Technology Sneek Peek: Adobe® Mercury Playback Engine

Lets start with the big, bold, brash, brazen, big-time, blow-your-mind (are there any other ‘big’ adjectives I’ve missed?) statement about the Adobe® Mercury Playback Engine: It is a game changer.

Haven’t heard about the Mercury Playback engine yet?  Good - Read on!

Let’s start with the back-story or history on the Adobe Mercury Playback engine.  Back at IBC in September, the show happened in Amsterdam and while Adobe was there talking about several things including Adobe Story - over at the NVIDIA booth, we were showing a technology preview with quiet undertones.  It didn’t have the name Mercury and it wasn’t even really the big thing we were showing.  However, John at FXGuide was over there and among several other tidbits, included Adobe in a podcast that he did over at the show. A month crawls along and during that time, the podcast starts to get some mentions in various forums and chatter amongst the creative crowd… People start to get excited about the possibilities and ask questions.  Here’s the high bandwidth version for your viewing pleasure.

Premiere Pro 4.2 & AVC-Intra

The new Premiere Pro CS4 4.2 and Adobe Media Encoder CS4 4.2 offer new improvements and enhancements to CS4 video workflows. With the 4.2 update, Premiere Pro now offers users of Panasonic’s AVC-Intra line of P2 cameras the chance to edit in native AVC-Intra format. This has been a longtime coming for AVC-Intra users and they can now enjoy the advantages of Adobe CS4 tapeless workflows and native editing. Several other enhancements to Premiere Pro 4.2 were also updated, like the support for Final Cut 7 import. I have outlined several of the updates and fixes below. I have also listed the “known issues” in 4.2 as well.

The Future is 64-bit

It’s common knowledge among post-production pros that 64-bit operating systems are the best choice for top-of-the-line performance, especially when producing HD or higher-resolution content. After 3 versions of simultaneous 64 bit and 32 bit support for After Effects and Premiere Pro, we wanted to let you know today that CS4 will be the last version of Adobe’s leading video applications to support 32 bit operating systems.

The majority of video professionals have already transitioned to 64-bit capable systems, including Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, or 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. Almost all Intel-based Macs are 64-bit friendly, and if you bought your PC after 2005, chances are it’s capable of running a 64-bit operating system (if it’s not already!). 

New Macs run 64-bit directly; if you are buying a new PC, make sure to choose the Windows 7 64-bit version. You’ll see up to 200% performance gains on CS4 Production Premium immediately, and you’ll avoid having to upgrade the OS later.

By focusing exclusively on 64-bit operating systems and native 64-bit support for After Effects and Premiere Pro, we’ll be able to offer even better performance and large project stability for the industry by building on the support we have delivered for the last several development cycles. 

We’ve optimized and architected the past three versions of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects to deliver better performance on 64-bit operating systems, and our customers have seen significant productivity gains as a result. For example, HD workflows using CS4 Production Premium on a 64-bit system with 16GB RAM are 50% to 200% faster than they would be on a 32-bit system with 4GB of RAM. Performance gains include increased editing speed, rapid switching between tools, and faster rendering—leaving you more time to be creative. 

Because of the dramatically superior performance native 64-bit OS support delivers, the CS4 releases are the last versions that will support 32-bit operating systems. Why? We believe that developing professional tools that leverage up-to-date hardware and operating systems is the best way to deliver great performance. We’ve heard loud and clear from our customers that performance is critical, and from a technology perspective, we know that only 64-bit operating systems are able to deliver the horsepower video professionals require. Our investment in developing the first truly native 64-bit professional video production tools sets the stage for the industry’s future by delivering the performance video pros require.

For more information on the benefits you’ll get from running Adobe software on a 64-bit operating system today and in the future, read our 64-bit whitepaper. For details on our move to 64-bit only in the future, check out our 64-bit FAQ.

Simon

Sr. Director of Product Management

Dynamic Media

Matrox and other 3rd Party I/O Vendors with CS4

As many of you know, over the past several weeks, Adobe has been working with the 3rd party I/O board vendors and their current CS4 drivers. This has been a joint effort between these companies and Adobe. CS4 introduced a number of changes ranging from 64 bit memory addressing to I/O calls and so on.

The recent Matrox Axio & RTX driver is working quite well with only a few minor issues for Windows users. We are highly recommending that Windows users upgrade to Vista64 (or Win7 64 when released) & 8GB or 16GB of RAM. Here is a PDF with information on using Matrox Axio and RTX with CS4 and identifies a few of these issues. Matrox is continuing to make improvements to their driver. Make sure to periodically check their website for updates.

If you have any questions on any I/O cards and Premiere CS4 please feel free to ping me or your 3rd party rep.  Adobe engineering and myself are working with these companies weekly.

We are also working on a Premiere 4.2 update due next month. A number of fixes plus support for Native AVC-Intra Import.Stay Tuned. I’ll send an update when it’s available.

Adobe Story (our new Metadata Script writing tool) was also released on Adobe Labs – Make sure to check it out and get a free beta download. http://Labs.adobe.com.

Adobe Story

A preview version of Adobe Story is now available on Adobe Labs. Designed for creative professionals, producers, and writers working on or with scripts and screenplays, the preview version will let customers try out a few of the scriptwriting tools that will be part of the overall features in the final version of Story. 

Story will be the new starting point in the pre-production phase of a planning-to-playback workflow thanks to tight integration with future versions of Adobe’s production toolset. Script information in Story will be transformed into relevant metadata that will flow through the production process to automate the creation of shooting scripts, shot lists, rough-cuts, and more. 

So in addition to being a screenwriting tool, Story’s future integration with Adobe’s production toolset will help creative professionals deliver more engaging experiences, while also enabling huge efficiencies in pre-production, production, and post-production. The scriptwriting features in the preview version of Adobe Story are just the beginning!

To access the preview, go to: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/story/

Using Kuler Color Themes

Kuler online.

Creative Suite 4 updates on Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects

The 4.1 updater for Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder are fairly critical updates for the CS4 user. If you are using Adobe CS4 Production Premium, After Effects also has a new updater, 9.02. To see some of the major changes in these updates for Premiere Pro review the datasheet. For After Effects, check out the release notes. I’ve also created a “What’s new in Premiere 4.1” video to get you up to speed.

Click below for the videos

For RED camera users, both Premiere Pro 4.1 and After Effects have new workflows for RED R3D files. I do a quick run through of the new features on the new RED workflow in the 4.1 video above but here is a completely new Adobe RED video, which walks you through the new workflow in detail.

Open Screen Project-Reinventing Storytelling in the Digital Age

At NAB 2009, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and Disney Interactive Media Group CTO A.D. Albers discussed how digital technology has acted like a catalyst on the media industry.

If you’d like to see a larger version. Click the video link below.

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