The Genesis Project

Of course there is the Adobe Store and it's very comprehensive and built around a Flex/Flash interface.

However, the people over at Toolfarm.com have come up with a comprehensive upgrade matrix as well.  In addition to being a great dealer of all things plugins, they work hard at providing excellent service and sales to the most important products to the creative person. 

So, if you want to look at what your upgrade options are for Adobe's CS4, I hope you'll take a look at Toolfarm's Upgrade Matrix

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTV is one of those brands that screams, "I use After Effects!"  As for me, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Engine Room is like a version of the Iron Chef for Creatives.  It's available on MTVU and online

In addition to the coolness of the show, it also has one of the guys doing a couple of tutorials.  They happen to be done in After Effects and I thought they were so good that I am going to link to one of them here.  Give a look at the website (click on the graphic), download the PDF tutorials and watch the video.

Here's Part 2 of the tutorial:

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you'd like to sign up (and I'd love to meet you virtually!), then please click on the link for a brief one hour eseminar that will give you your first glimpse into what makes CS4 tick.  It's at 2PM EST today.

Register now

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How does this entry tie into the title?  Well, in the last few weeks it has felt like I'm at the big game and the crowd roars for the home team (Adobe) and as a player on the team, you get a huge charge of excitement from the roar of the crowd. 

The last couple of weeks, I've been busy showing off the product and getting ready and it is somewhat like the above.  People have given great feedback on what we've accomplished and I'm tremendously proud to be part of such an effort and hence the somewhat cliche and sappy analogy... ;-)

One small point about this before the big announcement tomorrow.  If you consider that the video team released CS3 in July of '07, delivered substantial updates of P2 and XDCAM updates in the interim and still had enough time to get CS4 out the door, it really points to an incredibly talented and focused individuals who were able to pull of such an incredible feat.  If you ever meet an Adobe engineer, make sure you give them a hearty congratulations! 

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This week will be a busy one and if you're around the New York area, I'd like to mention a couple of events that I'll be at so you can be among the first to get a real live CS4 presentation (at least for video!).

HD Expo is coming up (9/25) and I'm doing a 2 hour workshop (one of my first presentations - so wish me luck and come with encouraging words! ;-)  Here's a blog entry to chase down the details and sign up.

TekServe will be hosting a small informal gathering on September 29th.  I'll be there along with an invitation to Sony and we'll be doing CS4 along with a show of tapeless workflows with XDCAM EX.  Here's where you can sign up.

Our AENY meeting is also on Thursday, September 25th and while we won't be showing off After Effects CS4 there per se, I will be there to take questions if you want to come up to talk to me.

Looking into October, it looks like we'll be at HD World as well, so I hope that you'll stop by and say hello if you're coming to the show.

Until tomorrow,

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the privilege of getting to work with high-end workflows all of the time.  I go from everything to DV to Film 4K and everything in between, but clearly SD and compressed HD workflows predominate what we do. However, I have to say that I've been really intruiged with what AJA offers for Adobe products - all that you would expect and a whole bunch extra.  Read on to get all the details.

I recently had a chance to play around with AJA Xena 2Ke and have to say that I love the ability of the AJA Xena and Kona cards.  Xena by the way is no longer just a PC card - they've removed the licensing restrictions and lowered the price to top it off.  I'd love to get my AJA card in a Mac tower and then make it work in both OS X and Vista via Bootcamp.  Rock on!

So, what's cool about the AJA cards?  A lot if you're a film maker, digital film maker, documentary film maker or video editor.  Here's the top things that I think are compelling for you.

1. DVCProHD Quicktime capture in RT for cross platform compressed workflow.  This also includes the ability to use these captured files in FCP or use DVCProHD captured files from FCP in our projects in Premiere Pro or After Effects.
2. Native sequence file support on Mac (DPX, Cineon, etc) without using proxies.  Are you kiddin' me?  DPX files playing in real-time.  Digital film makers rejoice!  Premiere Pro + AE + AJA = end-to-end digital film workflow!
3. Native 10-Bit RGB Editing on Mac (can't do this in FCP)
4. PS capture plug-in on mac for deck control and individual frame capture (great for touch up work with sequential file workflows)
5. AE capture directly in AE (instead of through Premiere Pro)
6. Built in RT down convert or cross convert from formats.  This makes it easy to see your HD material on an SD monitor or do a high-quality conversion from 1080 to 720. It's got a very comprehensive control panel.
7. Playback support for P2 and XDCamEX that is native to Premiere Pro: These files play in the timeline and out to the board in RT without using proxies or converted files.  In other words, native file types stay native - not converted!
8. Also it makes basically everything in the AJA/Adobe workflow cross platform.  Because the project files are cross platform and because AJA functionality is virtually identical across the two plaforms in Premiere Pro (except for AVI file support which is windows only) it means that users can more easily have full cross platform collaboration if they need it.

