Significant upgrades to Adobe Premiere Pro CC and other pro video tools
The wait is over: the new Creative Cloud applications are now available. Creative Cloud members can download all the latest Creative Cloud video tools including After Effects CC, Adobe Audition CC, Adobe Prelude CC, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, SpeedGrade CC, and Adobe Story CC Plus. Creative Cloud members will also have access to all the other new Creative Cloud applications, such as Photoshop CC and Adobe Muse CC.
Video professionals of all stripes will benefit from hundreds of new features and enhancements, providing them with better integration, greater creative scope, and a more efficient workflow. Here are just a few of the highlights:
• Editing Finesse UI and workflow refinements in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.
• Lumetri Deep Color Engine integration in Adobe Premiere Pro CC
• Audio clip mixer in Adobe Premiere Pro CC
• Live 3D Pipeline between After Effects CC and MAXON CINEMA 4D Lite (included with After Effects)
• Refine Edge tool in After Effects CC
• Shot Matcher in SpeedGrade CC
• Sound Remover in Adobe Audition CC
• Preview Editor in Adobe Audition CC
• Hover scrub thumbnails in Adobe Prelude CC
• Adobe Story CC Plus script metadata support in Adobe Prelude CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC
You can read a more in-depth overview of the new features here. http://bit.ly/ZlzXj9
“When I saw the integration offered by Adobe Creative Cloud, I could hardly wait to get started,” said filmmaker and visual effects supervisor Hasraf (HaZ) Dulull. “The learning curve was virtually nil. I moved among Audition, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop, but it never felt like I was jumping from compositing to editing. The whole experience felt like one big environment. What made it even more incredible was that I did it all on my Macbook Pro laptop hooked up with cinema display screen and external raid drive.”
The new pro video applications were first revealed in April at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) exhibition in Las Vegas. “The response at NAB was incredible,” said Bill Roberts, Director of Product Management for Video and Audio at Adobe. “The Creative Cloud releases of our pro video tools are really strong across the board. With the efficient new Creative Cloud model, our teams are poised to deliver new features on an ongoing basis. We think our users are going to love this.”
“It was a no-brainer in terms of going with Adobe Creative Cloud,” said Kyle Alvarez, whose latest film C.O.G. premiered at Sundance and recently won the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival. “It offers virtually effortless access to all the latest software and it’s always there for us. We use Encore, Media Encoder, Audition, Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Bridge, and After Effects, for everything from effects to movie posters—and the software really integrates perfectly together.”
While the feedback from current Creative Cloud members has been overwhelmingly positive, the initial reactions to the new Creative Cloud model, announced at MAX on May 7, have varied. “We realize that some in the community are still unsure about Creative Cloud, but as we go forward, people will realize that this approach brings us much closer to our users,” explained Roberts. “The tools and the whole model will evolve in a much more collaborative environment than was the case in the old days of boxed software and big, expensive releases.”
“The low monthly price of Creative Cloud makes it really affordable for independent filmmakers and smaller post-production companies to get Adobe software,” said director and editor Jacob Rosenberg (Waiting for Lightning). “So far, it’s been seamless using Adobe Creative Cloud.”
“Creative Cloud provides a backend infrastructure for the tools, including storage, Sync Settings, an easy mechanism for staying up-to-date, and access to resources,” said Steve Forde, Senior Product Manager for After Effects. “As the digital media creation process evolves, this kind of infrastructure will become more important for our users. It’s a connected world and our creative tools should be connected, too.”
Richard Jobson uses all Adobe Pipeline on Wayland’s Song
We really pushed the boundaries of what you can do with the Creative Cloud software. For me, it's almost like being in a punk band again with Adobe: SpeedGrade and After Effects are my drummer and my bass player and Premiere Pro is my guitarist, who’s been getting much better. I have my band, and now I can tell my stories.
- Richard Jobson
Leveraging the complete Adobe Creative Cloud toolset, Wayland’s Song, which premiered at Cannes on May 25, 2013, was written and directed by Richard Jobson. A former movie critic and television host, Jobson started his career as the charismatic front man for 1970’s punk band, The Skids. After working in broadcast, he began screenwriting in 2000 and was soon directing short films and game cinematics. Early writing and directing highlights included Heartlands, and 16 Years or Alcohol.
As an independent filmmaker Jobson brings a practical, can-do attitude to his work, producing movies that are technically innovative and pioneering in terms of subject matter; such as his visually powerful 2009 human trafficking short, The Journey.
Filmmaker Richard Jobson speaks about Waylands Song at Adobe&Filmmakers event.
