There are a lot of different videos showcasing what we showed at NAB here: http://tv.adobe.com/show/adobe-at-nab-2013/

Premiere Pro is adding so many new features, that some of my favorites have been overlooked:

1. It will now be possible for 3rd-party effects to be GPU-accelerated. Yep, for the first time, 3rd party effects can take full advantage of the Mercury Engine’s real-time performance. The engineering group is working with plug-in makers now to show them how it’s done. Can’t wait to see what comes from that.

2. Smart Rendering is now possible for many new formats. ProRes? Yup! DNxHD? Yup! Plus many more – including some added flavors of QuickTime. As soon as I have a full list of formats, I’ll post it. This is going to speed up a lot of renders by as much as 10 times, and will make the “Use Previews” function in final output render quicker too.

Those are just 2 examples of the multitude of new features coming soon – keep your eyes open for more examples coming soon.

If you are a fan of the “mutant rugby” that Americans call Football, you need to thank Steve. The impact he had on promoting this game was unprecedented. He and his organization brought the drama, the conflict of Football, to television in a way that hadn’t been seen before. Some of the best camera operators worked at NFL Films, and week-after-week, they’d shoot plays at crazy frame rates – over 120fps – just to bring those creamy slow-motion shots you’re used to seeing. I still crave owning a high-frame-rate camera because of what I grew up watching from Steve.

Steve introduced the concept of metadata to me. Back in the 90′s, NFL Films was sitting on a HUGE library of film, dating back to something like 1947. He called for the creation of a computerized system to catalog, tag, and digitize this library, and his team created a custom system called SABRE. Using SABRE, an editor could search for all the clips of Green Bay Packers linebackers with cold breath at an away game, and SABRE would deliver a list of clips, with low-res proxie files ready to view. All the asset-management systems of today? Steve’s team had them beat back in 1999. I remember asking one of the production staff about my brother-in-law, who played for the Raiders, and within 5 minutes, he handed me a tape with all his highlights cut together.

Steve was also thinking about the future of broadcasting – the division I worked with was NFL Films Online – a team of people hired to create the next generation of NFL Films. A lot of those early attempts involved extending shows that were broadcast on ESPN or the big 4 networks. We would take a show brand, like Edge NFL Matchup on ESPN, and create original online content. Many of the traditional shows were limited to 24 minutes of on-air time, and couldn’t cover all the games, so our job was to bring the hosts in, let them talk about the games the same way they did on-air, and produce extended content that fans could watch on the web site. And, we had to do it at 1/25 the cost of the on-air version. I have memories of training the production staff how to use a virtual set system we set up in an old film storage room.  One of their virtual set designers was a 16 year old kid who impressed Steve enough to get a job.

One of the last projects I remember working on was a virtual set demo for an NFL Owner’s meeting in Baltimore. I had to tech-direct the demo, showing live internet streaming (with Steve holding a clock as “proof”!) from another part of the building. Steve was presenting his vision for “building the Brand online” and it worked – he convinced the owners to fund the project.

Steve was a class act, and what you saw in all those on-camera intros was what you got off-camera. He was a genuine, personable guy with a vision of what he wanted.

Why Singapore? Well, to answer that, I have to first answer the question, “Why Asia in general?” The truth is that I’ve always found Asia to be one of the most energetic and dynamic parts of the world. This region is growing so rapidly, and the Adobe video business is really riding that wave over here. We are seeing a big growth in areas like broadcast worldwide, but the potential for growth in the next couple of years here in Asia-Pacific (or APAC) is huge, and I want to help it however I can. Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to come back to the region on a video tour, and it reminded me how much I’ve missed the area. Last year was a domestic-only travel year, and while I loved the Hollywood visits, my heart missed the world traveling; the world exposure to different production worlds, different challenges, etc.

Out of all of Asia, Singapore is the most cosmopolitan city. There’s a little bit of everything here. One thing my world travels has taught me is that America is the biggest exporter of chain branding, especially for restaurants. You name it, and we have it here. (It’s also a place for American chains that can’t survive in the USA – read this article to see more.) Still, the culinary adventures are numerous. 2 highlights so far – getting the kids to try Century Eggs one night (which I love) and to try the King of Fruit, Durian, the next. (not as well received.) The culture here is definitely the most “western” of the large Asian cities, but there’s still a wonderful blending of cultures. It does remind me a lot of San Francisco without the hills – a big city with a lot of diversity, but with a unified branding and identity.

It’s all still so new here – my furniture hasn’t even arrived, and I’m meeting with clients and planning travel in the region. The family is still getting used to it all. Most of my family had never left the USA before, so this was quite the adventure for them. I still have to get my daughter to remember to look right when crossing the street (instead of left like back home.) The humidity is really foreign to me, having grown up in the arid Sacramento valley. My body is still adjusting to that.

People keep asking me how long I will be here – although this is a 2-year contract, I’m treating it for the time being as a permanent relocation. I can’t predict the market in 2 years, but I love the location, the people, the culture, and well, everything about Singapore so far. Some of the other expats that live here came over on even shorter contracts, and just never left. So, we will see what the future holds.

HELLO SINGAPORE!!

NAB Madness is upon us!

