Oliver Peters on Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms has a nice look into Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015.

It is worth checking out, and actually pointed out some things I didn’t realize.

I didn’t realize that the grade in Premiere Pro is separate from a SpeedGrade grade, and none of the grading passes over. This is really too bad. I really like SpeedGrade is an awesome Grading program, and it could be amazing with just a little work from Adobe, but instead they are porting some of it’s functionality into Premiere, but dumbing it down to a much more Lightroom like interface, instead of a Pro Grading Suite as SpeedGrade is.

I would be much happier if the grade was in fact the same and passed from one to other so you could use the high end grading controls if you want or the lightroom like controls in Premiere.

It actually kind of scares me that they might just dump speedgrade (no upgrades this time around), when really all it needs are a few little tweaks like multi monitor support to make it really powerful.

A problem with Paste Atributes in Adobe Premiere Pro 2015

I don’t know if this was issue before 2015, but I really noticed it on an edit today.

When you are copying and pasting attributes of a file, it doesn’t paste size correctly if you have unselected uniform scale. I have clips that are a strange aspect ratio so I have to scale the height and width separately, and the only way to paste the attributes correctly is to first unselect uniform scale, and the paste works as you would think. this is frustrating with many clips, and uniform scale should be one of the attributes that Adobe copies when you copy and paste them, but it is not.

Can’t save Premiere Pro 2015 Projects to earlier version

The latest and greatest Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 came out, and you should be warned of some issues.

First off the new version requires OS X Yosemite on a Mac, the latest OS Version. This means if you have a computer that is going to be slow on Yosemite or doesn’t have enough memory you are SOL even with a subscription to Creative Cloud. And this makes 2 other major problems.

The first is that when you install the new version the default setting is to remove 2014 from your system. You can get around this if you know by going to advanced settings and not allowing this, or by re-installing the old versions, but this is an annoyance that was never hear before. Normally it kept all your old versions.

And the second and worse part is that projects saved in Premiere Pro 2015 cannot be opened in 2014, and even worse there is not a way to save down a version like Premiere used to have. In fact you could save down a version in each version then open in that version and save down again. Now you can only save projects to 2015.

The only workaround is to export a Final Cut Pro XML and import that in 2015, but that can be messy. On my first attempt at that, the clip size got messed up (making ever clip 33% wider, which was fine for clips that had not been resized, but for resized clips make for a lot of work). And even worse for projects with lots of text created in Premiere Pro, it all gets wiped out, and leaves a clip with some of the text (but not all) as a marker. This is nuts!

Adobe needs to put back in the ability to save down a version, as not everyone upgrades right away or at all!

I have of course reported this as a bug to Adobe (you can see the form right here) and you should to, because if they get enough complaints they will have to put this feature back in!

Macnn Feature Thief article on Final Cut Pro, iMovie and iDVD

William Gallagher and Charles Martin have an interesting article on Apple and it’s changes to it’s video lineup. It goes into iMovie, Final Cut Pro and iDVD, and how Apple upgraded the first 2 with less features, but slowly made better versions.

My biggest complaint with the article would be on who they polled as they say that most of the people who were angry over Apple’s switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X have moved back X (with a cursory mention of Premiere Pro as an alternative).

Personally being a professional editor, I did give the initial Final Cut Pro X a try, and hated it. And got a refund and have not gone back. There are some features that I do really like in X (especially it’s handling of Meta Data), but since I edit complicated graphics heavy shows, it is the timeline that is the deal breaker for me, and it is the fundamental feature of X, so no matter how many updates they do, the timeline is too unorganized and broken for it to make sense for a 15 track highly organized video project.

And of all the editors that I know, I have only heard of one that has gone back to X and really likes it now. And while features are starting to make their move to Premiere Pro, there have only been a few instances I have heard of big houses moving to X. Most of the big houses I know that were basically all Final Cut Pro have moved to AVID at the studios insistence (kick backs?!??!), while most commercial houses have moved to Premiere Pro for it’s fidelity with graphics.

I just don’t see Final Cut Pro X as a viable solution, and with Apple’s history of dropping software, I don’t trust Apple to keep it going anyway!

Adobe Reveals the next release of Premiere Pro

Adobe has revealed some features from it’s next version of Creative Cloud at it’s PremierePro blog.

