Final Cut Pro users wanting to get a sense of the workflows possible between Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, and the other products in Adobe Production Premium CS4 have some free instruction online. For more information, see the documents posted to Life without walls: Open workflows with Avid and Apple
During recent workflow studies, I asked several video editors to import files of various formats into Adobe Premiere Pro. When they came to a set of files shot on a Panasonic P2 camera, and another set shot on a Sony XDCAM EX camera, most of the editors imported these files with the Import command (File > Import). They found this method time-consuming and confusing ("What should I do with all these XML files?" "Will the audio stay with the video?"), and seemed unaware that the Media Browser could have made importing these tapeless assets a breeze. They had never seen, apparently, the very helpful video tutorial, Importing tapeless assets in Media Browser, nor read the sections dealing with the Media Browser in the Help topic, Import assets from file-based sources. If you work with tapeless assets, spare yourself some confusion. Save yourself some time. Consult these resources
Adobe commissioned a set of video tutorials aimed at helping users learn the ins and outs of Premiere Pro CS4. For a while, these tutorials were a bit hard to find, but now all 29 of them are listed on a single page on Adobe TV: Learn Premiere Pro CS4.
For each of the file formats supported by Adobe Premiere Pro, it would be helpful to list the codecs Adobe Premiere Pro supports natively. A container format, such as AVI or MOV may contain audio and video content encoded with any of a number of encoders; a single file could even contain audio and video encoded with different codecs. Before trying to import, for example, an AVI encoded with say, the foo codec, it would be good for a video editor to know whether Premiere Pro supports the foo codec natively. If Premiere Pro does not, the video editor might first install a foo codec pack before importing the AVI file into a Premiere Pro project. Do you have a list of Premiere Pro's native codecs you'd like to share with the world; or, do you know of such a list to which you could point?
A great source for video tutorials for Premiere Pro and other Adobe products, the new Adobe TV website is now live at http://tv.adobe.com. The press release tells us that this version of Adobe TV was
>>
architected and designed based on substantial input from users and internal stakeholders. It's the first website in the world to deploy a video player built with the Adobe Open Source Media Framework (aka Strobe), and one of the first sites built using Adobe ColdFusion 9.
The site has a brand-new look & feel, and many new features including:
• User-customizable homepage
• Vastly improved navigation & search
• Save your favorite episodes to "My Library"
• Share videos on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, and StumbleUpon
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting & Rating
• Tags
<<
Enjoy!
Are you going to MAX?
Join Adobe reps for snacks, drinks, and a sneak peek at the version of Community Help that will make its debut in Premiere Pro CS5. We'd love to get your feedback on the all-new AIR interface and exciting new features.
The sessions will be held, at MAX, at these times:
• Monday 10/5/09 11:30 am - 1 pm
• Tuesday 10/6/09 4:30 pm - 6 pm
Please contact Tanya Knoop at tknoop@adobe.com if you think you can make either of these sessions. Tanya will send you details.
Adobe is looking for participants for a brief (~1 hour) online work observation and interview. Participants must have experience editing videos to completion using Adobe Premiere Pro.
Please extend this invitation to anyone you know who uses Adobe Premiere Pro. Freely blog, email, or tweet the invitation to your contacts.
There are two different studies, each with its own set of participant criteria. Read the criteria for each study carefully before responding.
If you meet the requirements for either of the observation-interviews, and would like to participate, please take the brief survey at this location: Adobe Premiere Pro workflow candidates. The survey will ask of which of the two studies you would like to participate.
The two studies are:
Collaborative video editor delivers a rough-cut on a website
and
Independent video editor corrects sound problems common in video productions
The studies will be conducted over the telephone and Connect (software for screen sharing).
Participants in these studies will be thanked profusely and given a $100 Amazon gift card. Your participation will help us improve the content and navigation of Premiere Pro training materials.
----------------------------------------
For the rough-cut on a website study, participants must meet the following criteria:
- moderately experienced user of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
- current user of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
- have Creative Suite 4 Master Collection or Creative Suite 4 Production Premium installed (with most recent updates) on a computer that can be connected to the Internet
- have a speakerphone at the same location as the computer that you will use for the workflow study
- ability and willingness to install and use Acrobat Connect on the same computer as the above software
- a 90-minute block of free time between 10:00 and 16:00 Pacific Time (GMT-8) on a weekday before September 5.
----------------------------------------
For the sound problems common in video productions study, participants must meet the following criteria:
- moderately experienced user of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
- current user of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
- have Creative Suite 4 Master Collection or Creative Suite 4 Production Premium installed (with most recent updates) on a computer that can be connected to the Internet
- have Audition installed on the same computer
- ability and willingness to install and use Acrobat Connect on the same computer as the above software
- have a speakerphone at the same location as the computer that you will use for the workflow study
- a 90-minute block of free time between 10:00 and 16:00 Pacific Time (GMT-8) on a weekday before September 5.
We are conducting two brief surveys to learn more about how customers get information about using Premiere Pro. We'd like your feedback. Please click a link below to take a brief survey on one (or both) of the following topics:
Your participation means improvement of Premiere Pro Help and training materials. Thanks in advance from the community of Premiere Pro users.
If you found it difficult to use the Adobe TV interface for finding Adobe's free video Design Center tutorials for Premiere Pro CS4, you were not alone. So Adobe has posted a web page that makes them much easier to find. You might like to bookmark Learn Adobe Premiere CS4 and return to it whenever you have a tutorial need.
