The biggest challenge is where to begin? Perhaps with some of the fundamentals of Premiere Pro and how it’s a bit different from the competition.  If this is old news for you skip on down a bit and you’ll

1. True interchange, truly cross platform: Adobe really is about not making the Operating System or the hardware platform part of your decision making process.  If you like PC’s, rock on.  If you’re a Mac zealot – that is cool too. PCs and Macs can work together and share projects back and forth and as for open, our FCP XML has long been recognized as pretty robust and this go around our AAF has improved greatly.
2. No transcoding/rewrapping or “Adobe won’t touch your pixels”: This has always been a big one for me.  Both Avid and FCP 7 (legacy) have traditionally ‘encouraged’ you to convert your source footage to either DNxHD or ProRes in order to work.  That’s not a bad thing per se, it’s just a choice.  If you want that choice within Adobe, that’s not a problem.  However, rendering/converting/transcoding (you pick whatever word you like) always costs you time.  Adobe would rather have you working with your footage as quickly as possible.  Premiere Pro has a ‘resolution independent playback engine.’ Essentially, this means you can throw anything on the timeline and expect it to play within reason.
3. Never “Render” until you’re ready for final output: In a well equipped system, I have found that I will never render anything (temp effect, spot AE comp, PSD file, compositing in the NLE and so forth) until I’m ready to output to whatever formats I need.  This is huge as it keeps the creative person creative! Why deal with an ‘unrendered’ message when you should never have to? Why slow down the creative process?

Doubtless, I could go on, but in covering the above three points, I think you get the idea about Premiere Pro’s approach and how it aligns itself to time sensitive broadcasting like news, sports and content creation in general.  I mean, when’s the last job you got that said you could have more time than the last job?

So, what follows are my picks for what makes Premiere Pro CC ideal for broadcast. 

Closed Captioning: This was a big one for me personally as it kept coming up in talking to broadcasters.  For the average editor, it’s a complete non-issue.  Even production houses that create TV content likely don’t deal with it.  Closed Captions however are the law and each broadcaster must have 100% of their content captioned.  With Premiere Pro CC, we introduce a brand new captioning workflow designed for the re-use of captions.  This feature has three basic tenants: 1) Do no harm to caption data if it exists, 2) allow viewing and light editing of the caption data and 3) export captions either as embedded data or as a sidecar file.

What I particularly like about our implementation is that it is simple and doesn’t get in the way of editors if they don’t want to see caption data.  You can toggle captions on/off in both the source and program views and the caption data is represented as a second video track, which again makes sense.  Why does it make sense?  Well, if I move video that has audio, the audio tracks move in sync with the video, right? Why shouldn’t it be the same exact way with captioning data?  Indeed, for Premiere Pro CC, it is.  Take a look at the graphic to see some of the details on our closed captioning implementation.

One final note on this.  While closed captioning is a requirement in the United States, it is not in many other geographies and nations.  That said, what I hear from many of my colleagues is that the interest and possibly requirement for some sort of captioning or subtitling is increasing abroad, so its something that will continue to become important over the coming years.

DNxHD and ProRes(for Mac only): I am very excited to see the inclusion of DNxHD encode and decode in its native MXF wrapper on both the Mac and PC versions of Premiere Pro CC.  In addition, we have implemented encoding of ProRes on the Mac platform without the need for any Apple ProApps software to be present.  This is big because Adobe recognizes that no matter how popular our non-linear editor is, there will be healthy competition and therefore the need to play nice with other edit systems.  In addition, both ProRes and DNx are well thought of as intermediary codecs (or DI codecs) and including these two makes a true DI workflow much easier now inside of Premiere Pro CC.

