How technology is influencing storytelling and filmmaking

Academy-award winning VFX Supervisor Rob Legato (Hugo, Titanic), and filmmakers/directors Vincent Laforet (Revelry, Mobius), and Jacob Rosenberg (Act of Valor, Waiting for Lightning) discuss the changing world of filmmaking. Moderated by Sharlto Copley (District 9), panelists dive into a discussion on the digital advances in filmmaking technology and innovative techniques to create engaging, thought-provoking work on any budget.

Switching to Adobe Premiere Pro-A 4-part switcher series

More and more Final Cut editors are using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 to make them more efficient. If you’re wondering if Adobe Premiere Pro is really worth the switch, check out the four-part web series (replay links are listed below) featuring Final Cut editors and how and why they use Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. You’ll learn the real story on Adobe Premiere Pro’s Mercury Playback Engine, what it means to edit DSLR footage natively, and how you can remove bottlenecks in your pipeline when working with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. To follow up the series, check out the Q&A session to see if your burning questions were answered.

Don’t forget to check out the resources we have for Final Cut and Avid editors here making the switch to Adobe Premiere Pro. We have also created a 7-part video series that answer a ton of questions. Check it out on AdobeTV. For information on hardware support, we have a special site just for that purpose and even have benchmarking data to give you the real scoop on Mercury. Finally, for all things revolving around HDSLR video editing, Adobe has created a site that is full of free video tutorials and tips & tricks.

Post’s West Coast Editor Daniel Restuccio Visits Adobe’s Headquarters

View the interview: Video Here

Premiere Pro C4 and After Effects CS4 Workflow Using the NEW Native RED R3D Plug-in

The RED Importer plug-in provides full native support of RED raw files including the ability to work with RED media at resolutions from 256 up to 4k. RED files can be imported directly into Premiere Pro and After Effects and worked with in a variety of frame rates, aspect ratios and resolutions. Dynamic Link can be used to serve frames directly from Premiere Pro to After Effects and sequences can then be exported using the Render Queue in After Effects.
Resolution can be assigned for RED footage as desired by accessing a global RED Source Settings dialog in Premiere Pro. For example, a low-resolution setting such as 512 or 1k can be assigned to RED media with higher native resolution. Lower resolutions provide increased playback performance during editing. Later, when editing is completed, a higher resolution sequence can be created and clips can be reset to higher native resolutions, such as 4k, for high quality export, grading and effects workflows .

Intro to CS4 and New AVCHD Editing

Click Here for VideoWith the various price ranges of AVCHD cameras, tapeless workflows will surely reach the mainstream in the near future. I’ve been using CS4 internally for quite a while and have been totally converted to the new CS4 workflow.

Take a look at the quick workflow video and see what’s new in Production Premium CS4 and AVCHD. I also show a few more CS4 features like the new Media Browser which lets you browse media from any drive right from Premiere Pro. (The big advantage is here is not having to import unknown clips just to view them).

AJA + Adobe = Great High-End Workflows

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the privilege of getting to work with high-end workflows all of the time.  I go from everything to DV to Film 4K and everything in between, but clearly SD and compressed HD workflows predominate what we do. However, I have to say that I’ve been really intruiged with what AJA offers for Adobe products - all that you would expect and a whole bunch extra.  Read on to get all the details.

Adobe’s NAB Sneak Peaks

Another NAB has come and gone and it appears everyone at Adobe survived the crazy/great week. Well, I’m at home nursing the traditional post-NAB cold, and my feet took days to get their feeling back, but that’s all just par for the course. It was a great show for us—while overall attendance was definitely down, our booth was packed. I had the opportunity to get to know a lot of customers and partners all at once, which is the ultimate point of going at all.

During the show I had an opportunity to share a little sneak peak of some of the things Adobe is working on in our technology labs. We wanted to pull back the curtain just bit and show a little of what we are working on because it’s important for you to know where we’re going. You obviously choose the tools company you want to work with based on what they have available today. But because you invest a lot of time, energy, and money into adopting a toolset you’re also interested in where they’re going tomorrow. And so when you look at Adobe, you want to know we’re not just committed today, but that we’re thinking about the challenges you’re just starting to face, or will be facing soon.

If you weren’t able to make NAB, or were at NAB and missed my presentation, no worries. We just posted a bunch of our theater demos to the new Adobe TV site and my technology preview can be found in the video pro section. I won’t give away everything I show, but if you’re an editor at least watch until I get to the speech analysis part. Good times. Then again, the last thing I showed was definitely the most popular. How’s that for a tease? Enjoy!

Creating interactive web video with a tool you already know and use.

(now with an example at the bottom)
Encore CS3, Premiere Pro’s trusty DVD authoring sidekick has a few new tricks up its sleeve to help give you a competitive edge.  I’ll talk more about high definition Blu-ray disc authoring in another post.  This post is for those of you in the traditional video workflow who want to be able to create interactive web video experiences, BUT you don’t want to have to learn a new tool. 

Encore CS3 can now export a version of your existing DVD project for use on the web. 
Here’s how -
1. Author your DVD or Blu-ray project as you normally would using Encore’s intuitive interface and integration with Photoshop and After Effects. 
2. In the Build panel choose “Flash”
3. Select your quality preset
4. Click “Build” - you’re done!

Encore encodes all your videos to .flvs, creates a .swf that provides all the DVD-like interactivity, and creates an .xml file that ties the .flvs to the .swf.  Encore also embeds the .swf in a template .html page. 

The result is a DVD-like experience on the web complete with features like main menu and chapter menu navigation, motion menus, slideshows, extra features, and the ability to skip to chapters.  When compared with the typical web video experience where the only control you have is play and pause Encore’s Flash export is a significantly better experience.  It allows you to create the design and chapter navigation viewers are used to on DVDs. 

Give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Thanks for reading,
Nate

A little bit about me.  I’m the product manager for Adobe Encore and Visual Communicator.  Additionally, I am also working on developing community related features for our DMO products.

Here is an example of a project one of our customers sent me created with the Flash export feature in Encore. 
http://www.theatreofillusion.com/online-dvd/

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