Archive for August, 2011

free sample chapters and videos from An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro

Posted on 28 August 2011 by Todd Kopriva | Comments (0)

Peachpit Press recently released An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro, by Robbie Carman, Jeff Greenberg, and Richard Harrington.

This book is an excellent resource for experienced editors to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. It begins from an assumption that you already know about video editing in general and only need to learn the details of the features and workflows specific to Adobe Premiere Pro and its companion applications. (I’m quite sure that I’d have the same very high regard for this book even if I hadn’t been its technical editor.)

You don’t need to take my word for it, though. The fine folks at Peachpit Press have made four chapters available as free samples: three as PDF documents and one as an HTML document.

The book also contains a DVD with approximately 5 hours of video lessons. We’ve put a few of the videos on Adobe TV so that you can check them out:

There are many other useful resources for learning Premiere Pro, both for the experienced editor and for the beginner.

Adobe Premiere Pro, Nvidia CUDA drivers, and Mac OSX v10.7 (Lion)

Posted on 22 August 2011 by Todd Kopriva | Comments (0)

If you are using the version 4.0.31 CUDA driver from Nvidia on Mac OSX v10.7, you may notice that the Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration setting is unavailable. This version of the driver disables the CUDA processing features of Premiere Pro if the operating system is running the 32-bit kernel; the reason for this is that there is a conflict between the driver and the Mac OSX v10.7 operating system. For drivers earlier than 4.0.31, a crash happens when a 64-bit application runs on the 32-bit OS kernel. With the updated 4.0.31 driver, Premiere Pro will continue to run, but the Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration settings will be disabled.

This is a temporary situation which is currently being worked on by both Nvidia and Apple, and updates to both the Mac OSX v10.7 operating system and the Nvidia CUDA drivers are expected soon to address this issue.

In the meantime, you can do one of two things:

  • Run the 32-bit operating system kernel, which for now disables CUDA processing.
  • Run the 64-bit operating system kernel, which allows CUDA processing.

Note: By default, Mac OSX v10.7 (Lion) uses the 64-bit kernel, so you shouldn’t need to do anything unless you’ve previously changed to the 32-bit kernel.

This issue does not exist for Mac OSX v10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

For details regarding choosing between the 32-bit and 64-bit OS kernels, see this page on the Apple website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3773

Easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro: Ask a CS Pro session with Al Mooney

Posted on 14 August 2011 by Todd Kopriva | Comments (0)

Last week, Al Mooney presented a seminar on easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro from another NLE, such as Final Cut Pro.

Here’s the recording.

(Note: If the Adobe Connect session loses audio/video synch, just click the playhead in Adobe Connect, and it will re-synchronize.)

In addition to the information that Al provided, these resources should help you to get started with Premiere Pro if you know Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer.

For more information about making the transition from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro (including a limited-time offer to save 50% off the price of Premiere Pro or Production Premium), see this page. If you want to try Premiere Pro for free, you can do so for 30 days.

Here’s a brief outline of what Al talked about, as well as some links to more information about each subject:

main presentation

question-and-answer session

Several of the items above relate to performance and hardware requirements, which we get a lot of questions about. So we put together this page full of resources about making Adobe Premiere Pro (and After Effects) work faster.

Carey Dissmore shows how to edit a demo reel using Adobe Premiere Pro

Posted on 8 August 2011 by Todd Kopriva | Comments (0)

Last week, Carey Dissmore presented a seminar on how to edit a demo reel in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Here’s the recording.

Carey covered a lot of useful and interesting material, both in the main presentation and in the question-and-answer segment at the end. Because Carey has spent a lot of his career using Final Cut Pro, much of his presentation focused on how he is making the transition to Premiere Pro and what similarities and differences are between the two applications. I recommend that anyone who uses (or wants to use) a non-linear editor check out the recording.

For more information about making the transition from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro (including a limited-time offer to save 50% off the price of Premiere Pro or Production Premium), see this page.

I should also point out that Carey will be doing a hands-on, interactive workshop on this same topic at the motion conference in October.

Here’s a brief outline of what Carey talked about, as well as some links to more information about each subject:

introduction, setup, and importing

basic editing

interchange with After Effects

interchange with Final Cut Pro 7 and exporting

miscellaneous questions and answers