Smart Rendering: “Time to air” are three words that many broadcasters live and die by.  Getting the content out as quickly as possible is critical for news and sports and tends to be the mantra for just about any broadcast entity.  Smart Rendering is the concept that if your source footage format is also your destination output, that it Premiere Pro will only render things like dissolves but cuts will be more akin to a file copy than anything else.  The end result is a much faster, accelerated output.  Remember – time to air!  For Premiere Pro CC, our list of supported codecs for Smart Rendering include: DV, DVCProHD, AVC-Intra, XDCAM, XDCAM-EX, XDCAM-HD, ProRes and Animation in MOV(Mac only), and DNxHD in both MXF and MOV.  This is a pretty good list given that it includes the most popular broadcast codecs used today.

Edit Finesse: This is a less defined feature in that it isn’t any single thing, but rather a collection of little things that add up to making the editor faster and happier with Premiere Pro CC.  Over the last several product cycles, we have spent a lot of time evaluating former FCP and Avid user requests for the things that they really miss from those editors.  When you have thousands of feature requests and input coming in, you quickly get a sense for the things that stand out.  With Premiere Pro CC, I think we’ve take the largest step yet to making forlorn FCP editors happy with Premiere Pro.  A couple of specific call outs on edit finesse features: The new audio clip mixer allows FCP and Avid users to animate keyframes in the way they were comfortable with.  More keyboard shortcuts like a command to move clips up and down in the timeline. A reworking of track targeting to make it a single click instead of three.  In total, there are several dozen features that are designed to delight the editor and make them more productive.

Are there more features or workflows I could talk about? For sure, but I’m not sure I care to write a book about Premiere Pro CC, so will stop here…

So there you go, four things that are important to media and entertainment companies about Premiere Pro CC.  In conclusion, there are a lot of changes going on amongst editors and broadcasters around the world and Adobe is doing our very best to engage with everyone: to learn what the most important things to address are.  Over the last few years, Adobe has developed a reputation for listening to our customers and responding in kind.  Some would like to write that off as marketing gobbily-gook, but as one of those people who is listening and taking the information back to our engineering and product management teams, Adobe’s listening attitude is for real.  We believe ultimately, that living in an ivory tower with no contact to the customer results in a poorer product with no feedback on how things can and should be done by the customer.

I went into this endeavor thinking that I would clearly delineate between different Quadro level cards and along the way understand what each one offered in the way of performance.  I was methodical in setting up my system and in trying to create real-world tests that would emphasize what the GPU brought to the table.

While I did learn a lot (which I will pass on to you in due course), the experience and tests in some cases were not always as clear-cut as I had expected.

In my role at Adobe, I sometimes have to present an ‘executive summary’ that gives the key points in a pithy and concise manner.  For those of you that have no time to waste and lets be honest that’s most of us, here are my key findings:

• The idea of a balanced system for Adobe CS5 and above with regards to 64-bit native applications is critically important to having the very best performance.
• While you still get the Mercury Playback Engine without having a GPU card installed on your system, I was genuinely surprised by how much of a difference it made on many of the tests I ran.
• What the GPU provides in terms of a boost is dependent on the kinds of codecs you’re using.  This is similar to the CPU which makes me point you back to my first point again (!)
• The difference in cards is a mixed bag, but there are clear differences in performance as you scale up.
• Determining the right card for you depends on two primary things: the rest of your system’s capabilities (point 1 again) and the kind of codec(s) you’re using.
• Finally, the fractional resolution playback system in Premiere Pro CS5 and later is a marvelous feature that allows lesser systems to still have acceptable or even good performance with big, heavy productions.  Combined with the GPU, this allows the most powerful and flexible editing/playback engine out there today.  Some people call playing back at half-res as ‘cheating.’  On the contrary, I find that I don’t even know when I’m doing that and have to check periodically.  It’s a SUPER feature that I think some people don’t understand.

The system:

I am using a 2-year-old HP Z800 with 16GB of RAM and an internal 4-drive SATA RAID array.  The drives were getting a consistent 424MB/s read and write using the AJA utility.   I have two physical CPU’s each with six cores and hyper-threading turned on to present a 24-core system.  The chips are XEON X5660 and have a clock speed of 2.8Ghz.  The system contains an AJA Xena/Kona 3 and I may test the GPU capabilities with AJA and others in the future, but for this test, all sequences were Adobe native.