Here is a quick breakdown.

•Lumetri Color Panel. Adobe has integrated more of the color engine of SpeedGrade directly in Premiere Pro, but with simpler to use controls for editors, but all grades will easily pass over to SpeedGrade. Now you get SpeedGrades videoscopes, and controls simplified to work like Lightroom as well as a new Lumetri 3 Way Color Corrector.

 The Lumetri Control Panel

New Curve and Hue/Saturation Controls
New Lumetri 3 Way Color Corrector

•Morph Cut allows you to seamlessly morph between to edits in a talking head interview to make it look like a single cut (kind of scary, but also an incredible tool if it works as described).

•CC Libraries have been integrated into Premiere Pro and After Effects so you can save looks and graphics wherever you are logged into Creative Cloud.

•Premiere Clip, Adobe’s portable editing solution has an upgraded workflow.

•Task Oriented Workspaces for editing, coloring, audio work or other needs (much like AVID’s similar functions).

•New formats including ProRes 4444XQ Avid DNxHR, Canon XF-AVC and Panasonic 4K_HS.

•Closed Caption Support

•Composite Previews during trim

•Simpler Keyboard numerical import

•Source Settings as Master Clip Effects

•Improved AAF Exports

•Improved Audio Routing

•Improved Audition workflow, where audition will play the video directly from your media instead of rendering a video of your video.

•Improved Mercury Transmit Performance

•Time Tuner in Premiere and Media Encoder to allow you to retime a show up to 5% easily and possibly up to 10% in either direction without losing quality.

Sounds impressive. I am looking forward to getting my hands on it!

Adobe has given us a peak at the new video features in Creative Cloud

Next Week at NAB Adobe will be showing off the next release of Adobe Creative Cloud’s video suite with updates to apps. We knew this was coming as Adobe announced on March 18th that the next version of Creative Cloud will only work with Mac Os X 10.9 Yosemite and higher.

Check out this video that shows the most exciting new features!

Used Premiere Pro’s Capture for the first time yesterday

I was handed a DVCAM tape yesterday and work was going to rent a DVCAM deck to capture. I said I would do it myself since I have a Sony DS-20 in my office. I used to use it all the time, but it mostly gathers dust now, so it was good to give it a run, and I decided to try it out with Premiere Pro.

Now I knew that Premiere had a very simple capture engine that would work with HDV or DV, so I decided to give it a try. It has very few settings, just which capture setting, then you can set in’s and outs, change clip and tape names and capture a clip or a tape. The problem is that the tape was old, and it kept failing on the capture, and it doesn’t seem to have a setting to automatically break up clips when there is a break in timecode. After many many attempts that failed, I gave up and switched to Final Cut Pro 7.

Final Cut Pro 7 still has a much more powerful capture engine, and will in fact break up a capture if you set it to, so you get clips around the breaks, but surprisingly it managed to capture the whole 1 hour and 50 minutes in one go, not making any breaks.

So honestly I am glad Final Cut Pro 7 still runs on Yosemite, as it does still have some uses. Looks like I will need to keep a backup of this system state before the next OS which will likely break Final Cut Pro 7 completely so I can still capture DV easily if need be.

An additional issue with Adobe Premiere Pro sequences in SpeedGrade CC 2014

So I have been working more with Speedgrade, finishing the grade on this twenty eight and a half minute long show, and I realized another issue.

Actually it is very like the issue with the multicam clips, where you can grade them, and the grade shows up in Premiere, but the Lumetri Effect does not on clips with an Alpha or that or Premiere Pro Text layers.

This is an issue when replacing graphics with textless versions and you can’t just take the same grade from existing clips, because the while the grade shows up, it is does not show up as an effect that you can edit or copy or do anything with in Premiere Pro.

This gives me memories of precomputes and AVID! The horror!

I really hope Adobe fixes this and the the other issues I previously posted with a new update of Creative Cloud at NAB this year, as I really do love how the grade ends up on your original sequence (for the most part). I do really like the program, but some of the issues really do make DaVinci seem more viable for the moment.

