Adobe announced the new colaborative editing tool Adobe Anywhere

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AdobeAnywhere

Adobe has announced the collaborative editing tool Adobe Anywhere. You can check the less than 4 minute video on it at Adobe TV. Basically using the new Mercury Streaming Engine, media for an edit can now be kept centrally on a server, and be edited on a local network or anywhere with a good internet connection as long as you have a good CUDA video card to work with. And as you edit you can share you sequences and the cuts instantly show up at different ends.

A very exciting prospect for remote editing. In fact this could be HUGE! This way an edit house could keep media locally and still have editors working remotely. Talk about enhanced security!

Still think they need an iChat theater type component, so you can show what you are viewing.

onOne announces Perfect Photo Suite 7

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onOne software has announced it’s new Perfect Photo Suite 7. A revamp of their already awesome photoshop and lightroom plug-ins, with new versions of Perfect B&W, Perfect Protrait 2, Perfect Layers 3, Perfect Effects 4 and Perfect Resize 7.5 Pro and older version of Perfect Mask 5 and Focal Point 2. This is an awesome company too. They gave all their 64 bit upgrades free for their users, so that has created some serious loyalty at least with me. It ships in Late October.

You can read all about it at their web site.

iChat theater has issues, but is still a wonderful solution that Adobe and AVID need to implement

I know, I know iChat theater is old technology and has been out since Final Cut Pro 7 was was released, but it is still awesome tech. If you have a web camera or iSight you can share what you are viewing in Final Cut Pro 7 using iChat (or messages in Mountain Lion) and you can hear the person on either end and see Timecode as well. It has it’s issues (audio often drops out and you have to restart the computer to get it back, and often it is hard to get the chat to actually start), but overall it works very well and allows for remote monitoring of an edit.

Sure you can share your screen with Skype, but that shared the whole screen, timeline and all, and the video is small. iChat theater allows you to share just what is playing back from Final Cut Pro. It is awesome for editors who like to work at home, and producers who like to do the same. And it works very well overall.

The problem is that Final Cut Pro 7 is EOL and will never be updated again, and is really showing it’s age. Sure many companies have such an investment that they are still using it before the go with AVID (though I prefer Premiere Pro, if only it were more stable). And neither Premier Pro or Media Composer have anything like it.

iChat theater and Final Cut Pro 7 is an elegant solution to a problem that is very relevant today (editors working remotely), and a new solution needs to be implemented in AVID and Premiere Pro.

I wonder if it could be done via a plug in like BlackMagic or AJA, as if it was going out via video to Messages or Skype or a proprietary messaging program? The thing is it is such a great piece of software that the competitors need it (even if FCP X doesn’t have it anymore either).

Working from home means companies need less edit bays, editors get more sanity from not driving, and it is better for the environment not having to drive, so someone please come up with a solution and fast!

NVIDIA admits issues with CUDA 5.0.17 and 5.0.24 driver with Premiere Pro

From Todd Kopriva at Adobe. And over at NVIDIA. Causes crashes when going from Safari to Premiere Pro.

  • There is a known issue in this release where forcing or allowing the system to go to sleep while running CUDA applications on 2012 MacBook Pro models with automatic graphics switching will cause a system crash (kernel panic). You can prevent the computer from automatically going to sleep by setting the Computer Sleep option slider to Never in the Energy Saver pane of the System Preferences.
  • There is a known issue in this release where CUDA applications will not automatically engage the discrete GPU on 2012 MacBook Pro models with automatic graphics switching. To run CUDA applications, it is necessary to uncheck the Automatic Graphics Switching checkbox in the Energy Saver pane of the System Preferences.

Hmm, doesn’t sound like the same issue that I have been having, but hopefully it is similar, and accounts for the Premiere Pro instability.

Adobe adds updates to the Creative Cloud

Richard Harrington has the article on the new updates only for Creative Cloud users.

Adobe Illustrator has three new features — available only to Creative Cloud members — that give you the ability to package files, un-embed images, and do more with the Links panel. To access these features, update Illustrator from its main menu by choosing Help > Updates. • Adobe Muse – now includes built-in support for contact forms and many other new exclusive features. • Adobe Edge Animate preview – now has resizable layouts, rulers and guides, and a more precise timeline. If you used Edge in the past, you’ll notice we’ve also updated the name.


Glad they are finally doing some new features to the cloud, but I want them for Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop more, though any are of course welcome.

Some more cool After Effects Scripts

Some more really cool looking scripts from AEScripts and the Pro Video Coalition.

Layer Repeater to easily offset layers in space and time suggested $19.99 but name your own price.

Masks and Shapes gives you more control over creating shapes and masks and can save them out as a text file, suggested $9.99 but name your own price.

Projection, makes it easy to camera map onto 3D planes in After Effects with 3D Camera Tracker, Syntheyes, Boujou or PF Track. $24.99 down from $49.99.

