This is not the same Adobe Premiere many of you know and may or
may not love. Premiere Pro is a complete re-write of the code, from
the ground up. It looks different, it operates differently and it
definitely performs differently. Gone are the days when you required
3rd party hardware in order to get productive results. Premiere
Pro can now stand alone as a powerful and feature rich real-time
NLE. That said, you can still gain additional features and real-time
performance by adding hardware like the Matrox RTX100 Xtreme Pro
or Canopus DV Storm 2.
 Real-Time
performance.
Premiere Pro gives you real-time previews on your VGA screen.
You can also set it for real-time previews via FireWire output.
Premiere Pro allows you to scale down the video quality in order
to improve the real-time playback performance. For final output
to tape (either DV or analog) you will need to render. Adding
a DV Storm 2 or RTX100Xtreme Pro to Premiere Pro will give you
Analog, DV and MPEG2 output from the timeline all in real-time.
New features I love
about Premiere Pro
- Gone is the old fashioned A/B editing. Adobe has
embraced the more professional method of editing. Gone is
the transition track. Now you can place clips on any track
and add a transition between them. Just make sure you leave
a little extra footage called "a handle" to fill the video
in while the transition is going.
- The Audio tools are dramatically improved. This
was one of the biggest weaknesses of older versions of
Premiere. Now you get a full array of audio editing tools,
equalization and filters.
- New Motion Control & Keyframer. Adobe has done a
great job here. I really hated the old Premiere 6.x
motion control. Creating a simple Picture-In-Picture (PIP)
effect took much too much work. The new keyframer has an
excellent interface that lets you easily position and size
your PIP. By setting up multiple keyframe points you can
make your PIP fly all over the screen with ease. When you
put together the real-time previews with this well designed
interface it's easy to see that Adobe has done their
homework.
- Workflow with other Adobe Products. This is a BIG
productivity boost. You can now work on the same project
with Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore DVD & Photoshop.
When you save your work in one of the apps, the changes go
with you into the other. As an example, let's say you've
created a sequence in After Effects for your project. As you
are editing you realize you need to make a change in the AE
sequence. You open After Effects, make your changes and
save. Go back into Premiere and the changes are there!
- Third party plug-in and hardware support. As
mentioned earlier, if you want real-time analog, DV or MPEG
output you should get a DV Storm 2 or RTX100 Xtreme Pro.
These cards also include a bunch of additional features,
filters, transitions, and effects. Boris FX has just
introduced Continuum Basics, which gives you 30 additional
filters and effects to use inside Premiere Pro. United Media
tells me it's Multicam utility will support Premiere Pro by
the time you read this article.
Premiere Pro wish list
- While Premiere Pro supports AC3 encoding and 5.1
surround creation from the timeline, you only get a trial
license for it. After three times you'll have to buy the
full license for $299. That's pretty expensive if you are
not doing surround sound and all you want is the AC3
encoder.
- When importing footage captured from other apps or
earlier versions of Premiere your audio will need to be
conformed before you can edit the clips in real-time. This
process can take quite a while with long format projects.
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