In my opinion, I would say the following about the general sense of the system:

Prepping the box:

To make sure the Z800 was using the latest drivers, I visited the HP website and upgraded the BIOS as well as all Windows 7 files that were necessary.  As a person who is routinely playing with a variety of software packages, I uninstalled as many as were reasonable and also ran my favorite utility – Advanced System Care Free on the HP as well.  This great little utility helps allow for optimization, especially for people that are not uber geeks.

Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder each had a minor update right before the tests commenced, so I used 5.51 for both.

For NVIDIA drivers, I used at the latest (at the time of this article, 275.89)

On the slightly geekier side, I went through and tried to remove as many processes as I could to provide the most performance out of the box without over-clocking or other semi-questionable activities.

The Cards to be tested:

I wanted to keep this pretty real, but also exclusively Quadro (I’ll explain more on that in a bit).  In the category of ‘real’ I excluded the Quadro 6000 simply because I don’t think there are many people who are prepared to shell out that kind of money for GPU acceleration within Premiere Pro.  Hint – you need to be a RED user to even really have a good reason to in my opinion.

I wanted to use the popular Quadro FX4800 (from the last generation of products) to provide a baseline reference and I wanted to see how much performance I could get out of a Quadro 2000.  Finally, the two that make the most sense for Premiere Pro users – The Quadro 4000 and Quadro 5000.

Quadro 2000 gets booted at the last moment:

Unfortunately, I had to pull out the Quadro 2000 during my tests because I discovered a bug that I need to verify.  Rather than wait for NVIDIA to send me another Quadro 2000 and have Adobe engineers verify if I found something, I pulled the card from the tests.  I had problems with the RED tests but not the other sequences.  I hope to isolate what the problem is and deliver a Quadro 2000 test as an amendment to this article in the future.  The Quadro 2000 is perhaps one of the most intriguing cards there as it’s about $500 and fits the price of cost conscious video editors.

Ok, why no love for the GeForce?

Why just Quadros?  Why not the very popular GeForce cards?  Granted, I think these cards are great and will run equal with a Quadro card for a fraction of the cost.  But as I’ve mentioned previously, the Quadro cards are engineered to perform for long times without failure and if it gets hot, it gracefully degrades performance.  It’s over-engineered and manufactured by NVIDIA whereas the GeForce cards can be made by any of a dozen different companies.  Consequently, while a GeForce may look and perform as good or even better than a Quadro in the short term, I know that all of my Premiere engineers have repeatedly praised Quadro cards.  While NVIDIA may not like the analogy, its like a Toyota and a Mercedes: They both go from point A to B, but the quality and longevity of the Mercedes shows itself again and again.

The real truth about the tests:

Sadly, there is no single, quantitative test that I could run that would make my results read out as ‘Card A did X. Card B did X+Y’.  If there were, this would be a blessedly briefer article.  In the end I used a couple of real-world tests to help come out with some useful information.

While this test was done on a PC, I think it fair to say that the gist of it translates well to Apple computers as well.  The Quadro 4000 Mac is a good card overall and provides a true GPU enabled workflow for Premiere Pro users on the Mac platform.

PPBM5 test: “Premiere Pro Benchmark CS5”

First, I ran the PPBM5.5 tests for each card on the same system.  PPBM5 aims to try and give a numerical performance for 4 key metrics.  Surprisingly, the scores of non-GPU metrics changed.  Here’s the table of the scores for each – each number represents seconds and the total time represents the sum of the four tests:

Each of the numbers represents the time it took to do the task and the Total Time reflects the overall performance.  The site discusses the testing methodology and it also is worth a read. If you’re interested in seeing how your system matches up, go to the site and look at the large list of systems that have submitted their scores.  That itself is an interesting look at how different systems perform.  More thoughts on the PPBM5 test in my conclusions below.

