What's cooking for PPro 3?
 

Does anyone have any idea what's in store for next version of Premiere? I know that PP 2 is just a year old, but they develop something new full steam for sure.

I would certainly like to see some improvements in compositing (like blending modes) and interface (keyboard switching between panes).

Those who know don't tell, those who tell don't know.

Words of wisdom Harm.

As far as I'm concerned, if they could just fix the bugs in PPro2, that'd already give a new version worth buying.

This is just wishful thinking but to me, PPro is now at a point where it has enough features to compete with Avid and FCP. But they are not solid enough to do so yet. Working on solidifying those already implemented features (color correction and media management are two things I can think of) and smoothing the rough edges (24p problems) would go a long way in making it a favorable app (in the pro world anyways).

Dynamic link was the first step towards pro grade workflow. Now fix those bugs, improve the image processing quality (up/down conversion mainly) and media management and we're talking.

Yup Dynamic Link is their ticket, why else would they relsease a Mac version of Production Studio. Dynamic link is awesome. But their not quite in a position to over run FCP. They still have a ways to go. Both are great apps though.

I have to disagree. I think Premiere blows FCP out of the water. I use both of them and there is no comparison to me.

As far as new features: there are two things that i noticed in the Mac Screen Shots and they are Time Remapping (A long awaited feature) and in the project pane there is a new search feature.

Todd, why exactly do you prefer Premiere over FCP so much? (I own Premiere but I envy FCP users better compositing and media management)

I prefer it because I have the full production suite and the intergration betweent the apps is great like from After Effects to PP2 and Photoshop etc...

I think premiere has a more productive work flow. It is a lot more user friendly in my experience. Just having the "contains" fields to search on is huge. Also FCP has to much rendering before you can do anything. When it comes to media management I can not comment to much on that because I do not have thousands of clips like others. I do know that the new version will have improvements in media management. Compositing is huge for me only because I do have the production studio which I use After Effects for. I know that is not premiere but I thought I would add that anyway.

All in all I find premiere to be way more productive. The way the interface works and the way it interacts with the rest of the studio is awsome. Don't get me wrong it does have bugs just like every other software package. But I have always found a way to do anything that I have ever needed to do.

One thing that I really wish it had was the ability to take a HDV 16X9 edit and simply print to tape SD letterboxed. I switched from the Sony Z1U that would do it from it's outputs to the JVC HD110 and really miss that feature because most of my work goes to braodcast and what I have come up with as a workaround is pretty cumbersome. (to say the least)

Not disagreeing with anything said here, I love Premiere and use it on a regular basis, but to me it still lacks a few things compared to the Avid Xpress family to be able to compete on the pro level, and those things are not necessarily features.

Media management is directly linked to reliability and responsiveness on long term projects. Premiere is not reliable when you throw hours of footage and hundreds of clips at it over a long period of time. Avid will load as fast and respond as well no matter the number of clips/sequence time, even after months of the original project creation. To work in a pro environment, you can't afford to start fighting the app as your project grows, this would be counter-productive. You need reliability and PPro doesn't provide that yet.

In depth color correction has just started to be implemented by Adobe with version 2.0, but it is nowhere near Avid and even FCP yet. It needs to be improved in order to be good enough for online editing and final color corrections that are broadcast accurate.

One feature this is still missing from PPro (though I think there's a plugin for it, but still) is OMF export. If Adobe is ever to play with the big boys of this industry, they have to implement this feature. It allows for multiple department collaboration on a project without having to render every time. You can't really make it work efficiently without this.

David, I do agree with you on that first point. PPro is not the best at long form projects, or heavy fx projects involving hundreds of clips, edits and effects.
Whatever the reason, it needs better memory management.

PPro also needs to improve on SD down converting with decent descaling, rather than having to rely on frameserving to third party freeware to do the job. (I noted this on Adobe's PPro wishlist).

Frankly these are more like patches and fixes rather than new features, and I'd be hard pressed to upgrade unless there are features that would help me earn a paycheck.

Amazon has some new info on features of CS3 product including After Effects and Premiere, including long awaited variable speed control!


New Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and Adobe OnLocation CS3* (Windows version)

Make every phase of video production more efficient with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 as well as Adobe OnLocation CS3* (formerly the award-winning DV Rack HD, now included in the Production Premium box), a powerful set of direct-to-disc recording and on-set monitoring tools to help produce high-quality video footage while shooting with an SD or HD camera. Achieve dramatic effects using improved slow motion with variable speed control in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3.


New Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional

Take advantage of innovative new features in Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional such as Shape Layers for flexible drawing and animation of vector shapes; the Puppet tool, an intuitive new approach to shape animation; and Brainstorm to quickly experiment and refine designs using parameters you define.

New Adobe Encore CS3

Author once, and then output to multiple media types. Use a familiar Adobe interface to author a single Encore CS3 project and then export to standard-definition DVDs, high-definition Blu-ray Discs, and interactive DVD-style SWF-based experiences for immediate use on the web.

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/upgrade/

Major disappointment for me. Mostly cosmetic changes. I was looking towards XDCAM HD support at the least. It makes me consider Edius even more, even though I've been a long fan of PPro. I wonder if render engine is more efficient.

Agreed, I was hoping for some compositing options. I hope they at least improved keyboard use, Premiere means too much mousing around.

They need to fix the cake (core issues) before dumping on more frosting (bells and whistles). 90% of my profits/efforts only come from using only 10% of those features anyhow. Capture, cut, title, CC, and export. Everything else is either wasted or done better in AE.

The time remapping and inclusion of the (now-renamed) DV Rack application are enough for me. Integration with Flash will also save some steps on my typical workflow to the Web.