Illumination adds a new dimension of lighting control, and adds the softbox. $19.99 down from $39.99

Pixel Cloud, a compositing tool to relight a 3D generated image or displace the pixels in 3D space, $89.99 down from $129.99.

Paste Multiple Keyframes, lets you copy and paste keyframes from multiple layers at the same time, suggest $9.99, but name your own price.

Auto Lip-Sync, create a mouth that automatically animates according to your voice recording. $39.99

Null Swapper swaps null layers for light layers for Trapcode Particular and Plexus, and this one is free.

Some quick likes and dislikes of editing a recent project with Premiere Pro CS6

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Over the last 2 days I cut a short film on Premiere Pro CS6. It was shot on a Canon 5D and I had no time to convert the footage, so I figured Premiere Pro was the way to go because I wouldn’t need to re-compress the footage.

I used Plural Eyes to sync the footage to the external microphone, and it worked, though took some finessing, and some manual syncing and I would say it got about 75% of it.

Then I started cutting and had all the crash issues from my earlier post on the NVIDIA GTX 285, but was able to switch to my NVIDIA QUADRO FX 48000 and mostly cleared up the issues. No more serious Error messages, and no more screen going black. Still some random crashes, but nothing too bad, that a quick restart wouldn’t get running again.

I was running the footage out of premiere pro through my DV deck to an external NTSC monitor, and it looked great.

Now I edit in Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and AVID Media Composer, but have always preferred some things of Final Cut Pro. And there are some things about Premiere Pro that I like and some I don’t.

I don’t like how you can only set a duration for your default transition in Premiere Pro, and you can’t set up a favorites bin of effects either per project or within the system. I would always make a bin of favorites in Final Cut Pro with various lengths, and was quickly able to apply any transition I wanted.

I also don’t like how on a clip in the timeline that is not butted up to another clip, all transitions start at it’s cut and can’t be put center on the cut or ending at the cut. You have to extend the clip to make the transition go further than the cut. Now it is pretty easy if you select the cut first as you can just hit E to extend the clip to the playhead, even if a transition is already on it. And I have set command-D to apply the default transition, so I can easily extend clips and apply the default transition with one hand (awesome), but I still want a bin of my favorite effects, and if not in the effects browser, let me do them in the project like I can do with AVID.

The integration with Adobe After Effects is a thing of beauty. Just being able to make changes so quickly is totally awesome. Once you have either imported a After Effects Sequence or sent files to one from Premiere, you just save changes in AE and they show up in Premiere, and you render in Premiere. AWESOME! This makes Premiere the best program for graphics intensive stuff bar none. I think Premiere Pro should become the premiere program for Direct Response because of this alone!

When Snapping is turned on, why does the cut tool not snap to the playhead. Now it seems to still cut at the playhead if you are close, but if that is the case, why not snap?

I really don’t like the Time Remapping feature within a clips effects pallet. It is a different kind of keyframe, where you split it to make it softer, but doesn’t work nearly as well as just being able to bezier curve it, or even easy ease or or ease in and out. This should be just like it is in After Effects and it just ins’t, and doesn’t work as well because of it!

Honestly I had some trouble with the select all to the right tool (hold down A to activate). It sometimes put tracks out of sync on me. And it only does one track unless you hold down shift and click while holding shift to select all. I like how you would hit A twice to change it in Final Cut, and think having to hold down 2 keys makes it more difficult.

I don’t like the track selection tools. I keymapped the select all audio and video selections, but they don’t seem to always work, and I often had to manually turn tracks on and off. Now this is slightly upset by not having to set tracks to ripple delete gaps between clips, or even when you do an extract, but still I like how you can option click in Final Cut to select just that track, and think Premiere Pro could use that functionality (as well as making the select and deselect all tracks actually work all the time).

I would like the audio waveform in clips to be a tab like it is in Final Cut Pro. I know you can switch it via right clicking and going down a level and selecting Audio Track, but that is making it much more difficult, than just a tab, which can be quickly switched to. It is better than AVID, as I like to see my Audio in the VIewer and not in the Timeline), but still has too many steps to do something I do so often.

And I know it is a problem with audio from 2 sources, but I hate not being able to go into the audio linked to the video and open it in the viewer and put markers in it for where i want to cut. I often work this way in Final cut Pro, as the audio waveform is so much bigger in the viewer than the timeline, but here Ic couldn’t do it as it was linked to different video I think. I would love to be able to wrap the new audio with the video so it acts like a normal clip and you could use it like it is a single piece of audio and video.

Overall I have really enjoyed using Premiere Pro (though some of the keyboard shortcuts still vex me), and would like to see it supplant Final Cut Pro, because while i like AVID, it is still the same old program, and Premiere feels more powerful, and faster (with a CUDA card at least). I plan on posting more impressions on it in the future.