April 4, 2013 - 10:38
It's NAB time again and here come the announcements:
I've been lucky enough to spend some time working with Premiere Pro Next and it really feels like in this version they've done two things: brought into Premiere tools you used to have to pay a third party for, and made the day to day editing experience easier and faster.
They've got videos on that website above giving a brief overview of new features, and doing it in video much better than I can in words, but some things that have stood out for me:
Adobe've incorporated a pluraleyes style mechanism that enables you to sync together multicam footage using audio very easily and in less time than it takes to make a cuppa. For people like me doing multi-camera shoots but without sophisticated things like timecode sync this is a real boon. I'm pretty bloody good at doing it manually, but like John Henry and that steam drill, this is doing it faster and more accurately. And I get to drink more tea.
Also you've (finally) got captioning / subtitling. I do a fair bit of work for the hearing-impaired, so it's great not to have to be paying my rent on EZTitler.
In the workflow enhancement section two standout things that are tiny but make a big difference. One is being able to go from clip to clip on the timeline via a keyboard shortcut selecting the next clip as you go. If you're going through the timeline clip to clip grading your pictures this is great: you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard to click on a clip to actively select it.. Using this in conjunction with an improved "paste attributes" dialogue which lets you choose which attributes you want to paste has made rough and ready shot matching and grading much faster for me. And speaking of grading there's a lovely new shot matching tool in Speedgrade which does a better job automatically than I can by eye.
Adobe aren't saying when it'll be released, or how much it'll cost, or if they're doing the same cheap Creative Cloud deals in the UK that they're doing in the USA. But Premiere Pro Next as well as AE, Speedgrade, Story, Audition Next are the versions that'll be on all the stands at NAB, so we can expect to hear a lot more about them over the coming few days.
Adobe Certified Professional Premiere Pro CS6, Premiere Pro CC
April 4, 2013 - 17:18
#1
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
Mark,
Thanks for the preview.
What is the situation re: transitions automatically matching the overlap between two clips?
Ray
April 4, 2013 - 19:16
#2
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
RayL wrote:
What is the situation re: transitions automatically matching the overlap between two clips?
Do you mean like in AB editing in Premiere 6.5? The transition on the transition track automatically matches the overlap of the videos on track A and track B?
If so, I don't know how to make that happen automatically.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but that I don't know.
I will do some research....
Adobe Certified Professional Premiere Pro CS6, Premiere Pro CC
April 5, 2013 - 07:15
#3
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
My question was really asking if such an obviously superior feature had finally been restored. There has never been a satisfactory explanation as to why it was discarded in favour of default-length transitions which then need to be adjusted, a time-wasting process that seems to fly against the whole idea of using a computer to improve productivity.
Auto-fitting transitions don't need A-B of course - they can work equally well with single-track. Just trim each clip, overlap them the required amount and drop the transition on to the overlap. The computer then ensures that the transition fills the overlap - obvious and elegant. Why the switch (in Premiere Pro) to a transition that doesn't fit and has to be adjusted manually? - it doesn't make sense.
Ray
April 5, 2013 - 07:56
#4
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
RayL wrote:
My question was really asking if such an obviously superior feature had finally been restored. There has never been a satisfactory explanation as to why it was discarded in favour of default-length transitions which then need to be adjusted, a time-wasting process that seems to fly against the whole idea of using a computer to improve productivity.Auto-fitting transitions don't need A-B of course - they can work equally well with single-track. Just trim each clip, overlap them the required amount and drop the transition on to the overlap. The computer then ensures that the transition fills the overlap - obvious and elegant. Why the switch (in Premiere Pro) to a transition that doesn't fit and has to be adjusted manually? - it doesn't make sense.Ray
Why haven't other NLE vendors adopted the Vegas auto transition method. Once the novelties of the box of obscure transitions have worn off, most users do most of their work with straight cuts and simple crossfades. What could be easier than overlapping the clips to create a perfect matching transition?
April 5, 2013 - 11:57
#5
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
So the short answer to Ray's question is no, you can't. I asked the audience over on the Premiere forums, and that was the consensus.
AFAIK it's only Vegas, of all the NLEs that lets you do that.
So anything in any other NLE is going to seem like a workaround to you.
The only suggestion for how to do that in Premiere Pro was to use the FXFactory plugins.... but they're Mac only.
So in the 11 years and 10 different versions of Premiere since the A/B editing of Premiere 6.5 you still can't do this.
The only way that would change would be for people to be submitting feature requests for it.
In my recent experience Adobe do listen and implement those feature requests if there's a weight of numbers and a convincing argument can be made. (When they made the big paradigm change from Premiere 6.5 to Premiere Pro they weren't so receptive to feedback!.).
So if it's something you want to see, here's where to submit a feature request:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
There are a lot more details of what's new and what's fixed in this next version of Premiere Pro in this blogpost here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/04/the-next-version-of-premiere-pro.html
PS At least Premiere has always had Picons!
Adobe Certified Professional Premiere Pro CS6, Premiere Pro CC
April 5, 2013 - 12:15
#6
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
If you need a page turn effect then you should have to have a convoluted workflow to get it, (personally i'd like to see them put in place a system where such transitions were only available by return of post or something!)
The point of default transitions is that they do not need to be adjusted most of the time. In the AB workflow every single transition needs to be manual adjusted, in the new (err 10 year old) workflow then only transitions which are special need to be adjusted.
Editing workflows are designed to be fast for repeated common tasks. Most people want either a cut or a fixed length fade, only on rare occasions is tweaking the transition length required.
I know people who still mis editing by cutting up film, doesn't mean that film editing is obviously superior.
April 5, 2013 - 16:40
#7
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
In A-B editing the only 'adjusting' is the trimming of clips - which one would do anyway. Adding a transition is completely painless - the computer does all the work.
Ray
April 5, 2013 - 17:46
#8
Re: Adobe reveals features of next version of video tools
Yes but the trimming process sets the duration of the transition, which makes it harder to get a consistent transition duration, the new workflow overcomes this. It does make the assumption that you want all you fade to be the same duration but by working in a non-linea fashion it is possible to quickly adjust multiple transitions.
The old way may be more intuitive, but it isn't as fast as the new method.
It very much depends what your editing anyway, premiere et al are designed to be like AVID which is designed to be very fast for cutting TV programs. Few editing packages have seriously considered the needs of people who are not making TV but are doing more "arty" productions where ease of doing fairly complex effects possibly outweighs the need for speed.
For doing music edits I really like Vegas, it has a lot of tools which the other editors lack and whilst it isn't as fast as premiere for Tv style edits it is much better when you need to do things like retime video to fit music.
It's still the case that if you want to use Vegas (or PP or FCP or whatever) then you'll need to learn how to change your editing practices to fit the new software. You can't expect to simply use the same technique you use in premiere 6.
I think that much of the reason that Vegas is still a minority edit platform is because people used to other software do not really make an effort to understand the vegas workflow. It's easier if you have an audio background and have used mulitrack audio software. It has some really powerful concepts such as Track Effects which make it super fast to do complex compositing, which simply isn't possible in traditional NLEs and of course it supports overlapping clips with automatic fades.