CS4: it's about time
 

... saving time, that is. As a video professional, that's more important to me than just "bells and whistles". Clearly CS4 delivers quite a bit of both, but I'll focus on the saving time category, and those upgrades and enhancements that I'm finding the most useful (so far).

I got the big email from Adobe on October 15th that CS4 Production Premium was shipping (two weeks ahead of schedule), or in my case, download-able, and I went and bought it that night. 8GBs later (love those cable modem DL speeds), it was ready to go. I waited another week until I finished a project before taking the plunge. I mirrored my C: drive in case anything got wonky, and then started un-packing the downloads. Boy were they compressed! It took way longer to unpack than to install. And since it loaded from the HDD instead of optical media, installation went very fast.

I've been editing steadily on PPro CS4 now for the last few weeks. It's been rock-steady, no glitches. Once I wrapped my head around the new targeting tracks implementation (watching a little Adobe TV on CS4), it was smooth sailing. I really like how highlighting tracks focuses the keyboard shortcuts (Pg Up/Down, Home/End) only to those tracks you want impacted by the shortcuts. Same with adding transitions. I'm certain there's some other niceties to discover in the day-to-day keyboard-pounding.

The biggest changes for me, are HUGE, though. Bigger than any other release so far:

1) Adobe Media Encoder is standalone now, and has a queue. Let me repeat, it has a queue. And it's awesome. Not only does AME take rendered files, but it accepts comps and sequences from PPro and AE. I can set up a dozen comps or sequences, set my desired output (or multiple outputs: HD, DVD, and Flash), hit the go button and then go home and go to bed... and awaken to rendered files for an entire project. Theoretically, I could even render while I was working on something else in PPro or AE, but let's get real... my render would never finish and playback would slow to a crawl. There's only so many CPU cycles to go around.

2) Encore is render-less, as well. Dynamic Link drills right into Encore, transparently sending PPro sequences to the app. to be rendered without intermediates. Amazing.

3) Dynamic Link works both ways. In case you missed that, Dynamic Link works both ways. I can cut in PPro and finish in AE... and render the comp in AME. Or do something cool in AE, bring it into PPro (which I could do with CS3, to be fair), and go from there. Or more to the point, cut greenscreen in PPro, key it out in AE's Keylight effect via "replace with a new AE comp", and then finish it in another session of PPro... a real round-trip (wisely, the D.L. server won't allow two-way linking to avoid circular references, hence "another session" in PPro).

4) Finally, PPro is sequence resolution and format agnostic... allowing multiple sequence frame sizes and framerates in the same project. I noticed that I can't change a sequence framerate or rez. like I can in AE (or Vegas, gasp!), but it's a minor niggle to make a new sequence with the desired settings and drag the timeline clips over (or nest it). HD and SD can now input/output readily from the same project. No more importing PPro projects to try new settings, and being frustrated with the results. A loooong overdue feature.

5) Blend modes in PPro for clips, footage, and PSD files. Yeah, buddy. Almost as huge as the PS layer styles added to AE CS3. I don't do a lot of compositing in PPro, since the world's finest 2.5D compositor is just a D.L. away, but there are times that call for spicing-up video-only footage with blends, and viewing it in near-realtime is cool indeed.

6) Two-pass encoding for FLV Flash content. The Flash encoder is much more robust... basically it's a free version of the On2 Flix encoder. FLV and F4V (H264 Flash) is supported. I haven't fully investigated all of the features, but two-pass CBR and VBR encoding gives much fewer artifacts at lower bandwidths

Those are the biggies for me. It will save hours over the course of any given project. And so far, it's been bulletproof (except for the time I tried to break PPro, and succeeded, by changing a Dynamic Link comp size in AE... except this time, a message window popped up so I could send comments and my dump file to Adobe for their R&D guys to check out. Nice! I told 'em I was trying to break it.)

A funny "feature", and possible potential future feature (say that three times fast) is the meta Speech Search function. You basically give PPro a video file and it chews on it awhile and eventually scripts out (an oftentime hilarious interpretation) of your dialogue in a meta track so you can later jump to specific words or phrases (which would be amazing... if it worked). I tried it, and let's just say it needs lots (and lots and lots) of work. I think the Dragon Naturally Speaking folks learned over a decade ago that successful speech-to-text software needed several rounds of training to provide any acceptable accuracy. C'mon, Adobe. Duh! It's great for some comic relief, but I don't think that's what the Adobe folks were hoping for. I'd wager that the various forums could hold a contest for actual Speech Search results and get some wonderful doozies. I've since been told by other CS4 users that they've experienced much better results with Speech Search, so I'm going to give it another shot on my next interview segment footage.