Real-world GPU test (aka ‘my GPU torture test’)

The second series of tests were my own and based on building sequences of different material and testing frame rates (dropped frames) at given resolutions. I used an internal testing mechanism to measure a few things such as CPU utilization.  The most important thing I was looking at though is the number of dropped frames.  Even dropped frames don’t necessarily tell the whole story because of different codecs.  I found that multiple codecs task different aspects of the system so I picked three different ones to use for these tests.

AVCHD – Highly temporal in nature makes the CPU decode a chore.  In other words, it’s a LongGOP format. However, it is fairly lightweight in disk throughput and so not necessarily taxing on the disk drives.  AVCHD is also very similar to Canon’s popular DSLR H.264 codec, so that was an added bonus.

DVCProHD – This is not a LongGOP format but a bit heavier in terms of disk space.  At about 13MB/s it is not overly difficult for modern drive RAIDs, but still considerably bigger than AVCHD.  Its frame size is actually 1280×1020…

RED – This is a worst-case scenario for a GPU test.  Huge frame sizes and large data rates make this a chore for both the CPU, RAM and the drive array.  4K clips on any system are hard.  Throwing on effects is like turning the knife and pouring salt on a wound at the same time.  Ouch.

In creating sequences of these codecs, I wanted to focus on GPU performance and how that translated in dropped frames.  So, I stacked on as many effects as I could to push the GPU in the system.  For each of the three codecs, I created two sequences: One with a single clip with as many effects as possible; Second, I took four clips as PIPs and did the same.  Each type of sequence had the exact same effects applied in each case.

The results:

Some notes about the tables:

While I strove to make everything as absolutely accurate as possible, the fact is that I had to estimate on some of the values.  For example, the CPU utilization is changing all of the time.  I looked at both my internal CPU meter and the task manager performance panel and chose what I thought the average was over the duration of the sequence.  Scrubbing quality is also a subjective quality.  ‘Great’ meant that I could scrub faster than real-time and it would keep up.  ‘Fair’ meant that it was real-time or close to it.  ‘Poor’ describes intermittent frames showing in the program view and ‘Beyond Poor’ was…well.. you get the idea…

Lastly, I ran these tests several times and averaged the numbers to give the most accurate view.  In some cases, a timeline would drop no frames one time and then a few the next.  I tried to make a quality assessment based on multiple test runs.

Quadro FX4800:

Quadro FX4800 Performance Table

Quadro 4000:

Quadro 4000 Performance Table

Quadro 5000:

Quadro 5000 Performance Table

Some conclusions:

First, lets tackle the PPBM5 test.  Even with the MPE scores coming in nearly identical between all three cards, the net result changes in between cards.  Since, literally nothing changed in the system except the card itself, this lends itself to the idea that the total system score is the thing you really want to be after.  As they discuss on their site, there is no perfect test and the graphics card can affect the overall performance.

For my tests, I had a couple of surprises, one of which is how good Premiere Pro is at decoding RED files.  I would have expected anything short of the Quadro 5000 to drop some frames when dealing with four 4K files with effects on them at half resolution.  The fact that the FX4800 dropped 10 frames total (about 1 frame every 2 seconds) is remarkable.

This brings up another point.  We have to remember that dropping a couple of frames in a given duration is no big deal in most cases and it’s doubtful that we even see it (despite people attesting to the contrary).  Obviously, we always want to strive to have zero dropped frames all of the time, but given that a lot of online video is NOT 24 or 30fps and no one complains should be an indication that there are acceptable levels of frame rates that don’t hurt our editing or viewing experience.  Additionally, throwing 20 effects simultaneously on timelines isn’t something that you’re going to do even once in a while.  While it is intellectually interesting to look at this, the big thing we should come away with is that a good GPU can really improve the day to day workflow and efficiency of an editor.

Back to RED – Turning off the GPU in all cases has a clear result in performance.  The system dropped frames up to 95% of all frames at half-res without GPU turned on.  That’s just downright amazing and provides the RED user a clear answer on whether to get a good GPU card.  Answer – get one!