I, too, also hope that down-sampling is fixed for HDV content. Their encoder is showing its age. But it's not a show-stopper for me. I'm far too enmeshed in the Adobe Suite to switch NLEs, and Dynamic Link is too much a part of my workflow now. But I haven't edited with anything else to compare it with, though... but see no need to right now.

I'll happily hand over my cash when the time comes,
Brian Brown

I couldn't agree more with you David. I'm currently fighting with PrPro 2.0 on a project that has 5000+ video and audio clips (about 75 hours) with many many nested sequences out of necessity for 5.1 surround sound mixing and I spend more time reading "Sorry, Adobe Premiere has to shut down..." errors than anything. Each reboot and restart of the project costs me 12+ minutes and usually in a 3 hour session, I'm restarting about 4-5 times. The project use to load in just a few minutes and as the complexities of the edit started to compound the project began to take 7-10 minutes to load. To work around this, I have to run 2 seperate projects, 1 to mix 5.1 sound which has all of the unused assets removed and the other to sweeten + fix sound (doing these two phases concurrently to maximize our time and need access to all assets) and what a hassle. Ever since I removed unused assets, it's been pretty solid, but keeping track and updating multiple projects can be quite tedious and counter productive.

I was hoping for 64bit version with PrPro CS3 for stability but it's not going to happen. Ridiculous.

On Adobe's site, it states that one can upgrade from PP2 for $299 - OR, you can buy PP2 upgrade now for $199! and get CS3 for free when it comes out - What?

The Adobe site also says that Encore is rolled into Premiere. I wonder how that will work. Is CS3 going to be one over bloated program or are we still getting two separate programs with one encoder better than the other or?

My favorite update - someone finally figured out that there are times when you want to replace footage on a timeline the same as one does in AE, just by replacing the asset and keeping the edits! Man, what took so long!!!

I've been using their stuff for years and they seem to do this each time - dribble out a few more features, while failing to really make huge leaps or fix some of the real issues that people are faced with everyday - 24p DVD export, tape export, encoder problems, clumsy interface....

Yeah, I bought into it a long time ago and stuck with it because that's what I'm used to. I'm hoping that they will address some of the issues that PP2 really needed addressing, but I get the feeling that this one is all about throwing a few new things in so that they can launch all their products as this new Suite.

Encore is included with PPro - not rolled into it. It is still a separate app.

I think what many people are missing with these updates are some fundamental elements of Adobe's direction:

-Integration is the name of the game now.

The developers that don't get this (ahem..sony) are going to get pushed aside. This release of all the CS3 apps is about them working well with each other. This is critical. I just don't see PPro working to it's potential without AE, Soundbooth and Encore. Notice they let go of the 'standard' version of AE? That is because you need the single version of AE to really have the full workflow with PPro.

-Subtle

Many of the improvements in all the apps are subtle little elements that when compounded add up to big things. Several of AEs improvements are like this - the motion blur revamp for example. You will find many of these in PPro as well. What this means is you are getting a honed tool instead of new problems being introduced.

Adobe has upheld this as their biggest update ever and I can easily see that. There was a huge amount of planning and teamwork between development teams on this project and I think you will see them back in the arena as one of the serious players in post.

-gl

Good points George, but I still can't help thinking that there are several things that would really help everyday workflow that should be addressed, but are not apparent in the features of this latest release. I would prefer a rock solid, fast and friendly, editor that let's one export properly in all the required formats before the ability to integrate with 6 other apps that I don't necessarily like or want to use because they have similar limitations and quirks.

You may want to hold judgement until we see more hands on opportunities like the open beta coming up this in mid April. You may find that some of your UI and export issues are addressed.

-gl

I agree. I guess I'm just a bit skeptical goiven their track record with Premiere. BTW - I have not seen any info regarding the beta or release date. What have you heard?

George,

Can you elaborate a little on the added integration between Premiere, AE, Encore, & Sound Booth for CS3? Premiere for editing and AE for color correcting utilizing the integration is more than worth the price of admission for me. Using Audition's integration with PrPro 2 has been a serious time saver not to mention the savings on my sanity. I guess what I'm getting at, is the new integration features in CS3 enough to warrant an upgrade over the integration between PrPro 2, AE 7 Pro, Audition 2, Encore 2? I do not have dynamic linking though. Thank you.

Kevin

Open release betas are rumored to be out in the next 2-6 weeks. Anticipated release is to be timed with the Mac platform, which is July-August.

Okay, so there is still a ways to go. Thanks

April 16th it will be at labs.adobe.com along with AE CS3.

-gl

It takes the current integration to another level in terms of drag and drop abilities and non-destructive interaction. For example, you can drag and drop a PPro sequence into an AE project with all the bins and keyframed events all intact.

Almost every filter/effect is transferable to AE from PPro now. Also the photoshop layer effects also transfer between AE and PPro. Basically, we are talking about Dynamic Link2 :)

-gl

That sounds great George, but is that only through dynamic link which is part of the Studio Premium bundle, or will that be part of the general integration?

If you have PPro CS3 and AE CS3 you have this capability:

"Integration With Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and Encore CS3:

Adobe Premiere Pro project import
Save time and preserve project organization when working with Adobe Premiere Pro projects. Preserve bins, edits, markers, keyframed effects, nested sequences, transitions, and more from Adobe Premiere Pro. Drag and drop or copy and paste clips from one application to the other.

Adobe Premiere Pro project export
Export an After Effects project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project, streamlining work that involves editing as well as motion graphics and effects.

Adobe Encore CS3 integration
Create elements such as motion menus and interactive buttons for your DVDs. Export movies from After Effects with markers that Encore CS3 reads as chapters."

-gl

Thanks George. Not sure if these added features will warrant an upgrade for myself, but hopefully by this time next year a 64-bit version will be close to launch.