Adobe adds Speech to Text to the Public Beta

Adobe has added Speech to Text to the Public Beta, you no longer need to sign up to use it. Of course if you you are already signed up you can also use it in the release version. Speech to Text is so good for doing testimonials I don't know how i ever lived without it. It is fast and works so incredibly well. And having the script helps with comprehension so my edits just go faster. This is the most impressive feature in years, and it has quickly become essential to my workflow.

Adobe needs to bring back SpeedGrade as Lumetri Pro and have a proper finishing workflow

Now I was a huge fan of SpeedGrade when it existed, and greatly lamented it's passing when it went away. For those of you who don't know, SpeedGrade was a professional color correction software much like DaVinci Resolve that Adobe purchased and added to their creative suite for a while, and then gutted it and that is where the Lumetri color panel came from. What I miss the most was that unlike with DaVinci where you render out movies with the grade baked in, the grade from SpeedGrade could be exported a single movie or movies of each shot, but you could also roundtrip to premiere and the entire grade came back to Premiere as the Lumetri plug in on your clips! Not only was this much faster, especially since most Lumetri grades would play back in real time without rendering in Premiere, but it saved hard drive space too and made the whole round-tripping thing a real pleasure. Sure it wasn't quite as powerful as DaVinci Resolve at the time, but it was plenty powerful and at the time even beat DaVinci on a couple of things. Of course by this point DaVinci has vastly moved on from SpeedGrade, but this is Adobe we are talking about, and they could certainly update it (and give it multi-monitor support). And maybe bake in some After Effects tools for masks and tracking and the like. Now Premiere Pro has the Lumetri Color Panel, but it isn't near what SpeedGrade was and no where near what Premiere can do. So the Adobe Creative Suit really needs a high end color correction package and it could be the evolution of SpeedGrade or as Randi Altman called it Lumetri Pro (I wish I could take credit for the name).

Randi Altman’s thoughts on Adobe Premiere’s Interface Update

https://postperspective.com/thoughts-on-adobe-premieres-interface-update/#utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss Randi Altman from PostPerspective has a post about the Input, Output and Home tab in Premiere Pro that I just posted about. I like his thoughts on import which is a simplified version of DaVinci's cut page (since you can quickly assemble a sequence) are interesting, I hadn't thought of it that way, but then the Cut page isn't really for me or how I work, though I do like some of it, it just isn't there for me. And the fact that he asked adobe and they will eventually update everything including the timeline (just don't learn anything from Final Cut Pro X please) is pretty huge news. And he is right they need to make Lumetri Pro, which would be a new version of SpeedGrade and bring back the grade just being the lumetri plug in premiere. OMG I WOULD LOVE THAT, I have missed SpeedGrade since it went, and it is really the one thing Adobe is seriously missing a powerful finishing program.

The new Import and Export workflows in Premiere Pro Beta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGTj_jejNGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTiGjY-k4_s Scott Simmons at the ProVideoCoalition has a great article on the new import and export workflows that are being premiered in the latest Adobe Premiere Pro Betas. As Scott says these look like dumbed down versions of software for new users, but as long as they don't supplant the old ways of doing things, and they keep adding features like projects and don't mess with the timeline too much I am OK with new low end features too. Adobe also has a Page up on the new features. The New Export Window is cleaner and takes up the full screen automatically One problem with the whole screen thing, is that it is completely taking over the Premiere Pro interface, and my automatic response was to go to the red button on the top left to close the window, which closes the whole program. To close the export panel you have to go to the EXIT button on the bottom left. Which the hell knows about? See the Exit button on the bottom left corner. Honestly I kind of see where they are going here, as the export instead of a window is now basically a workspace, but if that is the case treat it like a workspace and have it with the workspaces (at the top of the list) and to exit it you go back to your workspace. It is going to take me a bit to break me of closing it as a window if I need to. Or they realized and put an exit in because might not realize that you leave by going to Edit instead of export, but this makes the edit workspaces a second tier (since you have to click twice to access and select them now, and they are only within the edit interface and not within the export interface. And why the hell is the Exit button on the bottom right of the Import dialogue and left of the Export dialogue? A single unified Workspaces would make much more sense to me instead of 2 tiers, and it is 2 tiers as the workspaces have now been moved to their own button, and in both Import and Exit they are greyed out. Greyed out Workspaces And the default Export Settings is so much less pro now, being renamed to destinations. Well OK you can include upload settings, but it is not something a pro will normally use. The Default Export Settings All these "Destinations" are so web oriiented, how about some master settings, or at least export full resolution timeline at it's settings (which should be the top setting). Honestly I never use an automatic upload. Anything that is for mastering needs to be exported then watched then uploaded anyway, so having all these "destinations" is completely useless to me. And how about a Frame.io destination which could be a bit useful at least, but still should be watched before uploading. Now it is easy enough to add new ones,…

