Adobe Video tools: Fall CC 2014 preview [updated]

Rich Young

10 years ago

Adobe Video tools: Fall CC 2014 preview [updated] 6

At IBC 2014, Adobe is previewing the latest features coming to Creative Cloud pro video apps (blog). Features are a bit light this time, except for some important new ones in Premiere, but these are updates not new version releases, like the ones in June. Hopefully there are few kinks in any UI changes amid the high-DPI functionality upgrades.

See the October 2014 update in New Creative Cloud and mobile apps at MAX 2014.

Adobe also hosted their MAX conference, Oct. 4-8 in Los Angeles, to share even more innovations coming to Creative Cloud across desktop, mobile, services, and community. Details were posted in New Creative Cloud and mobile apps at MAX 2014.

Below are the main feature updates (more under the hood and with partners), pulled from a pretty PDF outlining the changes, with links to Adobe and other blogs.

◊ For a video walkthrough, there's a live webinar from Amsterdam, Ask a Video Pro session, on Friday, September 12 at 10 am PT (7 pm EST). Later, Adobe posted the WEBINAR REPLAY.

◊ For in-depth overviews of Premiere CC Next, see Dave Helmly and Josh Weiss below. Here's Al Mooney from the Premiere team with an overview, 'Pro Video Apps Innovation Coming Soon to the Creative Cloud.'

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Search Bins lets you build new bins automatically, based on metadata searches.
Advanced Timeline Search
Improvements for Multiple Project Workflows – multiple Media Browser panels can be open simultaneously, allowing fast browsing and import of other Premiere Pro and After Effects projects for easy access to their media and sequences.
A new Source Monitor Timeline View allows editors to preview sequences from other projects, getting direct access to their components to quickly bring into the current active project.
Archive, convert, or move a project with Consolidate and Transcode (with GoPro codec too).
Render and Replace enables quick timeline renders of clips and dynamically linked After Effects composition.
Full encode/decode support for the GoPro CineForm codec offers users a cross-platform intermediate codec, with full support for alpha and large frame sizes of 4K and beyond. With the GoPro CineForm codec, frame width must be evenly divisible by 16, frame height by 8. Smart rendering is also support, with a caveat for Windows.
Installing free decoder or GoPro Studio gives users QT Player 7 and system decode (restart may be necessary; VLC doesn't work).
GPU with native support for 4K, 5K, 6K and higher content, now including debayering Phantom Cine and Canon RAW, as well as RED and Cinema DNG footage. Support for the AJA RAW format.
Masking and Tracking improvements, performance and polygon pen and Bezier adjustments with feathering and expansion.
Master Clip Effects indicators in the timeline to quickly see if a clip has a master clip effect applied, and improved navigation between sequence clip effects and master clip effects.
Improved Send To Audition and enhancements to AAF export.

Premiere Help has a nice new features summery. Additional notes on the Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere Pro CC 2014.1 releases were posted by Adobe's Al Mooney in October 2014.

◊ Josh Weiss has video and extra pictures and comments in Premiere Pro CC 2014 IBC Update- New Features Coming our Way (24-minute video), and in Match Source Settings in Premiere Pro CC 2014 (IBC Update). Just a few days ago, Josh posted What’s the Deal with Proxy Workflows in Premiere Pro? R3D to MOV nightmare… if you also have problems relinking, file a bug report too.

◊ Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014.1 (8.1 Update) by Vashi Nedomansky is another summary. By the way, the “Pancake Timeline” was used for many years without a name in both Premiere and Final Cut, probably because Avid-quality Trimming wasn't implemented and direct manipulation mousing was easy.

◊ Remember that UI brightness is user-adjustable when reading Scott Simmons' Dissecting those upcoming Adobe Premiere Fall CC 2014 Preview Features. But yeah, most people will likely agree with Scott and choose a lighter shade than Adobe's full-on dark Appearance setting that makes the blue highlight too bright, though doesn't improve contrast for UI property text. It's not clear if complaints on the Adobe Forum will lead to color pref options, even as found in Photoshop (which doesn't have the UI color problem).

