Product Reviews

Less than a year has gone by since Adobe released the first version of a complete rewrite to its video-editing giant, Premiere. As part of the en masse release of new editions that make up the Digital Video Collection 2.5, Premiere Pro 1.5 builds on the codebase with a combination of new features and improved old ones.

Premiere Pro further imitates After Effects with this release, as the motion control has become even more like a compositing tool. It now supports Bezier keyframes, so that the on-screen nodes for each keyframe now have familiar little handles, allowing you to change the curve of the motion. You can also change the temporal interpolation, so that motion can ease in and out of a keyframe.

Best of all, every single effect, not just motion paths, can now be saved as a preset, with the option to anchor the frames to the in or out point, or scale them when they're applied to a new clip. Adobe also supplies a small selection of ready-made presets created by Jacob Rosenberg, an LA-based skateboard film-maker.

Photoshop integration - one of the key new features of the original Premiere Pro - has been improved as well. Photoshop luma and track mattes can be used directly in Premiere, with complete interaction between the two apps. Photoshop CS can be called directly from within Premiere, and any changes made in Photoshop are immediately registered back. Now that Photoshop CS understands non-square pixels, the correct aspect ratio will be used, which is particularly useful for 16:9 anamorphic work.

Premiere's integration with After Effects has also been taken to a new level, although you still can't import After Effects compositions for use on the timeline. However, you can copy and paste between Premiere and After Effects. Not everything gets through the process - most of Premiere Pro's filter and transition effects are left behind. Notable exceptions are the After Effects ones that now replace some of Premiere's own versions; motion paths and other motion control settings are also passed across. It's possible to call upon After Effects' more detailed control and compositing toolset, and the results can be pasted back into Premiere.

Premiere Pro now comes

Premiere Pro 1.5 also includes a selection of new special effects, the most intriguing of which are the GPU effects: Page Curl, Refraction and Ripple (Circular). However, although these produce eye-catching effects similar to their equivalents in Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5.5, we found playback far more jerky. Waves' DeEsser and Steinberg's DeHummer VST audio effects have been added too. These remove high and low-frequency background noise.

Another major area into which Adobe is pushing Premiere Pro is as an offline editor, fitting in with higher-end systems. The improved Project Management tools allow you to reduce a project's size for archiving by cutting out the unused portions. These tools also facilitate Premiere Pro's use as an offline editor - for example, making a 16:9 DV edit of an HD project, then using the edit to reassemble an HD version. The support for exporting Avid AAF files makes Premiere even better suited to this than previously.

Although this is only a 'dot' release, and the enhancements are welcome, one area where we were hoping to see big improvements was in real-time video mixing capabilities. With the competition from Canopus Edius 2 and Pinnacle Edition Pro 5, Premiere was really starting to look long in the tooth in this respect. Adobe has made noticeable improvements in this department, but it's still not enough. Although Premiere can now edit MPEG, it can't mix it with DV in real-time like Edius.

While you can use both the Canopus and Pinnacle software on little more than a fast PC with good graphics and a FireWire adaptor, Adobe needs Matrox or Canopus hardware to really shine when it comes to real-time rendering. This isn't a disaster, considering the incredible bundle deals Adobe has with Matrox cards - you can virtually get an RT.X10 or RT.X100 for free. But this drastically limits its potential by being tied to hardware when the competition has already made the break.

In its favour, though, Premiere Pro still has its unique nested sequences and comprehensive integration with other Adobe apps, plus massive third-party plug-in support. It also has the most familiar interface in the business, and will be the easiest for a newcomer to get to grips with. But unless Adobe addresses the core issue of real-time rendering performance, professional editors will continue to look elsewhere for a speedier workflow.