AVCHD really proved to be more challenging than I would have imagined.  It shows that CPU can still be challenged.  The GPU really makes a difference here too.  You see in the case all three cases, that the GPU improved playback performance by a factor of 3.  The question here for me is why is Premiere Pro not capitalizing on more CPU power here?  It’s a question I don’t have the answer to at present, but I’m taking it to the Premiere Pro team with the hopes of getting one.  I think the big takeaway for me on AVCHD is that I will work in half resolution all of the time and get a MUCH better editing experience (scrubbing, playback, etc).  Temporal codecs like AVCHD and H.264 are getting better, but can still be challenging on a lower-end system.

DVCProHD clearly was the least taxing of the codecs with regards to GPU enabled systems.  I think it’s because it is an intraframe codec meaning every frame is a full frame(picture).  While the disk usage is higher than AVCHD, the drive system in the PC was not going to break a sweat with 90MB/s.  Yes, the FX4800 dropped a fair number of frames (65) but again, that’s 20 effects and if you bump down to half resolution, all your problems go away.

Scrubbing with GPU is also enhanced but not universally.  There are anomalies, where I thought the FX4800 had the best scrubbing of AVCHD material overall.  I don’t have a good answer as to why but I can say that the subjective difference over a number of days is probably minimal.

My final conclusion:

GPU’s are good.  CUDA enabled NVIDIA GPU’s are awesome when editing with Premiere Pro CS5 or later.  Personally, I came away surprised at how much better the system performed with the NVIDIA GPU.  The performance between the cards scaled more or less linearly and in general they confirmed what I had suspected: The Quadro 4000 is a GREAT card for the money and provides real improvement for less than $1000.  The same could be said for the Quadro FX4800 if you find them used.  If editing is your business and you’re using Adobe Premiere Pro, then investing the money for a Quadro 5000 card is a wise investment.

Of course, the one caveat to the above is that you need to have a balanced system in order to make everything perform well.  Not having enough RAM is the single biggest problem I encounter.  It would be interesting to add another 8GB of RAM to the test machine and run the test again just to see what would happen.  Similarly, If you’re using RED and have two drives striped together, you’re asking for a problem.  CPU + RAM + HDD + GPU = awesome Adobe Premiere Pro editing platform.

Balance your Production Premium Mac or PC!

Thanks for reading and I hope this article generates some conversation and comments which I welcome.  Talk amongst yourselves and I’ll reply to any good comments or questions.

Dennis – Adobe guy

Unfortunately, with all good intentions, it sometimes generates a certain amount of confusion and at the request of a friend and coworker, I’m here to set the record straight on the details of Adobe’s current promotional offer for FCP and Avid users.

First off – the details of the offer is here.

Save 50% off Adobe® Creative Suite® 5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere® Pro CS5.5 software if you own Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer with offer code SWITCH. Offer ends September 30, 2011. See terms.

This offer is available to editors interested in switching from their current tool of choice to Premiere Pro or Production Premium.  I previously had a couple of people ask me about switching from Sony Vegas. Our initial idea was to offer an upgrade path for FCP users who were feeling stranded, but then as we moved forward, we opened it to Avid Media Composer, Grass Valley Edius or Sony Vegas owners too.

While my personal focus is clearly in the US, Adobe is a global company.  As such, this Switcher offer is available on adobe.com worldwide (“SWITCH” promo code) with the exception of Japan. We will be adding Japan soon!

Sometimes things happen that cause some trouble.  Rarely – but it happens.  If you’re having trouble with purchasing or using the promo code SWITCH, contact Adobe Customer Service in your region: http://www.adobe.com/support/contact

A final closing note for you to consider:  This offer is definitely, definitely a temporary thing and if you’re at all on the bubble about doing it or not, I encourage you to consider it.  As I’ve said previously, I’ve never seen anything like this from Adobe and honestly, I expect the powers that be to wake up one day and say, “What were we thinking.”  So don’t say that you weren’t warned!

