinking def needs work. I haven't had much trouble myself because I haven't been changing workstations, and I'm already fastidious about where my media is, but it's a known issue for Premiere.

>Well, you can just copy paste to a ProRes sequence for that one, but the relinking def needs work.

Yea, but that does nothing to the media unless you export a QT movie, and you don't want to send a flattened QT movie to the graphics people. You want a folder of rushes with handles and an XML/EDL/AAF.



www.strypesinpost.com

Andy Field Wrote:
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> Walter and Jude - curious as to what the Media
> Management shortcomings are -

There really isn't any. Under the hood there's some real shortcomings in the media management as a whole. I was hoping to run some very large projects on there, but I'm not certain all the media would re-connect correctly. And then media reconnection is not very good either if you have to do it manually.

There are a host of other things I'm waiting to see addressed, but I'm waiting to finish article until the final product ships. Some minor things may still change before the public version ships.

CS6 is a major step forward and they've done a great job. I think what is released in 2013 will be the solid NLE that addresses our core concerns as well as they've addressed all the new features they keep adding to it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Ah true. It's media agnostic, so any conversions happen on export. I have in the back of my head that there is a pipeline for this, but I can't remember what it is - dpx sequences? Maybe that's only for SpeedGrade. It's not ProRes though, since that belongs to Apple.

It is a major improvement though, and very simple to get started with. It seems the logical path for me, since I really dislike the rigidity of Avid. I haven't seen Smoke close up yet, though.

>It's not ProRes though, since that belongs to Apple.

They can do ProRes. I don't see any reason why not. Premiere can render to Prores, so I don't see any reason why it can't transcode to Prores and keep accurate timecode and reel data.

Also, Project Manager has no search function, and as Walter mentioned, I'm not certain if it will let you know when there is a properties conflict (wrong clip duration, wrong reel names, etc).

At the moment (5.5), Project Manager seems to only consolidate and trim selected sequences or consolidate everything in a project. And unlike FCP, where you can open multiple project files, you can't do so in PPro, so you can't create a new project, pop everything you want into one project, then save that new project. Essentially this makes an FCP project function like an Avid bin. What you can do in Premiere, however, is to import another Premiere project into your Premiere project, which is okay, except when you have large projects. Then it feels like a chore.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >It's not ProRes though, since that belongs to
> Apple.
>
> They can do ProRes. I don't see any reason why
> not. Premiere can render to Prores, so I don't see
> any reason why it can't transcode to Prores and
> keep accurate timecode and reel data.

Keep in mind Premiere Pro cannot create ProRes files other than to use Adobe Media Encoder. For instance if you want to capture to ProRes from tape in Premiere Pro you can't. You would need to use something like the AJA VTR XChange to do so.

So I'm not sure what the deal is with SpeedGrade right now and ProRes. I DO know that for now, everything is converted to DPX when you Send from Premiere to SpeedGrade because that's about all they could do in the six months they've had since they got the application.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

>Keep in mind Premiere Pro cannot create ProRes files other than to use Adobe
>Media Encoder.

If you buy Compressor or Motion (assuming you dont already have FCP), you can render (create preview files) to Prores in a QT wrapper from within PPro, you can render to Prores in AE, but there is no consolidate/transcode option to anything, not ProRes, not 1:1, not Uncompressed. This part baffles me.

>if you want to capture to ProRes from tape in Premiere Pro you can't. You would
>need to use something like the AJA VTR XChange to do so.

That's interesting, but I guess Adobe doesn't want to get their hands dirty with real time Prores acquisition between various 3rd party capture cards and 3rd party codec in 3rd party media container (QT). This would get pretty problematic very fast.

>I DO know that for now, everything is converted to DPX

I do anticipate the forums getting crowded with people trying to run their 5D footage through SpeedGrade on USB drives and wondering why they can't get real time playback.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >Keep in mind Premiere Pro cannot create ProRes
> files other than to use Adobe
> >Media Encoder.
>
> If you buy Compressor or Motion (assuming you dont
> already have FCP), you can render (create preview
> files) to Prores in a QT wrapper from within PPro,
> you can render to Prores in AE, but there is no
> consolidate/transcode option to anything, not
> ProRes, not 1:1, not Uncompressed. This part
> baffles me.

Premiere Pro use Adobe Media Encoder as the rendering tool. It doesn't do it by itself. All Exports / Render to another coded are performed by Adobe Media Encoder. The interface pops up on top of Premiere Pro.

>
> >if you want to capture to ProRes from tape in
> Premiere Pro you can't. You would
> >need to use something like the AJA VTR XChange to
> do so.
>
> That's interesting, but I guess Adobe doesn't want
> to get their hands dirty with real time Prores
> acquisition between various 3rd party capture
> cards and 3rd party codec in 3rd party media
> container (QT). This would get pretty problematic
> very fast.

This apparently has nothing to do with Adobe but nobody will speak to me on the record why Premiere Pro cannot capture to ProRes or DNxHD natively within the application. Good luck with major batch capturing using the third party tools is all I'm going to say.....

>
> >I DO know that for now, everything is converted
> to DPX
>
> I do anticipate the forums getting crowded with
> people trying to run their 5D footage through
> SpeedGrade on USB drives and wondering why they
> can't get real time playback.

They're also going to wonder why they can't get playback out of their AJA, BMD and Matrox devices and why it costs about $5,000 to get an nVidia SDI output card.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com