And I know there's lots more to explore in CS4 from here (like OnLocation, Flash, Photoshop and a now-multi-track SoundBooth), but to say that I'm a happy monkey about CS4 is an understatement.

Rah, rah, Adobe,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions
Longmont, CO USA
BrownCow Productions - Affordable Full-Service Video Production

Thanks for the review. Sounds like a significant upgrade.

Yup, it was sure worth it for me. I think the price was even lower to go from CS4 from CS3 than it was to go from CS2 to CS3. I think Adobe mentioned that the price would go up at some point.

Can you extract audio from the project clips direct to edit in Audition (as you could in Pro 2), or do you have to buy the (inferior) Soundbooth for this?

I know that you can export the audio, but the link accessed by simply R clicking on the file in the Project window is far more convenient.

Alan, since I bought the CS4 Suite and it came with SB, I'm not certain if you could alter a standalone copy of PPro to use Audition as a default sound editor in lieu of SB.

I too was sorely disappointed in SB 1.0, and felt "ripped-off" by getting SB with CS3 instead of Audition... but the second version adds some better tools and functionality, like multi-track and some nice filters. Here's a list of the new stuff: audio editing software | Adobe Soundbooth CS4: features

Looking at my menus in PPro CS4, it does reference SoundBooth in a few different places. "Inquiring minds" would like to know whether those links would be there in a standalone copy.

Hmm...
Brian

I thought I saw the production premium package go for 1699 dollar in the US, based on the current exchange rates we in Europe pay 2900 dollar.

I guess that says enough what one of the reasons is why I bought the limited premiere/encore combo CS3, even a upgrade to cs4 will cost me 450 dollar. For that amount I almost can buy Vegas 8.

After having major problems with the first versions of CS3 I'm currently running the latest patch problem free (knock on wood) and premiere/encore cs3 has served me very well since for my dv/hdv projects. Unfortunately I won't be upgrading to CS4. that would be a waist of money and for premiere/encore only the advantages are not that big to justify a upgrade.

Thank you for that, Brian.

I suspect that it is too much to hope that Adobe would allow this cross transfer between generations.

I am still on Version 2 of Premiere Pro, Encore and Audition. I might just get away with Soundbooth CS4 now that it has multi-track, but Audition 2 does all that I need, and I am reluctant to shell out for the newer software, particularly as their does not seem to be any upgrade available in the UK.

Brian - great review. Would it be OK for me to post it on the Videoguys Blog?
I would give you full credit as the author and link back to your website.

Gary

Brian... Thanks for that great review. Although I still want to play with a trial before I upgrade from CS3 (which is working just fine, thank you very much), I'm more inclined to "pay the man".

Also, I appreciate someone who can still work the word "wonky" seamlessly into a narrative.

Hi Gary, sure you can use my review. No problem.

FWIW, I did buy my CS3 upgrade from you guys... but went with Adobe for the CS4 one because I could do the download thing. You Videoguys are great.

Thanks,
Brian

I read somewhere last week that "Edit in Audition" will make a reappearence in a forthcoming CS4 update. I really hope that's true and not just wishful thinking!

Me too! It would solve a major dilemma for me, as much of my (wildlife) audio needs extensive editing to get rid of the local Louder Spotted Mobile Phone User, the RAF/USAF on NATO training exercises, etc. Soundbooth just does not have the facilities I am used to.

Alan, I've found this workaround useful: use the "Edit Original" command in Premiere to launch Audition, provided Audition is registered in Windows as the default application for the audio file type you're editing.

I'd like to know how you get a whole timeline full of audio out of premiere and into soundbooth. Is it the same as cs3, where you have to render and replace each clip one by one, or is there a nicer way of doing it? (ie, can you select multiple files in the project bin and then render replace them all in one go?)

