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FEATURE REVIEW ADOBE CS 6 PRODUCTION PREMIUM WORDS BY TREY YANCY Whether flying solo or working as a part of a team, the video production process requires four things: a lot of horsepower, and a tool set that is comprehensive, support for a large range of formats and a workflow that is fast and efficient. Adobe CS6 Production Premium goes a very long way in fulfilling these goals. It includes significantly improved processing and rendering power, a strong and well- balanced collection of complementary applications, support for nearly every format available, and greater integration between applications. Composed of 11 applications, the star attractions are Premiere Pro (video) and After Effects (motion graphics). The bundle includes Photoshop and Illustrator for art creation and editing, Prelude for assembling clips and rough cuts, SpeedGrade for color management and looks creation, Audition for audio, Media Encoder for output and multiplexing, and Encore for authoring Blu-Ray, DVD and web DVD. It also includes Bridge and Flash Professional. A thorough review of all the new and improved features to this heavy- duty collection is something best left to the reader, who is also welcome to look elsewhere for information on the non-video apps in this bundle (Flash and Bridge), but we will touch on the highlights. Premiere Pro Over the past decade Adobe Premiere evolved from number one to has been to a complete no-show, but Adobe came back swinging and now that Apple has shot itself in the foot with iCut and iMotion, Premiere has taken the lead as the industry standard NLE. The latest release brings a lot to the table, reaching parity in some areas and surpassing the competition in others. It includes a revamped interface that features new monitor panels with user customizable buttons, a proper two-up display for fine tuning edits, new project views with the ability to scrub and setting of in out points in thumbnails, the ability to set (and make sense of) multiple markers at the same point, live multi-camera switching with the ability to tweak your cut afterwards. You can also update sequence settings to match a clip. With its new 64-bit and multiple effects) and apply effects by simply double-clicking on the name in the effects panel. Other tweaks include a rearranged three-way color Corrector plus easy round-trip editing with SpeedGrade. There is also improved round-trip integration with Prelude (including efficient ingest and logging), which is enhanced by native support for virtually every major video format. Premiere can also import projects from Media Composer and Symphony as well as FCP7 7 XML files (something that FCX cannot do). In addition, audio features also received a boost with a redesigned mixer with a range of Audition-inspired features, as well as easy round-trip editing in Audition. After Effects The latest version of After Effects playback engine, you can play your project in real time, including real-time FX adjustments. Speaking of effects, Premiere comes with a variety of new offerings, including warp stabilization, rolling shutter repair for eliminating skews and smears from CMOS cameras (DSLR and others). You can also create adjustment layers (multiple layers introduces a lot of improvements and new features, but for those of in the trenches, perhaps the most significant is in the area of performance. Depending on the task, some functions are up to sixteen times faster, and you will see a notable improvement with such things as graphic overlays, masks and effects. Another new time saver is global RAM caching and global persistent disk caching. Unlike in the past, you can render in the background and then try various things without losing the cached rendering. Change your mind and the previous render reappears. This is also stored on disk so that you don't have to re-render the next time you open the project. As for the fun stuff, AE now includes 3-D camera tracker with the ability to automatically or manually identify tracking points. This is great for overlays and background. Just right click to create a solid and 3-D camera then swap the solid for your art or video. You can also turn Illustrator files into editable and animatible paths, including strokes and fills (a one-way trip), and if you are in a 3-D mood, you can also convert vectors into ray traced extruded objects, complete with transparency, mapped reflections and more. Another important improvement is variable mask feathering, which provides a feathered path within a standard path and drag to adjust the feathering as desired. 103 MacDirectory