A Note on Adobe Premiere Pro

I’m Al. I’m the guy who gets to – along with an amazing group of very talented colleagues and friends – build Premiere Pro. For some obvious and some less obvious reasons, our beloved product has been receiving a lot of attention over recent days. So it feels like a good time to express a few thoughts.

Over the last few years, we’ve been working really hard on our NLE.  Way back in April 2010 we shipped our CS5 version, a natively 64-bit cross-platform application built on the Mercury Playback Engine. It was designed to make the absolute best out of modern computational resources, CPU and GPU optimized to its very core. It was a big and bold move in a crowded NLE market, but we felt we had the right foundations in place to start turning a few heads. And turn a few heads we did.

Last month, we shipped a major update to CS5 in CS5.5. I always talk about CS5.5 as building finesse on the solid foundations of CS5, and that was our aim. We had the engine and the chassis of a race-winning car, and now we needed to make it easier to drive. We did. We focused efforts on smoothing the path for people moving over from other NLEs, or those just trying out a new one. And more heads turned.

Then, last week, Apple shipped Final Cut Pro X. I’m not here to comment on Apple’s intentions or strategy, and I won’t. But I can say this: I’ve read and heard that many editors felt alienated with the release. And I didn’t have to look far to hear the disgruntlement. It’s all over the web. It ate my Twitter feed for two days. It was on Conan. It was actually on Conan.

And as a result, understandably perhaps, even more heads have turned to look at Premiere Pro. It’s a powerful NLE that’s intuitive to existing editors. It can open your Final Cut Pro 7 projects via XML. It supports all of your media natively. It performs beautifully, and it lets you edit the way you’ve learned to, using shortcuts you know and paradigms you’re comfortable with.

But the most important thing I want to say to all the newly turning heads is simply this: Adobe is committed making a modern, powerful, useable, professional NLE. In fact, we’re developing harder and faster than ever before. We will continue updating and improving Premiere Pro with regular, timely releases. We’ll continue striving to improve performance, to offer the best native format support possible, and to make the pure experience of just editing – in the way that you’ve learnt to – as intuitive and creative as possible.

I expect that the more you experiment with Premiere Pro, the more you’ll tell us where you’d like it to go next. There will always be bumps on the learning curve with an application new to you, just as there will be things you didn’t have before and wonder how you lived without. I just want you to know that we’re listening to you, the editors, and we aim to continue building an application that you love and can rely on.

This is going to be fun.

Would you recommend Premiere Pro to your friends and colleagues?

Adobe has started the Video Ambassadors program to build an online community for Adobe Premiere Pro editors to support each other, help us improve Adobe Premiere Pro and spread the word to other editors about trying Adobe Premiere Pro. As an Ambassador, you will receive exclusive information, access to the Adobe Premiere Pro team, answers to any questions you might have, and sneak peeks of what we’re working on. We’d love to see how you’re using Adobe Premiere Pro and give you the ability to share your work with others. If you’re interested in joining, check it out on Linked In.

Adobe’s Vision for Professional Video

The tide is turning in professional video, and Adobe’s momentum is strong: We are driving innovation in our products and winning market share. Recent surveys also show a significant increase in positive brand perception for Adobe Premiere Pro among pro video users – particularly since the CS5 launch. For these reasons and many more, video pros are switching to Premiere Pro and Creative Suite Production Premium in record numbers.

Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium Road Show

Adobe is hosting a free, three-city road show in June. Not only will we talk about the new features in CS5.5 Production Premium, we’re also spending more time on educating you on HDSLR editing and how you can better integrate Production Premium into your existing workflow—no matter which NLE you’re using.

Jim Guerard, vice-president and general manager of Professional Video at Adobe, will also be available to discuss challenges and opportunities facing the production and broadcast industries today and how Adobe is equipped to help you meet those challenges.

If you’re interested in attending this event and want more information, please check it out here.

