In a word, “integration” is what the many recent updates to Creative Cloud are all about.  Over the last several years Adobe has been developing and acquiring technology, such as IRIDAS Speed Grade, and more recently the Skybox VR technology of Mettle.  They have also been busy bring all these technologies together to work seamlessly in one platform, Premiere.  

Multiple projects can now remain open without repeatedly having to open and close individual projects to access different functions formerly only available separately in software such as After Effects, Audition, etc..  Also included is integrated access to over 4 million HD and 4K Adobe Stock footage selections directly within Creative Cloud.

Once the latest innovations are put on-line, (later this year), multiple workstations will be able to remotely collaborate simultaneously on a single project for color, graphics and audio workflows without ever leaving Premiere.  However, to avoid confusion and control access, high level project locking functions have been put in place.  Collaborators will also receive periodic reminders to share their changes and can easily access the group’s version history.

Most popular formats can now be easily edited natively and mixed on a single timeline.  And with the announcement from Apple that their High Sierra operating system will no longer support Final Cut Studio, including Final Cut Pro 7, it is especially important that Premiere has expanded it’s ability to port over FCP keyboard shortcuts.

Adobe is trying to ease the transition of many Editors to Premiere as more high profile project are now cutting on the platform.  Some notable productions making the switch include “Mindhunter” from executive producer and director David Fincher, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” from co-directors Bonni Cohen and John Shenk, “Only the Brave” from director Joseph Kosinski, and “6 Below” from director Scott Waugh.

Perhaps the biggest new features coming to Premiere are in the area of VR.  Virtual Reality content creation will be possible with a dedicated viewing environment in Premiere Pro. Editors will soon be able to immersively experience content, review their timeline, and use keyboard driven editing for trimming and markers while wearing the same VR head-mounts as their audience.  A graphic editing interface can also be overlaid to float in VR space which can be controlled with a wireless handheld pointer so that basic editing function can be performed without taking off the headsets.  In addition, audio can be determined by orientation or position and exported as ambisonics audio for VR-enabled platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. VR effects and transitions are now native and accelerated via the Mercury playback engine.

Another area of advancement is Character Animation; Adobe’s Character Animator 1.0 has been unveiled with changes to core and custom animation functions, such as pose-to-pose blending, new physics behaviors and visual puppet controls.  Auto tracking features help to improve realtime lip-sync capability by accurately matching mouth shape with spoken sounds.

Many of these innovations in virtual reality (VR)/360, animation, motion graphics, and editing, collaboration are powered by Adobe Sensei, the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning framework.  The technology announced at IBC 2017 is not all currently available, but will be later this year.

For more information, visit www.adobe.com.