Already familiar with Photoshop and After Effects, Jobson started editing with Adobe Premiere Pro in 2011 to conform and finish The Somnambulists – an arresting portrayal of fallen service personnel, recounting their experiences in Iraq, from beyond the grave.
“Premiere Pro allowed me to go back to the original, native rushes that I shot in camera, without changing or degrading the image,” said Jobson. No other software allowed me to do that. With Premiere Pro’s dynamic link to After Effects, completing the film in Adobe software was a no-brainer for me.”
For his latest feature film, Wayland’s Song, Richard Jobson moved to an all Adobe workflow: Starting with Adobe Story Plus, which he used for script editing, preproduction planning, and to generate detailed production schedules, all the material was moved smoothly through Adobe Prelude, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Adobe Audition, and finally SpeedGrade for finishing.
Creating Wayland’s Song
Inspired by a Nordic myth, Wayland’s Song tells the story of a British soldier returning from Afghanistan. While the world he left behind him seemed dark and medieval, the world he returns to appears little better. He discovers that his daughter has disappeared and the film follows his search for her, a journey through friendship, tragedy and ultimately revenge.
“I have always loved a kind of graphic sensibility in my stories,” reflected Jobson. “The Wayland character has almost been lifted from a graphic novel. I love that type of thing. In all of my films I use the camera and lighting to create this quality.”
Wayland’s Song was beautifully shot on the Canon C300 by Director of Photography Andrei Austin. Offload, back-up and ingest was done with Adobe Prelude, which the production team used for shot-logging, adding metadata for use in postproduction, and pre-editing. Adobe Prelude was used for camera file ingest and shot logging on Wayland's Song.
Visual effects and graphics were created entirely in Photoshop and After Effects, including a series of colorful, experimental sequences portraying the main character’s collapse into a seizure. “I suffer from epilepsy myself, and I wanted to visualize that overwhelming sensory experience, where mind and body are flooded with light and you enter a world of hyper reality,” said Jobson.
The film was edited by Steven Sander in Adobe Premiere Pro. Moving to a native workflow allowed for a much faster pipeline that required no transcoding or rewrapping of files. XDCAM, Apple ProRes and H.264 codecs were all mixed on the same timeline in a smooth, seamless process. The combination of HP hardware, an Nvidia Quadro 5000 graphics card and the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro eliminated rendering from the editing process and allowed instant feedback when working with complex visual effects.
“I was instantly impressed by the speed and responsiveness of Premiere Pro,” said Sander. “It seemed to handle everything we threw at it and it was great to be able to switch between Mac and Windows hardware, as needed, without converting sequences or media.”
Audio clean-up and mixing was done in Adobe Audition by musician and composer Keith Atack, who previously worked with Jobson on Heartlands and 16 Years of Alcohol. “This was a really fun and challenging project. A number of the team have a background in video game production and we tried to bring some of that dynamic to both the visuals and the sound design,” said Atack. “Audition lets me to work quickly and intuitively, allowing me as a sound designer to stay in the creative moment and get instant feedback. That was really useful for the more experimental sections of the film.”
Audio editing for Wayland's Song was done in Adobe Audition.
Grading and finishing were completed in SpeedGrade by colorist Dado Valentic at his MyTherapy facility in central London. Valentic has been a longtime SpeedGrade user.
“We actually developed the looks for the project in SpeedGrade before we started production,” explained Jobson. “This allowed us to view our shots as they came in with the creative looks applied. It was really helpful - just one of the ways that these tools allowed us to work faster and more efficiently.”
Colorist Dado Valentic talks about his work with SpeedGrade on Wayland's Song.
“Richard gave me a lot of creative freedom on this project,” said Valentic, “so I could really put SpeedGrade through its paces. I applied technical looks, which I created to adjust the camera color spaces, along with the creative looks Richard used during production. With SpeedGrade, all of these color adjustments are layered so it’s easy to combine all of them for a final result that is both color corrected and stylized with the artistic look of the film.”
Filmmaking with Adobe Creative Cloud
Jobson joined Creative Cloud in 2012, soon after it became available, and couldn’t be happier with the service and the tools. “Adobe Story Plus gives me a great place to start my projects, and with the whole package I have all the tools for production right through to finishing. This software gives me the freedom to make films the way I want to make them.”
Wayland’s Song premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival on May 18 and will see theatrical distribution in the UK and Europe in September 2013.