Continue reading "A better way to find Premiere Pro video tutorials" »
Reading Kush's primer on H.264 pointed a spotlight at a gap in the documentation available for Premiere Pro and for Adobe Media Encoder: we haven't made much background material available about the various codecs and their various uses. With the explosive growth, in recent years, of the number of codecs, a central listing of resources explaining them would seem a welcome thing for users of Premiere Pro.
Can you recommend any online articles, white papers, primers, or tutorials expalning your favorite codecs? Send me their urls. I could add them to a codecs page in Premiere Pro Help, or link to them from the Premiere Pro Help and Support page, or blog about them, or all of the above.
Kush Amerasinghe has done a fine job of explaining the H.264 codec--covering some of the arcane settings in the Adobe Media Encoder along the way--in his primer H.264 for the rest of us.
And Jan Ozer has posted a good one too: Encoding options for H.264 video
Read these before exporting another sequence from Premiere Pro.
One of the benefits of inserting speech-to-text metadata into your videos is that doing so can make them searchable by your audience members. Try out this demo by entering search terms into the Search Text box:
The future of video is searchable.
Looking for more instruction on how to transcribe speech to text in Premiere Pro? See the following resources:
Using Speech Search to Speed Editing by Paul Trani on Adobe TV
Edit Dialog Faster than Ever by Jason Levine on Adobe TV
XMP metadata in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium an article by Dan Ebberts
Creating searchable video with Adobe® Creative Suite® Production Premium, a white paper
Convert Speech to Text Metadata, the Premiere Pro Help topic
Continue reading "Explanations of speech search and speech-to-text conversion" »
Adobe tests Premiere Pro with a variety of camcorders, cameras, and other hardware devices. Apparently, there are users who don't know we report the results of that testing on the Third-Party Hardware Support page.
Now, you do.
Adobe yesterday integrated the former Macromedia user forums with the Adobe user forums, and has converted to a different forum software package. The new package promises the following:
• Email participation, including starting a new discussion and alerts
• RSS feeds for many parts of the forum (topics, users, announcements, and more)
• Integration of Adobe ID for true single login to all forums
• Rich text options: inline images and videos, file attachments, code samples
• File Attachments
• Updated look and feel, more consistent with other forum systems
• Improved moderation capabilities (hosts can delete inappropriate content)
• Improved search capabilities:
o Wildcard searches (Multiple or single character)
o Fuzzy Search (search for "foam" also retrieves "roams)
o Proximity, weighting, date range, specific user
Try the new Premiere user forums for yourself.
You can see enormous performance gains in Production Premium CS4, Premiere Pro CS4, and After Effects CS4 by running them on a 64-bit operating system with 16 GB of RAM. Adobe Marketing has posted the details in a white paper: ADOBE® Creative Suite® 4 Production Premium: Take advantage of 64-bit operating systems today You can also find it here.
For more information, see:
Not using 64-bit Vista yet? You should. by Karle Soule
64-bit OS and Adobe Products
Our great friends over in tech support have posted three articles detailing how to optimize your operating system to get the best performance out of Premiere Pro:
Optimize Windows XP for Adobe Premiere Pro
Optimize Windows Vista for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
Optimize Mac OS X for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
Here's a tip of my own for optimizing XP. This turns off the various visual effects of the XP UI, leaving Windows looking flat. However, it can make a slight-but-noticeable improvement in the speed at which your computer performs its tasks.
1. Open the Windows Control Panel.
2. Click System.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. In the Performance pane, click Settings.
5. On the Visual Effects tab of the Performance Options dialog, select Adjust For Best Performance.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK again.
OK, this resource is not about Premiere Pro per se: it's about Photoshop. But Photoshop is a great tool for Premiere Pro users, and I would hazard that many, if not most, Premiere Pro users do use Photoshop as well. Thus runs my justification for telling you about Creative COW leader, Richard Harrington's Photohop for Video blog
For example, who doesn't need to make lower thirds occasionally? If you want to learn how to make them with Photoshop, you already have one good reason to visit Photohop for Video. See Making Lower Thirds Part 1 - Photoshop for Video
Keep an eye on developments in Adobe's Community Help system. Subscribe to Marius Zaharia's Adobe Community Help blog. While you're at his site, be sure to watch Adobe Community Help: the Movie provided by Adobe TV.
In a recent blog post, Marius Zaharia shows how easy it is to install a browser plug-in that makes using Premiere Pro Community Help searches very easy.
Tip: On the Community Help page, from the Product menu, select View All Products > Premiere Pro before clicking the Add It button to which Marius refers.
Studio Monthly has posted a text tutorial explaining how to use the RED plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro: http://studiodaily.com/studiomonthly/currentissue/10320.html
and Film&Video tells how the Olson brothers used the RED plugin to finish Fatal Flaw: http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/9893.html
Adobe TV enlisted the services of lynda.com for the CS4 launch. The result is a set of 30 Learn tutorials:
Enjoy!
Back in September and October, lynda.com posted three sets of tutorials for Premiere Pro CS4. Wouldn't want them to escape your notice:
Premiere Pro CS4 Essential Training
Premiere Pro CS4 New Features
Premiere Pro CS4 Getting Started
Enjoy!
RED has released their plugin! You can now edit RED footage in Premiere Pro and After Effects CS4. Documentation? See Dave Helmly's text and video tutorials. Also see a draft workflow: Download file.
Users of Premiere Pro CS4 have discovered that the sequence presets use pixel aspect ratios slightly different from those used in Premiere Pro and After Effects for years. This tutorial dispels the resulting clouds of confusion: http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/player/?id={50AEFD66-0E51-4246-9660-4D44F53A490E}