Issues with Adobe SpeedGrade CC 2014

So I am a commercial editor and lately have really moved to Premiere Pro after the death of Final Cut Pro 7 (as you will know if you regularly read this blog). I do much of my work in Commercials and direct response and many of the houses I work at have moved over to Premiere Pro for it’s speed and integration with After Effects.

We have been using DaVinci Resolve for color correction, but with the upgrades to Adobe SpeedGrade with CC 2014 I learned it and have been wanting to give it a try. Mainly because of it’s integration with the adobe suite, and the fact that it puts the grade onto the clips as a plug in that can be easily removed, instead of having to render out a new sequence with clips with handles, which makes major changes to the sequence much harder. And with the addition of working with Black Magic Cards it was time to try it out.

So on the current 28:30 Direct Response show I have been editing I am doing the grade in SpeedGrade, and while some it has some very good features, it has some very glaring issues that adobe needs to fix immediately!

  • First and foremost if the fact that SpeedGrade is made to work on one monitor, with a second monitor being your view monitor. And if you use an AJA or Black Magic card, it still forces the whole interface into a single monitor. You can’t peel off any of the segments and move them to a separate monitor. This is especially troublesome with a complicated timeline! I have 14 video tracks in my current show, so my timeline needs to be fairly large, but you still need the controls to be big enough to use, so what suffers are the scopes, which have shrunk to a minuscule size and are very hard to use! PLEASE ADOBE FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY! We need to be able to re-arrange the window and move things to a second monitor as we see fit. It really makes this program hard to use!
  • Number 2 is certainly the issues with Insufficient Resources dialogue which kicks out the video card, so you are only using the CPU to render. And sometimes it makes your images get a crazy clue cast. Now I am using an NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition, which isn’t the newest or greatest video card, but is pretty decent, but I don’t think it is the cards issue, but instead is with effects and the Mercury Render Engine. The problem always happens on clips with effects on them, but it transitions other than dissolves or even Warp Stabilizer or speed effects on clips. SpeedGrade just can’t handle them, and turns off your GPU and you have to at the least restart Speedgrade to get the GPU back on. The thing is that the problem will instantly occur if another filtered clips is hit when you restart. If the Mercury Playback Engine can’t handle this in SpeedGrade, Adobe should figure out a way to turn off these FX when they come into SpeedGrade and turn them back on when you go back to Premiere. You can do it manually by turning them off or removing them in Premiere, but then you have to remember to put them all back when you return your grade to Premiere, but that is a workaround and may cause you to miss important FX or transitions.
  • Number 3 is issues with Multi-Cam clips in Premiere Pro. If you have multi-cam clips in your sequence you can grade them in SpeedGrade, but they do not show up as a plug in in Premiere, neither on the multi-cam clip or within it’s sequence, though the grade does show up. To get around this I duplicate my multicam clips on another layer, and then flatten them. This creates another problem, which it makes each clip a separate instance instead of going back to the master clips, so for these clips you cannot do a single grade on a master clip. Now admittedly this is a Premiere Pro issue, but on that needs to be fixed to make SpeedGrade work better. As being able to user the Master Clip Grade is so much quicker and easier.
  • Number 4 for is the timeline. It needs to have better zoom controls instead on showing the whole timeline, 6 seconds or from your in to out. I want to be able to zoom in or out to where I desire.
  • Number 5 is a keyboard navigation issue. When I use the numerical controls for a grade and I type a number into a box, hitting the tab should move to the next box and activate the grade I have entered. Instead I have to click out of the box with the mouse, which is slow and not efficient. So Adobe, you need to let us navigate with the keyboard. This is faster and more efficient, especially for those of us without a dedicated color control board.
  • Number 6 is faster opening of Premiere Pro sequences. I am sure this has to do with converting the sequence to work, but it takes a long time, many minutes at times, and is especially painful if you keep getting hit with the insufficient resources bug from above.
That is it for now. The single monitor and Insufficient Resources could be deal breakers for many, but for now I love the conveniece, and love that it leaves my original sequence intact in Premiere Pro, but lets hope Adobe makes this program more adobe like in the near future (NAB please Adobe), so that the ease of going back and forth is complimented by a program that is easier to use and doesn’t have some glaring issues.
Honestly if Adobe makes this better, I see no reason to use DaVinci Resolve with Premiere even if it is a superior program, just because of the ease of use of SpeedGrade.