The Horse Is Gone...
With the release of Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, the first thing users may notice is that the horse, which has long been associated with Premiere, is no longer there. In fact, the icon now representing Premiere Pro has a glassy look to it, clearly influenced from a film reel.
Upon launching a new Premiere Pro 2.0 project or opening up an existing Premiere project, you will also notice an entirely revamped interface, which now features docked panels. Apart from the new looks, Premiere Pro also has scalable panels, where changing the size of one panel, automatically alters the size of other panels. Adding to the appearance, there are tons of new features that will please both new users as well as long time users of the application.
Lets take a look at some of the different features hidden beneath Premiere Pro 2.0's new look.
Perhaps the biggest new feature of Premiere Pro 2.0 is the ability to edit multi-camera footage from four different sources without the need of 3rd party plug-ins. The new multi-camera feature of Premiere Pro lets you edit or cut on the fly, using short-cut keys 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 where 0 stands for record and the numbers 14 represent different camera angles. In most cases, while working with multi-camera footage, editors prefer to use only one audio track and by default, Premiere Pro uses the audio track of camera angle one. However, this setting can be modified such that the audio and the video tracks are cut together.
Another great feature of Premiere's multi-camera functionality is that it is uses nested sequences to create the various cuts, which means that you don't have to enter different modes to make the cuts. Also, since it uses nested sequences, you can edit these cuts as regular clips, with no limitations.
The process of fine-tuning the multi-camera edits is also quite simple. All it requires is a right click on the timeline and the selection of a different camera angle.
What are clip notes? Clip notes are essentially PDF files that contain your rendered video. These clip notes can be sent to clients or other users, who can then enter comments in the PDF file itself. Doing so, attaches the notes to the current time code and when these clip notes are imported back into Premiere Pro; the tags become markers at the specified time codes!
The benefits of using clip notes for large or small projects are tremendous. Ever had to send out tapes or DVDs to a client for constant preview and then wait for the comments to come back, send out another copy because you weren't sure where the client wanted changes? Well, using clip notes eliminates that entire process. Clip notes can be opened by anyone that has the free Adobe Acrobat Reader and the comments are precise to the time code.
The release of the new Adobe Production Bundle certainly enhances the integration of Premiere Pro with other products in the bundle. One such enhancement is referred to as the Adobe Dynamic Link, found only in the Adobe Production Studio. Dynamic link simply means that if you have to import an After Effects project into Premiere Pro, it can be done so, without having to render the compositions in After Effects! As soon as an After Effects project is imported into Premiere Pro, it acts like a clip, and can be trimmed, cut or have effects applied to it! But, what if you have to change a small portion of your After Effects composition? Well, fret not! Any changes made to the After Effects compositions will immediately show up in Premiere Pro. This feature will certainly save a lot of time, especially if your After Effects projects have complicated animations.
 
Premiere Pro 2.0 can also open Premiere Elements projects, a feature sure to please users moving up from Premiere Elements.
Although, previous versions of Premiere Pro had the ability to export timeline content to a DVD, Premiere Pro 2.0 goes a step further and allows editors to create menus and sub menus. This new feature of Premiere Pro 2.0 is also extremely customizable as it gives users the option of making animated backgrounds, the ability to have a background audio track and a few other options. It is also easier to generate DVD markers straight from the timeline, by using the newly added "DVD Marker" button. 
To use this new feature, editors will have to go to Window > DVD Layout, rather than File > Export > Export to DVD, as the latter option creates DVDs without menus.
Premiere Pro 2.0 also ships with extra DVD templates, spanning different genres, which are sure to get you, started.
With Premiere Pro 1.5 and After Effects 6.5 installed on the same machine, users could utilize certain After Effects plugins, which would be automatically available in Premiere Pro. However, these effects are now integrated into the Premiere Pro 2.0 installation itself. Other enhancements in this category include the long desired "Time Code" effect, new GPU transitions as well a whole section dedicated to color-correction effects. The newly added color correction filters include the Fast Color Corrector and the Three Way Color Corrector, which are certainly excellent additions to the effects line up. The benefits of using the Fast Color Corrector is that it permits real-time playback, with a supported graphics card. Although, the Three Way Color Corrector takes a little time to render, it certainly results in finer corrections.r>
Another effect users may find interesting is the newly added Lighting Effect from Photoshop. This effect can be used to generate spotlights, omnilights or directional lights and can be helpful in changing the overall mood of the image.
While working with keyframmable effects, users will also notice the addition of velocity and value graphs in the effects control window. With the introduction of these various graphs, Premiere Pro 2.0 also introduces advanced keyframe manipulation.
Premiere Pro 2.0 now also supports GPU accelerated playback with certain effects, such as Motion, Opacity, Cross Dissolve, Fast Color Corrector and a few others.
Premiere Pro 2.0 now natively supports HDV content, without the use of other plugins such as Cineform's AspectHD. Since editing is done natively within Premiere Pro, the need to constantly recompress the footage is eliminated, saving time as well as maintaining the best possible quality.
Due to its native support of HDV content, footage captured with earlier versions is automatically converted to the Adobe HDV format.
Titles generated in Premiere Pro are now embedded within the project itself. But, what if you want to use the same titles in another project? Well, Premiere Pro also has the ability to export these titles as a PRTL file which can then be imported into other Premiere Pro projects.
This is another addition to version 2 and certainly an excellent one as well. In Premiere Pro 2.0, you can create a transparent video layer, which can be used for applying effects to a bunch of clips without having to repetitively copy and paste attributes. Just apply an effect to the transparent video track and the results from the effect will automatically be apparent on all other underlying tracks.
Â
Ever have too much footage in your project, that won't be used for the end product? Then the newly introduced remove unused feature is your friend and helps you eliminate unused media clips or other elements. Â
 
Â
The Adobe Media Encoder for Premiere Pro 2.0 has a completely overhauled interface and the ability to output to Flash Video. Other enhancements in this category include the ability to preview your source video, your output video as well as the ability to crop your video, right inside the Media Encoder itself.
Â
Premiere Pro 2.0 now supports 10 bit video clips while working with the Adobe HD âSDI presets. Since, 10-bit footage, takes up a lot of processing power, Premiere Pro by default plays the files at 8-bit, a setting which can later be changed.
Premiere Pro 2.0 also adds the capabilities of working with 16-bit Photoshop files.
If you have any of the applications of the latest Creative Suite, you may already be aware of the Adobe Bridge. If not, then Adobe Bridge is essentially a media management application, which can be used will all products in the Adobe Production Bundle. However, the updated version of the Bridge that ships with the Adobe Production Studio allows you to preview video files as well as After Effects animation presets.
Premiere Pro 2.0 is certainly accompanied by a lot of enhancements from previous versions of the applications. The following is a list of some of the enhancements worth mentioning.
- Audio Conforming: Premiere Pro 2.0 no longer conforms audio files if the ratio of the audio clips to the project is 1:1, 1:2 or 2:3
- Change Tape Name: Whenever you insert a new tape to be captured within Premiere Pro, the application now prompts you to enter a new tape name!
- Re-arrange sequences: Premiere Pro 2.0 now allows you to re-arrange sequences, by simply dragging and dropping them in a new location.
Reply
Like
