Adobe Encore CS6 is the last version

Rich Young at PVC is reporting on this and how to install it if you have Creative Cloud.

Personally I hate this. DVD Studio Pro is already dead, and ancient and now Adobe’s disc making software is gone too. Sure we can use the old version, but it will never be updated again? That really sucks! This is a very Apple ish move, and I personally don’t like it. Yes digital delivery is huge now, but there is still a time and place for disc based media as it looks better, and with 4K on the horizon, it will be sticking around in one form or another for a long time.

Adobe releases NAB Sneak Peaks of it’s video apps! UPDATED

AdobeNAB

Check it out over at Adobe where they have a bunch of videos of new features being shown at NAB! Woohoo, wish I was there!

Premiere is really getting controllable paste attributes! WOOHOO!!! I am so excited about Premiere Pro, it finally looks like it really is Final Cut Pro 8, but with so much more. And the Link & Locate was so necessary. And really powerful audio, and the integration with speedgrade and realtime looks very exciting. And it looks so much better working with audio, and I am hoping that it’s control surfaces works with any MIDI controlled surface. I love that Adobe listens to it’s users!!!

After Effects just looks amazing. And the Warp Stabilizer VFX seems unbelievably powerful. And the 3D pipeline looks awesome, though it makes me wish I had Cinema and knew Cinema 4D!

And is it just me or is it cool to see Wes Plate from Automatic Duck running Prelude? And the script integration just seems amazing! Especially with transcripts! That will speed things up so much, and be useful across the industry! Wow! And being able to edit using the script is insane. You can make a paper cut so fast it is a joke!

Speedgrade gets a more of an adobe makeover, and lets you rename grades in layers and add snapshots and save them so you can easily make different grades, and work better on portable machines, and even have 2 playheads in the timeline to easily pick frames you want to grade to and from, or have 3 up as well! Sounds much improved!!!

Adobe Story has really grown up and looks incredibly powerful!

Really need to spend time with Speedgrade as the new color match looks powerful and it’s engine integration in Premiere Pro looks especially impressive. And being able to use Targa files from Photoshop or Lightroom (has to be exported from Photoshop not Lightroom) to drive shot matching looks very very cool.

And the Audition Loudness radar seems very interesting.

More feature request for Adobe Premiere Pro and Media Encorder CS6

Premiere

So I am delivering a show that was cut in Final Cut Pro, that was cut in 23.976, but needs to be delivered at 29.97, so I was using Adobe Media Encoder to do the conversion, but found I could only do it if I want either a single stereo audio track or a single mono mix-down.

I don’t have the ability to compress a version with dual or more mono tracks (or a stereo and dual mono).

Often I have to deliver shows with a stereo mix, and dual monos one with dialogue, and the other with music and FX, but I can’t do that with Adobe Media Encoder, so I have had to go back to the super slow Apple Compressor to do my compressions.

AME

Not only could Media Encoder us a pass through, so if you have a clip with 4 audio tracks uncompressed, then just re-write it in the new file exactly as it was, but it also needs to at least be able to separate dual mono tracks so you can at least do stems on the textless version.

The other is that Premiere Pro really needs to be able to paste individual attributes of a clip, just like Final Cut Pro 7. Just being able to paste all attributes is less than useless in most cases!

I just brought all of my reels into Premiere Pro from Final Cut Pro 7 because I wanted to use Adobe Encore to make a new DVD and somehow all my clips had there volume put to negative infinite, so I have had to individually raise the volume one each clip, which was an incredible pain.

And yes I have put in Feature requests at Adobe, but I have been putting in the individual attributes since CS 5.0, so I am not holding my breath.

Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 have been updated for HiDPI Retina Displays

Adobe has released updates to Photoshop and Illustrator for those with HiDPI and Retina displays, such as the new MacPro Laptops. The Adobe Illustrator Blog has more on the Illustrator update.

And the Mac Performance Guide says that the new Photoshop is 13% faster than the previous version! Nice!

