It feels like a good time to start blogging.
I’m Al. I’m the guy who gets to – along with an amazing group of very talented colleagues and friends – build Premiere Pro. For some obvious and some less obvious reasons, our beloved product has been receiving a lot of attention over recent days. So it feels like a good time to express a few thoughts.
Over the last few years, we’ve been working really hard on our NLE. Way back in April 2010 we shipped our CS5 version, a natively 64-bit cross-platform application built on the Mercury Playback Engine. It was designed to make the absolute best out of modern computational resources, CPU and GPU optimized to its very core. It was a big and bold move in a crowded NLE market, but we felt we had the right foundations in place to start turning a few heads. And turn a few heads we did.
Last month, we shipped a major update to CS5 in CS5.5. I always talk about CS5.5 as building finesse on the solid foundations of CS5, and that was our aim. We had the engine and the chassis of a race-winning car, and now we needed to make it easier to drive. We did. We focused efforts on smoothing the path for people moving over from other NLEs, or those just trying out a new one. And more heads turned.
Then, last week, Apple shipped Final Cut Pro X. I’m not here to comment on Apple’s intentions or strategy, and I won’t. But I can say this: I’ve read and heard that many editors felt alienated with the release. And I didn’t have to look far to hear the disgruntlement. It’s all over the web. It ate my Twitter feed for two days. It was on Conan. It was actually on Conan.
And as a result, understandably perhaps, even more heads have turned to look at Premiere Pro. It’s a powerful NLE that’s intuitive to existing editors. It can open your Final Cut Pro 7 projects via XML. It supports all of your media natively. It performs beautifully, and it lets you edit the way you’ve learned to, using shortcuts you know and paradigms you’re comfortable with.
But the most important thing I want to say to all the newly turning heads is simply this: Adobe is committed making a modern, powerful, useable, professional NLE. In fact, we’re developing harder and faster than ever before. We will continue updating and improving Premiere Pro with regular, timely releases. We’ll continue striving to improve performance, to offer the best native format support possible, and to make the pure experience of just editing – in the way that you’ve learnt to – as intuitive and creative as possible.
I expect that the more you experiment with Premiere Pro, the more you’ll tell us where you’d like it to go next. There will always be bumps on the learning curve with an application new to you, just as there will be things you didn’t have before and wonder how you lived without. I just want you to know that we’re listening to you, the editors, and we aim to continue building an application that you love and can rely on.
This is going to be fun.
Al.
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If you have feedback to give, such as bug reports or feature requests, you can do so here. We also provide several other ways to communicate with the Premiere Pro team and keep up to date with what we’re doing:
“Premiere Pro team on Twitter and Facebook (and blogs and forums, of course)”
These resources should help you to get started with Premiere Pro if you know Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer:
“Premiere Pro overview documents for Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer users”
You can try Premiere Pro free for 30 days:
Premiere Pro 30-day free trial download
Comments
Thank you Al. Thank you thank you. You know, as a Premiere user since the early days of 2.0, I’ve always been shadowed by FCP’s reign over my professional circles. FCP has had their day, and now the world is turning to Adobe…and it couldn’t be more deserved. Adobe’s relatively recent advances in native editing and GPU acceleration have been unparalleled. My thank yous are pouring out of me when you said in your own way that Adobe will remain committed to it’s pro editors. That reassurance is appreciated!
You and Adobes attitude towards your customers is refreshing. Add to that your eagerness for clear communication to and from your users is a shock to many ex users of FCP. I am very thankful that a Adobe and editors around the world have an opportunity to work with and enhance such fine software. Every time I dynamically link from PP to AE and back…I say “Wow” and laugh with delight.
Many others have said it, but I will say it again… Adobe gets it.
I must say i tried Premiere after i read the reviews of fcpx. I can’t say it was the best editing software i’ve used but it reminded me that there are still options. Than i thought about how much i’ve used photoshop in my lifetime and how you guys haven’t let me down it made me think that maybe Adobe is the way to go as apple has abandoned me as a professional. (and when i think of how many times i’ve stuck up for the program vs my avid and premiere friends it kind of makes me feel a bit jilted.)
Although i’m not really a person who cares much if it’s 64 bit or the render engines or anything like that, i’m a feature editor so i concentrate mostly on story, i just want a good UI that runs smoothly and does what i need it to do.
