The new Import and Export workflows in Premiere Pro Beta

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, based on the settings you make with the media file settings.

New Media File Destination added to the list.

And as for getting to the compression settings, everything is harder to get to now, taking multiple clicks to do what could be opened by one before.

I have to click more and scroll to see more settings
Once I have clicked more

And you cannot type in a number in the bitrate, only use the slider to set bit rate. No thank you, I need to be able to type in a bitrate as I used to be able to. (UPDATE: in the forums they have said they are working on this).

I am really not sure about the new header bar, and it’s hiding the workspaces in favor of Import/Edit/Export which becomes a new tier of workspaces, and ones that I don’t use as much as my edit workspaces on a day to day basis.

Going to be interesting to see how Adobe makes it standard across apps, as I am assuming that will just mean video apps, but we shall see.

I can honestly say I don’t need the Import and Export all the time on my title bar, I would rather have quick access to my custom workspaces than have those. Many times I import most everything at the start then only need a graphic here and there so don’t need it on the title bar.

I think it should all be one workspace system or at least make Edit a drop down with your workspaces.

So now it is two clicks for me to change workspaces instead of 2. That is not an improvement.

You can discuss the new features at the Adobe Support Community, here is for the Header Bar, Import Workflow and Export Workflow. And the Export discussions says the layout is still being worked on, and they are going to add BACKGROUND RENDERING as well as the already added multiple outputs.

And I really wish Adobe would fix Merge Clips rather than adding new stuff.

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.

So I moved my blog, and transferred it from blogger to WordPress

I don’t know if any people were reading my blog posts of late, but it can’t be many as the links were broken. I was using google’s blogger as the back end, and using a plug-in in Rapidweaver to show my blog, but the plug in like all of it’s predecessors is no more, and hasn’t been working right. It was added a comma in the rss feed to my blog, and I couldn’t fix it. And even weirder is that the links worked fine on my machine, so I couldn’t tell it was broken (thanks Tom).

I decided to move the blog to WordPress, and have been using a plug-in to show my movie reviews within the Rapidweaver site, but it just isn’t that good. So I moved the blog completely to jonahleewalker.com but will show the latest posts on my jonahlee.com front page.

A self hosted WordPress is just so much more powerful than blogger. It has extensive plug-in support, and with google’s feedburner also being gone, much getter RSS support. So overall the blog should be better. The RSS feed is here.

Sofi Marshall’s must read Ultimate Guide to Productions in Premiere Pro

 After my last post on Productions I also had to post this great guide from editor, writer and workflow expert Sofi Marshall, who I posted about her work from home streaming setup previously, THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO PRODUCTIONS: PREMIERE PRO’S MOST UNDERRATED NEW FEATURE.

This is a great read from someone who obviously has used this extensively and will really get you up and going with a feature that you should be using if you have a project of any size.

Just started using Productions in Premiere on a project that I was given to update an existing project, and I can’t believe just how good it

So I was just given a huge direct response, and the 300 MB project barely functioned, just beachballing when I tried to do anything. In fact I couldn’t even get it to copy and paste the contents into a new project, it just would beachball and nothing would happen. It was basically a disaster of a project and with a 28 minute and 30 second infomercial I really needed it to be sprightly since I am new jumping into it.

I considered just getting the sequence I was working on out, and did that, but it was a mess, and I would need to search through footage to cover different things, so I really the whole project.

So I tried Productions. You can read it about it here in the Adobe Premiere Pro Manual.

Basically I started a new Production and imported my existing project, which took a while to work, as the project was so messed up. I then broke the project up into smaller little projects as bins, and now a project that was taking 10+ minutes to open, opens in 15 seconds and works better than I could have ever expected!

This basically turns Premiere Pro into AVID, where each Bin is it’s own little project file. So if you are well organized you can break up a project and make little manageable pieces that you only need to open when you need to, to save memory. And you can use folders and break things up even more granularly, so multiple footage bins if you need it.

This is also for multi-user workflows as you can have some bins that open read only and others that you have read write, so you can find footage and not even own a bin, but it works just as well for a single user on a big project.

Honestly should be very scared of Productions, because it fixes one of the longstanding complaints about Premiere Pro where it is a single project that can get messed up. Instead it is a folder of projects all working together. WOW!

Honestly if you are doing a large project in Premiere I would consider using Productions because it speeds everything up and really just works.

This is easily the biggest improvement I have seen in years in Premiere Pro, and really pushes it to new professional heights.

Awesome.