ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
A Production Premium:
Adobe Creative Suite 4
By Michael Kunkes
 Premiere Pro CS4 Interface, showing project window, media browser, timeline, source and program windows. Note ease of access to time code information throughout the space. |
Avid has “New Thinking,” Final Cut Pro has “Editing Unleashed.” Now, with the major release September 23 of its Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, Adobe’s watchword is “Product Intelligence.” But is it change we can believe in? The short answer is a resounding (though early) yes, as Adobe representatives explained in a recent media conference call. The company is rolling out new full versions of After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore––all integrated together via the improved Adobe Dynamic Link and Adobe Bridge. Production Premium is part of the 14-product strong CS4 Master Collection.
In talking about Product Intelligence, Adobe refers to what it feels they have created in CS4—vastly increased integration among all its products, especially when grouped together in a unified package. With CS3, Adobe production premium made the leap into Mac compatibility (now all-Intel) and cross-platforming/streaming creative content. Now, with a claimed 30-percent share of the video tools business, CS4’s goals are to work faster, create tighter integration, maximize and create value for assets all the way down the timeline (making those assets fully searchable), and supply deliverables via multiple encoding options over a wide variety of screens. There is also a new tabbed interface for all applications in CS4, allowing users to have multiple tabs open at the same time, but still remain in one window.
 OnLocation CS4 screen, with camera metadata, vectorscope and waveform monitoring. |
Simon Hayhurst, senior director of product management for Dynamic Tools, says that Adobe’s strategies are in turn driven by its customers. “Things are getting a little more large and a little more urgent,” he says. “It’s not like we’re just moving from on-air screens to online screens to mobile screens and thinking about how to retool production. The entire business model is shifting significantly, because while people want to be successful in a multi-screen world, they also want to be able to continue their business model as they shift online.”
That change is especially apparent in Adobe’s video business, which Hayhurst says has tripled in three years and made it the market-share leader in units sold and revenues. “We’re providing a new way for editors to work, and we wouldn’t be Adobe if we didn’t provide editors with new ways of creative control and help them achieve higher performance,” he adds. “CS4, with streamlined editing, better batch processing out of Premiere Pro, and having dynamic link everywhere, gives them a much richer way of working and a more consistent interface. It’s a no-holds barred workflow.”
As an example of this drive for better integration, Adobe has introduced a key new technology, “Speech Search,” designed to transcribe the audio track of a video file into text-based metadata that makes any video clip searchable by spoken keywords, pointing directly to the word’s location in the clip. Editors can quickly find relevant places in a particular time-accurate take or clip, or find the right clip based on what was said. The transcribed text is also embedded in rendered output from Soundbooth CS4, making it available for other tools that can read Adobe XMP metadata (Extensible Metadata Platform, supported in all CS4 applications), such as Internet search and indexing engines.
 The speech search window in CS4, showing search location on the timeline. |
Speech Search also includes a variety of different language models with different sub-dialects as well. “For example, if you are looking for a clip where the character or actor’s name appears, you can view the clip in the source window as the transcript follows along,” says Lawson Hancock, Adobe product manager for audio. “The editor gets a lot more information about what he or she is seeing and hearing, and can even use the transcript to set in and out points. It changes the way people organize their assets, especially when working with long-form documentary content.”
As with any speech recognition technology, accuracy is always an issue and will vary according to the quality of the audio and type of speech. What makes Speech Search so useful as a tool is that even with reduced accuracy, enough keywords will still be generated to easily find specific locations in clips, and Speech Search’s metadata panel makes it possible to correct and edit transcripts along the post process. The process could also be a major boon to ADR editors and mixers, but that idea remains to be explored.