Finally Jeffery Harrell’s blog let me know that you guys were listening. I’m here to tell you that if you are serious, than we are a loyal bunch. And we love to talk:)
I’ve been a fan of Adobe products for years, so I’m pretty biased. That being said I’ve never given Premiere a second glance. After+Illustrator+Photoshop have been my Adobe weapons. for NLEs I feel like I’ve used everythin under the sun: Avid, Media 100, Discreet’s Edit, Incite (!), EQ, and for the past years FCP. With FCPX my trust in Apple has finally cracked and vanished. Even though I’m a loyal Adobe customer, I will now switch to Premiere trusting that the company that has shipped amazing product after amazing product will listen to their “new” NLE customers and cater to their needs, all the while innovating as is their custom. This blog post is proof that they are doing just that (as they always have). Thanks, Adobe.
Hey Al, good to see you popping out, even if not entirely voluntarily, it would appear…
Yeah, Al.
I’ll probably be giving Premiere CS5.5 a new look, I gave up totally on it at CS4, which was an unmitigated horror, although it did at least work, unlike Encore CS4, which was just a giant crash machine. If Apple hadn’t blown it, I’d probably never have bought another product from you, because I swore I wouldnt after CS4 production premium. I’m starting to think it’s time to look at other companies than bloated monsters like Apple and Adobe.
Adobe Premiere CS5 at it’s core is a solid editing system. However, what is understood is that If it were not for Adobe’s stellar After Effects and the easier integration between it and Premiere, this NLE would not exist or matter.. Adobe Customer Service and Support has at times (at release versions) been non existent and at times completely unresponsive. I remember once speaking to an Adobe Premiere rep after migrating to 5.0 (not CS 5) and finding the ‘time code’ effect was no longer included (the TIMECODE effect!). “No one asked for it” was the reason I was given for it’s lack of inclusion. Clearly the idea of a window dub and working with “clients” was not even on Adobe’s radar at that point.
If I had been able to have a MAC in my corporate environment, I would have switched to something else, but I was locked in.
I’m happy to say that I have seen so many improvements both in the interface and the usability but also in the ‘attitude’ of Adobe towards it’s Premiere users. Sadly some of the “old guard” still reside at Adobe and the support and attitude towards PPro users is inconsistent at times – but seems to be on a positive user focused trend.
Please keep improving the product, please continue to find ways to improve the product, fix the bugs and listen to your users.
GREAT post Al. Welcome to the post FCPX blog world. A world where one company abandons their loyal users while others, like Adobe, are ready and prepared to step in!
I posted this article on the Videoguys Blog last week:
Adobe gets it and Adobe wants you.
http://goo.gl/c6RUQ
Keep up the great work and keep releasing great products! The Mercury Playback Engine is what has revolutionized tapeless workflows. Adobe’s tight integration of their apps is what sets you apart from the competition. Once an editor round trips footage from Premiere to the new Warp Stabilizer in After Effects, then realizes how freakin good it looks, they will be Adobe customer for life!
Gary
Al,
Thanks for this.
I’ve been a Premiere Pro editor since its inception and have always loved the product. Since I didn’t have FCP on my MacBook (only FCE) I thought I couldn’t lose trying the new FCPX for $300. Wow. What a mess. Nuff said.
At any rate, I plan on stepping up to CS5.5 (currently only at CS3) in the coming months as that has always been my preferred NLE platform. Hoping it will work seamlessly with the new Lion Mac OS?
I’m looking forward to the future with Adobe.
Cheers,
Jeff
Thanks for blogging. Long time Premiere user here since about version 5.0
Keep up the great work. About to switch to CS 5.5
Thanks for your focus on people who do editing for a living.
Dumb question: Is the ATI Radeon HD 5870 in my 2010 Mac Pro pretty much useless when it comes to Premiere? Will I need to change to a card from nVidia to get any kind of decent performance? I’ve never really understood graphic cards and how/when software makes use of them. Maybe that’s because FCP never really did?
Can you guarantee that Premiere won’t strain under the pressure of ‘long-form’ editing with hundreds of hours of rushes, multiple users on a shared network storage? If so, I’m in. If not I’m AVID.