Here’s a schedule of where I’ll be presenting and when:

Monday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am – Accelerated Tapeless Workflows: Go from Shoot to Edit Faster in Premiere Pro CS4
9:30am – Everyday Timesavers: Edit Faster with the Top Timesaving Features in CS4 Production Premium
11:00am – The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm – Technology Sneak Peeks: See What’s Coming in Adobe Creative Software

(In the FCP SuperBooth)
5:00pm – Integrating Adobe Production Premium into your FCP Workflow

Tuesday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am – Life without Walls: Open Workflows with Avid and Apple
9:30am – Everyday Timesavers: Edit Faster with the Top Timesaving Features in CS4 Production Premium
11:00am – The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm – Technology Sneak Peeks: See What’s Coming in Adobe Creative Software

Wednesday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am – Accelerated Tapeless Workflows: Go from Shoot to Edit Faster in Premiere Pro CS4
11:00am – The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm – Technology Sneak Peeks: See What’s Coming in Adobe Creative Software

(In the FCP SuperBooth)
3:20pm – Integrating Adobe Production Premium into your FCP Workflow

I’ll also be presenting at the RED Supermeet Wednesday night.

Thursday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am – Life without Walls: Open Workflows with Avid and Apple
11:00am – The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm – Technology Sneak Peeks: See What’s Coming in Adobe Creative Software

I’ll also be hanging out at the pods around the back of the Adobe theatre each afternoon, so come by and say hi!

By the way, AdobeTV is now 1 year old! 1 year ago last week, Adobe launched the AdobeTV site with 210 videos. Today, Adobe TV has almost 3,000 videos, including offerings in English, German, Japanese and French. The content is growing weekly, and all of the evangelists just wrapped up shooting new episodes in the brand-new studio in San Francisco.

This week is a prep week for NAB, which will be action-packed. In addition to many presentations in the Adobe Theatre, I’ll also be attending user group meetings for FCP and RED users, presenting in the FCP SuperBooth, and also covering a couple of Adobe-specific user group meetings. I’ll be posting a full schedule later in the week.

On a completely unrelated note, I ordered a gift for my friend and coworker, Jason Levine, way back in December. It was backordered until very recently, and now it’s sitting on my desk. I’m going to present it to him at NAB, but I thought I’d have some fun in the meantime seeing if he can guess what it is. Here’s one of the very blurry photos I’ve sent Jay over the past couple of weeks:

Any guesses?

I usually shoot a lot of video on my travels, but I rarely have enough time to get anything produced before I’m off to the next event. This time, I made the time on the flight back. This edit is VERY rough, and I wanted to insert some of the great photos that were taken into it. This was shot on my HV-30, all handheld (it really shows – sorry for all the shakycam!) and captured into Premiere Pro as a single clip, which I then created a massive amount of subclips from. In CS4, subclips perform just great, plus I added metadata to each of the subclips, so my media can be organized by location, content (buildings, people, etc.)

Here’s the video:

You’ll see Rufus, Paul, and myself, plus Roman and Olga from the local office. Both Roman and Olga took personal time to show us around Moscow, each on different days. Thanks again, Roman & Olga!

The music track used is “As the Rush Comes” by a group called Motorcycle. Copyright by Armada Music, and the track is available for purchase and download here: http://www.armadadownloads.com/

I stood in the center of Red Square, and shot this video as the Kremlin Clock on Spasskaya Tower struck 8pm. the video starts with Spasskaya Tower, shows the walls of the Kremlin, shows Lenin’s tomb (with Roman waving at the camera,) the Iberian Gate and Chapel (with Slava waving,) the GUM department store all lit up, and then St Basil’s Cathedral.

Thanks for the comments, everyone! Looking forward tot he event Friday!

The ground is covered in what’s called “Moscow Cocktail,” which is a gray slushy mixture of snow, ice, water, and road salts. It’s EVERYWHERE. You can’t avoid it when walking down the streets. I step carefully.

In the Adobe office, I’m sitting next to a map of the entire Russian federation. This is the first time I’ve seen a Russia-centric map. Globes and world maps don’t do justice to the size of this country. It just amazes me. Slava, the sole Sales guy here, says it takes 8 hours to get from Moscow to the Eastern shores. That’s 2 weeks by train. In the US, I’ve driven Coast-to-coast in under 52 hours before (not recommended, but it’s possible.)

Today is a prep day for me, along with the possibility of meeting with a high-end broadcaster here. Tomorrow, Rufus and Paul will be joining me here to brief our partners on CS4, and Friday is the Creative Futures event. The early attendance numbers for the event on Friday are astounding – 3,000 people have registered! This is the first time for an event like this in Moscow, so that’s a HUGE number! If you’re reading this in the Moscow area, come on out and say hi.

Today, I’ve been sequestered in my hotel room prepping some custom content for this week’s road tour through Bratislava (on Tuesday) Prague (on Wednesday) and Warsaw (on Thursday). I’ll be covering a little of everything Production Premium related each day over a 5 hour period. If you are in the area, definitely stop in and say hi.

For those who follow me on Twitter (KarlSoule) you’ll know that I’ve had some issues with my hotel room chair. Something I’ve never been able to understand is why hotel chairs are most often chosen for style over comfort. Case in point:

I’ve been sitting on this piece of lucite for the past 6 hours, off and on, and I officially declare it is the MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CHAIR EVER!!

With that rant done, I’m back to work. See you later in the week.