Adobe CS5 Production Premium Overview Review (page 2)
Premiere Pro
For most of us, the most exciting news is Premiere Pro's significant performance increase. At the heart of this speed improvement is the new 64-bit architecture, memory addressing, CPU optimization and the new Adobe Mercury Playback Engine that leverages the power of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) of a compatible nVidia graphics card. This means that for processor intensive operations, such as using highly encoded video formats, you'll get real-time performance even after stacking on layer after layer, each with effects and color correction.
For a quick speed test, we compared the frame rates of an identical project on the same computer in CS5 with GPU acceleration enabled and in CS4. We stacked six layers of various HD video formats that included two HDV, a DLSR and graphics MOV, AVI and, just for fun, an F4V. Each had at least three different effects, and four had additional motion and scaling. After hesitating for 10 seconds before starting, the playback in CS4 slowly climbed to 2.5 FPS. After a two second delay, the playback in CS5 was real-time without any dropped frames. Be sure to look for our next review where we'll have more benchmarking results.
Beyond performance gains there are also plenty of new feature and capabilities. Premiere Pro now has improved support for AVC-Intra and it natively handles AVCCAM, XDCAM HD 50 and DPX along with those from popular DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D and even monster 4k Red R3D files. Some of these format capabilities were not yet included in the pre-release version we reviewed. You can now import and export Final Cut Pro and Avid projects using XMP and AAF data respectively. Along with the other programs in the suite, there are plenty of new metadata configuring and exporting options. And, at last, auto scene detection for HDV files is here.
With CS5, metadata becomes a much stronger thread used to weave together the functions and workflow of the suite. You now can bring shots from Story through OnLocation into the Premiere Pro library with all script information embedded in the clips. While Speech Transcript was a promising tool introduced in CS4, if you have a script to begin with, this is a far more accurate way to handle your narrative throughout the production pipeline. The new Analyze Content feature lets you sync your script with what was actually spoken making a transcript far more accurate than analyzing from scratch with Speech Transcript alone. You can then search or set in and out points based on the script, which become edit points in the timeline. When you're ready to output, you can bring as much or as little of the metadata into your final program as physical or online media where it can be used to create interactive and searchable productions. There are a number of small workflow enhancements, like dragging a clip in Premiere Pro onto the New Item icon now automatically creates a timeline with the correct settings for that asset. You can also render your timeline to your final output format without leaving Premiere Pro, although you still have the option to open the Media Encoder render queue. Dynamic link remains a solid render-free conduit between Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Encore. Adobe says this version of Dynamic link is faster but our tests revealed only minor differences exporting, importing and updating.
Effects get a real upgrade as well. Premiere Pro now has a much-improved keyer called, Ultra. It is powerful, simple to use and the quality is very comparable to the sophisticated Keylight keyer within After Effects. It is also GPU accelerated so you don't have to worry about the performance hit normally associated with keying. You'll now find folders at the top of the effects panel grouping effects into Accelerated, 32-bit color and YUV camps.
It may be sign of a maturing program that Premiere Pro's layout is only slightly reconfigured. You'll now find the tools docked horizontally along the upper left corner. Of course, panel arrangement remains completely customizable.
Sound Booth
The improvements in Sound Booth are welcomed, but not as earth shaking as some of its suite siblings. You can now work more flexibly in multi-track view with the new track expand and zoom capabilities. We found we could comfortably navigate 10 tracks with visible waveforms, instead of just the four or five tracks in the static CS4 timeline. Of course, by minimizing each track and scrolling, your track counts can surpass the ridiculous in either version. You now have an easy way to pan and zoom in and out of your project using a slider at the top of the main window. You also can download and drag and drop files right into the timeline rather than having to import into your file system first.
CS5 does give you a hefty amount of new audio assets; 130 scores and more than 6,000 new sound effects (totaling 10,000). These are valued at approximately $700 if purchased separately.
After Effects
Like Premiere Pro, the big news for After Effects is the improved playback and rendering performance. 64-bit memory addressing allows you to work with much larger files and create longer previews if you have the RAM. For instance, our test machine has 32GB so instead of 5.5-seconds of full resolution HD video with 4GB, we were able to produce a 111-second RAM preview. Although this did take several minutes to render, it is at least possible to preview your timeline within After Effects.
The new Roto Brush is similar to the quick select brush in PS. There's a refine matte function that automatically reduces chatter and attempts to account for motion blur by adding a softer edge for that area. It also attempts to clean up the interior of the matte using Decontamination. In our tests, Roto Brush worked well extracting our subject that had sufficient contrast from the background. It was a bit more finicky when we tried pulling our subject from a background that was similar in tone and brightness. But this is to be expected. CS5 comes with a new version of the Mocha Shape plug-in that gives you improved tracking and more rotoscoping options.
A few other key improvements include now being able to work in HDR (higher color bit-depth like 32) along with incorporating advanced color management look-up tables (LUTs). After Effects is now natively compatible with AVC-Intra 50 and 100 formats and, like Premiere Pro, has expanded support for RED files. Dozens of other improvements and enhancements tools and processes suggest that Adobe has been both innovating and listening to us, the end-user. To ensure continued compatibility and stability, some changes include removing the ability to do things past versions could, such as opening/importing FLV files encoded with Sorenson Spark codec or projects from After Effects 5.5 projects or earlier.