Brian, a quick way to do what you want to do is make a master sequence and nest your "working" timeline in it. You'll then have one single timeline of audio you can effect and add other master tracks to. I'll almost always do this at the "scoring" stage of production. I have one track of multiple interviews (what I usually shoot) and run some compression on it to even out the levels and compress the dynamic range a bit with just a single track to worry about. And then I can run a SoundBooth score or royalty-free track under the piece, adjusting the gain as needed.

HTH,
Brian Brown

CS4 superior to Vegas Pro 8?
 

I have Vegas Pro 8, like it, and am getting fairly proficient at it. I just purchased CS4 as part of an Adobe Suite. Is CS4 superior to Vegas 8, or is this a preference issue. If it's technically better or more efficient, I'm willing to learn it. If its a "flavor" thing, I'll probably stick with Vegas.

Anybody out there used both extensively and have an opinion on their relative merits?

My big Q is did they make Audition for the Mac yet? Biggest disappointment was finally buying a Mac for editing and not getting Audition at all. SB was trash in CS3

I'm a "Premiere Pro guy" since version 1.0, but I did try the Vegas trial a bit over a year ago. I found it to be extremely fast at cutting video, was format-agnostic (and PPro at the time was not), and even had some decent built-in masking tools (PPro does not). What I found lacking was the motion and transformation tools were limiting or just too time consuming. I do a lot of panning and zooming of HD video and stils into SD and Web resolutions, and Vegas was just very hard to keyframe motion for me. Otherwise, it looked like a very robust program. Its audio tools are second-to-none.

But Adobe gives me a Suite approach, and is the apps are even more integrated now with CS4. AE does killer titles and motion graphics, not to mention effects like nothing else. Encore is a great authoring tool, and Photoshop is... well, Photoshop. OnLocation does tapeless and provides great location tools and scopes. And I'm just very, very comfortable with it now.

If you're considering Vegas, go ahead and try the trial. Maybe you'll find it suits you and your workflow. There's a lot of editors out there that LOVE it.

Good luck,
Brian Brown

Brian,

Thanks for the info. I already have Vegas 8 and have been using it and earlier versions for about 4 years. I'm getting CS4 (whole Adobe Suite) and hate to fool around learning a new editor if it's not significantly better. I've found Vegas keyframing quite easy and I use it extensively. You do need to use blur functions to avoid a jittery effect. Perhaps others build that in automatically???

If CS4 isn't significantly better, I'd rather spend my time learning PhotoShop and the other portions of Adobe. Vegas titling is very hard, I think needlessly so.

That sounds like an efficient way to edit a whole track in one pass, and it would work for me if all the audio were from the same source, but at the moment I'd rather have a quick way to take all the audio from the video clips and work on them in Sounbooth.

Roger, not sure why I missed the whole "I have Vegas" thing in your post... sorry. Too many late nights. Yes, learning a new NLE will be painful indeed, esp. if you're already proficient with Vegas. It's a very fast editor, for sure, and PPro will frustrate you in certain areas.

I think where PPro would shine over the other NLEs, including FCP, is the integration with the rest of the Adobe apps if an editor spends a lot of time with those. Renderless comps to and from After Effects is a huge boon for me. I don't even bother with titling in PPro, although I think its titling is quite good. But I have a whole slew of lower-thirds projects made up as AE comps that I can drop right into PPro via Dynamic Link. One could even use an Excel file to automate text title insertion to AE via scripting... but I really don't do a ton of titles. Bringing in layered Photoshop files is another huge plus, along with the new blending mode support for PPro CS4.

And there's certain video effects that AE does that nothing else will. The Wiggle function, Displacement Map, Keylight (for keying), Motion Tile, and Fractal Noise (for on-the-fly motion backgrounds) and a few others come readily to mind. Being able to do these two-way, rederlessly (is that a word?) between PPR and AE is huge.

Do you know if Vegas supports a render queue or is it "render one timeline and wait" the way PPro was with CS3 and earlier? The render queue really changed my life. There's no way I would want to live without it now.

But edit with Vegas as you get the CS4 Suite... and then maybe stick a proverbial toe in the water with PPro when you have a little time to try it out. Since you'll be getting it for free (so to speak), there's no rush. It will all be different and weird, but maybe you'll see some improvements to your workflow on certain projects that make the pain worthwhile. Or maybe you'll won't and then: what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Har.