Great news for those with Retina displays, but I likely won’t be one of those for a long time. I still use my MacPro and am hoping for a new one and a large Retina display, say 24 inch would just be too expensive for a very very long time. Still great to see Adobe keeping up though (and this will be awesome for Premiere Pro once it is updated for those with the 15″ Retina MacBook Pro).

Had Adobe CS6 Creative Cloud Licensing Issues All Weekend

Took until just as I was going to bed last night to get it working correctly.

Basically when I opened any program in the Creative Cloud Suite it told me my Trial Version had expired and that I had to either license the software or quit. It would show my correct e-mail address, but then ask me for a serial number (which I don’t have since I am using creative cloud). And not let me use the software without it.

Finally I tried telling it I was not myself, and re-entered my e-mail address and password, and then it logged in and re-licensed the creative suite.

Scary bug, especially since I lost use of the suite for a weekend. Now maybe I could have got on tech support and got it figured out sooner, but I hate talking to Adobe’s tech support in India, as I feel that unless I get it promoted to someone in the states that I am never going to get the problem solved.

FX Factory Updated to 4.0 now with Premiere CS6 Support

fxfactory400

Noise Industries has upgraded the FxFactory to 4.0 and added Premiere Pro CS 6 Support. I have a ton of their compatible and free plug ins, but don’t actually own this suite (always thought it was a tad expensive), but this gives me one more reason, as I have moved from any version of Final Cut and now prefer Premiere Pro (though I of course still have Media Composer which works with very few plug ins).

The new iMac

Apple has updated it’s iMac and it is thinner and more powerful, and now sans a CD rom drive.

Most impressive for editing are NVIDIA Mobile processors across the line, so they should all be great for CUDA in Premiere Pro. The low end has a GT 640M with 512MB of RAM, the second has a GT 650M with 512MB, the 3rd has a GTX 660m with 512MB and the high end has a GTX 675 with 1GB of RAM (best for editing right there). Even better the high end is configurable to a Geforce GTX 680MX with 2GB of RAM!

Too bad ll the stock models have i5 processors, but you can upgrade to an i7 that is 3.4Ghz. The high end also has user addable RAM, though the smaller model is soldered, but comes with 8GB to start.

Another exciting upgrade is the Fusion Drive you can get in BTO. It has 128GB of Flash Ram tied to 1 or 3 TB of regular hard drive, so your system can be on the fast Fusion, but you seamlessly get FLASH speeds for your system.

Starting at $1299-$1999 and available in November to December.

You have to configure it, but it really could be a great editing machine, especially with Thunderbolt, though I would prefer a non-mobile video card personally.

FCP.Co on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro

FCP.Co has an article on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro to get better OpenCL performance in FCP X, but it will also increase your CUDA power for Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6.

Still you can score over 1000 on Luxmark if you go for a GTX670 instead (which has a huge amount more of CUDA cores, and can still draw it’s power from the internal power supply instead of say a 680, which would require an external power source to run), but they are not as well supported on the Mac. Either way you will need to go to Netkas to get some instruction and some help (though some of the help can be rather surly, but it is worth it if can really beef up using your MacPro). Someone at Netkas has also figure out how to Firmware update recent MacPro’s to the latest firmware for the newest itineration, allowing beefier XEON’s into your old MacPro.

The instructions are pretty easy, but I have found that they don’t always work, so think about re-installing your NVIDIA drivers once you are done, as that did it for me.

You will also need to do some hacking to Premiere Pro and After Effects to get them working with the CUDA cores on a new video card.

After Effects Updated to 11.0.2

Todd Kopriva has the announcement at his blog. Looks like Ray Tracing fixes, and Kepler updates. Wonder if those would translate to a Mac with a Kepler card in it? Anything with CUDA updates is good in my opinion.

Actually reminds me that I need to replace my Quadro 4800 with my GeForce GTX 285, which the recent NVIDIA update should have helped with the crashing issue I was having.