Kappa Studios switches from Avid to an all Adobe workflow for the production of Cartoon Network's new hit show Annoying Orange. This animated series originated online and when viewership broke a billion views it was time to take the production to broadcast. With the demand for extremely quick turn around Kappa Studios knew only Adobe video tools could meet their needs for complicated animation and accelerated post workflows to make the production a success. Watch on Adobe TV
Just like people are shifting from consuming books and video content as physical media to digital and online consumption, Adobe is evolving from shipping shrink-wrapped boxes to offering easily downloadable software through the Cloud. You may or may not have heard about Adobe Creative Cloud, but you’ve probably heard about Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Creative Cloud is the most convenient and affordable way to get these powerful Adobe Creative Suite desktop tools with ongoing updates, plus many more tools and services like Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Story Plus and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, so you can deliver professional video productions from script to screen and beyond. All for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day!
On December 11th, Adobe announced new Photoshop features exclusive to Creative Cloud members, the availability of Creative Cloud for teams, and other news. In this article, you’ll learn more about Creative Cloud and why it might be a great choice for you, and get the scoop on the recent announcements.
Integrated tools for faster video production
So, what exactly is in Creative Cloud? For video professionals, Adobe offers industry-leading tools that cover the complete production workflow from ‘plan’ to ‘playback’. Creative Cloud is the way you download all the tightly integrated Creative Suite tools and services you need to create everything from documentaries and commercials to television news and feature films. One of the advantages of Creative Cloud membership is the ability to get ongoing feature updates, newly released products and more to stay up to date – all for one affordable monthly price. Creative Cloud gives you the following powerful pre- and post-production software tools:
• Adobe Premiere Pro for editing your way with true native format support, real-time performance, a sleek user interface, and the ability to mix and match formats on a single timeline. Adobe Premiere Pro offers tight integration with After Effects and Photoshop, as well as roundtrip editing workflows with Audition and inter-operability with other non-linear editing software and third party tools – so you can streamline your post-production workflow.
• Adobe After Effects for visual effects, motion graphics, compositing, and animation. After Effects CS6 is faster and more responsive than ever before thanks to a powerful new caching system called Global Performance Cache, while new 3D advancements such as the 3D Camera Tracker and 3D Ray-traced engine introduce a new creative dimension.
• Adobe Photoshop Extended for digital imaging magic, new creative options, and the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine for blazingly fast performance. Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended delivers all the imaging magic in Photoshop CS6 plus 3D graphic design and image analysis tools*.
• Adobe Audition for efficient audio editing, sound design, and mixing
• Adobe SpeedGrade for advanced color-grading and finishing
• Adobe Prelude for easy shot logging, previewing, and rough cut assembly
• Adobe Story Plus for powerful screenwriting, production scheduling, and reporting
But these are just some of the tools and services in Creative Cloud that are specific to a video workflow. Read on to learn about all of the other great tools and services that will also help you promote yourself or build your business!
Filmmakers around the world are discovering how tools in Creative Cloud can speed up their production workflows. Customers like Academy Award winners Rob Legato (HUGO) and David Fincher (The Social Network), and top broadcasters like Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, Hearst, and Turner are using Adobe products to create compelling feature films and broadcast content. Adobe has received great feedback about Adobe CS6 video products, with tens of thousands of people switching from Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer to Adobe Premiere Pro, including Bill Yukich (Red Hot Chili Peppers- “Brendan’s Death Song”), Philip Bloom, Vincent Laforet, Popular (Burton Snowboards “13”), Second City Communications, Sandals Resorts, and Bill & Ben Productions / Made Visual Studios (A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman).
Great ongoing value for both individuals and teams
At $29.99US per month for your first year for upgrading Creative Suite customers or $49.99US per month standard pricing (annual contract), Creative Cloud offers all the tools in CS6 Master Collection plus a host of services including Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, Adobe Business Catalyst, Adobe Muse, and helpful training content.
Creative Cloud has various membership offerings: you can join with an annual membership, or sign up for a month-to-month membership. You get the most economical value when you sign up for an annual Creative Cloud membership. If you are thinking of switching to Adobe Premiere Pro, you can try the 30-day trial included as part of a Creative Cloud free membership or sign up for the month-to-month membership with no cancellation strings attached, giving you the flexibility to experiment with the software as you like.
Aside from flexible membership options, Creative Cloud offers members exclusive and immediate access to the latest updates and product innovations as soon as they are released including:
• Over a dozen new Photoshop features announced December 11, 2012 — including Smart Object support for Blur Gallery and Liquify for non-destructive editing freedom, new workflow timesavers, new 3D options, Conditional Actions that will run only under set parameters, and more. In addition, this latest release offers Retina display support**.