Cheers,
Brian

p.s. your registration with Adobe entitles you to free training on lynda.com for 30 days. There's some awesome tutorials on there for getting up to speed with any of the Adobe apps, including PPro.

Roger, moving from Vegas to Premiere CS4 is not that hard or worrysome....I've used exlusively Vegas Video all the way from 4.0 days to present, and bought my first Adobe product 'CS4 Production Suite' less than a month ago.

I still will edit in Vegas for it's great speed and good audio mixing abilities. Another plus is the Cineform intermediate codec that comes with Vegas. For content that is not exceedingly heavy on effects I think it is a superior editor. It doesn't take long to learn to do the same things in Premiere, but it is a slower process to cut and paste and rip and shred and all the quick ways that Vegas just lets you basically paint video (you know what I mean :)

Having said that, you will like the Adobe suite for some great benefits....After Effects is incredible. Third party support, tutorials and the user community is broader which is good because the Adobe software is deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. I am only working with HDV so there are no technical glitches for me between software, however CS4 is reportedly current king of the filetype and format compatibility, which depending on your current or future needs will go a long way. Biggest concern with Premiere may be the audio side of things but right now I don't know it's capabilities and have only done some small tests in Soundbooth.

There both good professional editors so if your getting them both then get to it!! Learn it all!

It's not a matter of one being "better" then the other, the largest advantage of a complete CS4 setup is integration, there is no other software NLE supplier that gives the same amount of integration adobe has. The combo AE, premiere, photoshop, encore and audition for instance all have been designed to do one specific task and to do it well, only because they can work together as one it lifts this program well above what any other competitor has to offer.

Hi Brian;

Great review on CS4. Can you tell us which platform and OS you have ? I'm planning on upgrading from an older version to CS4 and would like to go with Vista 64 and would like to know if XP or Vista 32 are a better choice. Thanks.

But Premiere Pro is still the weakest link in the complete package. On my Mac, I cannot see the video I am capturing. HDV scene detection does not work properly and 3-point editing also does not work as efficiently as in FCP or Avid.

AE, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Encore are all the best of their class. But Premiere Pro is still not as good as Final Cut Pro or Avid. Not even close.

I hope we will see a big major update next time, because I really do see the advantage of the Adobe Creative Suite and Dynamic Link. Can speed up your workflow tremendously.

I do like the new update where you can import FCP products for further editing in Premiere Pro. Hope it works flawlessly. That way I an edit in FCP and go to Premiere Pro to add graphical layers.

Hi Jay:

I've been using Vista 64-bit for over a year now... first with the CS3 suite and now CS4. It allows me to access the full 8GB of RAM in my system, making multi-tasking between the Adobe apps very robust.

With the new CS4 suite, only Photoshop is a 64-bit application, so there's no inherent speed advantage for rendering or previews of the video apps with a 64-bit OS compared to its 32-bit counterparts. But the RAM thing is a HUGE thing for me... regularly leveraging AE, PPro, and Photoshop at full tilt in any given editing session. Also, AE gets its own 4GB chunk for RAM previews, and that's a big advantage compared to just 2GB under 32-bit Windows. Software like Nucleo Pro would give me even more RAM to RAM preview (full system RAM)... along with background rendering, etc.

If you're going to build a 64-bit sytem, component selection is critical to insure a workable, stable environment. Most high-end hardware and peripherals now have Vista-64-bit drivers... but it's best to check before putting together a system and certainly before upgrading an existing system.

HTH,
Brian

I am currently trying some things out but it seems nothing has changed since CS2.

Quicktime files captured in Final Cut Pro don't play very well in Premiere. They stutter so it looks like they are out of sync because audio is playing normally but video is lagging behind. This happens every 5 or so seconds before it catches up again.

I also captured a tape with Premiere Pro, and the MPEG file resulting from it crashes Final Cut Pro. So great interoperability here.

Are you not talking about rendered files here? I still have cs3 but captured files from a HDV cam doesn't give any problems opening in other pc nle's and quicktime files are handled without a problem. It sounds strange to me that captured files cause a problem, premiere doesn't change anything during that process as far as I know. Maybe it's just a mac related problem?

I totally disagree!! I would chose Premiere over Final Cut anyday!!

