MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/282
102 MacDirectory
REVIEW | CREATIVITY
metadata stored by those systems. There
is no capture or transcoding. Premiere Pro
references the files directly. Even though
we're far more familiar with Apple's Final
Cut, we found it incredibly easy to get up
to a reasonable degree of speed with
Premiere Pro quite quickly and started
enjoying some of the productivity
enhancements that abound throughout
the suite. An update released in late
November lets the program import Final
Cut and Avid projects via the XML-based
Open Media Framework (OMF). The same
update quietly added 64-bit hardware
support and drag-and-drop import of RED
R3D raw files.
As much as the other applications bring to
the creative workflow, Soundbooth CS4 is
the most elegantly brilliant member of the
Suite. This may sound like a bit of a
surprise considering that Adobe made its
name in the visual arts, however
Soundbooth incorporates a very visual and
tactile approach to audio production. It
has nearly all the power of the complex
tools popular with sound designers and
audio engineers, managed by an interface
that should make great sense to a video
editor. The original version, which made its
debut in CS3, was terribly hobbled by the
fact that it was limited to a single stereo
track. Soundbooth CS4 now offers true,
multi-track post. Its greatest strength is its
ability to simplify the task of editing and
cleaning up tracks with extreme precision.
And, at the risk of sounding overly
subjective, it's an incredibly fun application
to work with.
Beyond the template-driven structure of
programs like iDVD, there's no really easy
way to make authoring DVDs easy. It's a
complex, alchemic art. Here, the benefit
of Encore CS4 is the flexibility of using
Dynamic Links with the other CS4
applications. But the program brings a
couple of trump cards to the table. One is
the ability to create Blu-ray DVDs, pop-up
menus and all, and the other is the ability
to export fully interactive Flash versions of
DVD projects via the Adobe Media
Encoder, a multimedia Swiss Army knife
that for some, will justify the cost of
admission to the Premium version of the
package. Photoshop CS4's enhanced 3D
and video compositing tools may also help
you decide to take the Premium route.
Help!?
A downside to CS4 is the help system, or
rather, the lack of it. The Help menu will
take you to Adobe's online help Web site.
No connection. No help. With Photoshop
and Flash, you can opt out of the online
help with a rather well concealed
sequence of menu options. For the other
applications in the suite, you'll need to
download the PDFs from Adobe's site
before you go offline. As with CS3, printed
manuals will be available through Adobe's
bookstore. We can see the benefits of
online docs. They're easier to update and,
with Adobe's community approach, you
can (eventually) see comments from other
users. However, we would much rather see
this incorporated as an adjunct to, rather
than a replacement for built-in help files.
We considered Adobe's previous help
system to be one of the best available on
the Mac and we were quite sad to see it
go (enough, in fact, to drop a half-star
from our rating).
With this one exception, Adobe's CS4
Production Premium is worthy of our
highest accolades. It is an ingenious
collection of software designed and
developed by people who understand the
importance of going out into the field and
gaining an understanding of how their
customers really work. And as with so
many of Adobe's products throughout its
long history, its innovations are going to
have an impact that reach beyond the
artists and craftspeople that use the tools
and impact the vast and diverse audiences
of their work.
Product Adobe CS4 Production
Premium: After Effects,
Premiere Pro (including
Encore and On Location),
Flash Professional (with
Adobe Media Encoder),
Illustrator, Soundbooth,
Bridge, Device Central
Made by Adobe Systems, Inc.