Over the last few years, Adobe Premiere Pro has received some major updates and really morphed into an industry leading, fully-fledged NLE for professional video productions and some might even say overtaking rival Final Cut Pro and seeing a huge chunk of editors and video shooters, once loyal to the Apple NLE, jump ship from FCP 7/X and join the Adobe CC suite of pro applications. Just a couple of days ago, Adobe released the first major update for their Creative Cloud suite of applications including the very popular video editing platform Premiere Pro and also Media Encoder.
One the most significant new features in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015.1 is the expanded native support for 4K Ultra HD & HDR formats to include Avid DNxHR, HEVC (H.265), Dolby Vision, and OpenEXR.
The HEVC/H.265 codec is currently used in a handful of cameras, most notably the Samsung NX1 ($400 Off at B&H, Now $1,099), which does require more computing power to process and up until now had to be transcoded in most NLE’s, but does offer significant disk space savings without image loss quality compared to H.264 compression.
See a list of what’s new Premiere Pro and Media Encoder:
- Expanded UHD Support
Media Encoder will offer Expanded UHD capabilities with the addition of support for XAVC Long GOP (the primary codec in the new Sony FS5), DNxHR (a recording option in the Atomos Shogun 4K recorder), and the new HEVC/H.265 codec, which, at 60% the size of comparable H.264 files, is ideal for delivering pristine 4K content online.
- Optical Flow Re-mapping
Optical Flow analysis and pixel motion estimation are used to create brand new video frames that result in significantly smoother slow-motion, time-remapping, and frame-rate conversions with new GPU accelerated optical flow technology coming in the latest update to Adobe Premiere Pro CC.
- High Dynamic Range Workflow
HDR workflow in video is different than that in photography in the sense that it requires a high resolution (4K preferably) Grade 1 OLED display with BT.2020/DCI P3 and ACES support, a NLE/grading software suite with appropriate controls and at minimum 10bit 422 footage in LOG in order for a skilled colourist to get the best out of the image and make it feel 3D and lifelike without it actually being captured in 3D. I guess, this is my best way of describing as it was explained to me by a skilled and very experienced colourist not that long ago.
One such monitor that ticks all the boxes above for HDR colour work is the Sony BVM-X300 True 4K Display. It is Sony’s display crown jewel and at nearly $50,000 it will most certainly break the bank. It’s a high end tool destined for post-houses and super-rich colourists. But back to PP CC 2015.1.
The new HDR workflow features in Premiere Pro CC 2015.1 include an HDR specular highlight colour wheel, curve, and HDR colour scopes, all of which can be enabled in the Lumetri Colour panel menu settings.
- El Capitan OS X Support
- Publish to Facebook
Render and publish content to Facebook in one fell swoop. Easily showcase work, promote projects, or support social media campaigns on a platform where something in the order of 3 billion videos are viewed each day. Along with Facebook support, Destination Publishing also allows you to render and send video to Creative Cloud, Vimeo, and YouTube, giving you a super-fast delivery system for public or password protected video content.
- Improved Image Sequence Support
After Effects artists rejoice! You will soon be able to automate rendering for image sequences from After Effects (and other 3D apps) with new Watch Folder support for OpenEXR. Streamline your workflow for frame-based content and offload rendering so that you can continue working in After Effects.
- Automatic Loudness Correction
Loudness standards are now critical for the delivery of digital content. All you need to do is check the box in the next release of Media Encoder to apply automatic Loudness correction and deliver content with confidence, knowing that your deliverables meet broadcast standards.
- MXF Channelization
Ensure that you meet changing broadcast content requirements with flexible MXF channelization. Export audio within single or multiple audio tracks.
- IRT compliance
The IRT compliance in Media Encoder CC ensures that your content conforms to German broadcast standards. IRT (Institut für Rundfunktechnik) publishes the technical guidelines and specifications of Germany’s public broadcasters. There are six MXF Profiles for HD program material as specified by ARD, ZDF, ORF and ARTE. There are presets in Adobe Media Encoder that correspond to each of these profiles.
- New effects
Under the Effects tab you will now find SDR Conform and Video Limiter effects to give you even more control over the look of your final output’s colour.
Notable bug fixes
- XAVC Intra preset names have been updated.
- Various improvements to DNxHD
- Improved speed when smart rendering sequences with many cuts
- Official support for OS X El Capitan
- Improvements to MXF OP1a – Match Source (Rewrap) functionality
- Many workflow and stability improvements
Other minor improvements:
- Tabbed panel groups can be stacked vertically in a column for Lightroom-style one-click access.
- The Start screen has been redesigned.
- Certain timeline actions such as snapping will provide haptic feedback on supported Mac trackpads.
- Thumbnails in the Project Panel can show the effect of applied Master Clip Effects and Source Settings.
- A keyboard shortcut (Command/Control-backslash) has been added to hide the application title bar.
- New lens distortion removal presets have been added for GoPro HERO4, Vision 3, and DJI Inspire 1 cameras.
- Sound timecode and roll can be displayed in the sequence overlays.
- Multi-Camera angles can be arranged across multiple pages.
- The Video Limiter effect can be included in an export preset to keep video levels safe.
- A new effect, SDR Conform, has been added for tone-mapping HDR content.
- A preference has been added to shift clips that overlap the trim point during ripple trimming.
- Sequence timecode can be shown in the marker panel.
- Grid lines have been added to the Curves in the Lumetri panel.
- Indic languages are supported in the Titler.
- Multiple improvements to Merged Clips have been added.
- The Transform effect has been GPU accelerated.
Dave Helmly has put together a fantastic summary video of the new features in the latest Premiere Pro Update. Check it out below and be sure to check out his YouTube channel here.
[via PremiereBro/source: Adobe]
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