But times continue to be tough and despite possibly getting your $300 back, you’re faced with a daunting decision – stay the course or look for something new that will support your creative vision and your wallet?

I’m very excited to say that Adobe is working hard: not only at making great products that work for professionals, but at making the decision to try and/or purchase Adobe Production Premium as absolutely easy as possible.

Today we announced a program that will allow users of FCP and Avid to painlessly switch over to Adobe Production Premium at a price that I’ve frankly never seen in my 6.5 years at Adobe.  To top that off, while my personal focus is North America, this offer is WORLDWIDE, so no one is being left out!

So, lets not belabor this – it’s a ‘such-a-deal’ (spoken in my best, thick NY/NJ accent) and as an Apple or Avid owner,  if you’ve considered Production Premium in the past but haven’t done it yet – now’s the time.

In the news room – Adobe Announces Switch Program

More info and eligibility requirements

Taking the plunge (Promo Code: SWITCH) – Production Premium Offer

Not sure what all the hubbub’s about but interested in kicking the tires? Try Adobe Production Premium CS5.5 for FREE for 30 days

So to begin, it makes sense to start with defining what MPE is.  It is NOT(!) just about hardware GPU acceleration.

The Mercury Playback Engine is three discrete components:

• 64-bit native application – as opposed to 32-bit like most applications
• 64-bit memory addressing – use more RAM
• GPU hardware acceleration for effects – ‘go faster juice’ for your system

Todd Kopriva recently did a run down on MPE, CUDA and what it means to Premiere Pro. You should give this page a peak and then come on back.  By the way, Todd is a great resource and his blog is a great page to bookmark.

Now, lets get specific on the Mac and some of the questions I’ve gotten over the last several months…

Q: Can I use Premiere Pro on a Mac?

YES. Shockingly (at least to me), there is still a portion of users that are not aware that Premiere Pro is available today on a Mac.  It is worth noting that Premiere, which started 20 years ago, originally started on a Mac.  It’s been written from the ground up three times including the current 64-bit CS5 version. With CS3 (our first re-write), we returned to the Mac in response to customer demand and delivered the first Mac version of Production Premium, which is the primary product that contains Premiere Pro today.

Q: Is Premiere Pro 64-bit ‘native’ or ‘optimized’, because I hear there is a difference?

Premiere Pro CS5 on a Mac is a 64-bit native application and all of the benefits that this implies.  Premiere Pro and After Effects in the CS4 timeframe were 64-bit ‘optimized’ meaning they could address more than 4GB of total memory, but did not do much beyond that.   As a side note, Adobe Media Encoder is also 64-bit native.

Q: Do I need an NVIDIA graphics card (GPU) to be able to use Premiere Pro CS5 on a Mac? All of the new Macs (both towers and laptops) use ATI graphics cards and I’m on a budget!

Let me be very clear about this answer – ABSOLUTELY NOT! This is a big one.  As much as I absolutely love NVIDIA technology and what it can do for our users, it is not necessary for running Premiere Pro or any other CS5 application.  Remember: the MPE is a combination of three technologies or features, but you don’t have to have all three in order to use it. If you get a Mac Pro tower and it has an ATI card, you’re still getting two-thirds of the MPE technology and it will still run rings around FCP7 or any other software NLE in terms of how many video streams and effects you can run in real-time.  Why?  It’s the 64-bit goodness and memory addressing that makes up Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop and Adobe Media Encoder.

I’ve been accused of being an Adobe marketing weasel because Mac users and particularly FCP users think that Premiere Pro can’t do it’s magic without a great GPU card.  In particular, many FCP users feel that a GPU is essential in order to edit and playback challenging temporal codecs such as those found on Canon DSLR and AVCHD cameras.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

Q: Okay, if Premiere Pro on a Mac doesn’t need a GPU to actually edit AVCHD and DSLR footage smoothly, then what DOES the GPU add to my editing system?