So, check out the AJA website when you get a chance.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The other day I was asked by a co-worker how to do something in After Effects and my response caused me to dig in and learn about a great little expression called LoopOut which facilitates looping of a given animation. While he was looking, he came across a website that goes into the basics of expressions and consequently, I wanted to pass them on to you. This site has a lot of good information on AE expressions and if you're even mildly interested, you'll want to bookmark it.

Introduction to Expressions

While I'm at it, I should point you to Dan Ebbert's wonderful site on all things expressions.

Dan Ebbert's MotionScript

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sadly, this is a post that few people will actually take the time to read but is valuable nonetheless.  Maybe I should put a title of "CS4 ships!"  Nah...

John Dowell blogged this morning on corporate culture as a prediction of where a company is going and throughout it, it in turn quotes from a Wharton interview with Chuck Geschke - one of the founders of Adobe Systems.

I think John did a great job with this lengthy blog post and I would encourage you to read it.  It correctly captures the spirit of Adobe and one of the reasons why I feel so strongly about why Adobe is where it is and why we will continue to be successful with you (our customers) in the future.

jd/Adobe

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just a quick hit on the deluge of information coming from IBC.  This is an end-to-end workflow from capture to finish.  It's continuing good news for digital film.

RED native workflows

And a quick update for you - Here's the first RED film that's been finished by Premiere Pro.  Very cool!  Fatal Flaw

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another run and gun post....Adobe is having a busy IBC which is the European version of NAB.  We're showing a lot of new technology at the show and I imagine you'll be getting some good chatter on creative portals like Creative Cow and DMN

Here's an intruiging Adobe press release - all the tantalizing hints and no super substance.  Sorry, but that's what a press release is all about. ;-)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you've heard about Grid Iron's Flow, there's a lot of hype and interest in it.  It allows people to track their assets while doing basically nothing... Sounds good right?

Check out this late addition to the Digital Video Show case.  Get it via Adobe Media Player or check it right here...

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Until now, all of the episodes have focused on content, features or aspects of Adobe products that I completely know backwards and forwards.  In the case of Episode #9, I confess that my skills with Illustrator are somewhat limited.  But...that is the whole point of doing the show and of course, the whole idea behind both the Genesis Project and Adobe Beginner Classes!  You see, it's about learning how to do things.  Are you afraid of After Effects and Photoshop?  Well, I was too! Episode #9 was a reminder to me of why I do what I do and it confirmed to me that it has value to you.  I hope you enjoy this show.

On that same note, there is only one more episode that I have cue'd up before the CS4 announcement - I will be taking a short break (perhaps intersperced with a bootleg here and there) to think up some new episodes. I would really, really, REALLY, REALLY like to hear your ideas on basic things you would like to learn.  After all, I'm doing it for you and not for myself. So take a moment, and make a comment here on what you'd like to see

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm busy trying to organize my schedule over the next few months and one of the things I have coming up in HD Expo in NY's Javitts center.  If you're a student of the calendar, you'll notice that we announce CS4 on September 23rd.  You'll also notice that the Expo and the day of the workshop is September 25th.  What do you think I'll be showing? Yup, you're right.  So sign up here

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 

To get the basics out of the way, Adobe has announced that we're announcing CS4 on September 23rd.  It's right there on the Adobe home page.  If you click on the link, you can register to see a live web seminar of the announcement.

I'm sure we'll see some more stuff eek out during Photoshop World as alluded in John Nack's recent post.

As for me, I'll let one thing out of the bag right now that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone:  AVC HD support.  Huzzah!  As we demonstrated at a local NY event on May 29th, we had AVC HD playing natively in the timeline.  This will be a boon to those who are embracing this new type of format.

Beyond this, I must say that I'm getting pretty excited about the apps. I've played with them or tracked their progress for many months now and the culminating crescendo will be the release of CS4 to the public. While Adobe field people may occasionally come off as secretive or uncommunicative, nothing is further from the truth!  We are aching, literally aching to talk and show you all of the Adobe goodness we've got packed in, so stay tuned, hang in there a little while longer and before you know it, you'll get an early holiday present on September 23rd.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (32)