Brady Betzel at postPerspective review’s the TourBox Neo External Hardware Controller

 I already have an Elgato StreamDeck XL and a Tangent Wave2, but am always interested in something to speed up my editing workflow, so have been interested in the $169 TourBox Neo External Controller. The review is interesting and it sounds decent, but I am not sure I would go for it, especially since it doesn’t work with DaVinci’s color page, but it does sound good in Premiere.

Using Onyx to verify system file structure and run various maintenance tasks on a mac

Sometimes your Mac is running badly and needs some maintenance, now there are a couple of paid utilities I fall back to (mainly TechTool and Diskwarrior, but I will post more about those later) but the first I run is always the free OnyX. Onyx is a GUI or graphical user interface for various terminal utilities. It is from Titanium Software and has different versions for each version of the OS. I always go to Maintenance and usually run everything except disk positions on desktop. It will quit all open apps and run. And the run will take a while, maybe even an hour depending on hard drive size, then will restart your machine. I run this when Premiere is being sketchy, lots of crashes, and the system just seems to be running wrong. It isn’t a utility for Premiere, but for your system overall.

ProVideo Coalition article on Adobe and AVID needing iXML metadata in the Timeline

I have posted how this is needed in Premiere immediately, but i ran across this article by Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition. I hadn’t realized that Final Cut Pro X had added it, and didn’t realize you can read the metadata in Premiere, just not easily, and it should be appended to the tracks in the timeline just like it is DaVinci Resolve. This is a feature that Adobe needs to add immediately.

Adobe Premiere Pro’s recently added Productions makes Premiere the pro software that AVID is

I have already made a couple of posts about Productions, but had to write again with a quick update. I am currently cutting a 28 minute and 30 second full length infomercial. And it is a legacy project from 2017, with many versions, and tons of footage. When I first got the project it took over 10 minutes to open and was almost unresponsive when trying to use it. I decided to see how Productions would handle it. Productions offers you tools for organizing multi-project workflows, sharing assets between projects, and keeping everything streamlined and efficient, whether you’re working on your own or collaborating with a team.From the Adobe Help Manual for Premiere Pro. Now I am working from home and not sharing projects, but basically am using productions like AVID uses Bins. So breaking up the project into the categories it was already broken up into, that means Sequences, Footage, Graphics, Audio, Stills, ETC. So each what would have been a folder in a premiere project is it's own project. And premiere can access the media from these projects as if they were open within sequences. It is amazing how much this speeds up a large project. Everything moves like it should. And like AVID you have the safety of each bin being it's own project in case something gets corrupted, so you are really safe especially if you backup every day as you must. Honestly with this and Speech to TEXT AVID should be shaking. Now if only Adobe fixes Merge clips, this will be the ultimate editing program.

Adobe Premiere Pro speeds on an M1 reported officially

Eric Philpott at the Adobe Blog has a report on the latest Pfeiffer Benchmark Reports of Adobe Premiere Pro on Apple Silicon M1, and the results are pretty unbelievable. From first launch to final exports, everything is faster — on average 77 percent faster than comparable Intel-based systems — and editing is buttery smooth. Launch 50 percent faster, Open projects 77 percent faster, Save projects 168 percent faster, Gradient wipe effect 90 percent faster, Lens Flare effect 66 percent faster. Wow, those are seriously impressive results, and would speed up the edit every day. I can't wait to see what the M2 or even M3 will do, especially if they really goose the graphics cores and allow for more RAM. I am getting more and more excited for an M1 MacPro, even with limited expansion. I mean I have been pretty damn happy with my iMac Pro.

Jarle Leirpoll has a must read article on Premiere Pro’s Render Quality and Bit Depth at Frame.io

Jarle Leirpoll, the author of the book Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro and who runs the awesome site Premiere Pro.net, has written an absolute must read article at Frame.io on Premiere Pro's Render and Bit Depth settings. Honestly after all these years of using Premiere Pro I didn't know exactly how all these settings work and when they are affecting things, and Jarle really goes into depth and he ran extensive tests on everything to prove it. This really should be essential reading for any Premiere Pro user, and his open letter to Adobe is so true, and I just hope they listen. The whole thing should be simplified, which would quickly solve so many users issues with banding on exports.