See how Thunderbolt makes CS5.5 faster at NAB

At NAB 2011, the hot topic around hardware in the South Hall was definitely Intel’s Thunderbolt port technology. Maybe you’ve read about Thunderbolt or had co-worker try and explain it, but the simplest way to understand it is to just find a demo running on the showfloor and take it for a spin.
In the Adobe booth, we put together a complete system running on Apple’s new Macbook Pro 15” connected to a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt raid array connected to a BlackMagic Design Ultra Studio 3D with SDI output to an iKan portable SDI display. From the description above it sounds like a lot of cables and wiring, but in fact, it’s quite simple. Each Thunderbolt device has 2 ports and are linked together in a daisy chain configuration with very small but sturdy cable. The result was 800MBs throughput of shear madness.
For a quick test, we threw down some 422 1920x1080 Uncompressed footage in Premiere Pro CS 5.5 with data rates between 126 – 158 MBs and started playing the timeline with ease. Next we tested fast and slow scrub and it was silky smooth to the touch- It was like we were playing DV. I’ve never seen anything like it running off a laptop.
We continued putting it through the paces stacking on 3 and 4 layers of video throughout the day and inviting customers to feel the power of this new level of editing. After Effects CS 5.5 also had no problem playing the uncompressed footage in realtime. The Adobe booth appeared to be the only place where you could actually see the full workflow of editing with Thunderbolt.
BlackMagic Design has done an incredible job in being the first to show off this next generation editing platform running on Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and After Effects CS 5.5. I had the opportunity to talk to Pro Video Coalition about it. View the interview here.

Production Premium CS5.5 storms onto the scene.

Welcome to the new reality of 2011 – this industry is changing fast.  Our customers are adapting to the new multi-screen world we live in and learning to thrive and prosper in a world where never before has so much content been created and consumed.  Change happens fast in this world and that is why Adobe is delighted to be at NAB 2011 to introduce a new release of Production Premium—version CS5.5—only 12 months after our landmark CS5 release.

While our users’ goal of telling compelling stories doesn’t change, the reality of making content today is very different than a few years back—the world of tape compared with our file based reality today couldn’t be more different.  Adobe has added the concept of file-based workflows across the entire content creation cycle—from the first moment an idea comes into your head till the last glowing pixel fades on the device the consumer watches it on—Adobe is there. 

We call this “Plan to Playback” and our goal is to provide the essential tools you need across that spectrum (breadth), the specialized tools in specific areas you need to be more productive and creative (depth) and ensure that everything you do goes at full speed and can connect to any other tool you need to (Performance and Openness).

Digital Rebels: The New Generation of Filmmakers & Storytellers

If you’re attending NAB this year, don’t miss Adobe’s panel discussion at 12:00 on Tuesday, April 12 in room S222 called Digital Rebels: The New Generation of Filmmakers & Storytellers to hear from a new breed of filmmakers who are changing the rules for film production and distribution. The panel will be hosted by Johnny Loiocono, SVP and General Manager of Adobe’s Digital Media Solutions business unit.

Defying the big, bloated movie budgets of the past, today’s digital rebels are making their films fast and with surprisingly low budgets. But make no mistake; the caliber and quality of these films is right up there with the best of the best. Featured panelists include Tyler Nelson, Assistant Editor on the smash hit The Social Network among many other high-profile Hollywood projects; Gareth Edwards, an award-winning British filmmaker whose latest project Monsters has received critical acclaim on the global independent film circuit; and Jacob Rosenberg, filmmaker, author and digital media expert who has contributed to many films including Avatar, Superman Returns, and Dust to Glory. The panel will discuss what tools they’re using—such as RED and DSLR cameras, and software that provides integrated solutions and workflows that make this amazing storytelling possible.

Adobe’s Mercury Playback Engine & Apple’s new MacBook Pro 17″ with ThunderBolt

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of performance questions from Mac users about using Adobe Premiere Pro editing systems with ATI/AMD graphics cards. No question this has been “sparked” by Apple’s recent series of MacBook Pro Laptops featuring Thunderbolt and a 1GB AMD Radeon 6750 graphics card. I created a video (below) to show you how the Mercury Playback Engine running on the new Apple MacBook Pro 17” Thunderbolt laptop in 64 bit CPU mode or what’s also known as Mercury Software mode. In software mode, Premiere Pro will use its 64 bit playback engine along with OpenGL to give you a great playback & rendering experience. Apple is now finally shipping a fast processor with 8GB of system RAM and 1GB of GPU RAM on a laptop.

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