Following is a brief look at a few key features of a few key programs:
The CS4 version of Soundbooth, Adobe’s audio creation and editing program introduced last year, was released in a beta version earlier this year, and has been one of the few CS4 products to be vetted before this release date. Soundbooth has added several key new features lacking in CS3, such as multi-track support, automatic volume matching across multiple clips or to a single reference level, volume keyframing, mp3 compression preview, and improved integration with other CS4 programs. With the new “Edit in Adobe” Soundbooth command inside Premiere Pro Pro, Flash or After Effects projects, audio assets can be sent directly to Soundbooth, cleaned up and enhanced, and be automatically updated in the timeline or project window of those projects. CS4 also debuts a new file format, .asnd (Adobe Sound Document), which enables non-destructive audio editing, so editors can always return to the original source files, also useable in Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, Flash and After Effects.
Although aimed at editors who don’t work with audio very often, Soundbooth is a strong task-based tool designed to bring audio and audio correction into the video workflow much earlier. Hancock explains, “Instead of working on single audio assets, you can work on multi-clip audio files in a multi-track project. You can save clips in the timeline and use on-clip controls to apply fades, volume and pan adjustment; have individual controls for each track along with a master control for overall mix volume; and add royalty-free content such as effects and scores. Soundbooth provides a whole new level of creative control.”
 Premiere Pro CS4 metadata window. |
Adobe Premiere Pro continues to grow with each new release, and CS4 is no exception. Premiere Pro CS4, with a heavily keyboard-driven workflow, has been designed to natively support a variety of file-based cameras such as Panasonic P2, Sony XDCAM HD, Red R3D and AVCHD, eliminating the need for basic transcoding and re-wrapping of files. File management is heavily integrated with Premiere’s Media Browser. “The Media Browser not only provides information on the files, but also helps users understand what those files mean in terms of clips,” says Premiere Pro product manager Giles Baker. “Media Browser allows the editor to organize the content using the original clip information. Plus, you can also see all the metadata that was received with each clip and maintain it throughout the workflow. The key to this process is that you are not transferring content onto a hard drive or re-wrapping it; you’re editing directly from these native camera formats.”
CS4 also integrates with Adobe OnLocation (now available for Mac for the first time) to send shot lists to the Premiere Pro timeline along with all metadata logged during a shoot. The Adobe Media Encoder (now a stand-alone application in CS4), can batch encode multiple versions of source files for use across a variety of video formats, including FLV, F4V, Windows, MPEG-2, H.264, QuickTime and others.
Adobe has built over 50 enhancements for editors into Premiere Pro, most of which are geared towards speed and efficiency. For example, in order to avoid trimming redundant content in the project manager, any combination of sequences can be selected for trimming. With this feature, only those portions of online clips used in a sequence are included in the trimmed project, and those same portions appear when the clips are later recaptured. Editors can also customize their workspaces by using optimized project-panel configurations, such a creating separate columns for logging and editing. Track sync lock controls can be used to select which tracks will remain in sync after ripple and insert edits, and new sub-clips are created by dragging content directly from the timeline to the project panel.
After Effects CS4 has vastly improved the program’s search capabilities by adding live search functions inside the timeline and project panels, eliminating the need to manually twirl open layers or scroll through long lists of elements and properties. After Effects also has added a Composition Navigator to make it easier to navigate into deeply nested projects, as well as provides the ability to import, animate and easily render out Photoshop 3-D layers––basically creating an entirely new 3-D workflow that allows After Effects artists to do additional processing and animation without having to return projects to the original 3-D program for re-rendering. Editors working in animation will also like the new “Cartoon Effect,” which instantly applies the look of cel and a few other animation styles to live action clips.
Estimated street price for After Effects CS4 is $999; Premiere Pro, $799; and Soundbooth $199. The full Production Premium CS4 is available in North America for an estimated street price of $1,699 from Adobe or through authorized resellers. Licensed owners of Creative Suite 3 Production Premium can upgrade to CS4 Production Premium for $599.
“This kind of project intelligence will result in stunning returns for our customers,” Hayhurst claims. “We believe that in times of change, integration along the workflow provides a value proposition that cannot be matched. Creative Suite 4 provides a complete cross-platform solution that will enable customers to monetize their content, so they can make their living from their own creativity.”
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production. He can be reached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.