Dan – currently we are optimized for CUDA and support a number of NVIDIA cards (list of supported ones here: http://adobe.ly/eQyiP8 ).
David – we are constantly striving to improve performance in long-form projects and have made significant gains in recent releases. Try it out and let us know how you get on!
thanks
al.
Hi Al,
Regarding video cards, thanks, I’ve seen the list of NVIDIA cards. Just my 2 cents and I have no idea of what’s involved, but would be great if you could include more support for the ATI cards common in recent Mac Pros (such as the 5870 and 5770). Since potential Final Cut Pro switchers are by definition Mac users, and many of them Mac Pro owners, might be a worthwhile investment of Adobe’s time?
In any case, please keep blogging!
Thanks,
Dan
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I’m coming over from Final Cut Studio and I’m really impressed with Premiere pro CS5.5 but there are a couple of features I would love to see added if possible. However, some things are hard to explain in text on the feature request page and I would like to include screen shots of the premiere pro interface to more effectively convey what I’m trying to explain in the feature request. Is there any way to send screen shots with notes to the product development department? Perhaps an email or something?
Thank you
Sounds good so far.
Coming now from FCP I´ve had a look on PPro5.5 and there are many things that I really like. I have two edit suites and need to figure out where to go – I know Avid for years and it´s one of the canidates.
There are for sure a bunch of things to be optimized in PP, and there is stuff I have to learn new, as I needed to when switching from Avid to FCP. But one of the major things is:
Tape is not dead. Maybe for the prosumer but not when you work for major TV stations or industry clients. I see clients coming in with loads of tapes because they need bits and pieces… If I´d say to them “Tape is dead” they´d just kick my …
Maybe it´s on the way to a tapeless world but still clients need tape – at least for a broadcast master on DigiBeta oder HDCam.
So, one of the key things for me is that you need to support AJA, Blackmagic, etc. and have a working capture, batch and playout functionality – inside PP, not with third party. I hear the voice of my clients “Avid does it, FCP7 does it, where is the f**** problem?”
There is also the need of a truely working video preview on the external HD-SDI Monitor.
Both things seem to be worked on. As well as other things of course but many things appear during work and you realize “that would be great, that should be different”.
As I said, from my first look I really like what I see – it has so much potential if you really care and listen what industry people need.
You really have the chance to be the new player – take it!
I already use After Effects and other Adobe products. My beef with Adobe over the years has been it’s unwillingness to support macs. It seems that’s no longer the case. I am crazy-mad at Apple right now for just dropping us FCP users into limbo, and while I’ll continue to use FCP7 for editing, I’m going to be experimenting with Premiere. Don’t dis us mac users!
Hi Al, I’ve been a professional editor for over 12 years and have used many different NLEs from Edius to Avid. I just switched from FCP7 after 7 years to Premiere Pro CS5.5. You and your team have made some great changes in Premiere Pro CS5.5 from previous versions. I have things in Premiere that I wish I had in Final Cut Pro, and the performance with the Nvidia cards is OUT OF THIS WORLD!! Great job! Keep up the good work. That being said there are a few things I would love to see fixed as well, most I can work around for now but the biggest thing that is driving me crazy is how the target tracks work in Premiere Pro when doing an insert or overwrite edit. I work on commercials professionally day in and out.. I usually end up with massive timelines with many video and audio tracks. Since you move the source track patching to what ever target track you need to insert or overwrite to, and you can turn your source tracks on or off to either enable or disable material from source track to go to the target tracks in the timeline, needing to then also turn the target track on or off is another step that is really just an extra step and slows things down. The target tracks should just be needed for dissolves and lift or extract, extend edits, those types of operations. I would work around this by keeping all my target tracks selected but since having other target tracks selected in the timeline when you perform an overwrite edit will overwrite a blank space into the clips on those tracks, that won’t work. I’ve never seen another NLE work this way and it’s driving me crazy. If this is a function that someone finds useful then would it be possible to have a preference setting on how you would like premiere to treat overwrite edits when you have multiple target tracks selected so that it doesn’t put holes in them or better yet a preference setting to allow you to select whether you want the target tracks to have any effect on overwrite or insert edits? I would love to see these issues fixed to increase the efficiency of editing in premiere. Again, you guys have done a great job!! Keep up the good work and Thank you!!