Premiere Pro does not capture Quicktimes but MPEG files in HDV mode. If I select capture Quicktime, I get a capture error and I cannot activate the recorder. That MPEG file crashes both Quicktime Player and Final Cut Pro on my system. Not that I want to capture with Premiere, because I cannot see what I am capturing. How can that be that I can see what I am capturing in OnLocation but not in Premiere? I expect better from Adobe.

The other way around, the Quicktime files I captured in Final Cut Pro. Just, straight capture in Quicktime HDV format, no ProRes 422 or some other specific format, playback very sluggish in Premiere Pro. The audio plays back fine but the image itself is stuttering and lags behind the audio every 5 or so seconds, catches up and the process repeats itself. This makes it completely impossible to edit normally.

The Premiere Pro captured MPEG file plays back fine in Capture. The Final Cut captured Quicktime HDV files play back without any problems in Final Cut Pro.

So long way to go Adobe, long way to go.

I stick with Final Cut Pro and will use Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Flash and maybe Encore (haven't tested it yet) but Premiere Pro is a no-go this generation.

Yes it does, it's called Network Render. You can use it to distribute the processes across multiple machines or use it on one machine as a queue. Just select it when you start a render.

One thing about Vegas, it's not as full featured as the Adobe suite, but it does pack most of the features that most need 80% of the time into one application. And it does it very elegantly. So not only is it fast, but the integration makes it easier to get creative on the fly. I find it's so much easier and fun in Vegas to try out interesting ideas as they come to you - a workflow it inherited very nicely from it's musical background. That's one of Vegas's main editing strengths. It's very powerful in that respect. On the other hand, Adobe, FCS, & Avid split the different features into separate applications which I think gives them a different type of strength. It's much better when you've got several people in different disciplines working together. Not as "improvisational" as Vegas, but much better for group workflows.

That said, basic Vegas titling is ok, but the new titling application is a bear as it doesn't seem to follow "Vegas rules". So they still have some work to do in that area.

I think this is an FCP/Mac issue. FCP is notorious for not playing nice with others, but I still have to do some testing on cross-platform file transfers. I've been messing around with CS4 on a PC and all the captured files so far work great when transferred to other programs/NLEs.

Unless I am mistaken, QT HDV is a format that apple have decided to keep more or less exclusive to the Mac platform. They have released a decoder for windows, but not the codec itself, right? Why then should you expect PP be able to natively edit in this format?

That's a good point Jon. I'm totally surprised that Floris was able to open a QT HDV file in Premiere, kudos to Adobe for even getting that far. Usually you have to transcode one generation to get a QT HDV file into another application.

HDV IS inherently MPEG2, FCP just adds the QT wrapper. If you want an interoperability test, move both the MPEGs from Premiere and the QTs from FCP over to a PC and see which ones work. This will probably illustrate why Adobe chose the method they did. So long way to go Apple, long way to go. (The MPEG2 playback component for QT may allow the FCP HDV files to play on PC, but I have never tried it, since it costs more money)

On the otherhand, I agree that playback during HDV capture would be nice, but at 12GB an hour you, capture the whole tape for review later. I would never use it, but I can see how scene detect could be useful as well.

I just hate it that it is 2008 and we still cannot get to one, cross-platform compatible file format to work with. The Quicktimes don't play well in Adobe Premiere, the Adobe captured MPEG files crash Quicktime & Final Cut Pro.

Without transcoding it is impossible to capture one file that works in both programs. If I would transcode to another file system, which one would be good?

Why o why do they make it so difficult. The same goes for NTFS / OS Journaled file systems.

There are two different features in Vegas related to "cueing" renders. First, while your project is rendering, you can launch a second instance of Vegas and continue editing the same project, or even another project. Second, there is a built-in script that automatically renders a cue of multiple formats of the open project. So, while Vegas offers some efficiencies here, it doesn't work like Adobe Media Encoder, which I'm finding to be a great tool.

I still think the best option for cross-platform HDV is to create mirror images of the files for each platform. Capture the .m2t/mpeg files, then copy to the mac and re-wrap with ClipWrap. That way everyone starts from the same base. Doesn't help if you need to transfer after that, but at least it's one less transcode.

Does After Effects have the same problem with Quicktime files? When one works with Final Cut Pro and goes to After Effects, do you transcode or can you use Quicktime?