Great question, I’m glad you asked.

The NVIDIA graphics card provides processing of effects that you apply to your clips on the timeline. Once you understand and process this, you’ll come to this conclusion: Having an NVIDIA GPU gives you the ability to balance the load between different computing components.  If effects like color correction, dissolves, etc. can be moved over to the GPU, then that means the CPUs have more headroom and ability to focus on what they’re good at – decoding video and playing it.

Q: If I have the other two aspects of MPE, what does that really give me?

The 64-bit native nature of the application allows Adobe to utilize all of your CPU cores (and virtual  ones) much more effectively than with a non-64-bit application.  How many cores do you have?  Wouldn’t you like to be able to use all of them?

The ability to address far more than 4GB of total memory with an application also means that large projects or projects that contain After Effects Projects, Photoshop documents and the like will continue to perform well.  To my knowledge, current Macs (early 2011) can address up to 32GB of total memory.  As you can see from this picture, Adobe applications recognize others that are open and can more effectively share or release to another application.  In the case of After Effects, you can also reserve a number of CPUs to remain outside of its domain again allowing other applications to work well (not just Adobe). So, if you have 16GB of memory, you can effectively use it all and recognize performance gains as well.

Many popular applications are 32-bit only and can only address up to 4GB of memory.  As we’ve quickly moved to HD, 2K, DSLR, RED and even DPX files, the ability for a professional 32-bit application to deal with this kind of media en masse has become an increasing challenge.  Take it from us, we went through it!

Q: I need to work with other FCP editors and so I need to use ProRes.  That means I can’t use Premiere Pro for those kinds of projects can I?

You can use Premiere Pro CS5 and cut ProRes all day long.

There are probably two scenarios that I can envision.  First, you start with FCP and want to move it to Premiere Pro.  Second, you start in Premiere Pro and want to hand off to FCP.

The first scenario is really easy.  If the other editor has cut ProRes with FCP, he only needs to export his timelines as XML and give you the media.  As long as your Mac (or PC) includes the ProRes decoders in QT, you don’t need anything else to edit ProRes on a Mac.  While Premiere Pro CS5 doesn’t explicitly give you ProRes presets, it is very easy to create them.

The second scenario is almost as easy.  However, you will need to be on a Mac and have FCP installed.  If you know you’re going to hand off to a FCP editor and need to use ProRes – then use Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to create another preset to transcode that footage to ProRes.  One thing that a lot of Mac users don’t know about AME is that you can create a watch folder that will automatically convert anything you drop there to your chosen codec.  This is a 64-bit, multi-threaded, background process that allows you to work on other things even as it’s churning through the media.  From there, do your edit and hand your FCP buddy an XML and pristine ProRes when you’re ready.

Q: Apple is using ATI and a similar technology to CUDA called OpenCL. Will Adobe embrace OpenCL in the future?

When CS5 was under development and I showed the Technology Sneak Peek, OpenCL wasn’t even ratified or finished.  CS5 wouldn’t have had GPU acceleration at all had it been based on OpenCL.  Even today (March, 2011), we don’t have a lot of real OpenCL applications. Adobe is continuing to evaluate OpenCL for future development but today Adobe’s GPU acceleration technology is based on CUDA from NVIDIA.

One final note for Mac users.  There is a great group of passionate Premiere Pro users that have developed a PC-based benchmarking system.  They have been open to developing a Mac-based one, but don’t have the knowledge and Macs to get it done.  Want to find out how your Mac really stacks up?  Volunteer by going to Premiere Pro Benchmark CS5 site.

UPDATE 3/14/11: Dave Helmly has published a short video that shows Premiere Pro running on the latest MacBook Pro (8.3) with an ATI/AMD card. In this video you see the remarkable performance without running a CUDA GPU.  When watching the video consider that he’s running the OS, Premiere Pro and screen capture software all on a fairly measly 8GB of RAM – pretty amazing to me.

