Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Speedgrade my first experience

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I recently spent the time to get decent at DaVinci Resolve, and really enjoyed it. It is a powerful and impressive grading program, and I will certainly be making extensive use of it in the future. I of course have Adobe SpeedGrade though, as it is part of the Adobe Suite, and with the latest version of Creative Cloud 2014 it has not only allowed for your whole timeline to translate over to SpeedGrade (it used to only take on track at a time), but it also applies the looks that you create almost instantly back into Premiere Pro and puts them on the clips as Lumetri Filter FX that play back in reel time on most clips, and mean you don’t have to render out the clips as new clips, you can have your Color correct attached to the original clips! Not only that you can always go back and edit the effects in SpeedGrade at any time! THIS IS AWESOME!

And it works great, at least in initial testing! I was able to quickly come up with a pretty good grade, and quickly send it back to Premiere Pro where it was put back onto the original clips in the sequence! Wow! And I love the new Master Clips setting, which lets you set a grade for every instance of a source in the timeline, what a time saver!

I have to admit SpeedGrade is a little quirky though. It doesn’t handle dual monitors well, not letting you split parts of it’s interface off at all (which meant my scopes were too small). And it basically has no menus everything being in the interface, which seems very un-Adobe like. Not too hard to use once you learn the basics, but certainly confusing for a beginner.

And I hate the lack of Curves. Sure you can go in and you have 9 levels of control over individual luminance levels of an image and can do different color effects to each, and that is certainly powerful and has it’s place, but curves such a quick and easy way of control the look of a whole image at once, that it would be a very powerful addition to SpeedGrade.

The other would be support for more than just AJA Video Output. They need to get BlackMagic support in their as more places have the less expensive alternative to AJA. And you really need video output to get a great grade.

Still, even with these issues I would consider using SpeedGrade for grading with Premiere Pro because it is so easy to do, and just have the grade within Premiere Pro, easily changeable and easily removable. For now I will still go with DaVinci for things that need reel precision, as it works with Black Magic (and that is what most machines I work on use) and has curves, and even some editing functionality, but the integration with Premiere Pro means that I will be turning to Adobe SpeedGrade for much of my color grading needs!

Larry Jordan on why Final Cut Pro 7 editors should consider Adobe Premiere Pro CC and some of my thoughts

Larry Jordan has a very informative and in depth article on why Final Cut Pro 7 Editors should consider Premiere Pro.

I long ago made the switch on my personal system, and am starting to see companies move away from Final Cut Pro 7.

I know that Trailer Park made the move fully to AVID Media Composer for all of it’s bays, but they have graphics departments, so you basically are only cutting graphics into your edit there. And I have heard rumored that it is the studios forcing many companies to move to AVID. I actually wonder if they are getting kickbacks or if it is just older people more familiar with AVID? It is a rock solid system, but it seems so dated compared to Premiere Pro which I would say is a much more modern editing software.

As for Direct Response Beach Body made the move to Premiere Pro, which to me only makes sense for Graphics Heavy projects. Especially with a fast video card.

Red Giant has Updated Universe to 1.1 with 3 new Free and 6 Premium Effects!

Red Giant has updated Universe to 1.1 with 3 new Free and 6 New Premium Effects. And 3 updated Effects.


What's New in Red Giant Universe 1.1 from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Very cool. Lets hope they keep pouring out updates this quickly. The great thing about the subscription model is if they keep getting in money they can keep updating.

What’s new in Premiere Pro CC 2014

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Adobe has released a full document on what is new of Premiere Pro CC 2014.

They have videos to demo the new major features, such as Masking and Tracking within Premiere Pro, Live Text Templates from After Effects for editable lower thirds and title cards, the awesome Master Clip effects which are added to master clips and show up everywhere the clips show up.

Other less publicized features are you can set up automatic project backup to creative cloud. Reverse Frame Matching! Set clips to Frame Size from a drop down menu, and they don’t rasterize, so you are always going to the original to get the best image! AWESOME!