◊ Video from Adobe's Dave Helmly articles are below, What’s New in the Fall release of Premiere Pro CC 2014.1 and Premiere Pro CC & the new GoPro CineForm Codec

◊ AMD FirePro Community News also posted some video from IBC 2014:

Adobe After Effects CC

High-DPI content and UI (Mac OS, Windows 8.1)
Refreshed UI
Copy With Relative Property Links command
Color management for Dynamic Link
Adobe Anywhere improvements
Maxon Cinema 4D Lite R16 and Cineware 2.0
Collect Files for Cinema 4D assets
Native GoPro CineForm codecs: intermediate QuickTime codec for Adobe apps.
Installing free decoder or GoPro Studio gives users system and QT Player 7 decode (restart may be necessary; VLC doesn't work). There's more from Adobe's Dave Helmly in video above.
Improved Adobe Media Encoder watch folders
Bug fixes

◊ After Effects Help has a nice New features summary.

◊ For details see After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1): what’s new and changed in this update due to be released soon from Adobe's Todd Kopriva and Tim Kurkoski. Todd later added what’s new in mocha AE CC 2014, included in the upcoming After Effects update.

◊ Check out the Adobe Forum if you want to talk about the new UI.

◊ Motionworks posted a video, A quick overview of the new features and enhancements in Cineware 2.0.

◊ Sean Frangella posted After Effects Cineware 2.0 – Top 5 New Features Tutorial, Cinema 4D R16.

Adobe Prelude CC

new Add Transitions button
Additional Audio Tracks
User can set the Start Timecode for the rough cut timeline
Rewrap to OP1A MXF
Match Source preset ingest; when exporting, rewraps any matching clip rather than rendering or transcoding

◊ Larry Jordan has an interview with Bill Roberts, Senior Director of Product Management for Creative Cloud Video.

Adobe SpeedGrade CC (more in October)

Refreshed UI
RGB Curves and Hue & Saturation Curves
Grading layer grouping
Hover preview looks
Better Direct Link: audio from Premiere Pro, improved performance with masks, faster tracking in SpeedGrade
Improved Mercury Transmit external video previews, including 4K monitor and Blackmagic card external video previews
Improved Autosave
New SpeedLooks
Cineform intermediate renders open too (wildcard: with GroPro Studio free installed)

◊ While not on the new release, SpeedGrade Is Like Photoshop from Creative Impatience is fresh and worth a look for many of us who balked at UI or file format support of SpeedGrade.

Adobe Media Encoder CC (more in October)

Destination publishing adds destination preset options to projects
Automate rendering and encoding of items from projects in Watch folders
Extended Match Source functionality to include QuickTime and DNxHD
Multiplexing (MUX) during encoding for a single MPEG-2 file
DCP (Digital Cinema Package) functionality extended to 25-fps European standards
Extended Sony XAVC functionality includes both VBR (variable bit rate) and CBR (constant bit rate) for 2k and higher resolutions
Native decoding and encoding using GoPro CineForm codecs

Adobe Audition CC (more in October)

New UI
Faster launch and load times, better playback performance
Updated video import support (like MXF or XDCAM-EX)
Import library of Adobe Soundbooth .ASND mixdown previews
Read and add notes to audio files with iXML embedded metadata support
A new Target Dynamic Range parameter in the Speech Volume Leveler provides better background noise reduction and volume leveling for spoken content

Adobe Story Plus CC

Customize text boxes so that notes and comments stand out.
Assign numbers to camera shots to align with your scene order.

Adobe Anywhere for video

Adds robust collaboration support for After Effects CC users
Refinements to the Adobe Anywhere app for iPad, including new scrubbing gestures and sorting options.
A newstreaming API allows facilities and broadcasters to integrate content from Adobe Anywhere into a variety of user experiences on the web or mobile devices.

◊ Oliver Peters compared Adobe Anywhere to Avid Everywhere

Adobe Primetime

Adobe is also touting market leadership of Primetime Digital Rights Management (DRM), now available across apps on connected devices, including set top boxes, and via HTML5 on major web browsers. They are the first DRM vendor to work with Intel, Broadcom and AMD to enable hardware-based DRM that protects “super” premium HD and 4K content across tablets, smartphones and desktops.