I’m also kind of excited about #44 which is about some hidden gems (at least in my mind) about Adobe Media Encoder.  In this one, I show some real workflow productivity within an application that doesn’t have the sex appeal of After Effects, Photoshop or Adobe Premiere Pro.

As you might expect, I’ve also posted the episodes to Vimeo and they’ll be up on the Adobe Beginner Classes podcast soon as well.  Always looking for feedback and suggestions for other episodes.  I’ve tried to incorporate some of the past suggestions into this batch, so keep them coming!

Dennis

• I’m passionate about Adobe
• I’ve been thought of as peddling Adobe on FCP forums
• I tend to be very effusive and positive about things I like

That being said, I have to say that I’m REALLY psyched about this recent webinar by Chris Fenwick

Chris is totally honest about the good, the bad and the ugly.  He’s very thoughtful and experienced and he’s in the process of switching to Premiere Pro CS5 right now.  That’s intriguing in itself and he’s documenting it via his website.

The bottom line is that this guy is passionate like me but he doesn’t work for Adobe! Therefore, I hope, think and believe that he has some credibility where I might not.

The webinar may have a few hiccups in the beginning with audio, but stick it out and it’s a great 50 minutes.  Chris is an excellent presenter and he speaks candidly to FCP users and outlines what he likes and why about Premiere Pro.

So, check out the link below and navigate to Day 1 which is recorded.  Day 2-4 will also be there as they happen.

Chris Fenwick Webinar

If you’re one of those people who have been curious about what all the ‘hub-bub’ is about from a FCP perspective, then these webinars are for you!  Read on for the details and line up from industry experts!

You’ll learn the real story on Adobe Premiere Pro’s Mercury Playback Engine, what it means to edit DSLR footage natively, and how you can remove bottlenecks in your pipeline when working with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. We’ll follow up the series with a Q&A session to get your questions answered.

November 15, 2010, 12-1 PM PST
Leveraging Advanced Features and the Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro with Chris Fenwick
Join Chris Fenwick as he explains his personal frustrations with Final Cut and why he decided to make the switch to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Chris will showcase Adobe Premiere Pro’s more advanced features and how the 64-bit, GPU accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine speeds his entire editing workflow while solving a variety editing challenges. Register on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/PPro_1

November 16, 2010, 12-1 PM PST
HDSLR editing in Adobe Premiere Pro with Richard Harrington
Join Richard Harrington, author of From Still to Motion, as he shows you why he uses Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 for editing HDSLR footage. Rich will share his post-production techniques and editing strategies in Adobe Premiere Pro for HDSLR color correction, audio syncing, and camera calibration. You’ll discover how to harness the professional-quality tools in CS5 Production Premium to natively edit, color correct, mix audio, and publish to the web and Blu-ray Disc. Register on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/PPro_2

November 17, 2010, 12-1 PM PST
Tight Integration and Multi-Format Timelines in Adobe Premiere Pro with Colin Smith
Join Colin Smith, from PhotoshopCAFE.com, as he shows you why he uses Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 to create training DVDs. Because of Adobe Premiere Pro’s tight integration with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects as well as its ability to edit multi-format assets on the same timeline without converting to Pro-Res, Colin uses the suite of tools in Adobe CS5 Production Premium to speed his entire production workflow. Register on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/PPro_3

November 18, 2010, 12-1 PM PST
Making the Switch Q&A with Industry Experts Karl Soule & Kevin Monahan
Think of making the switch to Adobe Premiere Pro? Join Karl Soule, Adobe Premiere Pro expert, and Kevin Monahan, former Final Cut Pro editor, and get your questions answered. Learn how you can take advantage of Adobe Premiere Pro’s breakthrough performance and true native editing of DSLR formats. Have a hardware question? No problem, we have the answers you need to help you make the switch. Register on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/PPro_4

In Todd’s article, he outlines why GPU can make video better and sometimes faster as well. It’s definitely worth the read and I hope you’ll follow the link.

Details about scaling in Premiere Pro