Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro is the latest release of Adobe’s powerful DV-editing tool, and rather unsurprisingly (thanks to Final Cut Pro and Express dominating the Mac platform), it’s Windows only. The main improvement that Adobe is pushing here is a render-free environment. While this entirely depends on your set-up (a PIII 800 is the minimal requirement, but the app is optimised for P4 3GHz systems), the step is clearly good news for editors. Rather than stick with real-time previews, as in the last version of Premiere, Premiere Pro goes all out to show you exactly what your footage will look like without rendering at all. On 3GHz systems, this works extremely well – but wait for the review coming soon in CA to see how the technology fairs on older systems.

Another major new addition is multiple, nestable timelines. This sort of feature, seen in Final Cut Pro on the Mac (called Sequences), enables you to work on multiple timelines within the same project. This effectively means you can work on different parts of a project in different timelines and then put them all together at the end – eliminating a huge, complex, single timeline. While we’re on the subject, the Premiere Pro timeline has also been significantly revamped, supporting multiple timelines and streamlining editing tasks. In another influence from FCP, dropping clips into the timeline brings up Overwrite and Insert icons, so putting together cuts is much quicker as a result. Other enhancements include the ability to apply transitions to any video track, and automatically apply default transitions to overlapping clips. You can also select and trim multiple edit points at once. The Project window has also been rejigged. The Storyboard view shows clips in an orderly grid, the list and thumbnail views are combined to give you info as well as a visual preview, and you can view in/out points, offline properties, shot/take and other user-defined info.

The Monitor/Source window has been enhanced, too, displaying still images, audio (waveform), colour mattes and titles. New controls in the Source and Program views include a safe margin button (for toggling title safe areas), a magnification menu, various tools for marking video in and out, and a Match Frame button to match the frame at the timeline’s edit line with the frame in the source clip. Motion paths are made a whole lot easier in this version. Adopting a similar approach to FCP, they enable you to interactively move picture-in-picture effects using transformation handles in the Monitor window. The same goes for effects. You now have the ability to keyframe effects over time in an Effects control palette directly to the left of the Program window – just like in Final Cut Pro.

Colour Correction
Also new is the three-point colour correction tool. Yes, you’re right, when we saw these we immediately thought ‘Final Cut Pro’. And, sure enough, the tools are very similar, enabling you to correct hue, saturation and lightness for highlights, midtones and shadows. Rather unsurprisingly, considering the obvious influence from Apple, Premiere Pro also includes a built-in vectorscope, waveform, YcbCR Parade and RGB Parade monitors. A split-screen feature enables you to see the before and after effect in the same Monitor window. Very handy.

Where Premiere Pro looks to be greatly improved is in its audio support. New tools for enhancing audio are abundant in this release, and exceed most video-editing tools in terms of functionality. The old Audio Mixer from Premiere 6.x is here, but has been enhanced to deal with the new 5.1 surround sound functionality of Premiere Pro (although you’ll need a bolt-on export plug-in to export the 5.1 audio), and you can capture audio directly to the timeline – handy for voiceovers. New Reverb, Dynamics, DeNoiser and Pitch Shift tools are also here, and you can adjust clips with the precision of up to 1/96000 of a second.

The ability to exchange projects with pro video workstations using the AAF format will appeal to those darting between lower-end systems and say, Avid Symphony, and improved device control and capture settings will please, well, everyone. Of course, integration with AE 6, Encore DVD, Photoshop and Illustrator is superb, and Premiere Pro can confidently export to a plethora of video standards, including MPEG1, MPEG2, AVI, DV, Windows Media 9 and QuickTime. Premiere Pro feels very much like a Final Cut Pro for the PC, which is no bad thing. The decision to leave the Mac platform alone for this release is in no doubt a nod to Apple for its efforts on FCP and FCE, and with Premiere Pro, Adobe could have the same conquering force on the Windows platform.