• Illustrator new features released in August 2012 that will let you automatically package Illustrator projects and their related files for fast and accurate hand-offs, quickly unembed images in Illustrator files, and more efficiently access information in linked files.
• Adobe Story regular updates - with eight updates so far this last year.
• Exclusive Adobe Dreamweaver features announced in September 2012, including easier authoring of HTML5-based websites, new support for compositions from Adobe Edge Animate, more robust FTP transfers, and more.
• New Adobe Muse features allow you to create unique layouts for mobile versions of websites, without writing code.
Also announced on December 11th, businesses or workgroups can now get Adobe Creative Cloud for teams, which offers all the perks of a Creative Cloud individual membership, plus 100GB of cloud-based storage per person, and direct access to Adobe’s support experts. In addition, Creative Cloud for teams includes administration tools for centrally deploying and tracking your licenses, making it easy to manage your software investment. You can easily assign or redeploy seats – or assign an administrator the rights to do so – as the team grows or changes. Creative Cloud for teams is priced at $49.99US per user per month for your first year for upgrading Adobe CS3 or later customers, with standard pricing of $69.99US per user per month (annual membership).
Previously, Creative Cloud for individuals was only available on Adobe.com and through select retailers like Amazon and Staples. But Creative Cloud for teams is available through Adobe's extensive network of certified resellers worldwide. So wherever you live, chances are likely that Creative Cloud is now available to you.
Tools and services for promoting your work
Many of our professional video customers use other Adobe products such as Acrobat, Dreamweaver, and Lightroom. With Creative Cloud membership, you have access to all your favorite tools you use on a regular basis, but also have the opportunity to try and use other Adobe products and services, so you can learn new skills and expand your repertoire, or reach new people in new ways. Many customers use these other tools as a complement to Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other video tools or to promote their videos to their audience:
• Write scripts and organize your production with schedules and reports using Adobe Story Plus
• Create storyboards, pitches, posters, flyers, and other documents for your film with Acrobat and Adobe InDesign
• Create and host a website to promote and sell your films using Adobe Muse (with no coding) or Dreamweaver (if you are comfortable doing some coding), and our web hosting services called Business Catalyst (not only do we give you the tools to build your site, we'll even host up to 5 published websites for you, at no additional cost!)
• Publish your portfolio as an iPad app or create an iPhone app for your film using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition – with unlimited publishing of as many apps as you can create.
• Organize and manage your photos and pull high-res stills with Lightroom
And with the Creative Cloud Training offering, also announced on December 11th, you get access to an extensive library of cross-product tutorials and trial courses from renowned training partners Kelby Training, video2brain, and Attain as part of your Creative Cloud membership. You can use Creative Cloud Training to master the art of postproduction using the latest features in Adobe CS6 video products, or learn one of the above new tools that you’ve always wanted to try. We’ll be rolling out this new offering in the next week.
Try it yourself
As you can see, Creative Cloud membership gives you one powerful, comprehensive, and continuously updated toolset for creating and promoting your work using an integrated Adobe workflow, for an affordable monthly price. Try it yourself for free and let us know what you think in the Comments section below. What works well for you? What could we do better? What does Creative Cloud do for you?
* 3D features and some GPU-enabled features are not supported on Microsoft® Windows® XP.
**Retina display support in Photoshop Extended is not exclusive to Creative Cloud members.
Award-winning creative company produces epic work using a variety of footage and an Adobe centered workflow
Imagine some of the world’s most progressive snowboarders risking their lives to shoot in beautiful remote locations—all cut to great music. This year, Burton Snowboards chased winter to produce an original film to kick off the season, inspiring both core riders and newcomers to the sport. The creative production company behind this year’s project is Popular, a studio recognized for originating authentic athlete, personality, and lifestyle- driven creative for film, commercials, and branded entertainment. The award-winning partners of Popular—David Tindale and Jeremy Pettit—sat down with Adobe to share their experience switching from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 software to put together 13, Burton’s action-packed film for 2013.
Adobe:Tell us about the film.
Tindale: The 45-minute film is Burton’s primary marketing vehicle for the 2013 season. The purpose of 13 is to inspire all snowboarders to get out and ride. Burton is iconic and steeped in heritage. Our goal was to create a film that represents snowboarding today, showcasing the creativity of each team rider and how they progress the sport in their individual ways. The film premiered in eight cities around the world and was released on iTunes, DVD, and Blu-ray. The premiere tour continues in local Burton stores and dealers eventually finding its way to every local shop’s TV — all 4,300 of them.