You now have some choice when importing projects, and can import just sequences and create folders and have the choice of duplicating media or automatically using media already in your project.

You can also browse after effects projects in the Media Browser, so you can preview compositions before importing.

A feature that should have always been there in every program is to Maintain Audio Pitch while scrubbing and playback either slow or fast! YES!!

There are Voice Over enhancements. All effects are now cross platform, which means we have lost many effects (though none were that great anyway).

And the most awesome for speed is Cross Dissolve transitions can be saved as Presets! So you can have multiple length effects set up already, and you can change multiple transitions at once!

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Premiere is really improving, and at this rate will easily be the best editor choice around. AVID is going to have to learn that they need to upgrade quickly now that they are also doing the subscription model or they will fall behind really fast!

StudioDaily has a first look at the new Adobe Creative Cloud Video Suite Features

StudioDaily has a great first look at the new features being released with the latest Creative Cloud release.

Effects Masking and Tracking within Premiere Pro sounds like an awesome addition, as are Master Clip effects, which will make color correction a breeze.

As for SpeedGrade the direct link to Premiere Pro feature where you actually open your timeline in SpeedGrade would seem to answer about half of my issues with SpeedGrade. Now they just need to get some curves going in there.

The ability to apply filters per mask in a layer will greatly speed up effects, and simplify timelines. And the Live templates features is very very cool. Where you can set text lines in After Effects to be editable by an editor within Premiere to quickly make lower thirds and the like based on a graphical template.

All in all it sounds great, and I hope the download is available soon!

RedGiant Universe is out of Beta

Red Giant has released version 1.0 of it’s new GPU accelerated Universe Plug ins. These include 31 free GPU accelerated plugs ins and currently 19 Pro plug ins that can be had for $10 a month, $99 a year or $399 for a lifetime subscription. And they promise dozens of new tools in 2014 alone. Already these protools include a version of Knoll Light Factory, Toonit and Holomatrix.

I love Red Giant’s stuff, so this is a great thing. Not sure about all these subscriptions though. So far the small businesses I work with have been very averse to a monthly fee, but the free plug ins are great to have.

Cinemartin makes Premiere Pro Plug-ins for ProRES and H.265 HEVC for Windows

Studio Daily reported the news from NAB.

A 30 Day Trial is available for download.

They will have various versions:

•ProRES 422 including LT and HQ in 1080p 30FPS for $68 with Single Core Encoding

•ProRES 4444, UHD, 4K and H.265 (v2) at up to 60FPS for $137 with Dual Core Encoding

•H.265 SQ and HQ and up to 6 Core Encoding for $551

ProRES is so ubiquitous that this is great news.

Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films on Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro CC and Avid Media Composer

Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films has an awesome article, where he goes into not only the best things about AVID and Premiere Pro, but also his first attempt at using FCP X. And his is the first article that makes me interested in taking a look again at FCP X, though maybe once they fix audio issues.

And I still say that for graphics heavy projects, even longform (at least 28:30 Direct Response), I think Premiere Pro with a proper video card can easily outdo AVID, which is still archaic in how it deals with Alphas (and importing them) even if it is the king of media management. And those same projects would be a mess in FCP X without the ability to have tracks for organization.

I mean my current sequence has 18 tracks of video going all organized into different layers.

David Fincher has moved to Premiere Pro CC for his film GONE GIRL

Studio Daily is reporting that David Fincher’s new film GONE GIRL is being edited on Premiere Pro CC. And we already know Saturday Night live is using it for it’s pre-done segments.

Lets hope this is moment like when Walter Murch used Final Cut Pro 3 to cut Cold Mountain. That really pushed Final Cut Pro more mainstream. And since I have seen so many big companies moving back to AVID of late, it is great to see something high profile like this, to push Premiere Pro, which I really prefer to AVID, especially for Graphics heavy projects, like Direct Response which I mostly cut of late.

Not that Premiere doesn’t have it’s issues, but overall it is a very impressive program, and it’s integration with After Effects really makes it even better.