SUMMARY: Metadata streamlining and futuristic speech-to-text features, plus a shiny new Media Encoder, make this a powerful application for busy production houses, as well as a worthy editor for any desktop.
TARGET APPS
Video editing for any project on Mac or PC, from prosumer to broadcast and film projects, short or long form
WHAT IT COSTS YOU
$799 for Mac or PC version, includes Adobe OnLocation CS4 (now for Mac, too!), Adobe Encore CS4 DVD creation software, and Device Central (simulates Adobe Flash and graphics interfaces for cell phone and other video device deliverables). Upgrades from any version of Premiere are $299. Trial version available now online; final version ships by the end of 2008.
WHAT’S COOL
Finally, there’s batch rendering in Adobe Encoder. Speech Search makes video content searchable, and there’s also an efficient new metalogging feature to speed up the tedious task of adding indentifying data to digital media files.
WHAT’S MISSING
Faster and more accurate speech-to-text transcriptions (which should get better when this moves out of beta)
Specs
Windows
2 GHz or faster processor for DV; 3.4 GHz for HDV; dual 2.8 GHz for HD;
2GB of RAM (more RAM recommended when running multiple components)
16.3GB available hard-disk space; cannot install on flash-based storage devices
1280 x 900 display with OpenGL 2.0 – compatible graphics card
Graphics support for Shader Model 3.0
Dedicated 7200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred
For SD/HD workflows, a card for capture and export to tape
OHCI-compatible IEEE 1394 port for DV and HDV capture, export to tape, and transmit to DV device
Mac
Multicore Intel processor
2GB of RAM (more RAM recommended when running multiple components)
20.6GB of available hard-disk space for installation
1280 x 900 display with OpenGL 2.0 – compatible graphics card
Graphics support for Shader Model 3.0
Dedicated 7200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred
Smart Advice
In large projects, the sheer number of files can get out of hand. Premiere Pro helps you enter meaningful search terms in its metalogging fields that will help you sort out long lists of shots in no time.
Using Panasonic P2 cards? Access your shots directly from within Premiere, with no importing necessary. You can even put your edited master back onto the cards and playout to air from the camera.
PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENTS AND SOME PLEASANT SURPRISES
Charlie White
October 1, 2008 Source: Studio Monthly
Just when we thought Premiere Pro for Mac or Windows was about as packed with features as it could get, Adobe has put even more actually useful niceties into the CS4 version of the venerable editing application. Building on its strengths of smooth interaction with other members of the Adobe club of apps, Premiere Pro included functionality and feature sets that were sorely needed in previous versions. There are also some unexpected surprises within the mix.
Tipping its hat to the tapeless workflow that’s largely taken over video production, Adobe makes it easier than ever to log clips, add production notes and keep track of your projects with its new metalogging feature. In old versions of Premiere you could enter metadata attached to clips, but this enhancement lets you enter info into fields like a spreadsheet, tabbing from one to the next, lickety-split. Making matters even easier, you can now also select a huge group of clips and add an important piece of metadata to them (such as your copyright info), all in one stroke. Nice. It’s simple to use and streamlines a tedious yet crucial task that is so important to today’s digital workflows.
Speak Easy
The most promising new feature in Premiere Pro CS4 is Speech Search. This could be the best enhancement of metadata yet, transcribing words spoken in a video clip into easily searched text files attached to that clip. As soon as you click on a file in the project window and select Transcribe to Text, Adobe Media Encoder opens in the background and goes to work. You can designate multiple files to be transcribed as you continue working. When the transcription’s done, you can see the speech transcript as you play the file and click on a word to begin playing back that section of the video clip. You can even enter in and out points according to the words spoken rather than the video or audio waveform. It’s remarkable.
In theory, the approach is enormously powerful, but so far, in the beta implementation of the routine we tested, it’s still shaky. In a QuickTime file I tested, it took around 1 minute, 54 seconds to transcribe a 30-second studio-recorded audio clip into text with around 75-percent accuracy. However, a 30-second DV video/audio file shot in the field with an untrained speaker took even longer to transcribe on a fast dual quad-core machine, with transcription accuracy that was barely 10 percent. It became apparent that accuracy of these transcriptions depended a lot on how distinctly someone spoke. Speech Search still needs a lot of polishing, but Adobe assures us that the shipping version and its descendents will be more accurate and quicker to render.
Even the way it is now, this powerful routine bodes well for the future. The transcribed speech metadata stays with the file in the video when you distribute it — so if you place it into a Flash video or a Web page, that data is there and searchable, too. And there’s more innovation on the way, with ambitious Adobe telling me it’s working on utility apps using this technology that facilitate subtitles, too. Exciting stuff.
( Close-up)
Format Friendly
That’s some fancy footwork, but the most useful addition to Premiere Pro is its new Adobe Media Encoder, now functioning as a separate application. The most-requested enhancement was the addition of batch rendering, lining up projects, clips and versions to be encoded into whatever format you desire. Best of all, Media Encoder can now access its own separate RAM, so in a 64-bit multi-core system with lots of RAM onboard, it can use up to 4GB of its own RAM — and its own processor core — to encode video while you continue editing, not slowing you down much at all.
Smart Details
Adobe minded the small details, too. Among the several editing enhancements added to Premiere Pro CS4, I especially like the improved audio routing that borrows a bit from the Avid playbook, working like a patch bay to let you decide the track on which your audio and video will reside. I also appreciate the work-saving ability to add the same effect to multiple clips. For instance, this lets you copy a color correction from one clip, select 100 more on the timeline and instantly apply it to them all in an easy one-step routine. Besides those editing enhancements, the extensive format support, including AVCHD and DVCPro HD, will come in handy.
Summing up, I was already a big fan of Premiere Pro before I laid eyes on CS4, but now I’m even more sold on it. It’s not a crucial upgrade for every Premiere user, but if you’re adding a lot of metadata to most of your files, need to search speech, or encode multiple versions of your projects in a batch, upgrading would be worth the price of admission.
The Premiere Po CS4 interface looks about the same as its predecessor, but it contains editing enhancements, better interaction with other Adobe apps and a surprisingly ambitious toolset as well.
There are plenty of ways to manipulate your metadata in the newly expanded Project Window, and now it's as easy as entering cells in a spreadsheet. The search feature works well, too.
Speech Search transcribes speech to text, and then makes your video clips searchable just like any other text file. It was about 90 percent accurate with a QuickTime audio file.