Adobe:What was Popular’s role?
Pettit: This was our second year directing a film with Burton. We worked six film crews, chasing snow and terrain to film some of the most progressive snowboarders all over the world, including Danny Davis, Mikkel Bang, John Jackson, Mark Sollors, Mikey Rencz, Jussi Oksanen, Terje Haakonsen, Jeremy Jones, Zak Hale, Ethan Deiss, Seppe Smits, Werni Stock, Roope Tonteri, and more. The riders’ styles are all different and it was important for Burton to feature a variety of unique, undiscovered locations to best showcase their varying disciplines. The team stepped it up this year with everyone logging solid footage of advanced and innovative tricks from the streets to the backcountry. We work with several film crews over the season, each submitting footage on a monthly basis, this was like our dailies.
We would make comments, provide input, and log everything—the Media Browser in Adobe Premiere Pro was a huge help. Near the end of the season we hit the road with a small crew, tight grip and light package, and a smoke machine to shoot the creative action and lifestyle that comprised the opening movie intro and rider interstitials. From the end of the season through the summer our focus was on the edit. Just getting the footage organized was pretty amazing. We had a nine terabyte (TB) internal drive and 18 TBs of external drives filled with footage. Throughout the whole process, we worked closely with the team at Burton, including Bryan Knox, global director of team marketing and media, and Evan Rose, creative director.
Adobe:You previously used Final Cut Pro. We understand this was really one of the first times you had ever used Adobe Premiere Pro. Why did you switch?
Tindale: This was our first film stepping into full 1080 resolution. We knew we would be working with different camera formats and needed an editing solution that could handle everything. Footage was shot on RED Scarlet and Epic cameras, mainly—but some Cineflex, Panasonic HPX, GPS, GoPro, and a variety of DSLR cameras. It was incredible to just throw it all onto the Adobe Premiere Pro timeline and get straight to work. I think the main thing was the ability to deal with all these different formats. With so much footage and a tight timeline it was amazing to jump right into the edit and skip the time-consuming process of transcoding all of our footage.
Adobe:What was the switch to Adobe Premiere Pro like?
Pettit: The switch was pretty straightforward. We started working with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 on an ESPN project last spring. I needed to work fast, so I just mapped the keyboard shortcuts from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro. But with the Burton project we moved to CS6 and I started using the regular Adobe Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts—it wasn’t difficult. The improvements in the Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 interface made it more user friendly than the previous version. I love the “log and transfer” capabilities, such as the ability to see big thumbnails and scrub through them, set your project in and out points, and drop everything into your timeline. We were still learning as we went, but we found that right away, Adobe Premiere Pro is great for getting down to business.
Adobe:What other Adobe Creative Cloud components do you use?
Tindale: We used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop a lot for titling and graphics. Everything started as a still reference with style frames and storyboards. When we got into post production and visual effects we used a lot of After Effects. I would say 70% of the shots went through After Effects to create the VFX and smooth out speed adjustments, which made Dynamic Link a critical tool.
Adobe:What are some of your favorite features in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6?
Pettit: We are big fans of the quick and effective color correction tools in Adobe Premiere Pro. The speed adjustments and speed ramping tools are super quick and easy to use. And like David said, the ability to use Dynamic Link with After Effects is fantastic. It’s so great to have updates in one program linked and automatically reflected in the other. I think it cut our time, literally, in half.
Adobe:How has the film been received?
Tindale: We just returned from The REELS Festival in France where 13 won Best Movie, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography so we’re really pleased. 13 has been well received by the industry media and public. We are looking forward to the remainder of the festivals this year and the industry awards in early 2013.
Adobe:What is your favorite part of the movie?
Pettit: The athletes themselves as individuals and athletes. It was great working with Burton—honestly, I can’t imagine a better client. It’s a team effort from the riders, team managers to the film crew – with everyone in sync we are proud to bring together 13 and feature the high level of riding and progressive tricks of the entire Burton team. We’re honored to have worked on this project.
Comment from Bryan Knox of Burton
13 is one of the best films to come out of Burton to date. We wanted to make a film that gets you hyped for winter and makes you want to go snowboarding.
I would like to personally thank everyone that helped make 13 a successful film.
Save up to 40% off all Adobe video products when you switch from Final Cut Pro or Avid by Nov. 30. Learn more
Find out what the movers and shakers in Adobe's Digital Video & Audio Organization are thinking about, and get a glimpse into their vision on everything from product direction to hot trends in the worlds of video production and content creation, as well as see how other filmmakers are using Adobe products to realize their creative visions.
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